Building Learning Communities

In Summer of 2014, St. Anne's-Belfield School in Charlottesville, Virginia offered its inaugural Learn to Learn Institute, an intensive, optional, paid week-long professional development experience. Inspired by a Board retreat led by Alan November, the goals of this unique PD experience were to collaborate, create, reimagine and redesign course assessments, assignments and activities for learning in the Internet Age. To these ends, we envisioned an immersive and inspiring week that was truly teacher-centered in its implementation, with copious time for design, collaboration, sharing, and peer review. The arc of the week of Learn to Learn started with a keynote address by Alan November, was followed by a curricular design workshop by Sara Wilke, and was followed by three days of intense curricular (re)design work. Both in its agenda and physical set-up, Learn to Learn was designed to reflect 21st century teaching and learning: flexible and mobile furniture and breakout spaces; use of technology to facilitate one's work; collaboration across disciplines and grade levels; availability of experts--usually colleagues--to introduce new skills like blogging; and a schedule that laid out clear goals but provided freedom to use the time and space as needed. The result of the week was what one veteran teacher called "the best professional development experience of my entire career." To be sure, teachers left with upgrade projects and assignments, but more importantly left with deeper, and in some cases new, collegial relationships, collaborative partnerships, and a shared willingness to take risks in the classrooms. The unique format of this professional development experience inspired similarly innovative classroom experiences (more than a few teachers immediately changed the furniture set-up in their classrooms). We invite you to this session to learn more about how and why we implemented our inaugural Learn to Learn Institute, how it has impacted our classrooms, and how you can bring it to your own school.