Professional Learning Communities

1. Professional Learning Communities A Framework to Focus on Student Learning by Turning Up the H.E.A.T.

2. No Teacher (or Team Leader) is an Island Educators must stop working in isolation and hoarding their ideas, materials, and strategies and begin to work together to meet the needs of all students –(DaFour, 2004) We are a Professional Learning Community (PLC) that will go back to our schools and lead other PLCs.

3. What is a Professional Learning Community? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ?????

4. What are the norms you have taken back to your Professional Learning Community? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ????? • ?????

5. What is a “Big Ideas” of a Professional Learning Community? • Ensuring that Students Learn • A Culture of Collaboration • A Focus on Results

6. Ensuring that Students Learn • “core mission” of education is to ensure students are learning and not just taught • “learning for all” – taken literally it can be a pledge to ensure the success of each student • Multiple questions will come about…

7. Ensuring that Students Learn • What practices and characteristics have been most successful at helping students achieve at high levels at other schools? • How can we adopt those successful practices and characteristics to fit the needs of our school? • What commitments do we have to make to each other? • What are the indicators we could monitor to assess the progress?

8. Ensuring that Students Learn What will drive the work of the PLCs? • What do we want the student to learn? • How will we know when each student has learned it? • How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?*** *** - what separates PLCs from other committees

9. Ensuring that Students Learn PLCs response to students having difficulty learning is: • Timely – quickly identify students who need additional time and support • Based on intervention rather than remediation • Directive – systematic plan requires students devote extra time and receive extra help to master the necessary concepts

10. A Culture of Collaboration • Teacher collaboration represents “best practices” but in many schools teachers work in isolation….why?? • PLCs vs. “other” committees – this goes back to PLC “norms” – what are or should be the focus of PLCs • Are we removing barriers to success?

11. A Culture of Collaboration Are we removing barriers to success? Presenting teachers with state standards and district curriculum guides will not guarantee students will have access to a common curriculum.

12. A Culture of Collaboration Even school districts that devote tremendous time and energy to designing the intended curriculum often pay little attention to the implemented curriculum (what teachers actually teach) and even less to the attained curriculum (what students learn) (Marzano, 2003).

13. A Culture of Collaboration Ultimately PLCs are a question of will… According to Roland Barth (1991), “…God did not create self-contained classrooms, 50-minute periods, and subjects taught in isolation. We did…”

14. A Focus on Results • PLCs focus measure effectiveness by results… (Formative Assessment “for” and “of” Learning and Summative Assessment) • Goal attainment through measured progress: • Adopting book programs? • Adding a new computer lab? • Increase number of proficient students in science by 5%? • Reduce failure rate by 8%?

15. A Focus on Results • Do you suffer from aches and pains of the DRIP syndrome? • Data Rich/Information Poor • PLCs welcome not only welcome data but also turns it into useful and relevant information

16. A Focus on Results • Common formative assessment practices will provide useful data for comparison of all students… • …thus leading PLCs to call on each other’s experiences and talents to reflect and address concerns

17. A Focus on Results The rise or fall of any PLC depends not on the merit of the concept but the commitment and persistence of the educators. “…if we want to change what we are, we must begin to change what we do…” (Allen Wheeler)