AllThingsPLC Magazine Volume 8, Issue 3 by Solution Tree

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PLC things

PLC things all

Volume 8, Issue 3

Features

I’ve Got a Fever for Learning, and the Only Prescription Is More Cowbell

Bethanie Hale, with William M. Ferriter

Using classroom celebrations of academic success to build a culture of learning.

Fighting the Good Fight

Tesha Ferriby Thomas & Jennifer Parker

Coaching quadrants in action.

Leader in Me in a PLC at Work

Robert Mountjoy

From apathy to aspiration.

Brown Elementary’s Journey of Hope

Angie Bryan

The story of one school’s journey to become a PLC.

Tools & Resources

PLC things all MAGAZINE First Thing Continuous Improvement: Do We Want to

SOLUTION TREE:

CEO

Jeffrey C. Jones

PRESIDENT Edmund M. Ackerman

SOLUTION TREE PRESS:

PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER

Be Precise, Accurate, or Both?

Casey Ahner

Douglas M. Rife

ART DIRECTOR

Rian Anderson

PAGE DESIGNERS

Laura Cox, Abigail Bowen, Kelsey Hergül, Fabiana Cochran, Julie Csizmadia, Rian Anderson

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

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There are many reasons I love the PLC process. The two biggest reasons are the spirit of continuous improvement and a focus on learning. These two principles allow for the success of all students. I think about an old man I met who taught his dog Spanish. He spent days on end, ultimately years, teaching his dog. He would take him out in public to use the language in real-life situations in addition to the studies they did at home. After several years of doing this, he became very frustrated that the dog couldn’t speak a single word of Spanish! He came to the same realization I did as a young special education teacher. e focus should be on learning and not on teaching. I think we can all agree that is not a traditional or universal belief in classrooms and schools.

I have many experiences as a student and teacher in traditional school settings that didn’t embrace continuous improvement. As a new teacher, I followed the pattern I had been exposed to. Many times, the outcome of an assignment or assessment was to provide a grade rather than to act as a tool to measure a student’s pro ciency. I am so grateful for those who have confronted tradition and have shown us better and more e ective ways. Every day we look at student outcomes and data and ask, “What worked today, and what didn’t work as well as intended?” ank goodness we have the opportunity to re ne the strategies used and reengage students.

My son is a great example of using data to drive continuous improvement. He shoots Olympic 50 meter small-bore ri e and 10 meter air ri e competitively. Watching him has been a study in the use of data to make improvements. With each shot, he has to decide what adjustments to make. Do his ri e sights need to be adjusted, does his physical position need to be adjusted, both, or neither? e goal of every shot is to improve on the last and to ultimately have the perfect shot, a 10.9. ere are many variables that make this di cult. e weather conditions and altitude, ammunition or pellet consistency, condition of the ri e, previous adjustments made, and the athlete’s physical position and condition. Sometimes the data is misread, and it leads to the next shot being less desirable than the previous, causing the athlete to look beyond what they thought happened and make a plan to remediate before making the same adjustment and risking an even poorer shot or outcome. e results may be accurate, precise, neither, or the ultimate goal of accurate and precise. Accurate is hitting the target and possibly achieving a great outcome occasionally. Following is an illustration of accuracy without precision.

Precision is exactness. However, precision does not guarantee accuracy. Following is an example of precision without accuracy. Ultimately, the goal is accuracy and precision, as demonstrated in the following illustration.

How does this relate to student learning? As educators, we can also be accurate, precise, both, or neither.

We might see a team demonstrate accuracy as they work through the learning cycle. e team works very hard going through the process of determining essentials, unpacking the standards, creating assignments and assessments, and planning units of instruction. is does not mean that the “right” essentials are chosen. e team chooses what is thought to be best at the time. After seeing the results of student learning unit by unit throughout the year, it may be determined that they lacked precision and a limited number of standards were actually essential. ey may have been all around the bull’s-eye with limited evidence of student learning actually in the 10 ring, the bull’s-eye, requiring multiple teams to look at the results and make adjustments to essential outcomes and units of instruction in order to make student learning accurate and precise to the desired outcomes. e team is clear that student outcomes were a result of their e orts, and they dig in to determine which

instructional practices were the most e ective—not who is the best person, whose strategy proved to be the most e ective. e team then spends time mastering that strategy. To reengage students, the team will use the strategies that proved to be the most e ective. It would be an exercise in futility to reteach using the strategies that did not work the rst time. We would not expect to see the athlete continue to take shot after shot outside of the 10 ring without making adjustments that have proven e cacious.

