Tag: teams

A 7-Year(+) Journey Towards Establishing Effective PLCs

acelmer

I have been learning alongside two of my classroom teachers and PLC Facilitators this year through a Data Analysis course presented by Demonstrated Success. The Data Analysis Course is a year-long course that is a combination of self-paced online modules, virtual meetings, and full-day in-person sessions. The co-facilitators of this course have a wealth of experience, expertise, and resources to share with all educators – no matter your role. I strongly encourage school and/or district teams to attend their courses. Our focus during this module has been to read through an article about Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and use the “Four A’s Protocol” to reflect on the reading and apply this information to our practice.

In the article How to Build Radically Different PLCs That Empower Teachers with Ownership and Raise Student Achievement (Jody Honaker, Deana Senn, and Shakira Fetherolf, 2022.), helped me affirm all of the intentional moves I have made over the past 7 years as a school principal to continually improve and enhance our PLC experience to be more effective.

Assumptions

  • Configurations: The authors of this article made some assumptions about the configurations in schools. I’ve worked in schools where there is only one teacher per grade level, and I currently work in a school where we have 4 or 5 classroom teachers at each grade level. We also have some teachers who are generalists – teaching all content areas to the same group of students, and then we have other teachers who are content-specific. In my current school, we are fortunate to have an embedded model for Special Education which means we have anywhere from 1-3 Special Educators on each grade level team – I’m well aware this is not true in all schools. The configuration of the school should be taken into consideration when designing PLC structures.
  • Time: The authors of this article don’t specify how much time or what an example schedule would look like for PLCs, but there is an assumption that we have the time available to add PLCs to our schedules. Administrators are up against a lot of competing factors that can be barriers to supporting PLCs – and for me, it comes down to the teacher contract, scheduling needs, and a lack of adequate time that is essential when establishing and maintaining effective PLCs. I have tried a variety of different schedules over the years, and have been persistent in maintaining that PLCs are a priority, so we are now using 1 hour each week during our early-release time to ensure every grade level and department team has at least an hour to meet weekly. (Again, I know that we are unique – and most schools do not offer an early-release day for students.)
  • Terminology: The authors of this article assume that all PLC members have a shared understanding/definitions of terminology, language, and experience in PLCs – when our realities are that we have teachers that are brand new to teaching, teachers who are joining us from different districts/states, and teachers who are veterans who may have only worked in this one school or one district with limited exposure to schools beyond this school/district. There’s an assumption that there is an aligned scope, sequence, and pacing for grade level and department curriculum. In one school I worked in, they used the term “Learning Targets” as student-friendly “I can” statements that explained the specific skill the students were working on developing and how they were going to demonstrate that skill by the end of that lesson, while my current district refers to “Learning Targets” as these broad, end-of-year goals based on the Common Core State Standards.

Agreements

Reflecting on your vision for the team involves various shifts as you gradually move your team to a higher level of maturity and share more responsibility with your team.

When we first started building a structure for PLCs in my building (7 years ago), we hired an outside “expert” in PLCs to help encourage belief in the PLC potential. As this was a new format and structure for teaching teams, and I was a new administrator at the time, I approached this first year as a very hands-on (aka micromanager) to offer support, structure, consistency, and accountability. I was the facilitator for every PLC meeting, I attended every meeting, I took the notes at every meeting, I set the agenda, etc. Then, I asked for feedback. (Is anyone noticing a trend here?!?! Oye.)

The next year, I asked for one volunteer from each grade level team to become their grade level rep/PLC Facilitator for the year. I still set the agenda and made the note template (so they were consistent in all the grade levels). I also attended as many PLC meetings as I could – but at this time, we still had PLCs taking place during the school day, and they were only 30 minutes per week. We also did not have consistent data to bring to the table each week. I received feedback at the end of this year, which led to…

I was completely hands-off the following year. We still had PLC Facilitators, but I did not create the agenda, notes doc, I did not attend the meetings, etc. The feedback I received that year was that the PLCs felt like a waste of time because there was no direction, guidance, support, or purpose. Teachers weren’t showing up to meetings, they considered it a waste of time, or a joke, or the agendas focused on logistics rather than student data. Teachers were asking for more structure and support – and I needed to strike a balance between my too-tight and too-loose approaches tried in the past.

