Teachers Travel To Oklahoma For Three-day Training

FARMINGTON — More than 50 Farmington teachers and administrators participated in a three-day training last week in Tulsa on implementing professional learning communities within their respective schools.

Farmington Superintendent Bryan Law said the district committed to training its teachers in professional learning communities about three years ago and has sent smaller groups of teachers to different sessions each year.

Most of the events are further away, in places like St. Louis, Mo., San Antonio, Texas, and California. Law said the district decided to take advantage of the Tulsa workshop and send more teachers all at once. The district chartered a bus to transport 45 teachers and nine administrators.

The training cost the district about $40,000, which includes the registration fee, meals, transportation and hotel costs, according to Terri Strope, assistant superintendent. The district will use professional development funds from the state to pay the expenses for the workshop, she said.

Law said the district’s goal is to train 100 percent of its teachers in professional learning communities within the next two years.

Using this concept, teachers are divided into smaller groups to collaborate in reaching their students.

One example, Law said, might be how to raise the reading level for a group of students.

Strope has gone through the training and participated in the Tulsa workshop.

Strope said professional learning communities help teachers to have a dialogue so that when they are meeting together, the students’ needs are the focus and teachers are all aligned in their goals to meet those needs.

The Farmington School District has 175-180 teachers. With the Tulsa workshop, the district will have all its elementary teachers trained, more than half of the middle school teachers and at least one-half of the high school teachers trained, Strope said.

“It is our intent that all schools operate in that way (using professional learning communities),” Strope said.

The Tulsa training was sponsored by Solution Tree, which describes itself as a “leading provider of educational strategies and tools that improve staff and student performance.” According to the organization’s website, it will conduct 13 training sessions throughout the rest of the year. Many of the summer sessions are already sold out, the website says.

Farmington teacher Shan- non Cantrell, who is an instructional facilitator at Folsom Elementary, said the Solution Tree workshop provides excellent professional development.

The speakers are educators who have taught in model schools, Cantrell said.

Folsom already uses professional learning communities and the teachers meet weekly by grade level in “PLC meetings,” Cantrell said.

These meetings are used to look at student work and student data to see if students are meeting their goals or if teachers need to make changes to help students, Cantrell said.

She added that she believes the system helps teachers so they do not feel isolated and can share ideas with each other.

“It’s a good opportunity for teachers to make sure we’re doing the best we can for the students,” Cantrell said.