AllThingsPLC Magazine Volume 6, Issue 4

PLC things all

Features

Singleton On-Ramps for Collaboration

Brig Leane and Jon Yost

How singleton teachers and leaders can approach collaboration in their PLCs.

Equalizing Educational Opportunity for English Learners

Leticia Amalla

Leveraging the PLC Process and the SIOP Model to meet students where they are.

Moving Collaboration from Good to Great

Nathaniel Provencio

A helpful mnemonic to help you unlock the potential in your PLC.

The Aspen Early Learning Center PLC

Sheryl Esposito and Nick Esposito

The Aspen Early Learning Center story.

Tools & Resources

First Thing

What are teams and students doing with data?

ICYMI

In case you missed it.

FAQs about PLCs

What topics or issues should team norms address.

Learning Champion

Bill Ferriter building confident learners.

Data Quest

Student self-assessment.

Words Matter

Are mission, mission statement, and motto the same thing.

The Recommender

Authentic learning experiences and sustainable communities.

Skill Shop

Developing classroom norms.

Research Report

Social and emotional learning.

Why I Love PLCs

Surviving the great resignation.

things all

First Thing

What Are Teams and Students

Sarah Schuhl Doing With Data?

SOLUTION

Jeffrey

Edmund

PRESIDENT

Douglas M. Rife

DIRECTOR Rian Anderson

Recently, I began working with a new school. The teams shared with me their pacing guides, unwrapped standards, and common assessments with

agreements. They showed me how their electronic grading program generated the data they needed to see if individual students were learning and how they could use those data to create interventions and extensions as needed. This sounds like the work of collaborative teams in a PLC at Work, right? I agree. However, once we started our work together, I noticed something was missing.

Yes, the teams were unwrapping standards, building common assessments, and collectively calibrating their scoring for consistent feedback to students. However, the teachers only quickly verbally shared their individual classroom results with one another (e.g., “My students did pretty well” or “About 75 percent of my students showed pro ciency with the standard in my class”). After sharing, each teacher created interventions and extensions in their own individual classrooms, and the meeting moved on with team planning.

At this school, the rst two critical PLC questions were being e ectively addressed collaboratively with collective responsibility for student learning and through a lens of equity—teachers used the word we in their discussions. However, the last two critical PLC questions were not—teachers used the word I. Yet, all four critical PLC questions are written using the word we.

1. What do we expect every student to know and be able to do?

2. How will we know if students have learned it?

3. How will we respond when some students do not demonstrate pro ciency?

4. How will we extend learning for students who have learned it?

Team and student learning improve when teachers generate a collective understanding of each essential standard and create common assessments. However, the hinge point to even greater teacher and student learning is doing something with the data as a collaborative team. What are teams doing with the data after each common assessment? What are students doing with their own learning data after each common assessment?

Team Actions Using Common Assessment Data

How will teams organize their student common assessment data? And, once organized, what protocol questions will they answer about the data to plan for a team targeted response to student learning? Jon Yost, a colleague and former assistant superintendent of Sanger Uni ed School District, often states, “Data is for learning, not for judging.” How will each team learn through the process of data analysis about e ective instructional practices used and the thinking of students?

Consider organizing team data by teacher, team, and target for an initial look at overall discussions related to instruction and student learning. See the following chart for an example.

students in class. For target 2, they might decide to share students—one teacher reengages students in learning who earned a 1, another teacher works with students who earned a 2, and the third works with students who earned a 3 or 4. Each teacher can design a lesson for what the students need, whether students are shared during their class period (or learning block) or during a Tier 2 time for interventions.

To plan the most e ective interventions and analyze instructional practices, it is important for teams to look at more than numbers. To better plan interventions or extensions, teams should also analyze student work during their analysis. Student work provides an opportunity to see trends in student thinking and make stronger intervention plans. Identifying trends in student thinking from those who demonstrated pro ciency to those who demonstrated a minimal understanding often shows insights into e ective targeted interventions and extensions.

