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PLC M A G A Z I N E Summer 2017
THE WINDS OF CHANGE
all things
PLC M A G A Z I N E
Summer 2017
Features 10 Steps to Creating a PLC Culture Greg Kushnir
Challenging the status quo.
Transforming the Singapore American School Into a PLC
Darin L. Fahrney, Timothy S. Stuart, Devin R. Pratt, David A. Hoss
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Cataloging our school’s journey.
Learning by Doing: The Arts Middle Way Bo Ryan, Sarah Henry
Championing the PLC process.
Pursuing Attainable and Stretch Goals in a PLC Rebecca DuFour Going the distance.
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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
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PLCs are a way of life.
ICYMI
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Short bits that you might have missed!
Learning champion
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Jack Baldermann: Be compassionate. Work hard. Dream big.
FAQs about PLCs
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Holding students accountable.
Words matter
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Collaborative team vs. task force.
Skill shop
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Protocol for team analysis prior to teaching a unit.
The recommender
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Resources to support the PLC journey.
Classic R&D
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Formative assessment and student achievement.
Contemporary R&D
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What do collaborative teams have to do with it? Everything!
PLC clinic
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The role of administrators in collaborative teams.
Why I love PLCs Embracing learning for all—students and adults.
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PLC M A G A Z I N E
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SOLUTION TREE: 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 Abigail Bowen, Laura Cox, Rian Anderson
AllThingsPLC (ISSN 2476-2571 [print], 2476-258X [Online]) is published four times a year by Solution Tree Press. 555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@SolutionTree.com SolutionTree.com POSTMASTER Send address changes to Solution Tree, 555 North Morton Street, Bloomington, IN, 47404 Copyright Š 2017 by Solution Tree Press
First Thing PLCs Are a
Way of Life
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LCs are not a thing. PLCs are a way of life. Professional learning communities are groups of educators committed to the pursuit of learning for all. Learning for all is the PLC purpose, and collaboration is the method. The structures and standard practices of a PLC are simply methodologies designed to allow a group of dedicated professionals to pursue the goal of meaningful learning for all students. As a veteran in this movement, I have witnessed many schools simulate the PLC methods but not fully embrace the purpose and moral imperative. They invest in the right practices and structures without collectively committing to the purpose. The essential (tight) structural commitments of a PLC are well known. Professionals must work in collaborative teams. Those professionals must be granted time to address critical student needs in the learning process, including curriculum, instruction, assessment, and a collective response to student learning needs. When I partner with schools on their PLC journey, it is rare that their deficiencies are in the area of structure. Typically, their biggest problems are belief systems and norms of behavior that contradict the PLC purpose. Investing in technical innovation without addressing organization culture is foolish and inevitably leads to failure. The PLC strategies represent the most effective way to improve student achievement, but they require the right culture to allow the PLC to evolve from a thing to a way of life. A PLC’s culture is found-
ed on two assumptions: (1) all students can learn at high levels, and (2) our practices and influence are the greatest determining factors in a student’s success. These two cultural assets can also be described as teacher expectations of student success and collective staff efficacy. John Hattie (2009), author of Visible Learning, concluded that these two assets were the greatest influencers of student learning. Why is it important for every educator on a collaborative team to believe that all students can learn at high levels? High expectations stimulate an educator’s creativity, encourage experimentation, and create an optimistic environment (Petrides & Nodine, 2005). When professionals approach their work with positive intentions and lofty goals, they free themselves from bias and low expectations. If all parties involved agree that the work they do is essential, there is no room for doubt or pessimism. Belief is powerful, but it is even more powerful when coupled with collective efficacy. Organizing teachers into teams is essential in the PLC process, but that team cannot truly become successful until they believe that their collective power to influence
student achievement is always greater than a student’s ability to reject the learning process. Effective teams believe that they are the difference between success and failure (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2000).
Anthony Muhammad
Resources Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., & Hoy, A. W. (2000). Collective teacher efficacy: Its meaning, measure, and impact on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 37(2), 479–507. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 metaanalyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge. Petrides, L., & Nodine, T. (2005). Anatomy of school system improvement: Performance-driven practices in urban school districts. Washington, DC: The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management of Education for New Schools Venture Fund.
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Learning by Doing:
The Arts Middle Way By Bo Ryan & Sarah Henry “One of the most common traps that prevent organizations from closing the knowing-doing gap is reliance upon learning by training rather than learning by doing. As Pfeffer and Sutton (2000) conclude, ‘The answer to the knowing-doing problem is deceptively simple: embed more of the process of acquiring new knowledge in the actual doing of the task and less in the formal training programs that are frequently ineffective. If you do it, then you will know it.’ . . . Those who hope to lead PLCs should stop waiting for more training, more knowledge, and more skills, and instead create the conditions that enable staff members to learn by doing” (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2006, pp. 198, 199).
