ATPLC Magazine Spring 2020

all things

PLC M A G A Z I N E Spring 2020

A l wa ys Te a c h i n g

Always Learning

all things

PLC M A G A Z I N E

Spring 2020

Features

L E V E RAG I

D IF F ERE N

bet ween T EACHI and LEARNING

PLCs in Higher Education

TH E

Kevin S. Krahenbuhl, Heather K. Dillard, and John Lando Carter Lessons learned in the Middle Tennessee State University

STANLE Y- B OYD

9

M I D D L E

S C H O by

EdD program.

Leveraging the Difference Between Teaching and Learning

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David Ludy

The Stanley-Boyd Middle School story.

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5 Beliefs That Promote a Coaching Culture

Thomas Many and Tesha Ferriby Thomas What coaching behaviors have to teach us about teaching.

The 15-Day Challenge Maria Nielsen

Bringing the four critical questions to life.

T

o make a significant change in any field, the current harsh reality must be understood by stakeholders. That harsh reality was a difficult thing to face for Stanley-Boyd Middle School. In the winter of 2006, the Stanley-Boyd Area School District hired our local Cooperative Educational Services Agency (CESA) to do a study on our school to determine

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why we were doing so poo area. The study showed we in order to improve acade In 2006, we ranked in th in the state. In our local C 30 schools, and we were n ranked school.

To o l s & R e s o u rc e s fo r I n s p i ra t i o n a n d E xce l l e n ce

First Thing

4

The three gifts of mission.

FAQs about PLCs

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Team leaders.

Learning Champion

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Rich Smith: The only obstacle is the inability to dream.

Data Quest

41

Data-driven leadership.

Skill Shop

42

Creating consensus survey.

Classic R&D

44

Rensis Likert: Employee- vs. job-centered leadership.

Contemporary R&D

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Adult learning in a professional learning community.

Why I Love PLCs No kids fall through the cracks.

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all things

PLC M A G A Z I N E

First Thing The Three Gifts of

MISSION

2

8

SOLUTION TREE:

Kenneth C. Williams

CEO Jeffrey C. Jones

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PRESIDENT Edmund M. Ackerman SOLUTION TREE PRESS:

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PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER Douglas M. Rife ART DIRECTOR Rian Anderson PAGE DESIGNERS Laura Cox, Kelsey Hergül, Abigail Bowen, Rian Anderson

AllThingsPLC (ISSN 2476-2571 [print], 2476-258X [online]) is published four times a year by Solution Tree Press.

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I

was an eager new assistant principal in a large district. During a day when professional development was planned, all district and school leaders were called to a large gathering space for training. We were there to hear a speaker with whom I was not familiar. With that in mind, I arrived to the training prepared to not be trained. I searched for a seat at the back of the room and made sure my brand-new Palm I-705 was fully charged. I found the perfect seat. I settled in right behind a gentleman of larger carriage, who would in effect shield me, as my plan was to tune out and get caught up on an endless inbox of emails.

The speaker that day was Dr. Rick DuFour, and suffice it to say, I didn’t get any emails sent that day. He had my attention within the first five minutes of the workshop and kept my attention the entire day. By the end of his day with us, it was clear to me that I arrived that morning to a meeting and I left that afternoon on a mission. It would be another year and a half before I would be promoted to the principalship. And I spent that year and a half looking for as many opportunities as possible to establish the PLC culture and structures.

Though my opportunities were limited, the experience

was invaluable. Eventually, I was appointed principal of my own school, and the full immersion into reculturing my school into a professional learning community began. I could write a book on everything I learned as a building principal and am still learning almost 20 years later today as an author, speaker, and consultant in education. However, in this piece, I’m going to focus on the impact that mission had on my practice.

The principalship is a most unique position. Imagine a wooden wagon wheel. There is a cog at the center of the wheel, and wooden spokes extend from the cog to the rim of the wheel. The school principal is like the cog, and the wooden spokes represent the multiple stakeholder groups to whom the principal is beholden: students, staff, parents, community, district office, and school board. One of the many challenges of the principalship is the fact that the principal will be pulled in several different directions, by any number of the aforementioned stakeholders, at any given time. I remember jokes my colleagues and I would make early on in our tenure about being a principal. In particular, I remember someone defining the principalship as “one constant interruption.” And every principal knows there are many days when this feels like a most fitting definition.