In an example of precision with a lack of accuracy, we might see a team that spends their collaborative time just as the previous team did. ey identify and unpack essentials, pace and plan units, and make assessments with rubrics or pro ciency scales.

Special Education Interventions

Q:

Where does special education t into a school’s system of interventions?

A:

In a PLC, we learn together about best practice, apply what we have learned, and use evidence of student learning to guide next steps. If these are the criteria for making decisions in a PLC, then the research and evidence is clear: special education has proven to be tragically insu cient and ineffective as an intervention. e graduation rate of special education students is almost 20 percent lower than regular education students, and those students are also woefully underrepresented in postsecondary education. At your school, are special education students excelling due to the additional support they receive? Are a majority of students closing their achievement gaps? For most schools, the answer would be a resounding, “No!” If there is no research to suggest traditional special education services are likely to be effective, and no evidence at your school that these practices work, then how can a learning-focused school continue to perpetuate these interventions?

e failure of special education as an e ective learning intervention is

not due to ine ective special education teachers, but because the purpose of special education was a civil rights issue to allow students with disabilities to attend school at all. Subsequently, traditional special education policies have allowed at-risk students to fall too far behind before receiving systematic help, disengaged general education teachers from the intervention process, and overwhelmed special education resources at the school site with far too many students to serve.

Here is the key: schools should not view interventions as “regular ed” or “special ed”—just “ed.” If there was no such thing as special education and regular education, how would you determine who would provide interventions and how? You would group together students with common needs, then assign teachers based on who is best trained to meet those speci c needs. So start by identifying students who need help, discuss each student’s needs, group students by common needs, and assign sta members according to their training to meet these needs.

e federal reauthorization of special

education in 2003 promotes early intervention services, which allows schools to use a percentage of special education resources in preventive ways to support students not currently in special education. And regular education teachers have always been allowed to serve special education students—that is considered the least-restrictive learning environment. Such an approach might require rewriting some students’ individual education plans (IEPs), but luckily, IEPs are not chiseled in stone.

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 5, “How Will We Respond When Some Students Don’t Learn and When Some Do?”

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT

COACHING QUADRANTS IN ACTION

TESHA FERRIBY THOMAS JENNIFER PARKER

Some might say that teaching is like boxing. Every day teachers enter the ring of the classroom and work diligently to deliver high-quality instruction that results in student learning. Some days, they are victorious and can raise their exhausted arms in triumph. Other days, they leave the ring feeling defeated, beaten, and bruised. Educators have nally begun to learn what boxers have known all along. If we are going to ght a good ght, we need to have a coach in our corner.

In the Amplify Your Impact trilogy of texts, the cycle for coaching collaborative teams is built on the solid foundation of three cornerstones: clarity, feedback, and support (Many et al., 2018, 2020, 2022). Here, we extend the Amplify coaching cycle by connecting it to four quadrants: trusting relationships,

&goals and outcomes, teaching and modeling, and resources. is extension provides an opportunity for educators in a coaching role to utilize clarity, feedback, and support as they coach not only collaborative teams but also individual teachers who need additional time and support.

Please keep in mind that one does not need the title of “coach” to take on a coaching role. Principals, teacher leaders, and members of a guiding coalition are all examples of positions that regularly include coaching responsibilities, despite the absence of the word coach in the title. While there are many roles that educational coaches ll, there are four main quadrants that can help coaches focus their e orts to support their boxers.

1. Trusting relationships Trust is a crucial component for any relationship but is one that absolutely must be in place for teachers and teams to openly receive and act on feedback from a coach.

Goals and outcomes . Once teacher teams have reached a common understanding or clarity around the expectations for their work, speci c goals and attainable outcomes lead the way toward measurable progress.

Teaching and modeling . Ongoing, job-embedded support has been identi ed as a vital component of e ective professional development (Althauser, 2015). Successful coaches support teachers and teams by modeling high-impact practices and providing opportunities for professional learning that are immediately applicable.

Resources . As a continuation of ongoing, job-embedded support, high-functioning coaches invest time and energy in their own learning and freely share their knowledge just in time—exactly when teachers and teams need it most.

In the sections that follow, we describe each quadrant as it applies to the practice of coaching teachers and collaborative teams. As you read through each quadrant, we ask that you consider your own personal experiences with coaching teachers and collaborative teams.