Some prompts teams might use in their analysis include the following (Kramer & Schuhl, 2017):

Identify trends in student thinking



What did the pro cient or advanced (level 3 or 4) students do well?

 What did the close students (level 2) do well?



What did the students who are far from prociency (level 1) do?

Determine targeted and speci c interventions and extensions



Additionally, data by target and by student are information the team can use to address whether any reengagement should happen during Tier 1 (core instruction) or Tier 2 (additional time for intervention). Using a pro ciency scale of 1–4, with 3 indicating pro ciency, the following chart shows an example of individual student data on a team by target.

What is your speci c team plan for students who were pro cient?

 What is your speci c team intervention plan for students who were close?

 What is your speci c team intervention plan for students who are far?

What changes, if any, should be made on the assessment for next year?

Is the team on track to meet the SMART goal?

When teams analyze student learning together and create meaningful interventions, students bene t and learn. Teachers on the team also learn about the instructional strategies that are growing student learning and those that are not, which informs future instruction.

If the data are a pattern for all their students, the teachers on the team might determine how to intentionally address target 3 during core instruction and then check again on student learning. e team might collectively design a minilesson (small group) for those students not yet pro cient with target 1 for each teacher to use with designated

Student Actions Using Common Assessment Data

How do students know whether they have learned? What are the goal-setting and re ection routines? How are they learning from their common assessments by revising their work instead

of just redoing it? It is powerful when students can tell you what they learned and what they still need to learn. How do we help students own and learn from their data?

Consider how a team could create a routine for students re ecting on their learning after each common assessment. For example, the team may use learning targets with students throughout the unit and then have the students determine their level of pro ciency based on the feedback from the assessment. Students may be required to revise their work to grow as learners (Marzano, 2006). Additionally, students may create a plan for continued learning (those standards or targets not learned yet) and possibly tell a teacher which intervention group they should be working in when it is time for

References

intervention. In general, teachers might ask students questions such as the following:

Which targets did you learn to pro ciency or higher?

Which targets have you not learned yet?

What is your plan to learn those targets not learned yet?

Data from common assessments reveal the instructional practices and trends in student thinking that are strong and need to be revisited. Roland Barth (2004) says he has yet to see a school where the learning of the teachers and students did not go hand in hand. is school year, consider how to build routines for teams and students so everyone is learning from common assessment data.

Barth, R. (2004). Learning by heart. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Kramer, S., & Schuhl, S. (2017). School improvement for all. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. Marzano, R. (2006). Classroom assessment and grading that work. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Do you have a PLC Story?Our readers want to hear it.

Being involved in a PLC means following proven processes, but what we really want to hear about is your personalized story. Your perspective. A speci c telling about you or someone you know. An administrator, a teacher, or a student. Triumphs, failures, and the road between the two. We’re looking for:

Feature articles of 2,000–3,000 words

Articles about your school’s PLC journey in 2,000–3,000 words Or write for our Why I Love PLCs section in 500–700 words

Send your submissions or queries to: MagSubmissions@SolutionTree.com

Team Norms

Q:What topics or issues should team norms speci cally address?

A:Teams should create norms that address things like time (punctuality and timeliness), communicating (listening and responding), decisionmaking (inquiry and advocacy), participation (attendance and engagement), and expectations (roles and responsibilities). Norms should focus on the behaviors that promote development of a collaborative culture focused on learning.

In addition to these basics, one of the norms should describe a process for how teams will respond when someone violates a team norm. Here are examples of this last but very important norm.

• Give a nonverbal cue that a norm has been violated. Team members might pick up an object (for example, a stu ed animal representing the school’s mascot or the face of Norm from the television show Cheers mounted to a stick) to signal that a norm has been broken and then proceed to describe how the norm was broken.

• Put the topic (the speci c norm) on the next agenda and talk about the impact that violating the norm has on the team.

• e team leader or team discusses the problem with the individual who didn’t honor the norm in an e ort to recommit that person to the norm process.

• Facilitate a conversation with the principal between the team and the person who is violating the norm.

