The Power of PLC

The Power of PLC by Sheri Crandall

Have you ever attended a workshop that made you not only want to be a better teacher, but a better person?  Sue Atwater, mentor coach and I had the opportunity to attend the PLC Conference in Minneapolis this summer with some of our HS colleagues. 

From the moment that Dr. Becky DuFour took the stage for her Keynote on day one, until Mike Mattos took the stage for his Keynote and closing speech on the last day, including Dr. Richard DuFour’s Keynote on day 2, I was inspired to be better and do better. 

If you have ever had the opportunity to attend this conference, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. Becky DuFour set the stage and explained so very clearly how to build the solid foundation of a PLC and what a successful PLC should look like.  She encouraged everyone to NOT settle for “collaboration lite”.

 She talked about the importance of knowing our mission, vision, values and goals.  Why do we exist?  What must we become?  How must we behave and which steps do we take when? 

Mike Mattos discussed when ALL means ALL with such passion that you feel like you are at a church revival.  When he stood on stage and shouted at us, “Who are we to play God?”, he actually made me shake in my seat, yet I found myself nodding along with him.   We cannot allow our students to play the teacher lottery, we must insist that we work together to have success for all students by providing them with a guaranteed viable curriculum.

He encouraged us to make this promise to every parent:  “It does not matter which teacher your child has at our school, if your child needs extra time and support to learn at high levels, we guarantee he or she will receive it.”

Rick DuFour praised American Educators saying that we are the greatest generation of educators yet, but we still must improve, because the consequences of failing to succeed in school have never been more dire.  The gap in earnings between college graduates and HS dropouts is the largest in the industrialized world.  Therefore, we must implement what we know to be the most promising practice.  We must work in collaborative teams interdependently to achieve commons SMART goals for which all member are mutually accountable.  We must focus on the right work. It is obvious what the great Dr. Richard DuFour means by the right work … PLCs.

I could go on and on about the information learned at this conference, but that is not the point of this post.  The point of this post is that we drank the Kool-Aid and we saw the light and we knew we must focus on the right work when we returned to school.   For years we have been committed to blocking out the time weekly to meet in teams, but were we having team meetings or truly PLCing?  We weren’t quite sure where to start or what our next steps might be and we had the honor of working one on one with 2 of the greats:  Rick DuFour and Mike Mattos.  Dr. DuFour sat with our HS team and guided us step by step through what we could do when we returned to school.  We did exactly what he suggested and started by meeting with our HS principal and asking him about his vision and mission.  We, as teacher leaders, set our goal for the HS this year as making the PLC process really work.  We asked our principal to make some commitments to us about supporting and enforcing PLC work, as well as asking our staff to commit to this important work as well.

Due to the new teacher leader grant in our state, we were able to hire a PLC facilitator for each HS department this year.  This PLC facilitator will bring all the PLCs in their department together once a month to discuss curriculum alignment, student struggles, cross department issues and deficits.  Possible guiding questions:  * What are the areas in which our students consistently struggle, and what is our theory regarding why these skills or concepts are proving difficult for them? * What are the obstacles that are impeding progress? *What support and resources can we provide to promote progress? *How can we identify and celebrate examples of progress to build momentum to increase individual and collective confidence about taking on the next challenge? *What do we need to learn individually and collectively to improve upon our ability to help students succeed (What PD do we need to make this happen)?

The focus of our PLCs are 5 guiding questions:   

·         What is it, exactly, that we expect students to learn in our classroom?

·         How will we provide instruction to allow for the most student learning to occur?

·         How will we know when they have learned it?

·         How will we respond when they don’t learn it?

·         How will we respond when they already know it?

It is so exciting to see teams of teachers discussing what they as a group can do to help students achieve.  The paradigm shift from MY students to OUR students.  For those staff members that haven’t had a chance to attend the PLC conference we have made handouts and cliff notes of characteristics of a successful PLC, along with some guiding questions.  For those teachers that are still struggling with writing SMART goals, we offered a Professional Development session taught by our principal, where he broke it down for them step by step.  On our first PD day in August, our principal also led a session where teachers got into teams and ran a practice PLC meeting, as he guided them through the steps that should be seen in a PLC meeting.  We are striving to reinforce and clarify the PLC process that our teachers have started.  We are seeing an eagerness in our staff to improve their PLC work.   

We are off to a great start this year and I think Dr. DuFour would be proud of how our work is progressing.

 

In the meantime, keep up the great work LMHS and

Thanks Dr. DuFour for your hard work and dedication to PLCs and the PLC process, and to your entire team that inspired us this summer.   Not only is Dr. DuFour responsible for our LMHS focus this year, and motivating us, he is responsible for me taking my first selfie.

  

Professional Development that Wins

After 21 years in education, I've spent a fair amount of time in Professional Development settings. Some of those have been more engaging than others.  I am constantly hearing from my colleagues in education about what they do and don't like about adult learning.  As our Teacher Leadership Program begins the second year of implementation, we wanted to focus on activities and learning that fostered trust, teamwork, coaching, and above all a lot of fun.  Filling eight hours is a daunting task. Who really wants to sit in one spot and listen for eight consecutive hours?  Likely none of us.

After a year of focusing on leadership, Cognitive Coaching, and meaningful professional development training,  Erin Watts and I began to map out our Year 2 kick off plans for our full-time coaches.  Our goal was to provide opportunities to collaborate, gain trust, and hone our team work skills.  All while providing relevant material, nuts and bolts of the program for year two, a review of coaching practice and philosophy, and welcoming five new members to our team.  WOW. Cramming that into one professional day seemed IMPOSSIBLE.

To launch our day,  we started with a TRUST BOOT CAMP.  The four station event was comprised of a trust walk with planks, a hoola hoop relay, pantyhose bowling, and a bean bag toss.  The premise of each station was for your team to complete the goal together in the least amount of time.  Times were compiled to see which team/group had the overall best time.  I struggle to find words to describe the essence of the day.

It was MAGNIFICENT.  

We saw PRODIGIOUS teamwork, MELLIFLUOUS cheering, and heartfelt COMPANIONSHIP. 

Teacher Leaders at Linn-Mar  PD day, August 13th, 2015

Todd Lane calls upon his past gymnast skills during a game of pantyhose bowling.

Teacher leaders@ Linn-Mar participating in bean bag toss and pantyhose bowling.

After a year of building our plane while flying, it actually felt like we were flying.  The greatest moment; the joy and laughter on the faces of our teacher leaders.  PRICELESS.

Ryan Gotto, Sue Atwater, Dana Lampe, Nicole Redington, and C. J. McDonald master the art of the Trust Walk.

After debriefing about our game experience, Erin planned several Ice Breaker activities in between the housekeeping items, and intense material.  It was a winning combination of activities. We provided opportunities for our coaching to partner up in trios or pairs and read, discuss, and practice coaching.  I saw conversations and ideas happening all over the building, in the nooks and crannies of the halls, and in our parking lot.  They were INVESTED. INTENTIONAL. INSPIRED..........and SO WERE WE.  

Jessica Zimmerman, Kim Ophoff, and Beth Hayes engaged in a Cognitive Coaching conversation at a recent PD Day.