Principals are instrumental in sparking professional dialogue amongst teachers and encouraging critical self-reflection within the minds of individual teachers. All of these elements of reflection and reflexiveness are essential during staff meetings, for a true Professional Learning Community to function as it should. A good principal is willing to provide an honest evaluation as to how the school is progressing in its mission and not allow the school's reputation to

Women in Film Noir Teaching is in many ways a solitary profession: A teacher in his or her own classroom spends hours in contact with students but often relatively little time talking to other teachers and educators. Administrators are also in many ways isolated from the teachers. Perhaps because of this fact, the administrators interviewed for this project emphasized the personal importance of collaboration with other members of the professional and

Businesses are now pushing more so than ever before for schools and educators to adopt a community or learning community based approach to student education, in the hopes students will graduate with more applicable skill sets they can apply to the immediate global workplace. Where did they originate? Learning communities originated from "theory-drive evaluation" research focusing on school reform initiated by education policy specialists (Felner, et al., 1997:520). The idea was

Professional Learning and Development -- the Teacher's Perspective The recent debate over standards-based education has tended to focus upon student performance in regards to standardized testing and the rise of common core standards. However, an equally critical component of the question of improving our nation's schools is the training and education of teachers. Receiving a degree in education is only the beginning of the teacher's development as an educator. This

Abstract Uplift Triumph Preparatory is a public charter school in Dallas, Texas. Since 2013, Uplift Education has offered students at all grade levels the opportunity for personal, moral, and academic achievement. Although Uplift celebrates its successes in creating the type of supportive environment required for educational achievement, strong leaders understand the need to strategically plan for change and continually update goals. This Instructional Leadership Plan outlines the vision for Uplift Triumph

49). That goes for leaders in the learning community as well. Thessin asserts that while it is important to teach students to solve problems, there is a lack of focus on another important, related goal: "the need for teachers to learn to do the same" (49). Teachers are leaders and they must be given the training to develop problem solving skills along with the other important skills mentioned in