Have a question about PLCs? Check out Solution Tree’s effort to collect and answer all of your questions in one great book: Concise Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About Professional Learning Communities at Work™ by Mike Mattos, Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas W. Many. This question and answer are in chapter 2, “Building a Collaborative Culture.”

ON-RAMPS FOR COLLABORATION

By Brig Leane and Jon Yost

About two years ago, we unexpectedly ran into each other in a hotel near two di erent schools we were working at to help them improve their PLC processes. Glad to have connected with each other, we quickly started talking about our work. While the same-course teams were doing well, we were both concerned with some amazing singletons who were feeling left out of the PLC process.

Eager to nd some solutions, we got some paper from the hotel sta , and in the lobby, we sketched out di erent ways that singletons could collaborate in meaningful ways. at seemingly chance meeting led to the beginning of our book,

Singletons in a PLC at Work: Navigating On-Ramps to Meaningful Collaboration.

As we began working with small schools, which typically have more singletons, we became determined to provide singletons and leaders of singletons with speci c steps, protocols, and tools that provide help for these valuable sta members. We have found singletons to be highly in uential, connected with students in ways other sta aren’t, and hugely impactful on the success of a campus. You can walk into an art class and see the teacher discover and bring out the artistic talents of a student who earlier in the day struggled to grasp linear equations in algebra.

However, when it comes to the PLC process and the work of collaborative teams, singletons are often left wondering how they t into it. We have found that these highly in uential and studentoriented sta want to support the PLC process but often become frustrated when they are not given clear guidance and support. ey often ask: “Who should I team with?” “What should we collaborate about since we teach di erent content?” “Should our team work on the same things an English or math team does?”

Here we are going to focus on the pathways that lead to answering those fundamental questions. For a deeper dive and more information, check out Singletons in a PLC at Work

First, LET’S BE CLEAR ON WHAT WE MEAN BY A SINGLETON.

A singleton is a teacher who is the only one on their campus that teaches a speci c course or content. Common examples are the band teacher, art teacher, the only third-grade teacher in a smaller school, or a career and technical education (CTE) teacher such as an agriculture teacher. Less common examples include the sixth-grade English language arts (ELA) teacher who also teaches a period of drama and the fourth-grade teacher who is part of a three-person fourth-grade team, but because they are departmentalized, they are the only one teaching fourth-grade math. If these singletons are not provided clear guidance, they don’t experience meaningful collaboration designed to impact their practices and improve student learning.

Critical-Friend Template for PLC Critical Question Two

Unit: Date:

A critical friend and a teacher engage in a collaborative conversation by asking and discussing these items when planning an upcoming formative assessment.

1. How do you plan to formatively assess students throughout the unit and provide actionable feedback?

2. When looking at the language, especially the verbs of the standard and learning targets, does the level of thinking on the assessment align to the standard and learning targets? For example, if the standard asks students to compare, do assessment items ask students to compare?

3. Does the DOK level (complexity of thinking) of the assessment items match the DOK level of the standard and targets?

4. In reading the prompts and assessment items, is the assessment clearly written? Will students understand what you want them to do?

5. Will the data you receive from the assessment provide specific information that enables you to diagnose and o er meaningful interventions for students’ learning needs? Will you be able to provide specific feedback to the students to further their learning?

6. Are there enough data?

7. Does the design of the assessments align to high-stakes tests students will encounter?

8. Does the assessment ask students to explain their thinking and reasoning to best understand their level of proficiency?

GENERAL GUIDANCE

We know that teachers are busy and their plates are full. While the idea of having singletons nd meaningful collaboration may make sense, it can seem overwhelming for already busy educators. We recommend starting small and moving forward as educators increase in knowledge and capacity for the changes we are suggesting. Some schools start by deciding that all teams will answer the four critical questions of a PLC for at least one essential skill in an upcoming quarter to work through the PLC process. is allows

teams to get some experience ensuring clarity of an essential skill, assessing to see if learning has occurred, and doing something about it for students who have and who have not demonstrated their learning of that essential. Teams who are ready to work through the process on more than one essential should do so but only at a capacity they can handle given all of their other expectations. Determining a singleton’s capacity can often be as simple as asking them, “Is the plan we have created doable, given your current situation?”

