Why Have PLCs?

The Big Ideas of a PLC:

• We accept learning as the fundamental purpose of our school and therefore are willing to examine all practices in light of their impact on learning.
• We are committed to working together to achieve our collective purpose. We cultivate a collaborate culture through development of high-performing teams!
• We assess our effectiveness on the basis of results rather than intentions. Individuals, teams, and schools seek relevant data and information and use that information to promote continuous improvement.                     ~DuFour

I believe that we need to develop our capacity at New Tech to work in high-performing departmental teams in order to ensure that curriculum alignment is not left to chance! I imagine our Wednesday staff meetings beginning with 30-45 minutes of departmental PLC work with guiding questions such as:

• What Learning Outcomes will each department emphasize at which grade levels? (so that by the end of 3 or 4 years all learning outcomes are addressed equitably).
• What key elements of our school-wide rubrics are emphasized in which years, department by department?
• What are the most essential standards in each subject-based course within a department, and by knowing the standards that your other departmental teachers are targeting, can you assist the student with continuous, ongoing learning (basically, articulation of standards within a department over a 3 or 4 year sequence of courses).
• When you look at student work, do you see evidence of learning in the areas of the essential "power" standards and the learning outcomes?
• What is the best way to teach _______ (fill in the blank)? Share different instructional strategies and then look at student outcomes / work to determine which strategies worked most effectively, OR identify what types of strategies help certain kinds of learners (i.e. what are the best scaffolding activities and what are the best extension activities)?
• What does summative data such as the CSTs or the Exit Exam suggest we need to change with our instruction?

Before we can begin working in departmental PLCs, we need to get some norms, common language, and common expectations. That is why we are together reading the DuFour text. Based on the survey all staff participated in during the August 29th staff meeting, some staff think we are still in the Pre-initiation and Initiation stages on:

• Action Research
• Overall PCL Work
• Continuous Improvement
• Collaborative Culture of Teachers Working Together
• Collaborative Culture of Administration and Teacher Relations

If you would like to see the survey results summary, click here! 

Finally, we need to move towards this PLC work not only because it will increase student success, but because it is a Board Approved NVUSD initiative. It is Goal #1: Career and College Ready through a guaranteed and viable curriculum with "high performing professional learning communities". The rest of NVUSD is striving to address Goal #3, 21st Century Skills and Project-based Learning, which we have down with flying colors (Woot! for us).