The educators and administrators of Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts Middle School in Connecticut took these words to heart and commenced a PLC journey that relied on their passion, their dedication, and a number of resources to aid their learning by doing. They did not attend institutes or bring in outside professional development consultants. They learned on their own and became a National PLC at Work Model School in 2016. This is their story. The Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts Middle School opened the doors of an old factory called the Colt Building in 2012 and welcomed grades 6 and 7. Grade 8 would be added the next year. Before that happened, though, there was much buzzing behind the scenes. That summer we faced many challenges: this was a brand-new magnet school; the school was being made as we created the plan; we had to hire all of the staff; we had to order resources; and we needed to 30
AllThingsPLC Magazine/Summer 2017
recruit students to the school. Plus, we were going to do all this as a PLC. Bo Ryan, the principal, had had some experience with PLCs in the past. He had been the principal of Woodside Intermediate School in Cromwell and, during his first staff meeting there, used resources from Learning by Doing (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2006) to introduce the staff to PLC concepts, the big ideas, and the importance of creating a shared mission. The staff easily accepted the three big ideas of a PLC. They worked hard, and in 2011, Woodside Intermediate was named a National PLC at Work Model School. He used his expertise and knowledge gained to become the principal of the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts Middle School. With this background, we were able to ensure the school was operating as a PLC from the very beginning. Hiring was our first big challenge. Once we started the hiring process, we made sure that we hired
teachers who were not only great teachers but also superior teammates. Sarah Henry was one such person. She was hired as the instructional coach and shared a passion for learning and PLC concepts. She quickly became instrumental in championing the PLC process. After teachers were hired, we emailed them Rick DuFour’s article What Is a Professional Learning Community? (DuFour, 2004) for summer reading to set the stage. In addition, because we knew the collaborative team was going to be the focus of our school, we started to build relationships among the staff immediately. We invited all staff in for various events in the community and called the tour “The Taste of Hartford.” The staff was able to bond, develop respectful relationships, and also get accustomed to the city they would be working in starting in August. We hired an incredible group of educators!
We p u t t he “learnin g� in professi onal learning commun ity!
Another task during the summer was to create a schedule that offered the staff collaborative time during the day as well as daily time for intervention and enrichment. CREC Assistant Superintendent Tim Sullivan was instrumental in helping us create a schedule with long blocks for focused instruction and collaborative teacher planning time. He also helped us build time into the schedule for intervention and enrichment or extension. With these two big hurdles overcome, we had a great start with our PLC. But as you know, PLCs are a continuous process and require nurturing. Because we did not have the money to attend a PLC at Work event or have a consultant visit our school, we turned to a number of resources to guide our way. We bought numerous books, read everything possible, and shared the information with each other. Most of the time, we synthesized information from multiple resources into an easy-to-read template or protocol. Teachers then took the initiative and looked for ways to improve their instruction, impacting their grade-level teams and, in turn, the whole school. We discussed the big ideas and created a plan for school improvement. 31
The School Improvement Plan Following are four ways we used resources for our school improvement plan and to create a culture of continuous improvement.
1. Learn Learning, of course, was our primary goal. Learning is a continuous process, and the more we learn, the better able we are to improve our school. The four guiding PLC questions were used to drive our collaborative meetings. Quotes from the books we studied were used in this capacity as well in order to build shared knowledge with the staff. Henry presented what we called Power 25s. These were short, powerful professional learning sessions given in 25 minutes during grade-level meeting time. The meetings focused on best instructional practices and continuous improvement. During the first two years of the school, she gave Power 25s on a weekly basis. (Currently, we give Power 25s monthly.) Every week, we sent out learning letters to staff. These included information such as general updates, the monthly calendar, and events. The purpose was to not spend any of the allotted staff time on this information but to instead focus all of that time on collaboration in order to improve
student learning. In addition, there were sections in the learning letters that included educational blogs, tweets, book excerpts, and instructional information. We also used book hooks to try to get the staff to read a particular book. A book hook is an image of a book with a summary of the big ideas with research and/ or charts. The purpose is to constantly inform staff members of the latest books, best practices, and research. For instance, one of our goals for learning was to have the staff gain a better understanding of poverty and how it affects student achievement. We chose three different books to review, either during collaborative learning time or in the weekly learning letters. We read Breaking the Poverty Barrier (LeBlancEsparza & Roulston, 2012) and discussed core beliefs, a reading intervention plan, and the key to intervention success. We read Building a Culture of Hope (Barr & Gibson, 2013) and focused on a sense of optimism and the power of “we.” This book was part of our PLC continuous improvement plan, and we used various quotes from it in our professional learning sessions and highlighted the book in our weekly learning letter. We also used Poor Students, Rich Teaching (Jensen, 2016) as part of our continuous improvement plan. We summarized sections of the book to include in every weekly learning letter throughout the year.
