Growing Teachers to Grow Kids

5 Must-Haves for Your School’s PLCs

Many schools claim to have productive and comprehensive Professional Learning Communities. However, most of these schools are only scratching the surface when it comes to true collaboration and creating a student-centered approach. There are several elements that must be in place for any PLC to be successful and purposeful. If these elements are not in place, we cannot call them PLCs, but instead call them groups that hold glorified meetings.

1. Get Comfortable with Norms

Educators are usually comfortable creating rules and expectations for their classrooms. However, they get a bit reluctant to create norms for themselves and their colleagues. Every PLC must start with norms to ensure that all members are working toward common goals and to keep student learning at the forefront of every conversation. PLC members also should not be afraid to stop discussions and call out when a norm has been broken. This is the shift beyond collegiality that we will discuss later in this article.

2. PLC Time Is Sacred

Teacher time is often gobbled up by miscellaneous staff meetings, parent conferences and putting out fires. For

PLCs to be successful and meaningful, the allotted meeting time must be protected at all costs. Teachers should never be pulled from PLCs unless it is an emergency. If teachers are constantly pulled from their PLC time, their work will be in jeopardy, and ongoing work of a PLC will likely be seen as frivolous. Additionally, all educators must be held accountable for participating in collaboration.

3. The PLC Process Must be Defined

Educators should never be thrown into the PLC world without a clearly defined process. While educator teams need parameters to work within, they also need to be free to customize the process to meet their needs. A sample process for instruction and data analysis is as follows:

• Unpack Standards

• Identify POWER Standards for the Unit

• Create Scales and Rubrics to Define Progress

• Design Common Formative Assessments

• Design Instruction

• Gather Data / Analyse Results

• Remediate or Enrich Learning

• Teacher Reflection on Instructional Practices and Results

4. Team Roles

Team roles must be clearly defined to keep discussions focused on student learning as well as to ensure accountability at every level of the team. Having roles also will keep team members engaged. Sample teams roles could be Facilitator, Recorder, Time Keeper or Reporter.

• Facilitator: Develops agenda, facilitates the meeting, keeps team focused and ensures equity of voice throughout the team.

• Recorder: Records meeting minutes, posts minutes in PLC binder or in shared online drive, maintains data binder or online database.

• Time Keeper: Monitors agenda items and keeps meeting flowing, keeps track of start and end times, monitors the need to table an item or to make a decision based on time.

• Reporter: Reviews norms at the beginning of the meeting, ensures that norms are followed, reviews previous minutes before the meeting begins, acts as a liaison between the PLC and school leadership. Team roles can change monthly, quarterly or yearly, depending on the desires of the school as a whole.

5. Move Beyond Collegiality

In order for PLCs to be highly functional teams, educators must move beyond collegiality and not be afraid to engage in discourse. It is advisable that team members disagree with ideas, not people. This helps to be clinical, not critical of situations. This is important when looking at data. If students are not performing well, PLC teams must address the real issues and not sugar coat potential instructional concerns. We are not doing students any favours by looking the other way when we know something needs to be addressed. Always being “nice” can prevent the true changes needed to move a school forward.

Dr David Franklin, CEO of The Principal’s Desk, is an experienced school senior leader, education professor, curriculum designer and presenter. Dr Franklin has presented at national and international education conferences and is available for school or district professional development sessions. He can be reached at david@ theprincipalsdesk.org or at www.principalsdesk.org