BRIG LEANE, a consultant, has over 20 years of experience in education as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal in a variety of settings.

JON YOST is the recently retired associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction for Sanger Unified School District in California. He has worked in public education at the elementary, secondary, and district levels.

Leaders should track team and singleton work products and celebrate successes as teams move through the questions in the PLC process. Quick wins let the sta know the importance of the work, and by showing the products that teams are producing, leaders are providing exemplars for other teams to learn from. is acknowledgment could be as simple as walking into a team meeting and thanking them or putting a comment on a Google Doc that is submitted. Showing exemplary team products to the whole sta is a good way to not only celebrate the hard work of teachers but also provide examples for other teachers to see.

Is time available to collaborate? If a school doesn’t have time in the master schedule for teachers to collaborate, it is unfair to expect teams to simply do this additional work; therefore, it is imperative that leaders carve out time for collaboration or remove something from a teacher’s plate before adding collaboration. Creating time for singletons to do this work is no di erent than creating time for any other team. Learning by Doing (DuFour et al., 2016) contains excellent suggestions for nding that time.

e mission of all students learning at high levels is a mighty task. We need every sta member committed to team collaboration. We believe no educator should work in isolation. Just as important, we need to ensure our singletons are part of highly e ective collaborative teams. Remember, they are some of the most in uential and important educators on campus.

REFERENCES

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. Leane, B., & Yost, J. (2022). Singletons in a PLC at Work: Navigating on-ramps to meaningful collaboration. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Teacher Planning Checklist

 Do I have dedicated time to collaborate?

 Do I have one or more partners with whom to collaborate?

 Do my partners and I have the best possible on-ramp?

 Do I know where to begin looking for a potential collaborative team member who shares the same subject I teach?

 Do I have and understand the templates (protocols) that pertain to my on-ramp to guide collaboration?

 Do I know the essential learning for the classes I teach?

 Have I made the essential learning clear to students using student-friendly language?

 Do I have a way to assess whether students learned the essential standards?



Do I have a calendar of when the essential learning, as well as interventions for students who haven’t yet learned those essentials, fit into a school year?

 Do I have a plan for when students don’t demonstrate learning of an essential?

 Do I have a plan for extending the learning for students who demonstrate proficiency on an essential?

Leader Planning Checklist

 Have I reinforced the need for collaboration with singletons and other teachers?

 Do I know which teachers are on which teams?

 Is the construction of teams meaningful?

 Is every teacher part of a collaborative team?

 Is time available during the workday for collaboration?

 Are the PLC product expectations clear for teams, including singleton teams?

 Have I shared the templates and tools of di erent on-ramps with singletons?

 Does the leadership team provide feedback on PLC products to teams and singletons?

 Does the whole sta celebrate exemplary team or singleton PLC products?

 Do I encourage singletons to find meaningful collaboration with others?

 Do I track the PLC products of teams and singletons to know which teachers need more time and support?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Who are the singletons in your school? Are they currently part of any collaborative teams?

2. Which on-ramp makes the most sense for each singleton?

3. How can you ensure each singleton is getting the most out of the collaboration process in a PLC?

Data Quest Student Self-Assessment

Self-assessment can occur in different ways and with different areas of focus. However, there are some common attributes. The act of assessing anything requires a comparison of the skills and understanding indicated by evidence in this moment to the desired skills and understanding as represented within goals. Assessment becomes self-assessment when learners play an active role in gathering and analyzing evidence, setting short-term goals, making decisions to advance those goals, and re ecting on the success of those decisions. The following template will guide students in assessing their learning using evidence gathered throughout a unit of study.

Documenting and Reflecting on My Learning

Name: Date: Select samples from this unit to include in your data notebook or portfolio. These samples will help you set goals for the next unit. Look through your artifacts, products, and performances from this unit, and choose the following samples for your notebook or portfolio. Using a sticky note or tag, answer the prompts for each sample you choose.