My journey into school leadership found me overwhelmed on two distinct fronts. I was overwhelmed by the sheer responsibility of the position, and I was overwhelmed by the volume of priorities. Rick DuFour’s training on professional learning communities changed this double whammy of overwhelm. It was clear to me that the ideal of ensuring all students learn at high levels was something bigger than any one of us, something larger than any handful of us, and the kind of purpose that required our school to be on a mission. What stood in the way early on was the number of issues, all of which appeared to be of high priority. During my tenure, the number of issues didn’t change. What did change was how specific issues showed themselves as distinct and clear priorities. Being on a mission blessed me with three distinct gifts. I call them the three gifts of mission. They are: Gift #1—Mission quiets the noise.

Gift #2—Mission provides clarity of purpose.

Gift #3—Mission provides clarity of process.

Mission Quiets the Noise In the day of a school leader, there are so many issues careening your way from at times several stakeholder groups that everything appears to be high priority. Every school leader has to learn discernment while doing the job. Prior to learning about professional learning communities, my discernment was rooted in the beliefs and values on my best days and educated guesses on my worst days. The PLC process made clear to me what was most important and informed my next steps as a leader.

Mission Provides Clarity of Purpose The PLC process opened the way for us to establish our mission and purpose. It provided the direction I needed to move our school from operating through the prism of 65 individual purposes to the synergy of one powerful and compelling organizational purpose. Sixty-five positive but different purposes pale in impact to one purpose under which we all operate. It’s the difference between the light of a flashlight and that of a laser. Ensuring high levels of learning for all kids, regardless of background, was our compelling why, and it served as our school’s North Star. Every decision we made was done in the context of our shared purpose. This moved our school from operating through my leadership prism to our collective prism.

We were on a mission.

Mission Provides Clarity of Process Being on a mission has as its foundation a handful of behavioral collective commitments to which we all agree to execute.

Our commitments were born of our adherence to the four critical questions members of a professional learning community address in ongoing repeated cycles: 1. What do we expect all students to know and be able to do?

2. How will we know when they’ve learned the essential content?

3. How do we respond when they haven’t learned the essential content?

4. How do we respond when they have learned the essential content?

Our commitment to answering these questions made clear the processes we needed to put in place. Among them were: • Assembling a guiding coalition to help move the right work forward schoolwide • Building shared knowledge around the teaching, learning, and assessment cycle • Establishing collaborative teams • Creating time for collaborative teams to meet • Creating time for both accelerating students who didn’t master the essential content and skills and enriching students who did master the essential content and skills • Helping teams establish both long-term SMART goals and short-term, sense-of-urgency interdependent SMART goals It’s a widely accepted notion that it’s impossible for any teacher to teach every target and skill to mastery. The same thinking can be applied to the principalship. There is no way a school leader can give equal time and attention to every issue. Mission didn’t reduce the number of issues placed before me as a principal, but it definitely provided a lens through which to inform me of where the bulk of my time and energy should be invested.

Spring 2020/AllThingsPLC Magazine

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The

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Bringing the E

nergy, clarity, intention! These are all words that come to mind when I think of the 15-Day Challenge process. This is a great opportunity for your team to refocus their energy on the simplicity of the four critical questions. Master teachers have always asked: 1. What do we want our students to know and be able to do?

2. How will we know if they know it or not?

3. What will we do if they don’t understand?

4. What will we do if they do understand?

The Slippery Slope The four critical questions of a PLC are often looked at in isolation. They may feel like separate year-long initiatives rather than an ongoing cycle of collective inquiry.

The first year is centered on the mission, vision, values, and goals. Committees may be formed to wordsmith the mission statement. Once the task is complete, all are satisfied with a mission statement worthy of vinyl lettering in the school colors on the wall.

The following year is spent unpacking standards and putting them in a Google file, sorted into priority and supporting standards.

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AllThingsPLC Magazine/Spring 2020

15-Day

allenge

Four Critical Questions to Life Maria Nielsen

The next year, teams come together to write common assessments around essential standards. These common assessments are also saved to the team drive.

Then, during year four, the school puts together an RTI (response to intervention) committee to come up with a modified schedule to embed RTI in the school day.

While all of these things are excellent ideas and the work of a collaborative team, teachers often see these as separate initiatives, something extra they are being asked to do. They often feel that a better use of their time would be to spend their collaboration time back in their room prepping for tomorrow’s lesson.

What If . . .

What would it look like if teacher teams felt like their work each week was aligned with what they want students to know and be able to do? What if they created units of study embedded with essential standards, and common assessments were used as fresh data to determine if their students knew the standards or not? What if looking at those common assessments informed teaching practice in a formative way?

Teachers, could you embrace this process if it felt authentic and timely to you?