2. Share We created a culture of sharing knowledge. We purchased multiple resources for the vertical and collaboratives teams to use. Our teachers met in teams and used the BAT (big ideas, apply, and thoughts) protocol. They read the text, underlined big ideas, then discussed their ideas, thoughts, and how they could apply the information in their classrooms. For example, for our mathematics teachers, we provided Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching, Grades 6–8 (Nolan, Dixon, Roy, & Andreasen, 2016a), a book; Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching, Grades 6–8 (Nolan, Dixon, Roy, & Andreasen, 2016b), a DVD and facilitator’s guide; and Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching, Grades 3–5 (Dixon, Nolan, Adams, Tobias, & Barmoha, 2016), a book for intervention purposes. And the arts staff received Designing Effective Classroom Management (Harlacher, 2015) for classroom management tips, instructional improvements, and advice. Teachers met in August to discuss and map out the curriculum for the year. At the start of every month thereafter, teams met to discuss the first question of the PLC process (What do we want students to learn?). During those meetings, teachers talked about the essential learning standards to be taught. They created the key learning
targets, studied curriculum documents, and discussed, analyzed, prioritized, and made sense of the standards in order to build shared knowledge of the expected curriculum. During those monthly meetings, teams also discussed and created common assessments for evidence of learning and formative assessments to see if the students mastered the learning targets. The teams also discussed and created the success criteria students were expected to meet for mastery of the learning targets. The learning targets and success criteria were posted in every teacher’s room. Our English language arts teams and math teams met to discuss the units, so that students were ensured a guaranteed and viable curriculum, unit by unit, in each class. They also met regularly to collaboratively plan lessons during the school day. Our singleton teachers, science and social studies, mapped out their months, created formative assessments, and shared the results with their vertical teams. These meetings occurred every month with teachers gathering evidence of learning at the end in meetings called end-of-unit analyses. We carefully monitored each student’s learning on the essential learning targets on a monthly basis. The teachers scored, reviewed, and discussed the work with their team and reflected on the process using the four PLC questions as their guide.
ated collaborative protocols to go along with it. In fact, we created a collaborative playbook for the staff. The protocols helped teams engage in collective inquiry regarding issues directly related to student learning. One of our big accomplishments was the creation of our prior-to-unit monthly learning maps. We referred to several resources during their making: Collaborating for Success With the Common Core (Bailey, Jakicic, & Spiller, 2014); Simplifying Common Assessment (Bailey & Jakicic, 2017); Kid by Kid, Skill by Skill (Eaker & Keating, 2015); Design in 5 (Vagle, 2015); Collaborative Common Assessments (Erkens, 2016); Yes We Can! (Friziellie, Schmidt, & Spiller, 2016); Learning by Doing, Third Edition (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016); Concise Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About Professional Learning Communities at Work (Mattos, DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2016); and Collaborative Teams That Transform Schools (Marzano, Heflebower, Hoegh, Warrick, & Grift, 2016). As a staff, we created norms, roles, and meeting expectations, and we constantly reviewed them. Teams turned in evidence of meetings to the principal, and every teacher (including singleton teachers) was involved in a meaningful team pursuing SMART goals aligned with the school improvement plan. Scheduled during the year were numerous staff celebrations, staff recognitions, and staff events in order All this learning and sharing wouldn’t to recognize the staff for their teamwork. have done us much good if we hadn’t cre-
3. Create
4. Research Of course, research is necessary for continuous learning. Therefore, we took every opportunity to seek out a best practice, a word, a phrase, an idea—anything that would make us better. For example, when we wanted to improve our Tier 1 instruction and the RTI process, we turned to several resources, each for specific reasons: • Designing Effective Classroom Management (Harlacher, 2015)—To actively engage students and provide opportunities to respond to and manage misbehavior • Best Practices at Tier 1, Secondary (Gregory, Kaufeldt, & Mattos, 2016)—To shift to collaborative core instruction, develop a powerful core curriculum, and use data to inform instruction • Creating a Culture of Feedback (Ferriter & Cancellieri, 2017)—To answer the questions Where am I going?, How am I doing?, and What are my next steps? and to use the learning targets feedback form • Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek, 2010)—To set the groundwork for effective interventions, chart necessary prerequisites for systematic
interventions, make the key shift in learning, and learn from exemplary school stories • Simplifying Response to Intervention (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2012)— To develop collective responsibility and an “all means all” mentality, gain simple protocols to guide collaborative teams, and answer guiding intervention questions • Uniting Academic and Behavior Interventions (Buffum, Mattos, Weber, & Hierck, 2015)—To gain protocols and monitoring plans and to monitor our progress with information from teacher teams and schoolwide intervention teams • It’s About Time, Secondary School (Mattos & Buffum, 2015)—To make time for interventions during core instruction, learn what works, develop student data trackers, and create our flex block
