PLC Blog

Are Smaller Learning Communities (SLCs) Synonymous with Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)?

April 24, 2008

By: Rick DuFour

Education thrives on acronyms - IEP, UBD, RTI, ESL, SES, LD, NCLB, AYP, API. Sometimes this abbreviated attempt to communicate can create confusion. Recently, we received a query from a high school principal who felt his efforts to help his school become a professional learning community (PLC) would be enhanced by converting the school into a Smaller Learning Community (SLC). Teachers in his school had been working collaboratively in content-specific teams as they attempted to implement the PLC concept. The principal proposed the school should be re-organized into separate houses with teachers working in interdisciplinary teams. He felt certain the SLC structure would promote the PLC concept, and he asked if we felt he should press forward despite the resistance of the staff. We did not, for the following reasons.

1. Moving teachers from working in isolation to working in collaborative teams is a difficult and challenging task. The school should stay the course it is upon rather than heading off in a new direction.
2. The principal should focus on building the capacity of staff to work within a collaborative culture rather than shifting his focus to structural issues.
3. There is little in either the history of American education or recent developments in the field that suggests converting schools into smaller learning communities will improve student achievement.

The current push for smaller high schools stands in direct contrast to the recommendations presented by James Conant after he conducted a study of high schools for the Carnegie Foundation in 1959. Conant, the former president of Harvard University and Ambassador to Germany, called for the consolidation of small high schools, arguing any school with fewer than 400 students should be abolished as ineffective and inefficient (our emphasis). His book on the subject, The American High School Today, became a national best seller.

At the time of Conant’s recommendation, 12,000 of the nations 21,000 high schools served fewer than 400 students. If “small” was the answer to the problems of high schools, the 1950s offered secondary students the perfect environment for a fabulous education. There is little evidence to suggest, however, the students of the 1950s were particularly well served by their small schools. In fact, almost one of every three high school-aged students had left school prior to graduation throughout the decade.

More recently (2005 and 2006), two independent research organizations conducted independent evaluations of the progress of the schools that had been organized into smaller learning communities between 2001 and 2004 with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their reports to the Gates Foundations concluded:

1. Students reported improved relationships with their teachers

2. The attendance rate of students in the restructured schools was worse than attendance in other schools in the district.

3. When taking previous achievement into account, students showed slightly better performance in language arts but worse performance in math than other high school students in the same district

4. The quality of student work was low in the restructured schools

5. Demanding and unwieldy teacher work loads “may be endemic to the staffing structures of many small high schools” (p.6) and the resulting teacher burnout threatened the viability of the initiative. Staff turnover at the schools was high.

6. Staff cited lack of tutoring services and appropriate opportunities to do homework as a barrier to the success of many students.

7. Lack of staff capacity made the restructured schools vulnerable

8. Changes in teaching and learning lagged behind the structural changes that characterized the schools (American Institute for Research and SRI International, 2005).

A year later the same two research agencies issued their final evaluation of the Gates initiative. They reported Gates schools confronted significant difficulty in bringing the attributes of high-performing schools into their restructured schools because “entrenched cultures and sets of expectations about student achievement and behavior often became obstacles” (American Institute for Research and SRI International, 2006, p.6, our emphasis). They urged the foundation to: “Rethink the school redesign strategy. Although there have been some isolated examples of apparently successful small schools emerging from the restructuring of a large high school, these have been the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, the data that we have for school redesign efforts are not encouraging” (p. 82, our emphasis).  The better hope for changing schools, according to the report, was to emphasize continuous monitoring of student learning, a “tight” school culture, and “greater attention to issues of curriculum and instruction”(p.4-5).

In other words, even with the support and backing of one of the world’s greatest private philanthropic organizations, structural change alone will not reform schools. Those who pin their hopes on high school reform based on the size of the school are destined to be disappointed. Ultimately the culture must change to impact classroom practice and student and staff expectations, and the best strategy for improving schools at any level will focus less on the structure of the organization and more on building the capacity of people within the schools to create a new culture.

How will we respond when students don’t learn?

April 4, 2008

By: Austin Buffum and Mike Mattos

It is essential to implement both Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and Response to Intervention (RTI) because these complementary processes are considered
research-based best practices to improve student learning.

Response to Intervention (RTI) is based upon the assumption that schools cannot wait for struggling students to fall far enough below grade level to “qualify” for help. Instead, schools should develop a systematic, schoolwide process in which struggling students receive targeted, research-based interventions at the first sign of difficulties. These interventions can be provided by special education and/or regular education resources. Yet for a school implementing PLC practices, this approach to helping students at risk should not be a new concept, as this process is identical to a PLC’s “Pyramid of Interventions.”