Here’s How The 15-Day Challenge brings all the elements of professional learning communities together in one unit of study. And it is a process that can be used whether your school has been implementing the PLC process for a while or you are new to the concepts of PLCs. Simply follow these steps.

1. Identify standards, targets, and skills for the unit of study. When completing this the first time, select succinct standards and targets rather than long-cycle standards and targets, such as: + + + + + +

Measurement Parts of a sentence Multi-paragraph essay Water cycle Plants Parts of the brain

2. Create the unit assessments. + Create the end-of-unit assessment. Begin with the end in mind! + Next, create the common assessments to be used throughout the unit of study.

3. Complete the 15-Day Pacing Chart (see example).

Unit Design When designing the unit of study based on standards and targets, bring everything from your file cabinet or computer files to the team table. This is critical so that all team members will collectively design lessons using the best ideas and materials for students in the course or grade level.

Based on the 15-Day Pacing Chart, write lesson plans together. While planning the initial lesson design, gather materials and plan for Tier 2 intervention and extension groups.

Tier 2 Plan when and how skill-specific interventions and extensions will be embedded in the school day. Ideas include trading students among teachers when they teach the same course at the same time or scheduling a time during the day when all students are in Tier 2, such as flex time or WIN (What I Need) time.

Ensure that all activities and materials for Tier 2 time are planned and ready in advance so that students may be placed quickly in skill-specific groups.

You are now ready to teach, assess, intervene, extend, and move all students forward in a well-planned, systematic manner. Stay in the boat together and row to the island of student mastery.

Spring 2020/AllThingsPLC Magazine

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1

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ay D 5

llen a h C

th

ow

does it s tand up in

pra c ti

Practitioner Views

The 15-Day Challenge looks great on paper, but how does it stand up in practice? Let’s see what practitioners say.

Question: What do you like about the 15-Day Challenge process for unit design?

Kendra Barrera, high school English teacher:

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What I like about the 15-Day Challenge is that it allows teachers to identify focus standards for a unit and then break each day down to clearly see what standards are being focused on as well as how much time is being devoted to teach and practice each standard prior to assessments. This better guides teachers in pacing and assuring that the amount of time spent on each standard corresponds to the priority that the team has agreed on for each standard.

r a c titio

ner s s ay.

Luke Browning, assistant principal: One of the biggest challenges teams face when starting the PLC journey is getting overwhelmed by the idea of unpacking every standard. The 15-Day Challenge gives departments a quick win by giving them the freedom to choose two to three essential standards, unpack the standards for clarity and agreement, and then design and teach a unit of study together. This allows the teams to put the four critical questions of a PLC into practice quickly.

Heather Friziellie, superintendent: The 15Day Challenge process helps teachers maintain focus and stay on the same page, especially with assessment.

Planning can often be overwhelming, but this process makes it feel doable, less intimidating, while delivering a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Check-ins during the instructional unit allow for reteaching, and instruction is always standards driven. Lining all of the units up helps educators see the big picture for learning. And best of all, the process is simple and allows for quick wins.

Janel Keating, superintendent; Lori Curtis, director of digital learning services; and Jill Duffy-DeGoede, secondary ELA/SS specialist:

It has simplified and targeted planning, it brings clarity to the unit of study, and it’s doable! Teams have a specific start and end date. Unit assessment is designed first, and intervention is not an afterthought. It keeps

us focused on one power standard and has created alignment within the entire department. PLC conversations are more productive and supportive, and it has helped us give students targeted feedback.

Question: How has it made a difference for teachers?

Barrera: Teachers are often on the same

page now, and it allows for more conversation and collaboration as to how much certain standards should be emphasized or briefly taught as well as if too much or too little time is given to teaching prior to an assessment. Lesson objectives have also become much clearer.

Browning: The 15-Day Challenge quickly makes the PLC process real for teachers. It increases their capacity to understand their standards and gets them seeing the benefit of co-designing and teaching a unit together. During the 15-Day Challenge, teacher teams experience big success and make key mistakes.

Without the 15-Day Challenge, teams would not be able to fail safely and the consequences of their mistakes would be amplified, making it a lot harder for teacher teams to be successful.

Friziellie: The 15-Day Challenge helps

lay a framework for scope and sequence, especially when there are high levels of staff turnover and novice teachers. It provides the building blocks and shows how the curriculum connects. Teachers are more engaged with the content because they are planning short chunks at a time and always revisiting them. They share responsibility and continuously work toward better teamwork and collaboration. They are able to bring clarity to the work and provide meaningful feedback to students.

Keating et al.: It adds a visual hands-on

collaborative element to unit planning.

Teachers are more focused and unpack the standards together more intentionally.

