What is on Our PLC’s Refrigerator Door?

1. What is on Our PLC’s Refrigerator Door?

2. Today’s Purpose • To foster our PLC instructionally and professionally • To professionally collaborate so we can clarify what is really important in our school Our Target Let’s determine what is on Our Refrigerator Door at Discovery Middle School.

3. What is a PLC? A professional learning community is an ethos that infuses every single aspect of a school’s operation. When a school becomes a professional learning community, everything in the school looks different than it did before. ~Andy Hargreaves (2004)

4. Sowing the Seeds of Change “The fact that the captain of the ship can clearly see the port is of no use if the crew continues to paddle in a different direction.” ~Author unknown 4

5. Collective Responsibility The best organizations are places where everyone has permission, or better yet, the responsibility to gather and act on quantitative and qualitative data, and to help everyone else learn what they know. --Pfeffer & Sutton (2006)

6. The Power of Professional Learning Communities The most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is building the capacity of school personnel to function as a professional learning community. The path to change in the classroom lies within and through professional learning communities. ~Milbrey McLaughlin (1995)

7. Highly Effective Schools An analysis of research conducted over a thirty-five year period demonstrates that schools that are highly effective produce results that almost entirely overcome the effects of student backgrounds. ~Robert Marzano (2003)

8. Focus on Learning To truly reform American education we must abandon the long-standing assumption that the central activityof education is teaching and reorient all policy making and activities around a new benchmark: student learning. ~Edward Fiske (1992)

9. Focused on Results Collaborative cultures, which by definition have close relationships, are indeed powerful but unless focused on the right things may end up being powerfully wrong. ~Michael Fullan

10. Focus on Collaboration Capacity building . . .is not just workshops and professional development for all. It is the daily habit of working together, and you can’t learn this from a workshop or course. You need to learn it by doing it and having mechanisms for getting better at it on purpose. --Michael Fullan (2005)

11. The Four Critical Questions of PLC’s 1. What are students supposed to know and do? 2. How do we know when students have learned? 3. What do we do when students HAVEN’T learned? 4. What do we do when students HAVE learned the content?

12. There is no such thing as the perfect lesson, the perfect day in school, or the perfect teacher. For teachers and students alike, the goal is not perfection but persistence in the pursuit of understanding important things. McTighe and Tomlinson

13. We Put The Important Things in Our Lives on Our Refrigerator Doors On the provided paper, please take a minute to jot down what is on your refrigerator door at your house. “Before” Making Personal Meaning of the Learning Target

14. Principal’s Instructional TeamCreated the Existing Refrigerator Door (Cabinet in my Room) Courtney Horton Adrienne King Jennifer Dahlke Mary Beth Stewart Kate Wade Olivia Karr Jackie Flowers Robbie Smith

15. Clarifying What Really Matters in “Our” School Here’s a question: When was the last time you looked—I mean really looked—at what’s on the door of your kitchen refrigerator? My guess is that most refrigerator doors probably look a lot alike, busy and covered with papers, pictures and notes. Although you might characterize it as clutter, in fact, you can tell a lot about what is important to someone simply by seeing what is on his or her refrigerator door.

16. For a moment, extend the metaphor of the refrigerator door to “our” school. Obviously, we are not talking about what’s on the door of the refrigerator in the teachers’ lounge, but about using the metaphor to examine what is important in “our” school. For example, does a look at the refrigerator door reveal that “our” school values teaching or learning? Working in isolation or on collaborative teams? What really matters in “our” school? Best Practices/Tom W. Many, Ed.D.

17. “During” What’s on Your Refrigerator Door? Key Sentences Modified • Read the section titled “Defining What is Important.” After reading that section, mark the Key Sentences by underlining them. Group members will share one key sentence and explain why they think it is a key sentence. You have 5 minutes per round. • The process will then be repeated for the next two sections first read “Clarifying What is Important.” • Then read the last section “So what’s on the refrigerator door?”

18. “After” • On the provided sentence strips write what your group thinks should be on Our refrigerator door. Your group may do more than one. Place them on the Refrigerator (whiteboard in my room labeled refrigerator) with the provided tape. • Volunteers to share out whole group?

19. Interconnectedness of Goals, Data and Teams—All Three Are Essential for Improvement DATA—fuel the engine of continuous improvement TEAM MEMBERS—collaborate to improve performance GOALS—targets for improvement; keep improvement efforts “on track” PLC Work

20. NEW Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning LEARNING COMMUNITIES: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students occurs within learning communities committed to continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and goal alignment.

21. Today’s Outcomes • We have fostered our PLC instructionally and professionally • We have professionally collaborated to clarify what is really important in our school • We have determined what is on Our Refrigerator Door at Discovery Middle School

22. Our Challenge: Be Great! “Good is theEnemyto Great!” ~Jim Collins Good to Great

23. Professional Learning Community (PLC) Defined Educators are committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research in order to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators. ~DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many (2006)