Building the Collaborative Culture of a PLC

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Building the Collaborative Culture of a PLC

• Collaboration Session 1
• PLC Professional Development for Teams
• Learning Council, Elementary Leadership Teams,
  and Secondary Leadership Teams

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CRCSD Strategic Plan
LEARNING
COLLABORATION
RESULTS
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What am I doing here?

• What did we accomplish?

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Meeting Experiences Activity The Good, The Bad,
and The Ugly

• Work in small groups.
• Think about the meeting experiences that youve
  had. Write down the reasons why they were
  satisfying using one idea per post-it note.
• Go around the table, each person sharing one
  idea.
• Look for commonalities. In the middle of table,
  on paper, create clusters of ideas that are
  similar.
• Repeat for frustrating experiences.

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Activity Trust Busters Builders

• Trust is cultivated through speech,
  conversation, communication and action.

• Busters
• Talk, talk, talk
• Disengaged
• Pessimistic
• But.

• Builders
• Follow through
• Consistent
• Agree to disagree
• Listens to others

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Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Lencioni, Patrick. Overcoming the Five
Dysfunctions of a Team A Field Guide for
Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators. San
Francisco Jossey-Bass.
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Team Norm Activity

• In your small group develop team norms by
• Brainstorming norms
• Group like ideas - affinity diagram
• Create short list of group norms - not a laundry
  list
• Review the six areas to consider
• If your team has already written group norms
• Do your norms cover some of the common challenges
  that occur in teams?
• Do you need to add anything after looking at the
  six areas to consider?

DuFour, Richard, et. al. Learning by
Doing. Bloomington Solution Tree, 2006. (p.
210-211)
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Additional Tips for Creating Norms

• Each team creates its own norms
• Stated as commitments to act or behave in certain
  ways rather than as beliefs
• Reviewed at the beginning and end of each meeting
  for at least 6 months
• Teams formally evaluate effectiveness at least
  twice a year
• Teams focus on a few essential norms rather than
  extensive laundry list.
• Violations of team norms must be addressed

• DuFour, Richard, et. al. Learning by
  Doing. Bloomington Solution Tree, 2006. (p.106)

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Are you looking in the mirror or out the window?
Seven Norms of Collaboration

• Paying attention to self and others
• Presuming positive intentions
• Pursuing a balance between advocacy and inquiry

• Pausing
• Paraphrasing
• Probing for specificity
• Putting ideas on the table

DuFour, Richard, et. al. Learning by
Doing. Bloomington Solution Tree, 2006. (p. 104)
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Seven Factors to Influencing Reluctant Staff
Providing people with incentives to embrace an
idea
Connecting to the persons intuition so that the
proposal feels right
Appealing to rational thinking and decision making
Presenting real world examples where the idea has
been applied successfully
Changing the way the information is presented
(e.g. using analogies)
Building shared knowledge of the research base
supporting a position
resistance must be identified and dealt with
rather than ignored

• Reason
• Research
• Resonance
• Representational
  Re-descriptions
• Resources and Reward
• Real-World Events
• The greatest opportunity for change comes from
  the first six factors.
• 7. Confrontation

Gardner, Howard. Changing Minds The Art and
Science of Changing Our Own and Other Peoples
Minds. Boston Harvard Business School, 2004.

DuFour, Richard, et. al. Learning by
Doing. Bloomington Solution Tree, 2006. (p. 173)
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Why am I here?

• Work together to accomplish goals
• Benefit students when return to classroom with
  expanded repertoire of skills, strategies,
  materials, and ideas in order impact student
  achievement in a positive way.

DuFour, Richard, et. al. Learning by
Doing. Bloomington Solution Tree, 2006.
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What did we Accomplish?

• Leaders
• Promote focused and productive meetings
• Apply effective communication skills
• Encourage interdependence to achieve goals
• Keep 4 crucial questions at the forefront

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Building the Collaborative Culture of a PLC

• Collaboration Session 2
• PLC Professional Development for Teams
• Learning Council, Elementary Leadership Teams,
  and Secondary Leadership Teams

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Small Group Discussion
Isolation Collaboration

• Brainstorm What are the rewards / benefits of
• working in isolation? Collaboration? Write one
• idea per sticky note.

• Share Points-
• Share sticky notes, add to whole group chart

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Defining PLC Collaboration
Isolation
Collaboration
PLC Collaboration
The traditional school often functions as a
collection of independent contractors united by a
common parking lot. Eaker, Results Now, p 23

• Congeniality, focus on building groups
  camaraderie
• Consensus on operational procedures
• Committees to oversee different facets of school
  operation

• a systematic process in which teachers work
  together to analyze and improve their classroom
  practice.
• Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing
  cycle of questions that promote deep team
  learning.
• leads to higher levels of student achievement.

What is a Professional Learning Community?
Educational Leadership, May 2004
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Partner Discussion

• Jigsaw Activity
• 5 Keys To a Successful Meeting highlight the
  big ideas for one of the following
• Behaviors and Relationships
• Focus
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Structure
• Process

• Share Points-
• Share the keys big ideas with the whole group

Erkens, Cassandra, et. al. The Collaborative
Teacher. Bloomington Solution Tree, 2008. (p.
33-54)
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Comparison

• With those sitting around you, discuss how your
  line compares with that of organizational change

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First and Second order change

• First order change
• Small changes with existing knowledge and skills
  of the staff
• Small steps within existing paradigm
• Second order change
• BIG changesa dramatic departure from the
  expected and familiar
• Perceived as a break from the past may require
  new knowledge, new skills

DuFour, Richard, et. al. Learning by
Doing. Bloomington Solution Tree, 2006. (p.
186, 215, 218)
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Dont Judge too Quickly
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PLC Professional Learning Communities4 Crucial
Questions
What do we want each studentto learn, know, or
be able to do?
Student Learning Expectations
What evidence do we have of the learning?
Formative Assessment
How will we respond when some students
dont learn?
Pyramid Of Intervention
How will we respond to those who have
already learned?
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• Dont judge
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vKMgzTBhG2Us
• Bad PLC
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v0CqSP_slziw
• Fed Ex
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v6hKWM5Z1zds
• Bathroom remodel feel out of place,
  uncomfortable
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vqZf53MtLUCc
• Ship front fell off
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v8-QNAwUdHUQ