As the years progressed, we continued to have PLC Facilitators, and we would meet monthly as a vertical PLC – which has been super helpful. I attend PLCs on occasion, when asked, or when I have the time. I have access to the notes, and teams tag me in the notes if they need my response. Agendas are co-created by the PLC Facilitators and team members. Roles have been assigned to each member of the PLC team – so everyone is a little more invested in participating in the meetings. Student data is the focus at every PLC meeting, because we’ve added another meeting time weekly to go over anything else that the team would like to discuss together. Over time, our PLCs have shifted from manager-led to become more self-managing and self-designing – and, continue to be a work-in-progress. We have come a LONG way, and I am looking forward to continuing this important work with our teaching teams.

Welcoming different voices and opinions allows for the intellectual friction that drives diverse thinking.

I completely agree with this statement from the article as well – I believe it is healthy to have discussion, debate, and hear a variety of perspectives. When done with an open mind and an assumption of best intentions (genuinely), these conversations can help us all grow. I do question how to help support this with PLC members – we have teachers who are professional, respectful, and avoid confrontation or uncomfortable conversations with colleagues. We also have members who are negative, and don’t follow the norms/agreements/commitments, but the facilitators struggle on ways to bring everyone back to the norms/agreements/commitments. This is something we are working on schoolwide but would love to hear how other schools have helped overcome this in their schools.

Arguments

This article says that PLCs should focus on a compelling purpose, instructional planning, and data analysis. Something that we struggle with in our building is trying to figure out the timing of when all 5 or 6 classroom teachers and special educators should be planning instruction throughout the school year. I hear from teachers that they are not all on the same pacing for units, which makes it challenging to collaborate on designing units/lessons together during PLC meetings. I agree that the teams should develop the lesson learning targets or intentions together and build consensus on success criteria, but then each teacher should be able to design their own lessons/student tasks to help students achieve those targets (build grade level skills). A lot of this work could take place during post-service, summer per diem work, and pre-service, if we didn’t also have to allow time for preparing learning spaces, safety trainings, school system overviews, and district initiatives. If we could answer the Q’s; what do students need to know, understand, and do this school year? AND how will they show what they know? PRIOR to the school year, then we could continue answering the next 2 PLC Q’s throughout the school year in PLC meetings; what will we do when they show proficiency?, what will we do when students are not yet demonstrating proficiency?

Aspirations

This will probably come as no surprise, that our PLC focus this year has been to expand our use of and knowledge of data analysis. To be more specific, we are continuing to work on identifying the ‘now what‘ phase of data analysis in our weekly PLC team meetings. We are collecting a lot of data, but we don’t always know what to do with that information, and how to make revisions to our curriculum or adjustments to our instruction as a collective grade level (or department) team. MANY of my teachers are looking at formative data daily or weekly and making adjustments in their own classroom with instruction and intervention.

I’d love to see our horizontally aligned (grade level and department teams) start to meet as vertically aligned PLCs to gain a better understanding of the grade level below and the grade level above the current grade level they are teaching. This will encourage deeper conversations among colleagues and build capacity for classroom teachers to meet the various learners’ needs – knowing what to do when students already demonstrate proficiency with grade-level skills and what to do when students are not yet demonstrating proficiency with grade-level skills.

Going back to the idea of the embedded model for Special Education, I’d love to see our teaching teams move towards co-teaching models, where general classroom teachers partner teacher with Special Educators, Multilingual Teachers, Speech Language Pathologists, Digital Learning Leaders, Diversity Equity & Inclusion Coaches, School Counselors, Instructional Coaches, etc. We have an enormous amount of expertise and talent in our buildings that we have yet to utilize effectively.

We are slowly shifting our culture to realize our shared responsibility for all students, where we see how we are interdependent on one another, and where we view the PLC process as embedded professional development that highlights the strengths, talents, and expertise of ALL educators (not just coaches, coordinators, leaders, etc.).

 

Champions for Change

acelmer

The process of changing the culture of any organization begins by changing the way in which the people of that organization behave.

Knowing your audience (aka staff) is the MOST important part of implementing change and shifting the culture of a community. As a school leader, you cannot (and will not) force people to behave in certain ways, but you can support and guide them in having a better understanding of the culture the learning community is trying to build together. There are absolutely those who get energized and excited about the opportunities and limitless potential that change can bring to a community. These people like to take risks, push the status quo, and seek continuous improvement and innovation. I happen to fall into this camp – which makes sense that I am in a leadership role. (My one-word goal last year was “better” – I’m always striving to ‘reflect to refine’.) In my six years as a school administrator (and working with a staff of about 150 adults), I have learned that many more people view change as intimidating and overwhelming. Some people fear the unknown and the unpredictable nature of change. Educators tend to be planners, and thrive on consistency and feeling like they have a sense of control in situations – the idea of change moves us from a state of comfort to a state of challenge. As a lifelong learner, I know that growth and improvement can only take place when there is an appropriate level of challenge – and to me, if I’m starting to feel ‘comfortable’ it means I’m content (and possibly confident) but not necessarily growing or improving.