• A work that you would like to do over again How would you change it if you could? Which skills should you apply?

• A work that shows growth in one or more skill How can you give evidence of this growth?

• A work that had some hard parts and some easy parts Which parts were which? How did you deal with the hard parts?

• A work that has some potential but needs a little more attention Where do you need to focus some time and why? Which skills do you need to apply?

• A work that you stuck with even though you didn’t want to keep working on it Why was this work so tough? How did you keep working on it, even when it was hard to do so?

• A sample that you are really proud of What do you want people to notice about this sample? Which goal or goals does it reflect?

• A sample that shows you took a creative risk

What did you try, even though you weren’t sure how it would turn out?

• A sample that shows critical thinking How did your thinking change as you worked through the chosen sample?

• A sample you created as a result of collaboration with others How did other people contribute to this work? How did working together make this work better? What was hard about working together?

• A sample that you enjoyed doing Why was this sample so enjoyable? What parts did you like the best?

Source: White, K. (2022). Student self-assessment: Data notebooks, portfolios, and other tools to advance learning. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

GO FROM STATUS QUO TO TRUE REFORM

SCHOOL CULTURE

Build a healthy, high-performing school with our School Culture Audit

Developed by Dr. Anthony Muhammad, this on-site or virtual professional development engagement will prepare California school, district, and classroom leaders to resolve con ict, overcome challenges, and work collaboratively to improve learning outcomes for all students.

CREATE A POSITIVE CULTURE FOR TEACHERS AND LEARNERS Learn more at SolutionTree.com/CaliAudit

ARE MISSION , MISSION STATEMENT, AND MOTTO THE SAME THING?

Although the MISSION—the fundamental purpose—of a PLC is to ensure high levels of learning for all, a school’s mission statement might include di erent language or expand on that ideal. A well-articulated MISSION STATEMENT answers the question, Why do we exist? Regardless of the verbiage, the notion that all members of the school’s community will learn at high levels is evident. e challenge confronting educators in every school is to align their actual practices and procedures with the words of their mission statement.

Most mission statements involve three or four sentences that expand on the mission. When a mission statement becomes too long for most people to commit to memory, the school community may embrace a MOTTO that captures the essence of the mission statement. Examples of school mottos include “Learning for All,” “Success for All,” or “Hand in Hand, We All Learn.”

NO MATTER HOW GOOD anideamightsound, practitionerswanttoknow,“Yes,butdoesitwork?

Canitpositivelyaffectmyclassroom,myinstructional practice?”Teachersandprincipalsoftencollect storiesfromotherschools,butscholarlyresearch alsocontributestounderstandingwhatmakesPLCs effective. Thiscolumnwillintroduceyoubrieflyto contemporaryresearchaboutPLCsinpractice.Share thissynopsiswithcolleaguesandpolicymakerswho wonder how to make PLCs work more effectively,and digdeepertolearnmoreonyourown.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING

BEACON OF LIGHT FOR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Heather K. Dillard

The Study

Panayiotou, M., Humphrey, N., & Wigelsworth, M. (2019). An empirical basis for linking social and emotional learning to academic performance. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 56, 193–204.

Over the past 20 years, Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, has received national recognition for academic distinction. As a ve-time recipient of the National Blue-Ribbon Award for Excellence in Education, this model

PLC school has earned the right to advise other schools on student success. School administrators refer to Stevenson as “a lighthouse school” that seeks to lead other schools to safe harbor.

One of the methods that Stevenson uses to guide its own students to academic success is emphasizing social and emotional learning (SEL) as a primary goal. is research article provides evidence of why an emphasis on SEL is able to help students achieve academically.

e research team conducted a three-wave longitudinal study of 1,626 students as they progressed through third, fourth, and fth grades in an e ort to understand how and why speci c components of SEL led to academic improvements. eir aim was to “explore the

temporal relationships between social-emotional competence, school connectedness, mental health di culties, and academic attainment” (p. 195). e authors claim these relationships comprise an area “notably absent” from the literature up to this point, which might explain why reports uctuated regarding the role SEL had in improving academics for students.