• Making Time at Tier 2 (Mattos, 2015)—To make adjustments to our college prep intervention/enrichment time, change our enrichment philosophy, adjust our assistance for students failing or not completing homework, and create time for interventions and procedures
ment during the school day. The system was highly proactive, timely, and directive with an all-hands-on-deck mentality. We had an allocated time for intervention, and students were placed into groups based on test data, classroom data, and relationships with teachers. Teachers, in student support meetings, created in• Strategies for Mathematics Instruc- dividual plans for every child and placed tion and Intervention, K–5 (Weber every child into a class. & Crane, 2014)—To prioritize standards and research instructional practices At Arts Middle, we have not had any • Strategies for Mathematics Instruction and Intervention, 6–8 (Weber, outside presenters or attended any seminars Crane, & Hierck, 2015)—To de- or conferences. Rather, we consistently velop units in math, create learning search for new books, read, discuss, and targets and common assessments, figure out how we are going to improve gain mathematical instructional the school. We are fortunate to have an practices, and learn the importance incredible staff who are lifelong learners and goal of Tier 2 always looking to improve their practice. We are continuously improving our proWith the help of these resources, we fessional learning model and collaborative created a systematic plan for providing efforts, learning by doing, using PLC students with interventions and enrich- resources to guide us along the way.
The Arts Middle Way
Bo Ryan is principal and Sarah Henry is an instructional coach at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts Middle School.
Resources Bailey, K., & Jakicic, C. (2017). Simplifying common assessment: A guide for Professional Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Bailey, K., Jakicic, C., & Spiller, J. (2014). Collaborating for success with the Common Core: A toolkit for Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Buffum, A., Mattos, M., & Weber, C. (2012). Simplifying response to intervention: Four essential guiding principles. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Buffum, A., Mattos, M., Weber, C., & Hierck, T. (2015). Uniting academic and behavior interventions: Solving the skill or will dilemma. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Dixon, J. K., Nolan, E. C., Adams, T. L., Tobias, J. M., & Barmoha, G. (2016). Making sense of mathematics for teaching, grades 3–5. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. DuFour, R. (2004). What is a professional learning community? Educational Leadership, 61(8), 6–11. DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Karhanek, G. (2010). Raising the bar and closing the gap: Whatever it takes. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, T. (2006). Learning by doing: A handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., Many, T. W., & Mattos, M. (2016). Learning by doing: A handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work (3rd ed.). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Eaker, R., & Keating, J. (2015). Kid by kid, skill by skill: Teaching in a Professional Learning Community at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Erkens, C. (2016). Collaborative common assessments: Teamwork. Instruction. Results. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Ferriter, W. M., & Cancellieri, P. J. (2017). Creating a culture of feedback. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Friziellie, H., Schmidt, J. A., & Spiller, J. (2016). Yes we can!: General and special educators collaborating in a professional learning community. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Gregory, G., Kaufeldt, M., & Mattos, M. (2016). Best practices at Tier 1: Daily differentiation for effective instruction, secondary. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Harlacher, J. (2015). Designing effective classroom management. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research. Marzano, R. J., Heflebower, T., Hoegh, J. K., Warrick, P., & Grift, G. (2016). Collaborative teams that transform schools: The next step in PLCs. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research. Mattos, M. (2015). Making time at Tier 2: Creating a supplemental intervention period in secondary schools [Video file]. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Mattos, M., & Buffum, A. (2015). It’s about time: Planning interventions and extensions in secondary school. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Mattos, M., DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, T. W. (2016). Concise answers to frequently asked questions about Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Nolan, E. C., Dixon, J. K., Roy, G. J., & Andreasen, J. B. (2016a). Making sense of mathematics for teaching, grades 6–8. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Nolan, E. C., Dixon, J. K., Roy, G. J., & Andreasen, J. B. (2016b). Making sense of mathematics for teaching, grades 6–8: The TQE process [Video file]. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. (2000). The knowing-doing gap: How smart companies turn knowledge into action. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Vagle, N. (2015). Design in 5: Essential phases to create engaging assessment practice. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Weber, C., & Crane, D. (2014). Strategies for mathematics instruction and intervention, K–5. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Weber, C., Crane, D., & Hierck, T. (2015). Strategies for mathematics instruction and intervention, 6–8. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
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