QUADRANT 1

TRUSTING RELATIONSHIPS

“Cut me, Mick.”

Likewise, when coaches build trust with classroom teachers, both are more likely to engage in opportunities for professional and personal growth. ere are four main qualities people look for (consciously or subconsciously) when determining how much to trust another person: care, sincerity, reliability, and competence (Feltman, 2011). While we cannot coerce someone into a trusting relationship, coaches can re ect on the level to which they demonstrate these four qualities. Considering questions such as How do I show others that I care about them? Do I walk the walk? Can my colleagues count on me in a crisis? and In what areas do I need additional professional learning? can lead us to actions that will increase trust and improve relationships.

Strong relationships between coaches and teachers develop when teachers trust that a coach has their best interest at heart and is truly interested in providing support rather than judgment. However, high levels of trust can only be built when coaches consistently demonstrate care, sincerity, reliability, and competence.

—ROCKY BALBOA

Relationships are the heart of any successful organization. Schools that build positive relationships between teachers and students, administrators and teachers, and teachers and their colleagues are “more highly motivated, better able to adapt to challenges, and more likely to achieve school goals” (Many et al., 2022, p. 71).

From to

PLC at Leader inMe in a Aspiration Apathy

It was 2017, and I was wrapping up my rst stint as assistant principal of West Side Elementary. We were attending our fth-grade promotion to recognize students as they prepared to enter middle school. Up to this point, I considered my rst year a relative success. Teachers seemed content, students were generally happy, and our overall school culture was on autopilot. As the ceremony progressed and students were called in alphabetical order to walk across the stage, I noticed a glaring commonality among them. As I greeted them with a smile and told them congratulations, almost every student kept their head down. ey wouldn’t make eye contact. ey often extended the wrong hand to shake mine. Our job is to educate students and prepare them for the future, but even though everyone seemed happy, they weren’t really prepared with basic life skills. ey were taught things, but did they really learn?

We had a hardworking sta with great intentions and big hearts. However, we also worked hard to nd every excuse in the book for why we struggled to reach our students academically. West Side Elementary, located in North Georgia, is one of the most economically disadvantaged schools in the Catoosa County School System. It also has the highest number of English learners and the highest transiency rate in the system—meaning, at its highest, 26 percent of students who start the year with us will not end the year with us. With all that said, this often leads to frustration.

To be honest, our culture was that of complacency, not excellence. As long as our teachers and sta went through the motions, we considered ourselves successful. Sitting there in our award ceremony and observing our students go through the motions, I felt like they knew something wasn’t adding up. “Congratulations, you were able to sit there in class and have the teachers teach you a bunch of stu , but you really didn’t learn anything. Hooray!” e ceremony represented time served instead of knowledge gained. e idea of our students having no sense of pride or con dence, a lack of parental involvement, poor test scores, and a dirty school building that was the butt of jokes didn’t sit well with me. I knew there had to be a better way.

The Leader in Me

at next fall, my principal and I had the idea to do a book study as a sta with a book titled e Leader in Me, which told the story of A. B. Combs Elementary School. e school, using e 7 Habits of Highly E ective People written by Dr. Stephen Covey (2004), created an environment that empowered sta , students, and parents to be leaders.

at WorkMe Aspiration

by Robert Mountjoy

The Schedule

Scheduling became crucial in the success of our new school. We developed a schedule centered around the academic and social-emotional learning needs of our students. Before, I built the schedule centered around lunch. Old-school principals know what I am talking about! I laugh now thinking about how I focused on lunch and recess before academics. We had time designated within the master schedule to ensure tiered instructional support. We started with Tier 1 instruction and guaranteed that all students would have access to this grade-level instruction and not be pulled by anyone for any reason during this time.

We then designated time for Tier 2 instruction. When students did not meet pro ciency in an essential skill according to the data of the teacher-created common assessment, those students would be grouped to give them the opportunity to learn for a second time what they did not get the rst time. ey would then be reassessed, and this process would continue with a di erent strategy until they got it. Remember, we are ensuring high levels of learning for all students. ese were the steps we used in a cyclical process to ensure this work was done. We also focused our e orts to extend the learning of those who did show mastery. ey would work on something giving them a deeper, richer understanding of the learning being administered at that time.

We also made time for Tier 3 (intense intervention) instruction. is time was designated during the day to give students the opportunity to “ ll the gaps” of previous years of instruction missed.