Each of the 45 public schools participating in the study was located in northwest England with 23 implementing a prescribed SEL program while the other 22 “continued their usual provision” (p. 197). e average age of the students at the start of the study was 9.17 years and 11.17 years at the end; 51.2 percent of the participants were boys, and 48.8 percent were girls. Additionally, the participants had “a higher-than-average proportion eligible for” (p. 197) free lunch, English language classes, and special education classes.

e following measures were used to collect data for the individual tested variables.

· Social-emotional competence: Social Skills Improvement System-Social Emotional Learning edition

The Findings

Research Report

· School connectedness: School Environment Subscale of Kidscreen-27

· Mental health difculties: Teacher informant-report version of the Strengths and Di culties Questionnaire

· Academic performance: 2014 Key Stage 2 National curriculum test scores in mathematics, reading, and writing

· Prior academic performance: 2010 Key Stage 1 National curriculum test scores in mathematics, reading, and writing

Data analysis revealed both expected and unexpected results. Findings con rmed a negative correlation between mental health di culties and academic attainment, school connectedness, and social-emotional competence. Students with prior academic attainment correlated with later academic attainment. Female students were less likely to report mental health di culties and showed greater social-emotional competence and school connectedness. Additionally, “prior academic attainment was found to have an e ect on all variables across time and in the expected direction” (p. 200).

Interestingly, social-emotional competence did not have a direct statistically signi cant relationship to academic attainment. Rather, students’ social-emotional competence levels had a statistically signi cant relationship to both school connectedness and mental health di culties. School connectedness was not shown to predict academic performance, but it was linked to mental health di culties. is variable was found to “exhibit the strongest explanatory power for later academic attainment above and beyond gender and prior academic attainment” (p. 200). A student with more mental health di culties during the second phase of data collection was shown to predict poorer academic performance during the nal data collection cycle one year later.

Implications for PLCs

e purpose of teachers working collaboratively in professional learning communities is for students to achieve better academic results. Students learn more when teachers learn more. is study

provides data to explain why schools that focus their attention on SEL produce students with higher academic performance. For this reason, teacher teams would bene t from allowing schools like Adlai E. Stevenson High School to inform their practice.

When Molly Gosline was hired as the SEL coordinator at Stevenson High School, there was only one other school in the country to have an administrative-level SEL position (Davis, 2021). Looking for a place to begin the work, she turned to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). is organization has provided a conceptual framework for schools, families, caregivers, and communities to address social and emotional learning needs. is framework is meant to help individuals understand themselves, connect with others, achieve goals, and support their community.

What CASEL did not provide was an actionable plan to accompany the framework. is left Gosline and the Stevenson community to their own devices in determining how to build an SEL culture throughout the school. Working collaboratively, they produced the following de nition to guide their SEL work: “We, through curriculum, instruction, and assessment, build students’ social skills so we can help them access their emotional intelligences to become better learners” (Davis, 2021, 8:52).

Six years later, Stevenson has produced an SEL road map for the school along with a process for collecting student voice data. ey have a process for building high-level teaching practices that support SEL and present to the school board each month on their social and emotional learning (Davis, 2021). Additionally, the school provides two-day trainings throughout the school year for other educators to come to Stevenson and learn from them. One of the main topics for this training is building an SEL culture. Although the terminology of social and emotional learning is relatively new to education, the concept of teaching the whole child is not. While teachers may feel that expectations for meeting a child’s social and emotional needs are beyond their ability, a few simple changes to their methods of teaching could produce the type of environment needed for students to feel safe enough to learn. Teachers, like lighthouses, have been forced to evolve over the centuries, but their purpose will never change.

References

Davis, J. (Host). (2021, Oct. 6). Molly Gosline: Getting serious about SEL (No. 133) [Audio podcast episode]. e Good Athlete Podcast e Good Athlete Project. https://podcasts .apple.com/us/podcast/episode-133-molly-gosline-getting -serious-about-sel/id1278410201?i=1000537754224.

