Building a Professional Learning Community

1
Building a Professional Learning Community
Your mission is NOT impossible.
2
What is a Professional Learning Community (PLC)?

• Think about how you would define a PLC .
• Pair up.
• Share your definition of a PLC.

3
Component Definitions

• Professional

someone with expertise in a specialized field, an
individual who has not only pursued advanced
training to enter the field, but who is expected
to remain current in its evolving knowledge base
Learning
an ongoing action and perpetual curiosity
Community
a group linked by common interests
4
When you put it all together

• A professional learning community is when
  educators create an environment that fosters
  mutual cooperation, emotional support, and
  personal growth as they work together to achieve
  what they cannot accomplish alone.

5
Characteristics of a Professional Learning
Community

• A focus on learning
• A collaborative culture (focus on learning for
  all)
• Collective inquiry into best practice and current
  reality with a purpose (mission, vision, values,
  and goals)
• Action orientation Learning by Doing
• A commitment to continuous improvement
• Results orientation Did they learn it?
• Administrator assurances and teacher commitments
• -DuFour and Eaker 1998, 2006

6
The 3 Big Ideas of a PLC

• Focus on Learning
• What is it we want our students to learn?
• How will we know if each student has learned it?
• How will we respond when some students do not
  learn it?
• How can we extend and enrich the learning for
  students who have demonstrated proficiency?
• Building a Collaborative Culture
• Focus on Results

7
What does this mean as far as roles and
responsibilities?

• Administrator assurances and teacher
  commitments
• One of the great ironies in education is that
  it takes strong and effective educational leaders
  to create truly empowered people who are capable
  of sustaining improvement after the leader has
  gone.
• DuFour (2006)

8
What is already in place?

• On the green sheet check or
• note what components of a PLC
• are happening already here at
• Schenevus?
• Share with a neighbor.

9
Can you keep up with the

• The
• Wright
• Family

10
Collaboration

• Schools have been characterized
• by some critics of public education as little
  more than independent kingdoms (classrooms) ruled
  by feudal lords (teachers) who united only by
  common parking lot.
• One of the most formidable roadblocks to creating
  a professional learning community is the
  isolation of teachers.
• Creating a collaborative environment has been
  described as the single most important factor
  for successful school improvement initiatives.

11
Our individual differences
make us a strong community.
12
A Collaborative Culture

• We can achieve our fundamental purpose of high
  levels of learning for all students only if we
  work together. We cultivate a collaborative
  culture through the development of high
  performing teams.

13
What is the basic understanding of a
Collaborative Team?
A group of people working together to achieve
a common goal.
14
A More Complete Definition

• A group of people working
• interdependently
• toward a common goal for which theyre
• all mutually accountable.

15
What is Collaboration?

• A systematic process in which we work together
  interdependently, to analyze and impact
  professional practice in order to improve our
  individual and collective results.
• DuFour, DuFour Eaker

16
Need for a Collaborative Culture

• Throughout our ten-year study, whenever we found
  an effective school or an effective department
  within a school, without exception that school or
  department has been a part of a collaborative
  professional learning community.
• Milbrey McLaughin

17
The Focus of Collaboration

• Collaborative cultures, which by definition have
  close relationships, are indeed powerful, but
  unless they are focusing on the right things they
  may end up powerfully wrong.
• Michael Fullan

18
Advantages of TeachersWorking in Collaborative
Teams

• Gains in Student Achievement
• Higher Quality Solutions to Problems
• Increased Confidence Among All Staff
• Teachers Able to Support One Anothers Strengths
  and Accommodate Weaknesses
• Ability to Test New Ideas
• More Support for New Teachers
• Expanded Pool of Ideas, Materials, Methods
• Judith Warren Little

19
The Key to Effective Teams

• Collaboration embedded in routine practice
• Time for collaboration built in school day and
  school calendar
• Team focus on key question
• Products of collaboration are made explicit
• Team norms guide collaboration
• Teams have access to relevant information
• TEAMS PURSUE SPECIFIC AND MEASURABLE PERFORMANCE
  GOALS

20
Rx Prescribed Team Norms

• What would you expect the team guidelines to be?
• As a group list at least 3 expectations for team
  norms to ensure success

21
Examples of Team Norms

• Positive tone used at meetings
• No complaining unless suggestion for solution is
  offered too
• Begin and end meeting on time
• Everyone contributes equally
• Listen respectfully
• Consider anothers perspective

22
The Power of Teams

• One is too small a number to achieve greatness.
  You cannot do anything of real value alone. There
  are no problems we cannot solve together, and
  very few that we can solve by ourselves.
• John Maxwell

