Professional Learning Communities: Organizational and Leadership Readiness

1. Professional Learning CommunitiesLeveraging Collective ExpertiseandImproving Professional PracticetoImproved Student Achievement

2. Professional Learning Communities:Organizational and Leadership Readiness How do you assess your individual and collective leadership readiness for the successful development, implementation and evaluation of Professional Learning Communities?

3. Professional Learning Communities Is your school organization ready for Professional Learning Communities? • Do you as school leader have the necessary experiential background, as well as pertinent knowledge/skill set to successfully implement PLCs? • Does the staff have the necessary experiential background, as well as pertinent knowledge/skill set to successfully adopt and participate in PLCs? • Does your school’s Mission, Vision and Core Values align with Professional Learning Communities?

4. Professional Learning Communities:Essential Questions How do we define PLCs? What are essential characteristics? How do they form? Who gets to be part of a PLC? How do you know work is being accomplished? How do you know when the work is completed? How do PLC members act? How are PLC members held accountable? Who leads PLCs? What knowledge/skills are needed to effectively lead a PLC? How are PLCs assessed/evaluated? . . . Should they be?

5. Professional Learning Communities: Example of Key Characteristics • A focus on student learning • A collaborative culture • Collective inquiry into research-based best practice • Action orientation – professional learning by doing • All members mutually accountable for targeted results • Adapted from Richard DuFour • (Learning By Doing – 2006)

6. Professional Learning Communities: Rationale • Why Professional Learning Communities? • What distinguishes them from committees, teams, cohorts, ad-hoc groups . . . ?

7. Why Professional Learning Communities? • Abundant research indicates they work: • Robert Marzano • Richard DuFour • Kati Haycock • Linda Darling-Hammond • Mike Schmoker • Ron Edmonds • Larry Lezotte • Collective intelligence is more powerful than that of any individual • Do you/we believe in this? If so, there are several critical questions associated with PLCs that must be asked/answered.

8. Why 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 Stanford University School of Education

9. Why Professional Learning Communities? If schools want to enhance their capacity to boost student learning, they should work on building a collaborative culture…When groups, rather than individuals, are seen as the main units for implementing curriculum, instruction, and assessment, they facilitate development of shared purposes for student learning and collective responsibility to achieve it. Fred Newmann - Professor University of Wisconsin-Madison Director for the Center on Organization and restructuring of Schools

10. Professional Learning Communities: FLEXIBILITY • Having the freedom to pursue important tasks for a long period of time (staying the course) • Being nimble enough to confront new challenges, to take on new members with alacrity • Expanding focus when the need arises

11. Professional Learning Communities: FLEXIBILITY • Flexibility is a necessary characteristic of effective and productive PLCs. The challenge to ensure flexibility is significant in that ardent, opposing forces may be present. • How do we balance – • Depth and Breadth? • Stability and Change? • Diversity and Focus? • Networking and Integration?

12. Professional Learning Communities: EFFECTIVENESS • Not all PLCs are equally effective • We need to ensure there is clarity, precision, rigor, discipline and clear purpose to the work of PLCs so that they successfully raise both staff and students to higher levels of performance. • How is PLC effectiveness measured?

13. Professional Learning Communities: SUSTAINABILITY • How can we work to create learning communities that support enduring change that results in: • Improved teaching and services for all students? • Improved student achievement for all students? • Confirmative Evaluation • Ensuring our efforts result in necessary changes/improvements

14. Professional Learning Communities: What is Needed • There must be a PLC Framework in place which provides clarity and confirmation of: • Your definition of PLC • How PLCs align with and contribute to your Mission, Vision, Core Values • A confirmation by all staff that PLCs add value to the organization • Motivation and readiness

15. Professional Learning Communities: What is Needed • There must be a PLC Framework in place which provides clarity and confirmation of: • A systematic means of implementation • An understanding of the culture change typically associated with PLC implementation • Alignment of PLC efforts to targeted school- wide student achievement goals • Resource allocation and alignment

16. “The intent of sustaining professional learning communities, is to look beyond inclusiveness and transformation to the perilously difficult task of holding onto and improving upon valuable work once it has begun. The literature of educational reform is, unfortunately, replete with examples of beneficial changes that failed the test of time. Professional learning communities, if properly established, well maintained and sustained, can support enduring change.” Professional Learning Communities Robert W. Cole - Educational Author, Founding Member of the Schlehty Center of Leadership in School Reform and Founder of Edu-Data)