Heather K. Dillard, associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University, teaches the Schools as Professional Learning Communities course in the Assessment, Learning, and School Improvement Doctoral Program.

Why I Love PLCs

Surviving the Great Resignation

BY ASHLEY ANDRIOT

So we all know the past couple of years have been a bit interesting, to put it nicely. I won’t rehash all that educators have done to keep our schools running smoothly because you already know. You lived it.

At my school, I felt like we had conquered COVID-19 and were getting back to “normal.” But then people started announcing that they were leaving. First, it was someone who was retiring. en, it was someone whose family was moving. Next, it was someone leaving for a leadership role. And so it continued for various reasons until there were eight positions to ll for the next school year. Oh, and did I mention that my principal, my partner in crime, my fearless leader, decided to also leave to work full-time for Solution Tree? To say that I, as my school’s instructional coach, have been a bit anxious would be a grand understatement. Although I hear what has been dubbed as e Great Resignation has been the norm in many professions, not just education, it still does not give me solace.

I work at a school I often refer to as heaven on earth. e people in this place are simply amazing. We gained PLC Model School status several years ago because of the hard work and dedication that each sta member sel essly gave . . . so why would anyone want to leave such a place? Although I understood the reasons for my colleagues’ decisions and have come to terms with the fact that their resignations just so happened to fall at once, it doesn’t make the pill any easier to swallow.

I’ve become pretty good at self-talk. I use it to remain calm, think through things logically, and keep negative thoughts at bay, but in this situation, my self-talk needed some intervention. e worries were in full force.

How will we sustain our systems and culture with so many new people? What will our next principal be like? Will we share the same vision? Will we get along? If not, am I going to be miserable? All of our grade-level teams are going to have new members. Will they still be e ective? I am going to have a lot of coaching cycles on my hands . . .

As you can see, I was spiraling. I felt a heavy weight—that it would be my responsibility and mine alone to ensure the success of our school. I know this is completely unrealistic, but in times of stress, logic takes a back seat. But then it hit me. After what felt like an endless amount of interviews, it hit me. And not just a light little pat, but a hard smack in the face. is was my oneword wake-up call: COLLABORATION!

Several candidates asked the interview committee what made Freedom Elementary special. Person after person, interview after interview, one word was on repeat: collaboration. Our answers were all the same. We collaborate. And we don’t just collaborate on the “ u y” stu . We collaborate on the hard stu . is is what we call the “right work.” We are meticulously collaborative on the four critical questions of a PLC.

We have systems and processes in place to make sure our students receive a guaranteed and viable curriculum with protocols for assessments, data, interventions, and extensions. And we don’t just collaborate among our own team. We collaborate with other grade levels and not just the ones above and below us but all of them. We collaborate with our custodians, our cafeteria sta , our community, and the list goes on. Our collaborative culture de nitely sets us apart.

It was after re ecting on these interviews that I started to see more clearly. I don’t

carry the weight alone. My team of incredible colleagues carry the weight with me. We can think of it as a heavy burden that makes us weary and give up. Or we can look at it as something that will make us stronger, something that we all lift together, making our task ahead easier. Freedom Elementary is a true professional learning community. We are expected to work and learn together. at’s just what we do. So I am con dent that our sta will welcome their new teammates with open arms. ey will continue collaborating on the right work by staying true to our systems and processes that are instilled in us. ey will continue working interdependently to achieve common goals for which all team members are mutually accountable. Because of our collaboration, I can rest easy knowing our systems will continue, our culture will ourish, and our students will succeed.

ASHLEY ANDRIOT has over 16 years of experience as an educator and serves as the instructional coach at Freedom Elementary in the Bullitt County Public School System in Kentucky. She is also a Solution Tree associate.

Refresher Course

Because everyone needs a reminder now and again.

The 3 Big Ideas of a PLC

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

FOCUS ON RESULTS

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?

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

• 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.