23
Four prerequisites in creating collaborative teams

• 1. Time built into the school day and year
• 2. Purpose of collaboration must be made
  explicit
• 3. Training and support to be effective
  collaborators
• 4. Accept responsibility to work together as true
  professional colleagues

24

• The most promising strategy for sustained,
  substantive school improvement is developing the
  ability of school personnel to function as
  professional learning communities.
• -Richard DuFour

25
BREAKThinking Outside the Box
26
Building a Foundation for a Strong Professional
Learning Community
27
Schenevus Central SchoolMission Statement

• With our children as our focus, and with
  accountability and honesty as our guiding
  principles, Schenevus Central School will provide
  a caring, stable, secure and academically
  challenging environment one that motivates each
  student to discover, practice and master the
  skills to pursue a productive lifetime of work
  and learning within our community, and the world.

28
Communicating the Foundation

• Mission, vision, values, and goals will become
  irrelevant, and the change process will stall
  unless the significance of these building blocks
  is communicated on a daily basis throughout the
  school.

29
Correlation Between Clarity of Purpose and
Effective Schools

• Great schools row as one they are quite
  clearly on the same boat, pulling in the same
  direction in unison. The best schoolswere
  tightly aligned communities marked by a palpable
  sense of common purpose and shared identity among
  staff
• a clear sense of we.
• -Lickona and Davidson (2005)

30
SMART Goals Contribute to a Results-Orientation

• Strategic and Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Results-Orientation
• Time-Bound
• Conzemius ONeill

31
Assessment Purpose
32
Assessment Procedures
33
Assessment Examples
34
What does formative assessment look like in the
classroom?

• Distinctions of Formative Assessments
• -looks like practice
• -questioning that helps determine the next step
  in the learning process (embedded in lesson with
  immediate feedback check)
• -are given with clear expectations of the
  learning target (rubrics, exemplars, goals, etc.)
• -at its best, it has student involvement.
  Students are engaged in
• criteria and goal setting (quality work, behavior
  norms, etc.)
• self and peer assessments
• recording and monitoring their own progress
• task oriented activities (w/ rubrics, checklists,
  etc.)
• -involves descriptive, specific feedback given to
  student

35
Balance Summative and Formative Assessments

• Use a
• balance
• of these assessments to determine if students are
  
• really learning

36
Common Assessment Development

• Can use, in some cases, what is in place
• Collaborate together to develop and grade
• By grade level (common progress monitoring tool,
  common rubric, standardized product, etc.)
• By content (common lab report model, essay
  expectations, etc.)

37
Effective teachers will

• Review the data
• Reflect on the data
• Organize ways to meet the diverse needs of the
  students (differentiate the instruction)
• Engage students in their own learning process
  (conferences, reflective dialogue, coaching)
• Re-evaluate with each new formative assessment

38
Analyze the Assessment

• Be a Data Detective
• What does the evidence tell us?
• What does it mean we need to do? (intervention)

39
Data Analysis Activity

• The scores of 20 students on a 50
• computation question, multiplication facts
• 1-10 test
• 30, 45, 45, 50, 80, 80, 80, 85, 85, 85, 85, 85,
  90, 90, 95, 95, 95, 95, 100, 100
• What data is here? What questions arise?
• What was the teaching effectiveness of this
• unit on multiplication facts 1-10?
• What would you do?
• Mean? Median? Mode?

40
The same grade level teachers scores yield

• Mean 95
• Median 95
• Mode 95
• What questions arise?

41
Ticket to Lunch

• 5 and 5

42
First Steps

• Build teams and begin having focused
  conversations to establish goals

43
CONSIDER A professional learning community is
more likely sustained if

• Teachers participate in reflective dialogue
• Observe and react to one anothers teaching
• Jointly develop curriculum and assessments
• Work together to implement new programs and
  strategies
• Share lesson plans and materials
• Collectively engage in problem solving, action,
  research and continuous improvement practices

44
Correlates of Effective Schools

• A safe and orderly environment
• Clear and focused academic goals
• Frequent monitoring of student learning
• Additional learning opportunities for those who
  are struggling
• A collaborative culture
• High expectations for each student
• Strong leadership
• Effective partnerships with parents

45
A Final Thought From Rick DuFour

• While some schools are content to lie at anchor
  and accept things as they are, and other schools
  simply drift from fad to fad, the members of a
  professional learning community will stay the
  course. They will recognize that they must
  overcome their history and respond to future
  problems that they could not possibly anticipate.
  Yet, they will set forth because, like Oliver
  Wendall Holmes, they will have concluded that
  what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us
  are insignificant to what lies within us.