Backstory: As part of the state's RTTT application, DOE promised Professional Learning Communities. Some Christina schools have been using PLCs for years, dating back to Sec. Lowery's days as Superintendent in Christina. In the last year, four more Christina Schools have undertaken a PLC pilot - Bayard, Glasgow, Shue and Stubbs.
I attended a meeting last week between our CEA President, our Superintendent, and a group of our teachers from Keene Elementary School. The meeting was part of the RTTT unfurling of CSD's district-wide plans. While forums are planned with Christina Stakeholders of all walks, this one was particular to teachers and the impact of the plan on them.
Big Topic: PLC or professional learning communities. In practice, Christina's PLCs tend to vary, both in implementation and in the use of the data reviewed during those sessions. Having never been invited to a PLC meeting, this is an anecdotal statement based upon comment offered by those attending last week. It appears that State wants to the PLCs to utilize the Dufour model and Christina will be training with this model during the summer months. In September, DOE data coaches will be deployed (4.9 data coaches to be exact, yep, four bodies and a headless horseman) to run diagnostics of the district's PLCs. That assessment will drive the further development of the PLCs.
So, what is Dufour?
All of the following comes directly from: http://www.usd450.net/webpages/abeam/resources.cfm?subpage=793900
DuFour PLC Model
My Resources » Professional Learning Communities » DuFour PLC Model
What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
Richard DuFour
The idea of improving schools by developing professional learning communities is currently in vogue. People use this term to describe every imaginable combination of individuals with an interest in education—a grade-level teaching team, a school committee, a high school department, an entire school district, a state department of education, a national professional organization, and so on. In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.
The professional learning community model has now reached a critical juncture, one well known to those who have witnessed the fate of other well-intentioned school reform efforts. In this all-too-familiar cycle, initial enthusiasm gives way to confusion about the fundamental concepts driving the initiative, followed by inevitable implementation problems, the conclusion that the reform has failed to bring about the desired results, abandonment of the reform, and the launch of a new search for the next promising initiative. Another reform movement has come and gone, reinforcing the conventional education wisdom that promises, "This too shall pass."
The movement to develop professional learning communities can avoid this cycle, but only if educators reflect critically on the concept's merits. What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the culture of the school?
The rest of this article can be found http://pdonline.ascd.org/pd_online/secondary_reading/el200405_dufour.html
My Resources » Professional Learning Communities » Critical Friends Groups What is a PLC? (Provided by National School Reform Faculty)
A PLC is a professional learning community consisting of approximately 8-12 educators who meet on a regular bases.
What are the purposes of a Professional Learning Communities?
PLC are designed to
- Create a professional learning community
- Make teaching practice explicit and public by "talking about teaching"
- Help people involved in schools to work collaboratively in democratic, reflective communities (Bambino)
- Establish a foundation for sustained professional development based on a spirit of inquiry (Silva)
- Provide a context to understand our work with students, our relationships with peers, and our thoughts, assumptions, and beliefs about teaching and learning
- Help educators help each other turn theories into practice and standards into actual student learning
- Improve teaching and learning
The team is composed of the same curriculum educators or ones with common interest.
What are the characteristics of a professional learning community?
Professional learning communities are strong when teachers demonstrate
- Shared norms and values
- Collaboration
- Reflective dialogue
- Deprivatization of practice
- Collective focus on student learning
- Spirit of shared responsibility for the learning of all students
- Time to meet and talk
- Physical proximity
- Interdependent teaching roles
- Active communication structures
- Teacher empowerment and autonomy
- Openness to improvement
- Trust and respect
- A foundation in the knowledge and skills of teaching
- Supportive leadership
- Socialization or school structures that encourage the sharing of the school's vision and mission (Kruse, et al)
- Opportunity for educators of the same curriculum to discuss their curriculum area.
- Work together to address state assessment indicators
- Develop common assessments which can be used to discuss instructional practices.
- Usually curriculum teams have been working for sometime so trust has already been developed.
- Focus on curriculum, less on instruction and student learning.
- One view point (all teachers same curriculum sometimes can't see challenges students face that don't understand the content).
- Curriculum teams often have worked together in the past and maybe difficult to see the difference between a curriculum team and a learning community.
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