While RTI and a Pyramid of Interventions (POI) have essentially the same outcome, we would contend that effectively implementing RTI practices is not possible and should not be pursued until a school effectively begins implementing the three “Big Ideas” of a PLC-a focus on learning, a collaborative culture, and a focus on results. These first steps create the foundation needed to more effectively respond when students don’t learn. To skip these vital steps and move directly into creating a RTI/POI program would be disastrous. How can a school be expected to create powerful interventions if the staff has not built a culture that believes all students can learn, has not identified what they want their students to learn, and has not created a timely assessment system that can accurately identify which students need additional help? A school or district would be putting the proverbial “cart before the horse” by requiring teacher teams to use their meeting time to discuss individual student needs, while delaying or neglecting other important, prerequisite team tasks.

Remember that the fundamental mission of collaborative time in a PLC is to focus on student learning. As a school embraces the idea that RTI and PLC are not two distinct “programs,” but instead ongoing processes that strive toward this same outcome, the more a school will view their collaborative time as not “PLC time” or “RTI time,” but “learning time.” In other words, we hope that the lines between RTI and POI continue to “blur” to the point where they are indistinguishable.

Who should decide the agenda for collaborative team meetings?

March 11, 2008

By: Rick DuFour

Our school district is using the book Whatever It Takes as our guide to establishing PLCs. Should administrators tell PLC groupings what to discuss at their weekly meetings, or should the needs of the campus and students drive the constructive conversations?

The way you have posed the question makes it apparent what you believe the answer should be. I suggest, however, that you are falling victim to the “Tyranny of OR.” You ask who should determine the agenda for team meetings-administrators who have their own agenda OR teachers who are motivated by the interests of their campus and their students? First, I would suggest that the interest of administrators and teachers need not be different. Both groups should be driven by the interest of the campus and its students.

Furthermore, it would be unreasonable in my mind for a district to provide staff with a resource as precious as time, and then be indifferent as to how that resource was used. That does not mean, however, that the administration needs to dictate the agenda or topics of every team meeting. The best schools will reject the Tyranny of OR and embrace the “Genius of AND” with both groups playing a role in determining how the time is to be used. For example, the administration, with the help of teacher leaders, could establish a timeline for when it expects teams to complete certain tasks (please submit your team norms by X date, your team SMART goal by Y date, your first common assessment by Z date, and your analysis of the results and your strategies to improve by ZZ date). In doing so, the administration should provide teachers with time, resources, examples, and support to complete those tasks. Teams, however, should be free to establish the agendas for their meetings provided they honor this timeline. If a team needs to spend some time on a topic that does not appear on the timeline (for example, the behavior of an individual student), it should be able to do so, but it should still be expected to do address the topics on the timeline.

Finally, remember that the question “Are we collaborating?” is not nearly as important as “What are we collaborating about?” Giving teachers time to collaborate is a necessary step on the PLC journey, but it is not sufficient. Teams must demonstrate the discipline to focus on the issues that actually lead to gains in student achievement if their schools are to function as PLCs.

Moving from a tradition of isolation to a culture of collaboration

February 14, 2008

By: Becky DuFour

Some faculty and staff may undoubtedly have a difficult time moving from a culture of isolation into learning communities. How may other faculty and staff help these professionals make that transition and understand their role as a collaborator and its importance?

Let’s begin with the following assumptions: 1) All staff members have been organized into a series of collaborative teams, focused on student learning, and 2) Time and support for collaboration are being provided to each team by the administration. Some teams, however, are discovering some of their members are reluctant to collaborate for any number of reasons (i.e., not wanting to share their hard work, ideas, and/or materials; being fearful their ideas will be criticized by their colleagues; not convinced collaboration will actually enhance their teaching and ultimately student achievement; or simply not getting along well with their teammates).

Here are several steps these teams can take to help colleagues who are experiencing difficulty:

1.   Establish team norms. In PLCs norms represent the protocols and commitments developed by each team to guide members in working together. Norms help team members clarify expectations regarding how they will work together to achieve their shared goals. Daniel Goleman states norms are ground rules or habits that govern a group (Goleman, 2002, p. 173) and that establishing explicitly stated norms is an essential first step in getting off to a good start and in transforming a group into a team (i.e., we will begin and end our meetings on time, we will each contribute to team dialogue, we will share equally in the workload, we will listen respectfully, etc.).

2.   Identify and pursue a common SMART (Strategic and Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented, Time-bound) goal. The very definition of a team in a PLC is a group of people working interdependently to achieve a common goal, for which members are held mutually accountable. Katzenbach and Smith’s research found that establishing the right goals are the most powerful tools to help people begin to come together as a team.

3.   Become skillful in having crucial conversations. Kerry Patterson, et al. (2002) offer some very helpful tips in Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High. This book could provide some strategies for members of the teams to use when they experience difficulty with the team process.

4.   Become skillful in Howard Gardner’s seven strategies for changing someone’s mind (including your own)

a. Reason-Appealing to rational thinking and decision making

b. Research-Building shared knowledge of the research base  supporting a position

c. Resonance-Connecting to the person’s intuition so that the proposal “feels right”

d. Representational Re-descriptions-Changing the way the information is presented (for example, using stories or analogies instead of data)

e. Resources and Reward-Providing people with incentives to embrace an idea

f. Real World Events-Presenting real-world examples where the idea has been applied successfully

g. Confrontation*

*In the early stages of working in teams in a PLC, there will likely be times when a staff member(s) remains reluctant to contribute to the team process regardless of how skillful the members are in the art of persuasion. At those critical junctures, the principal must be willing to direct the team process. The hope is that the reluctant team members will ultimately experience the benefits of collaboration and will no longer need to be convinced.

