About This Book

as Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Ana Grace Academy of the Arts (which are now combined into one K–8 intermediate school), draw students from a wide area. Each school year, more than half the students in these schools are new to the building, coming from more than twenty-five different schools. The PLC process is critical for these schools to not only survive but also thrive.

I wrote this book for K–12 leaders in urban schools and communities who are ready to take action for PLC transformation. This book is also for any public school leader who faces some of the same challenges, regardless of the school’s size or location. This resource guides school leaders by outlining specific action steps and providing ready-to-use tools for supporting the work of PLC transformation, with a specific focus on the needs of urban schools. It is an excellent resource for leaders who have some knowledge of the PLC process but who are having trouble taking action or focusing on the right work, and who need clarity on leading a PLC in an urban school or district.

Chapter 1 focuses on creating a culture of care where all educators in the school care deeply about the students. In this chapter, I focus on collaborative discussions on race and equity, being mission driven, strengthening mindsets, conducting community and home visits, and creating a behavior system that focuses on relationships. All educators care about students on some level, but can they answer the question, “Do you care enough to take action?”

Chapter 2 focuses on creating a culture of collaboration with three action steps: (1) maximizing time, (2) ensuring team success, and (3) coaching up teams—all strategies that correlate directly to the second big idea of a PLC. Transforming school culture expert Anthony Muhammad (2018) defines culture as how educators behave. All the action steps in this chapter will help urban school leaders create the time to meet with teams, ensure teams focus on the right work, and coach teams for continuous improvement.

Chapter 3 describes how to create a culture of learning using a systematic and resultsdriven process called learning blocks. Learning blocks are periods of time teachers collaboratively create plans and assessments for, or what they will do with their students over a predetermined length of time. When creating learning blocks, teacher teams choose priority standards, create learning targets from the standards, agree on success criteria for mastery, create common formative assessments (pre-, during-, and end-of-unit), and plan time for more support. During the implementation of the learning blocks, teachers administer and collaboratively score assessments and meet in a data team to take action based on results. The teams create a learning block plan that guides the individual team members in their classrooms. The learning block strategy correlates with all three big ideas of a PLC.

Chapter 4 focuses on ensuring high-quality instruction in every classroom through high-leverage practices like teacher clarity, learning targets, success criteria, formative assessment and feedback, and student self-grading. This chapter shows you how to take the learning targets the team unwraps from the priority standards when planning the learning block and implement them in the classroom. The chapter also addresses how to create a plan to ensure more time and support for all students.

Chapter 5 describes how to use the resources in the building to create a culture of continuous improvement. The chapter describes ways to give staff professional learning opportunities during the school day in the school building. Leaders offer all the professional learning opportunities with minimal to no money—just the brilliance in the building.

Every chapter follows the same structure, starting with an ongoing fictional scenario highlighting the journey of an elementary teacher, Mr. Lewis, who faces many of the ongoing challenges common to urban districts. The what section describes the practice the chapter focuses on, the why section gives the research supporting that practice, and the how section demonstrates the action steps educators can take to implement the practice. Each chapter provides reproducible pages that include coaching tips, which will help leaders take action immediately. Each chapter ends with reflection questions and a template for you to write ways to take immediate action with your collaborative teams in the school.

The action steps and reproducibles will enable your collaborative teams to begin doing the work immediately. I created the reproducibles based on more than twenty-five years of extensive research and actual in-school use and revision in urban schools. While all the samples in the appendix were originally created for grades 6–8, educators have used the templates and processes in other grades; educators can use these tools at any K–12 grade level. Because urban schools do not always have the resources to enable educators to leave the building for professional development training, the tools in this book can support professional development days throughout the year. My hope is that this book helps urban school leaders harness the brilliance in the building. I hope you will use this book to start the work immediately. Let’s get all students out of that portable classroom and give them a fighting chance!

CHAPTER 1

A CULTURE OF CARE

Every student you help graduate means one less dropout, which means one less student at risk for entering the juvenile justice system, depending on welfare, or going to prison. . . . It is also one more voice that will contribute to our culture and world, making it a better place.

—Eric Jensen

It was a beautiful day in August. The staff were back at Teal Elementary for the first day of two days of teacher in-service to begin the new school year. Mr. Lewis, a first-year teacher who had recently graduated from college with a degree in elementary education, was feeling very nervous. He was excited to be a member of the Teal Elementary team—a group of people who, he presumed, like himself, had a passion for teaching. Mr. Lewis had been a member of a team, either football or basketball, his entire life. He preferred team sports to individual sports; he loved the sense of community and accomplishment. However, he was a little nervous about whether he would be able to make an impact in an urban school. Mr. Lewis hoped he had the skills to be the teacher the students deserved.

As he approached the auditorium, several veteran teachers welcomed him to the school, giving him the following piece of advice: Don’t smile until December! Mr. Lewis knew what his colleagues meant—teaching isn’t an easy profession. However, he wondered if the seemingly light-hearted saying was a reflection of much deeper feelings in the building. Did the staff believe simply getting through the school year was the best outcome to hope for? Or did they believe in doing more? Would he be working in a culture of care where students could overcome the challenges they face?