It’s incredibly important to identify early on who your “champions for change” (or change agents) are on your staff, because you’ll need to lean on them to support the slow and steady shift in culture over time. We’ve all got champions on our teams – these are the people who are positive, optimistic, and willing to try new things. It’s also important to know who on your staff is going to be the most resistant and reluctant to something that feels ‘new’ or ‘different’. These staff members will need more time to process, more opportunities to discuss and ask clarifying questions, and possibly will need some exemplars or testimonials to begin to see the vision and purpose of the upcoming change. The goal here is to help people believe-in (as opposed to buy-in) the reasons for the cultural shift and help them work towards being active participants in shifting the school culture. 

When I first joined the PreK-8 school as the PreK-4 Co-Principal back in 2017, I inherited a very fragmented group of educators who worked in the same building but was certainly not a collaborative community focused on continuous improvement. There were highly qualified, effective teachers who worked independently or with a partner teacher at this school. They had access to a wealth of resources available in the newly consolidated district.

My first year as principal, I was charged by the Superintendent at the time to help co-lead a Configuration Study. There was a confusing configuration in place due to some historical tension among staff members and administrators (at the time). The schedule provided a lot of autonomy, but not a lot of opportunity for collaboration or common planning time. There was no coordinated curriculum or cohesive PD plan. Some professionals (not all) used to participate in a team meeting that went by an acronym that no one knew the meaning behind. There was not a lot of value placed on collaborative team time – when I would show up to a team meeting that was on the schedule, many teachers would tell me (or sometimes ask me) that they (teachers) decided not to meet.

This blew my mind because I came from another district, that had Professional Learning Communities well-established and was the foundation of the culture of the community. I was the PLC Facilitator for our K-2 PLC when I was a Kindergarten teacher, and I helped coordinate/lead PLC’s when I was an Instructional Coach as well. We were student-focused, and evidence-driven – sharing the responsibility of ensuring high-quality instruction and learning for all – we were in it together.

As a new administrator, in a new learning community, I knew it was imperative to develop a long-term plan to bring Professional Learning Communities to our school which would help us start to shift the culture over time.

1. RECONSIDER CONFIGURATION

We started our shift toward PLC’s by working with our Program Council members to review the current configuration and its effectiveness. We researched and explored various configurations and weighed the pros/cons of multi-age, looping/non-looping, generalist teaching vs. content-specific teaching, class sizes, embedded models with special educators, etc. This year-long process helped us design a more cohesive configuration for a stronger foundation to develop grade-level and department teams. This helped us view our whole school as one large learning community that provides a thoughtful and intentional PreK-8 learning journey for students and families. We incorporated all stakeholders’ feedback and input to come up with our final configuration plan. It appeased the majority, but certainly rattled a few veteran teams who had been well-established and content for the past few decades.

2. ESTABLISH TEAMS

We then met with individual faculty and staff members to get a sense from them what grade level and instructional model they felt would be a strength for them. Getting the right people, in the right positions, with the right expertise, will yield strong results for students. We had some voluntary reassignments which of course went really well, because it was their decision and had some sense of control in the situation. We also made some intentional decisions to reassign individuals to different teams for a variety of reasons. Some of these moves worked out really well, while others resisted and eventually moved to different schools or positions within the district. As a school community, we are working on how to have difficult conversations with one another – this is something that many of us try to avoid or ignore, but then there is a lot of built-up resentment and toxicity brews. I think it goes back to establishing a healthy way (aka protocols), and opportunities (aka space and time), for adults to communicate in professional ways while staying focused on the shared goal of supporting all students. When professionals have attempted to do this and there is no improvement or change, then I can step in and have conversations with individuals. Being in a very large school, it can be difficult to either make things feel a little more intimate and team-focused while also providing an awareness of the full school community and the inter-relatedness of all community members. Developing teams is an ongoing process, and here’s how we kicked off this school year with our staff to help re-establish connection and trust so that we can move towards collaboration and interdependency for horizontal alignment and vertical progression to provide equitable learning experiences for all. 

A group may have a common purpose or interest, but individual members may have different goals and objectives. A team has a shared purpose and specific goals that all members work together to achieve.

