PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES

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Perspectives of Many Make for Wiser Thinking

ONE THING

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES

WHY?

Why PLC’s?
1.Solutions are best found closest to point of action
2. Embed capacity in the whole community (rather than an individual)
3. We are a community of professionals in practice

Good to Great is harder than Junk to Good.

SAS

THE FUTURE OF WORK

“The most successful corporation of the future will be a learning organization” (Senge, 1990, p. 4).

“The new problem of change . . . is what would it take to make the educational system a learning organization—expert at dealing with change as a normal part of its work, not just in relation to the latest policy, but as a way of life” (Fullan, 1993, p. 4).

“If schools want to enhance their organizational capacity to boost student learning, they should work on building a professional community that is characterized by shared purpose, collaborative activity, and collective responsibility among staff” (Newmann & Wehlage, 1995, p. 37).

“[We recommend that] schools be restructured to become genuine learning organizations for both students and teachers: organizations that respect learning, honor teaching, and teach for understanding” (Darling-Hammond, 1996, p. 198).

“Strong professional learning communities produce schools that are engines of hope and achievement for students. . . . There is nothing more important for education in the decades ahead than educating and supporting leaders in the commitments, understandings, and skills necessary to grow such schools where a focus on effort-based ability is the norm” (Saphier, 2005, p. 111).

“Research has steadily converged on the importance of strong teacher learning communities for teacher growth and commitment, suggesting as well their potential contribution to favorable student outcomes. . . . Effective professional development might thus be judged by its capacity for building (and building on) the structures and values, as well as the intellectual and leadership resources of professional community” (Little, 2006, p. 2).

WHY?

DIRECTIONS

• Gather in groups/rooms (5 min)
• Facilitator will give you instructions for 4-As protocol (5 min)
• Use 4-As to unpack the text (40 min, including 10 min to read)
• Break and return to auditorium (10 mins)

Group 1: Band room
Group 2: Media Center
Group 3: Library (there is a closed room inside)
Group 4: Auditorium balcony
Group 5: Auditorium front seating
Group 6: Choir room
Group 7: Room 230
Group 8: Room 136

HOW?

HOW DO YOU PLC?

• A culture of collaboration and co-learning
• A focus on learning (rather than teaching)
• A focus on educational outcomes

A Culture of Collaboration and Co-Learning

1. Questions are as important, if not more so, than answers
2. We all have strengths, gifts, and expertise
3. Solutions are best found closest to point of action

A Focus on Learning:

1. We CAN talk about teaching
2. But learning is the MAIN focus of our conversations, and the reason we gather

QUESTIONS TO GUIDE

• What is important for students to learn & understand?
• What do students already know and understand?
• How do students learn best?

A Focus on Educational Outcomes

1. Student level data
2. Data means numbers
3. Good data means more than numbers (context)
3. Great data has a name, a face, and a story

QUESTIONS TO GUIDE

• What are students curious about? (intrinsic motivation)
• What have students learned and how have they grown?

PLCS ARE NOT:

• A meeting
• A free-for-all discussion
• About logistics
• About evaluation of teachers / time for administrators to ‘judge’

PLCS DO:

• Use protocols
• Use specific questions or derivative questions
• Often end without a decision or answer (end in a question)
• Promote professional learning

LET’S PRACTICE

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• Get back into the same groups and rooms (5 min)
• Facilitators will give instructions (5 min)
• Use protocol to engage in PLC discussion (it’s ok if it’s awkward!) (25 min)
• Break and return (10 min)

AUSTIN’S BUTTERFLY

CONTENT OF PLC DISCUSSION:

• Austin’s Butterfly
• The portrait of an AISE graduate

Questions for Discussion:
1. What PoG traits were at play in the example of Austin’s Butterfly?
2. At AIS, what is the evidence we expect students to generate in order to demonstrate proficiency in the above mentioned trait(s)?

INSTRUCTIONS

Report Out:

IN YOUR PERSONAL OPINION, WHAT LEARNING HAPPENED IN YOUR DISCUSSION?

FOCUS