But what about social-emotional learning and the soft skills our students

1. Be proactive.

2. Begin with the end in mind.

3. Put ﬁrst things ﬁrst.

4. Think win-win.

5. Seek ﬁrst to understand, then to be understood.

6. Synergize.

7. Sharpen the saw.

Empowering Students

We worked for years to get to the point of allowing our students a voice in our school. Including students in the decision-making process and allowing student input created ownership. To be honest, their ideas were often way better than those of the adults in the building. We created a student leadership team called the Student Lighthouse Team. Students were nominated or completed an application to join this team. Over time, this team made big decisions in beautifying our campus, partnered with our local Chickamauga National Military Park to start a service project, and developed the Axton Solberg Scholarship Fund, which gave a graduating senior $1,000 to go toward their trade school. e graduating senior had to submit an application, and the Student Lighthouse Team reviewed the applications and chose the recipient. I wish we would have started this sooner. I will say it again, the ideas they had often surpassed those of the adults in the building. ey continue to amaze me.

It is important to point out that all of this was done to accomplish our goal of empowering students, giving them the con dence to see something bigger in themselves that they didn’t yet see, but also ensuring they were prepared academically for the next grade level.

“All of this was done to accomplish our goal of empowering students, giving them the conﬁdence to see something bigger in themselves.”

Virginia Bennett, executive director of academic support services, Bulloch County Schools, Georgia

THE RECOMMENDER

Michael Roberts

Answering Question Four

When I travel North America and talk with teachers about which essential PLC question is most challenging to answer, almost universally the response is question four: How will we extend the learning for students who have demonstrated pro ciency?

How to advance the learning of pro cient students seems like a simple question, but several things make answering this question very hard for most educators. Traditionally, we have not focused on pro cient learners, and when educators do try to address these students’ needs, what they have often tried (making students ad hoc aides or teaching at the next grade level, for example) are not extensions and really just ways to justify not doing much for these students. Here’s the biggest challenge: Where can teachers turn to build their own skill sets to help these children? ere must be something out there. After all, there are literally dozens of resources for answering collaborative question one: How do teachers determine what is essential? Want to build skills in assessing students to answer question two? Hundreds of resources. e interventions required to answer question three? Resources aplenty. Question four? ere are signi cantly fewer because these kids don’t need the help, right? ey’ll learn in spite of the teacher, right? Not so fast. Useful extensions do not just fall out of the sky, and if the extensions are not meaningful, students will not get much out of them.

Delivering di erent work, not more work, to students takes thoughtful planning. Where can educators turn to support this planning? Podcasts? My favorites, Real Talk with Jeanne and Matt and e Tom Schimmer Podcast, may have an episode about extensions. Blogs? e karenpowerblog.wordpress.com or the allthingsplc.info blog will occasionally touch on extensions, such as the article “ e Forgotten Question” (https://allthingsplc.info/the-forgotten-question/), but these blogs are not focused on extensions. Gifted-focused podcasts, websites, and blogs? ese can be used to spark some ideas, but they are focused on a small subsection of learners, and most pro cient students are not gifted, they are just pro cient.

So where can an educator turn? Following are some valuable resources that are focused on pro cient students and building meaningful extensions.

Enriching the Learning: Meaningful Extensions for Proﬁcient Students in a PLC at Work by Michael Roberts (2019)

This is the book I wrote when my team was building an accountable PLC and we could not ﬁnd any resources on meaningfully answering question four. I like it.

When They Already Know It: How to Extend and Personalize Student Learning in a PLC at Work by Mark Weichel, Blane McCann, and Tami Williams (2018)

This fantastic resource came out while I was working on Enriching This book is well researched and provides great support for educators.

What’s Next? Monthly Extensions to Challenge Proﬁcient Students in a PLC at Work by Mark Weichel and Steve Pearce (2022)

This resource offers strategies and ideas to help teachers build meaningful extensions for students.

The Big Book of Tools for Collaborative Teams in a PLC at Work by William Ferriter (2020)

This book supports all aspects of collaborative teams, but chapter 5 is all about extensions, including some tools to help teams ﬂesh out and develop their ideas for extending their students.

