By Peris Kaluki – Leadership Coach
Dignitas works towards strengthening school leadership teams and improving instructional quality, to help create an environment where all learners can develop the skills and knowledge to help them thrive and succeed. The Ongoza program, a partnership with IDP Foundation and Premier Credit Kenya, focuses on improving instructional quality through improved instructional leadership and financial management.
Instructional Leaders use Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) as a tool to promote best practices in school. A professional learning community (PLC) is a group of educators that meets regularly, share expertise, and work collaboratively to improve their teaching skills as well as the academic performance of their learners.
Joysprings Community Centre is a community school that has partnered with Dignitas through the Ongoza program. It accommodates learners from the local community starting from the pre-primary grades to sixth grade.
In appreciation of her school’s PLC and how it has enabled her to improve their school culture, the school’s Instructional leader Madam Dorrah, narrates how she has seen a huge improvement in terms of collaboration among teachers and lesson delivery.
“Going through Ongoza training has significantly changed our fixed mindset. We carried the traditional teaching attitude where everyone was working independently to raise test scores in the specific subjects and grades that they were in charge of. The introduction of Professional Learning Communities to our school has remarkably transformed teacher collaboration and sharing of expertise,” says Madam Dorrah.
She adds that through PLC meetings, they have been able to learn from each other, share challenges that affect learners’ performance directly, and deliberate on possible solutions. “Implementing PLC’s has helped us become more adept at self-reflection, an approach that has positively affected our school culture and resulted in major shifts, both in lesson delivery and learners performance. We have been able to identify our areas of strengths and weaknesses and this has helped a lot when it comes to defining our roles, delegating tasks, or allocating subjects to teachers. In addition, teachers are now motivated and more confident when delivering lessons, particularly after learning new teaching techniques during the PLC meetings,” she notes.
Teachers deliberating on issues affecting learners’ performance, during a PLC meeting at Joysprings Community Centre.
Madam Dorrah acknowledges that meeting regularly has enabled the teachers at Joysprings to build meaningful relationships among themselves and fostered a strong sense of community and belonging. More so, it has nurtured a strong collaborative learning culture because they now all work towards achieving a common goal of ensuring every child in the school receives the quality education they deserve.
Learn more about why school leaders are agents of change.