Professional Learning Communities

1. Professional Learning Communities

2. “If there is anything that the research community agrees on, it is this: The right kind of continuous, structured teacher collaboration improves the quality of teaching and pays big, often immediate, dividends in student learning and professional morale in virtually any setting.” DeFour

3. The Three Big Ideas Ensure That Students Learn Build a Culture of Collaboration Place a Focus on Results

4. Ensuring That Students Learn It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

5. “The PLC model flows from the assumption that the core mission of formal education is not simply to ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn. The shift from a teaching focus to a learning focus has profound implications for schools.” DuFour

6. Professional Learning Communities DuFour’s PLC based on doing whatever it takes for all students to succeed. Paradigm shift from it’s my job to make learning available to it’s my job to make students achieve. Learning is required. Students can and will be successful here. Students may not choose to fail.

7. Ensuring that all students learn critical corollary questions • What is it we expect them to learn? • How will we know when they have learned it? (FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT) • How will we respond when they don’t learn? • Interventions • How will we respond when they already know it?

8. Key to improved results: Team meets to identify essential and valued student learning, Develop common formative assessments, Analyze current levels of achievement, Set achievement goals and then Share and create lessons and strategies to improve upon those levels.

9. Common Formative Assessments Clarify 8-10 essential outcomes per semester Develop at least 4 common assessments per year Establish proficiency standards for each assessment (what is the score needed to be proficient?) Analyze results (average score, number proficient, percent proficient in different areas (predictions, compare/contrast, main idea, etc.) Look at individual student proficiency and objectives. Use the information to intervene and enrich and organize student groups. Develop and implement strategies to improve results.

10. PLC’s provide a systematic response to students who are not learning using the results from the common formative assessments. The students and skills are then identified for intervention and enrichment. Increased levels of time and support when the student is not being successful Response is increasingly directive, not invitational – required, no opting out Response is timely (at first indication of difficulty) Response is systematic and structured

11. SPEED intervention criteria Systematic – school-wide, independent of individual teacher Practical – affordable, sustainable, replicable Effective – available and operational early in the school year, flexible entrance and exit criteria Essential – agreed upon standards and outcomes. Targeted to student learning needs Directive – mandatory, during the regular school day, can’t opt out

12. Learning organizations are “organizations where people continually expand their capacities to create the results they truly desire.” Peter Senge

13. Culture of Collaboration

14. Group IQ “While a group can be no smarter than the sum total of the knowledge and skills of its members, it can be much “dumber” if its internal workings don’t allow people to share their talents.” Robert Sternberg (1988)

15. What is a Team? A group of people working together towards a common goal.

16. 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 (2002)

17. Four Types of Collaborative Cultures • Individualistic(Isolation, Closed Door Technique) • Regard intrusion of adults as invasion of privacy • Balkanized(Big kids w/ issues) • Deep-rooted cliques, align themselves w/ • Contrived Collegiality (Fake, Surface Dwellers) • How was your weekend? How’s your test scores? • Collaborative(True Believers, Work Toward Education for All) • Analysis of the data to discover ways of improving learning. Failure is Not an Option, Blankstein, 2004 What’s Worth Fighting for in Your School?, Fullan and Hargreaves, 1996

18. Collaborative Team @ School/District A group of people working interdependently to achieve a common goal about learning, for which members are mutually accountable.

19. Collaborate What? What do students need to learn and be able to do? How do we know students are learning it? What will we do if the students have not learned it? What will we do if students have learned it? congeniality and focus on building group camaraderie consensus on operational issues discipline, technology, social climate, field trips, attendance, tardies

20. Collaboration Ensure Student Learning Process of Working Together Focus on Results

21. A Focus On RESULTS Key Idea # 3

22. PLCs judge their effectiveness on the basis of RESULTS !

23. 1-Identify current level of student achievement 2-Establish goals to improve current level 3-Work together to achieve goals 4-PROVIDE PERIODIC EVIDENCEOF PROGRESS

24. D R I P Data Data Data Data Data Data Data Rich/Information Poor Data Rich/Information Poor

25. In a PLC…. Teachers share AND COMPARE their RESULTS from Formative Assessment and/or Common Cumulative tests.

26. They quickly learn which teammate has been particularly effective in teaching a certain skill. The others replicate the effective practice!

27. Professional Learning Communities Excuses! They are allOURstudents. RESULTS Focused!

28. The rise or fall of the PLC concept depends on the most important element of any school… the commitment and persistence of the educators within it!