Building Communities That Thrive.
Virtual Professional Learning Communities
One of the most important aspects of professional experience is the ability to collaborate meaningfully with colleagues from different communities and contexts. While educators in places like Finland, Singapore, and Switzerland routinely have these opportunities, this aspect of professionalism is often denied to educators in the United States. To the extent that opportunities do exist, they are often cost prohibitive or logistically difficult to attend. CanopyEd's Virtual Professional Learning Communities are designed to address this need.
Through our Virtual PLCs, we bring together educators from across the country (and sometimes the world) to engage in in-depth conversation and feedback about issues of particular importance to them. These conversations are also supported by ongoing interaction on other community platforms as well as information and resources on current events and research around education.
Below you'll find more detailed information on these Professional Learning Communities followed a description of what makes these communities unique.
Professional Learning Communities for Principals; Hosted by William Minton, Executive Director, CanopyEd
Sept. 26th; Nov. 7th; Dec. 19th - 6:30 EST; Cost: FREE
Principals deserve the opportunity for meaningful collaboration. This PLC is open to all principals and assistant principals.
Since this this is our inaugural cohort, we are proud to be able to invite principals to participate free of charge.
This PLC will consist of 3 meetings. Each meeting will begin with an overview of recent research and news about education. Participants will then transition into breakout groups where each participant will have the chance to present and receive feedback on an issue important to them. To read more about this Virtual PLC and register, check out our Eventbrite page.
Structures to Support Community
The Meetings - Guided Discussion Frameworks
Meetings will last 90 minutes and occur three times over the course of a semester. Each meeting is be dominated by discussion in breakout groups. These discussions follow a guided discussion framework that allow each participant to present a question or topic of inquiry for 15 minutes of in-depth analysis. So in every meeting each participant will offer insight and advice to 3 other colleagues from around the country and have the opportunity to benefit from their insight and advice on an issue of particular importance to them.
The Meetings - Summary of Research & Examples of Excellence
While the majority of time at each meeting will be spent in breakout groups, meetings will begin with a brief whole group session around a topic of recent education research or current events.
Ongoing Interaction in Closed Facebook Groups
While the live meetings will occur about every 6 weeks, participants will also be able to engage in ongoing communication and collaboration through a closed Facebook group. These groups will be reserved only for members of the PLCs and they will stay live even after the official semester long PLC is over.
Newsletters
In between each meeting participants will receive a newsletter summarizing the most interesting articles and research about education from the weeks before.