MICHAEL ROBERTS is an author and consultant with over two decades of experience in education. He has been a teacher and administrator at every level, from elementary school to the district office. He is the author of Enriching the Learning, Shifting from Me to We: How to Jumpstart Collaboration in a PLC at Work, and The Language of Possibility: How Teachers’ Words Shape School Culture and Student Achievement

NO

MATTER HOW GOOD anideamightsound, practitionerswanttoknow,“Yes,butdoesitwork? Canitpositivelyaffectmyclassroom,myinstructional practice?”Teachersandprincipalsoftencollect storiesfromotherschools,butscholarlyresearch alsocontributestounderstandingwhatmakesPLCs effective. Thiscolumnwillintroduceyoubrieflyto contemporaryresearchaboutPLCsinpractice. Sharethissynopsiswithcolleaguesandpolicymakers who wonder how to make PLCs work more effectively, anddigdeepertolearnmoreonyourown.

PRINCIPALS, ARE YOU PROVIDING EQUITABLE COLLABORATION FOR

PE TEACHERS?

The Study

Heather K. Dillard

Beddoes, Z., & Sazama, D. (2024). Principal perceptions and applications of professional learning communities: Implications for the future of physical education. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 43(1), 1–10.

One of the most loved and equally misunderstood professionals in the American school building is the physical education teacher. Perhaps as a byproduct of the accountability movement coupled with personal experiences in gym class, the average school principal has allowed PE teachers to become marginalized and academically irrelevant (Beddoes, Prusak, & Hall, 2014). is article exposes implications for the problem that currently exists and suggests ways to alleviate it. As commonly uncovered in PLC literature, the onus is on the administrator to implement PLC practices equitably. Researchers recruited 10 principals from seven grades preK–5 or K–5 schools, one grades 6–8 school, and two grades 9–12 schools to participate in semi-structured interviews for an exploratory interview study. Each of the four represented school districts had been using the same PLC framework in their schools for over

a decade and had received two-day trainings from national PLC consultants on “successful school-based PLCs” (p. 3) the summer prior to the interviews. e study sought answers to the following three research questions.

1. How do principals operationalize and implement the purposes and functions of PLCs within their schools?

2. What do principals perceive are the primary facilitators and inhibitors of a PLC culture?

3. How do principals conceptualize the role of PE and physical educators within the larger school PLC culture?

The Findings

ree overarching themes emerged from the study. First, PLCs are centered on and are structures for student learning (p. 4). Schools operating as PLCs view student learning as essential and provide opportunities for teams to engage collaboratively in discussing the four PLC questions; “however, this was not always the case for physical educators” (p. 4). Although principals “reported e orts to create thriving PLC

Research Report

cultures focused on student learning, PE teacher roles within the PLCs were not necessarily congruent with their faculty peers” (p. 5).

e second theme spoke of how the roles for physical educators di ered in both perception and function. Two significant di erences from other teachers were that PE teachers were expected to reinforce the learning of other content areas and that their primary function was to promote and develop general wellness across the school. “In terms of student learning of PE concepts . . . the principals were silent” even as they acknowledged student learning was the primary purpose of a PLC. e researchers found that principals held “few explicit expectations” (p. 5) for student learning of speci c PE outcomes, a stark inconsistency with the school’s stated purpose.

ird, the article addressed a common truth among all teams regarding a need for team trust and avoidance of drift. ree common causes of drift discussed were teacher turnover, fear of expressing vulnerability, and personality con icts (p. 6). With teacher turnover comes a need to revisit the rst PLC question regarding student learning. If teams avoid this foundational study, they are likely to drift away from the school’s mission. Likewise, a fear of vulnerability and personality con icts cause conversations among educators to drift away from student learning.

e article urged “focused advocacy for PE for the sake of PE and not simply as a tool for reinforcing concepts for other disciplines” (p. 8). Once principals understand the value of quality physical education toward the development of their students, then they must provide the same job-embedded structures, supports, and accountability for their PE teachers to support students’ physical education needs

Implications for PLCs

Professional Learning Communities at Work exist for the sheer purpose of student learning. e vehicle that drives student learning is educator learning. Every professional within the school community should be given equal opportunity for learning to occur. Administrators undermine their authority when they “stress the importance of collaboration and then fail to provide time for it” (DuFour et al., 2021, p. 64).

Finding time for collaboration to occur may be di cult for subjects like PE when there is only one teacher in the building teaching the subject. However, professional literature has provided scores of suggestions of how to address this issue.

e All ingsPLC website (www.allthingsplc.info) has hundreds of model schools sharing their stories of making PLC practices work within the scheduled school day.