3. INTENTIONAL FACILITIES LAYOUT

Our next step was to review the school floor plan and re-envision a more thoughtful layout. We considered what the learning experience would look like and feel like from the perspective of a student (and their family) throughout their PreK-8 school experience in our learning community. We were intentional about making the layout the most efficient for adults to connect with other adults throughout the building as well. We moved all teachers in the same grade level to the same pod area (or, nearby). We spent that spring/summer/fall physically moving almost every teacher into a new classroom, and embedded a Special Educator onto each grade level team (ie converted the team’s former walk-in closet to the Special Educator’s office/teaching space). Of course, we dream of the day we can truly redesign the building, but until then, we’ve had a sustainable layout for the past six years (and more).

4. DEVELOP SCHEDULE

We made sure to prioritize providing the maximum amount of common planning time for grade level teams, and ensure at least one collaborative team time per week during the school day, as well as one hour per week dedicated to grade level/dept PLC meetings during our early-release PD time.

5. PURPOSEFUL PD & BUILDING CAPACITY

We started from the ground up when it came to introducing Professional Learning Communities to our staff. In my first year as principal, we hired an outside consultant to lead our full PreK-8 staff through the foundational elements of PLC’s and develop a shared understanding of the purpose and principles of PLC’s. We invested a full year with the consultant who led professional development sessions for all staff and joined a few different PLC meetings to offer feedback and coaching along the way. This was a wonderful way to have a unified shared learning experience and get to know various faculty and staff members in the school. In my second year, I took a more active approach – and attempted to flex my ‘tight’ leadership skills – creating PLC agendas, notetaking docs, facilitating every meeting, etc. In my attempt to model and coach teams into my vision for our PLC’s, it back-fired because I was doing the work “for” and “to” the teams, and not “with” the teams. My third year, I took a big step back, and practiced my ‘loose’ leadership skills – I assigned a PLC facilitator (aka these are my Champions for Change) for each grade level/dept and let them ‘run the show’ – and, I did not attend the PLC meetings. This backfired as well, because the facilitators didn’t want/or know how to hold teammates accountable so teams would not meet, would not stay focused, did not bring data, etc. In my fourth year, we finally found the right balance – teams appreciated the consistency of universal agendas, notetaking docs, roles, meeting times, etc. and I would join the meetings to help guide and coach the facilitators so I could be the one to help hold teammates accountable for showing up to the meetings, starting on time, bringing data to the table, etc. The pandemic threw us off for a few years, but we’re building back our momentum now. Last year, our PLC facilitators participated in the virtual PLC’s at Work Conference together to review the purpose and principles of PLC’s – keeping our work student-focused and evidence-driven to answer one of four questions at every weekly PLC meeting. With this renewed energy around bringing our teams back together for collaborative work, we were ready to start the year with a primary focus on re-prioritizing our PLC’s. This year, I had hoped to continue digging deeper into PD that would focus on Data Analysis with all of the PLC Facilitators, and pay them an additional stipend for their leadership roles on their team, but only two people chose to participate in this option this year. Another great lesson learned – it’s okay to go slow and start with those who are willing to try something new, and then build/expand from there.

I’m not going to lie – our PLC journey has taken a lot of time, energy, enthusiasm, and commitment – and it was not easy. I experienced a lot of pushback and resistance along the way – from both sides, my district leadership team and my faculty/staff. There were certainly times I wanted to throw in the towel on the concept of implementing PLC’s in this school – because that would have been the easier thing to do. But, I refused to give up. I know this is what is needed to help shift our school culture in the right direction. And, doing the right thing, for the right reasons, requires hard work, dedication, and time. I’m here to tell you, it’s worth it.

I am both proud and relieved to reflect on our PLC journey over the past six years and recognize that;

  1. People see the value of PLC’s – they enjoy learning from and with their colleagues, they want this time built into the schedule (in fact, they want more time)
  2. PLC’s have remained focused on answering one of the 4 main questions during each of their meetings
  3. We’re still figuring out the tight/lose balance of creating agendas and timelines
  4. We are getting closer to having a data/evidence-driven culture (this is a work in progress)

A HUGE thank-you goes out to the various PLC Facilitators (aka Champions for Change) who have volunteered to be in this role doing this difficult work with me and helping our school community to get to the place we’re in today.

My PLC goal for the remainder of this school year is to help our learning community understand and view PLC meetings as embedded professional development and coaching cycles with colleagues.

Once we have productive PLC’s established, we have built a strong foundation to design horizontal alignment and vertical progressions within a coordinated and cohesive curriculum. We can enhance our instructional practices and strategies, and develop common formative assessments/evidence of student learning to review as a collaborative team. There’s limitless potential ahead…so find those Champions for Change and go after it. You’ve got this!