They feel like they can teach to a deeper level with one standard at a time. They appreciate the hard and fast end dates, and they see how all the pieces fit together. It offers more intentional learning targets

and success criteria and more accountability for student work (turning in work).

Question: How has it made a difference for students?

Barrera: Because teachers are clearer on

exactly what the focus is for each day, students are also clearer. They are more likely to know and understand what they are learning, what they are expected to do, and what they will be assessed on.

Browning: The 15-Day Challenge directly benefits students in the form of increasing mastery on essential standards.

Students quickly gain the benefit of having multiple teachers co-design a unit that includes formative assessments and builtin Tier 2 interventions. When students demonstrate that they need more help to master an essential standard, they receive the help, and when students demonstrate that they have mastered the standard, their understanding of that standard is extended.

Additionally, one of the biggest surprises for us in this process was how much fun the students had knowing that the teachers were designing and working together to help each student reach success.

Friziellie: Students are clear on what

they’re working on and receive feedback along the way.

Keating et al.: Students have more clar-

ity (narrow and targeted) of what they are learning and an understanding of specifically what they are learning. It includes depth of knowledge, support from one content to another, more targeted feedback, and more accountability for student work. Tier 2 support is given during core instruction; planned intervention in the unit provides proactive intervention.

Question: How have you guided this work as a leader?

Barrera: Throughout meetings, I con-

sistently refocus the group on revisiting the focus standards for the unit and the standards to be taught daily as we plan instructional activities and assessments.

More intentional teaching occurs.

Browning: In the same way that the 15-

Day Challenge gives teacher teams an opportunity make mistakes, have small victories, and fine-tune their process, it also gives district leaders an opportunity to fine-tune the support they provide to teachers and allows them an opportunity to get clear about what data they are going to measure to ensure the success of this process.

Friziellie: I have developed a district

template on poster paper to provide a working structure as well as a process to increase efficiency. Teams share their products during each collaborative planning time.

Keating et al.: We led the introduc-

tion of the process, created a scope and sequence to drive the units, and created a planning template. We’re involved in planning on a daily basis.

Question: How do principals guide this work in their schools?

Barrera: Principals hold their team lead-

ers as well as individual teams accountable for completing these steps together. They observe classes, they allow teachers to observe other teachers, and they look at data with the collaborative teams.

Browning: As a school leader, it is critical to know where each team is in the process. It is important to know a team’s stage of development, what they have learned in the process, what they still need to know, and what they are celebrating.

In my district, the opportunity to watch teams make mistakes as they plan and implement 15-Day Challenges has allowed me the opportunity to alter the type of professional development we provide. It has also forced me to get really clear about what I need to measure at each stage of the process.

Additionally, as each department team goes through the process, I am able to share their victories, aha moments, and the challenges they face in order to help other teacher teams find success. A prime example of this is when our ninth-grade English team co-designed a unit and then because of time and some weather-related Spring 2020/AllThingsPLC Magazine

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Why I Love PLCs No Kids Fall Through the Cracks

BY DAN SWATEK

Eight years ago, I accepted an administrative position as the principal of Cardinal Elementary School in South Sioux City, Nebraska. Having had 12 years of experience outside of South Sioux City Community Schools, I had visions of how I would lead a building once I secured my first administrative job. Shortly into my new principalship, I was asked to attend a Solution Tree Leadership NOW conference with my colleagues. To say it was the best conference I had ever attended would be an understatement! I walked away from that conference with a new vision of what I wanted Cardinal Elementary to become.

Listening to Rick and Becky DuFour, Mike Mattos, and Anthony Muhammad eloquently talk through the three big ideas and four guiding questions provided me with the direction and road map needed to start improving learning for all. We just needed to trust, and follow, the PLC process.

During my early years in education, I taught in a district that didn’t follow the PLC process. I will never forget that first year of teaching when I was handed my books and a pile of standards and sent to my room.

While I was fortunate to have a good mentor teacher who gave me a little guidance as we passed in the hallway or when I frantically came to his room in the morning to pick his brain, the collaboration ended there.

Every day consisted of working in my classroom, with the same kids, following the textbook the way I felt it should be taught. We all know kids learn in different ways, but I was trying to teach them all the same way. I made every decision based on what I thought was best and a means to get through all the standards by the end of the year. I certainly didn’t have built-in collaborative team time to discuss priority 48

AllThingsPLC Magazine/Spring 2020

standards, common formative assessments, and what our department would do with students who demonstrated proficiency and those who did not. Had I known about the PLC process, I could have been able to better meet all my students’ needs with a team approach. With that said, I did the best I could at the time and was just trying to keep my head above water.