Once time has been allotted, administrators should ensure

the four PLC questions drive the conversations of each collaborative team. Physical education teachers should engage in deep conversations around the question “What do we want students to know and be able to do in PE?” is answer should cause them to determine “How will we know if they have learned it?” e PE teachers need a clear understanding of how students can properly demonstrate their understanding so that a clear assessment of the skills can be performed. Once students demonstrate their abilities, the teachers can answer the nal two questions of “How will we respond if they don’t learn it?” and “How will we respond if they have learned it?” e discussion in PE collaborative meetings should not deviate from those of any other teams in the building. e focus is on student learning of the content.

Despite the ever-pressing demands on schools, administrators must not overlook the importance of physical education and any other non-academic class. Skills learned in these classes will be foundational for students to grow into healthy and productive citizens. Providing equitable collaborative experiences for all teachers in the school building must be guaranteed.

References

Beddoes, Z., Prusak, K. A., & Hall, A. (2014). Overcoming marginalization of physical education in America’s schools with professional learning communities. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 85(4), 21–27.

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., Mattos, M., & Muhammad, A. (2021). Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work: Proven insights for sustained, substantive school improvement (2nd ed.). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

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

Perfecting the Practice

JENNIFER BURRIS

“How do you support rst-year teachers?”

When asked this recently, I was quite surprised that an applicant with no teaching experience would know the signi cance of this question. At the conclusion of the interview, I found myself thinking about what my response would have been prior to PLCs.

I can vividly remember when I accepted my rst teaching position. I was given a key to my classroom, a teacher’s edition of the textbook, class rosters, and a genuine “Good luck!” My classroom was right across the hall from a teacher who was teaching the exact same thing. What is now mind-blowing to me is that the two of us worked in complete isolation for the entire school year. Why? at’s the way it was always done.

It was common for schools to have a culture of complacency. Complacency is de ned as self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual de ciencies. We didn’t know better! I have heard many times throughout my career “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Twelve years later, one event would nally reveal there was indeed a better way. e PLCs at Work Summit launched our PLC journey. e biggest takeaway was the four critical questions of a PLC, which transformed our educational practices as we had known them.

What do we want students to learn?

Before the PLC process was implemented, it was common practice for teachers to operate under the assumption that all standards are equally important and therefore attempt to cover each one for the same amount of time, not realizing that this inch-deep-and-milelong approach results in students with signi cant gaps who are not prepared for what’s

next. After the PLC process was implemented, it became common practice for teams to collaborate during common planning time to identify high-priority standards. Once this has been done, teams move forward with building high-quality assessments that have a strong emphasis on these essential standards.

How will we know if they learned it?

Before the PLC process, it was common practice for teachers to teach an entire unit before assessing to see if the students actually grasped the concepts. After the unit test, they moved on to the next unit. is approach left so many kids behind with no system to catch them up. With the PLC process, our teams now create common formative assessments (CFAs) that prioritize the essential standards and administer the CFAs throughout the unit. ey use these CFAs to identify struggling students and provide support before they get to the unit test and it’s too late.

What will we do if they don’t learn it?

Before the PLC process, it was common practice for teachers just to move on. After all, there is a pacing guide and teachers don’t have time to go back and reteach an entire unit. With the PLC process, teams now use the CFA data throughout the unit to determine which students need help with which standards and then provide immediate, targeted support during time that is built into the instructional day. After students receive additional support, often from a teacher other than their own, they have a chance to retest. What a growth mindset!

What will we do if they have learned it? Before the PLC process, the response would be the same as when they don’t learn it: give them a grade and move on to the next

lesson. is approach doesn’t give pro cient students an opportunity to take their learning to a higher level. With the PLC process, teams now create rigorous extension lessons to stretch students’ learning while those who are struggling are provided additional support.

So, how do we support rst-year teachers? Before we were a PLC, I would have had very little to share with a brand-new teacher posing this question. Now that we’ve become a PLC, I can’t hold back my enthusiasm as I respond. e answer is quite simple. We give them the most valuable resource—each other! We plug them into our high-functioning PLC that fosters a culture of collaboration and promotes success as we work to ensure high levels of learning for all. at’s why I love PLCs!

JENNIFER BURRIS , principal of Benton Intermediate School in Louisiana, has been working in education for over 20 years. She currently works with educators to implement proven practices to ensure high levels of student learning.