When I teach Communications class, I typically spend quite a bit of time going over the Shannon-Weaver Model of Communication, which essentially states that all communication involves A) a message sender B) encoding a message that is C) sent through noise to be D) decoded by E) the intended audience. Conversations, phone calls, emails, texts, Tweets, smoke signals—all communication follows this path.

Typically, when there are communication problems, it takes place because the message wasn't encoded effectively (e.g. typos)...

...it lost to the various noise/obstacles constantly around us (e.g. loud distractions, lack of reception)...

...or it wasn't able to be decoded. (e.g. the receiver doesn't even have the capability to understand the message.)

Students change every semester and/or year, and should grow every semester. The question is: "Are teachers and their curriculum changing, and if so, how?"

Research shows that spending time and energy on professional growth leads to student improvement.

Every PLC at every school is different. Some focus on meeting national, state, district, or building standards. Some identify and "attack" SMART goals to better themselves for annual assessments.

From my research, TAPA would best benefit from small groups where educators opt-in to study subjects and areas that they are personally interested in. The groups, subjects, and areas would not dictated by the calendar, curriculum, or administration—they would be teacher-led projects that benefit TAPA students, TAPA teachers, and the TAPA of the future.

Teachers are spending assigned time doing projects that benefit Primacy classes, teachers, & students

Teachers should be looking at themselves to see, objectively, what they do in class and how effective it is.

An effective PLC will help teachers calibrate their expectations, standards, beliefs, and goals with each other. Consistency is a huge "turn-on" to high school students, and by working together, all teachers should be better aligned.

It's not supposed to be departmental meetings; good PLCs focus on interdisciplinary collaboration. English teachers work with Math teachers and figure out a more "Math-like" way to teach English (and vice versa). Teachers spend time and energy finding new ways to combine forces.

PLCs focus on what students are learning, not what teachers are teaching. These groups should be centered around bettering the clientele.

A PLC should not administration-led. Teachers work on what projects they want to, when they want to, how they want to. The more teachers are empowered to run their PLC, the more they'll learn; the more administration is empowered to run the PLC, the more it will turn into an additional teacher's obligation.

Teachers will work together on their projects for 2-3 months; during a quarterly staff meeting, they'll share short 10-minute presentations with their findings, followed by a 5-minute Q&A. Additionally, projects should be digitized (e.g. Prezi, HaikuDeck, VoiceThread, or simply PDF) and added to a Professional Learning area of TAPA's website.

Teachers would be asked to periodically suggest PLC ideas to be added to the "Project Bucket." At the beginning of the project cycle, groups would take on projects they were interested in.