Back to Cardinal Elementary. I am very grateful to be an administrator in a district that not only believes in the PLC process but is very dedicated to working the process to benefit learning for all. The PLC process truly provides a vehicle for ensuring our Cardinal motto “All Means All” is met. The level of professionalism that is created by teachers collaborating around the four guiding questions is the driving force behind the positive impact we have had on student achievement, which no doubt carries over to the positive climate and culture of the building.

I am very proud of the fact that because of the collaborative work around the four guiding questions, it doesn’t matter who your teacher is. I can be confident that each room will have engaging and rigorous lessons developed by teams that have identified criteria for students to demonstrate proficiency. The beauty of it all is that each room will look and sound different due to different teaching styles, but the level of rigor around the same standard will be the same. I also know that after direct instruction is completed, the team will give a common formative assessment to see where each student is and then make instructional decisions together to either reteach or extend the learning based on assessment results.

This type of work is truly the epitome of “by the student, by the standard” teaching and

ensures no kids will fall through the cracks.

The work doesn’t happen by accident.

It takes dedicated, high-functioning teams with a laser focus on the right work. We are constantly problem-solving to make the learning outcomes and processes better together through the PLC process. Without a collaborative culture collaborating around the right work, our learning as adults is limited to our own perspectives. Gone are the days when teachers close their doors and teach what they deem important. Here to stay are collaborative teams working interdependently to hold each other accountable, ensuring that all students’ needs are being met in their grade level or department.

Today’s system of education is too complicated to navigate alone. Having a strong collaborative team that follows the PLC at Work process not only strengthens the educational process as a whole but also guarantees results of high levels of learning for all!

DAN SWATEK is the principal at Cardinal Elementary School in South Sioux City, Neb., which he helped lead to Model PLC school status in 2018.

Throughout his 18 years as an educator, he has also served as an assistant principal and middle school teacher.

AllThingsPLC Magazine | Spring 2020 vw

Discussion Questions

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a things

PLC I N202E0 Z Spr ing G A M A

YS A LW A I N G H T E AC YS A LWA I N G N LEAR

Use this convenient tear-out card to go over and reinforce the topics discussed in this issue with the members of your team.

E ANG N I A CH WITH FROM

PLCs in Higher Education (p. 9) 1. Describe your EdD program. In what ways is it similar to the ALSI program, and in what ways is it different?

2. Who are the stakeholders of your program, and what are the best strategies for building relationships with each?

3. How can you promote fidelity to the mission and vision of the program and its coursework?

Five Beliefs That Promote a Coaching Culture (p. 22) 1. What coaching behaviors can be found in your school? Are they formal, informal, or both?

2. Describe the culture of your school. Can it be considered a coaching culture? Why, or why not?

3. Rank the five beliefs of a school committed to a coaching culture from strongest to weakest based on your school’s beliefs. In what ways can you work to make the weakest belief stronger?

The 15-Day Challenge (p. 28) 1. What process does your team currently employ for answering the four critical questions? Are they treated as separate initiatives?

2. In what ways would the 15-Day Challenge benefit your collaborative team?

3. Choose a standard and fill out the 15-Day Pacing Chart, using the example as a guide.

What did you learn from the practice?

SolutionTree.com/PLCmag

AllThingsPLC Magazine | Spring 2020

Refresher Course Because everyone needs a reminder now and again.

The 3 Big Ideas of a PLC 1. FOCUS ON LEARNING 2. BUILD A COLLABORATIVE CULTURE 3. FOCUS ON RESULTS

1

The fundamental purpose of the school is to ensure high levels of learning for all students. This focus on learning translates into four critical questions that drive the daily work of the school. In PLCs, educators demonstrate their commitment to helping all students learn by working collaboratively to address the following critical questions: 1. What do we want students to learn? What should each student know and be able to do as a result of each unit, grade level, and/or course?

2. How will we know if they have learned? Are we monitoring each student’s learning on a timely basis?

3. What will we do if they don’t learn? What systematic process is in place to provide additional time and support for students who are experiencing difficulty?

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4. What will we do if they already know it?

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• No school can help all students achieve at high levels if teachers work in isolation.

• Schools improve when teachers are given the time and support to work together to clarify essential student learning, develop common assessments for learning, analyze evidence of student learning, and use that evidence to learn from one another.

• PLCs measure their effectiveness on the basis of results rather than intentions.

• All programs, policies, and practices are continually assessed on the basis of their impact on student learning.

• All staff members receive relevant and timely information on their effectiveness in achieving intended results.

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