We have learned one of the best ways to help people believe in the power of collaboration is to put them into the team setting and then provide all members with time, support, resources, and just-in-time training when they experience difficulty. Therefore, we have devoted multiple chapters to building and supporting strong collaborative teams in our book Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work^TM (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2006).

Reference List

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., and Many, T. (2006). Learning ByDoing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution-Tree.

Goleman, D. (2002). Primal leadership:Realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston, MA:Harvard Business School Publishing.

Gardner, H.  (2004). Changing Minds: The Art and Science of  Changing our Own and Other People’s Minds. Boston, MA:  Harvard Business School Press.

Katzenbach, J. & Smith, D. (1993). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. New York, NY: McKinsey & Company.

Patterson, K., Cover, S., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A.. (2002). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

What Trumps Learning

January 25, 2008

By: Robert Eaker and Janel Keating

Virtually no one disagrees with the proposition that having all students learn at high levels is a worthy mission. It is rare to hear someone say, “Well, I’m just not sure about that ‘learning’ mission.” One of the easiest aspects of reculturing a school to function as professional learning community is achieving a general consensus regarding a “high level of learning for all” mission. It’s only afterward that problems arise. All too often schools adopt a mission of ensuring high levels of learning for all students, yet engage in practices that are counterproductive to improving learning.

This disconnect between what we say we believe and what we are often willing to do is analogous to card games in which a particular card or suit of cards will “trump” other cards. This is an interesting idea to put into the form of an activity for small groups of faculty. Ask this question: “We have adopted the mission of ensuring high levels of learning for all students as our fundamental purpose. So, here is an important question-what would ‘trump’ learning in our school or school district?” 

What Trumps Learning: A Few Examples

Obviously, every school and school district is different, each with its own distinct culture. However, there are common themes regarding those things that “trump” the “learning card” in schools. For example, if schools are going to embed common planning time for collaborative teams to meet during the school day and if a school is going to develop a plan to ensure that students receive additional time and support within the school day regardless of the teacher they are assigned, the school schedule will more than likely need to be changed. Changing a school schedule is difficult because it brings directly to the forefront the issue, “What is the purpose of the schedule in the first place?” Is it to assist the staff in attaining our learning goals or is to ensure the happiness of the adults?  It seems that in some schools the fundamental mission is, in fact, to ensure the happiness of the adults who work there. Often, ensuring the  happiness of a few “trumps” learning.

 Another example is the issue of individual autonomy versus collaborative decision-making and collective responsibility. This conflict frequently rears its head with issues such as whether or not teachers serve as contributing members of a collaborative team- assisting with clarifying standards, developing common formative assessments and participating in collaborative analysis of student work-  all of which have been shown to be highly effective strategies for improving student learning, or will they be left alone to work in isolation?  All too often individual autonomy “trumps” learning, in spite of the fact there is not a shred of evidence that students learn more when teachers work in isolation.

Frequently, policies or practices will “trump” learning. Perhaps, there is a policy that doesn’t allow students to do make-up work if they miss school with an unexcused absence or a policy that limits those who can take Advanced Placement classes to a certain percent of their class. In a professional learning community, all decisions and practices should be reviewed through the lens of the learning mission and address the question, “What is the probable impact of this decision or practice on our goal to improve the learning levels of all students?”

Two Questions

In the White River School District in Buckley, Washington, the issue of making sure the learning mission is, in fact, embedded into the district culture is addressed by frequently asking two critical questions:“Regarding our mission to ensure high levels of learning for all students, what would  this particular policy, activity, initiative, or decision look like if we really meant it?”  What if we really meant that ensuring high levels of learning was our fundamental mission-the core of what this school or district is about?   The second question is equally powerful: “Is what we are doing good enough for my own child?”  When we filter questions through the context of our own children, very few things “trump” learning. So, think about-or better yet, engage in collaborative discussions about this question: “What trumps learning in your classroom, school or school district?”

Team SMART Goals vs. Smart Students

January 10, 2008

By Rick and Becky DuFour

A teacher raised this issue about SMART goals by offering this example:

Current Reality: Last year, 70% of the students in Algebra classes earned a final grade of C or better and 68% of the students met or exceeded the proficiency standard on the State/Provincial Algebra Assessment.

SMART Goal Example:  This year, at least 75% of the students in Algebra will earn a final grade of C or better and at least 75% of our students will meet or exceed the proficiency standard on the State/Provincial Algebra Assessment.

His Question: “If we meet this SMART goal, how do we know if the change is the result of the actions we took or just that this group of students was more proficient in Algebra to start with?  Aren’t we comparing apples and oranges?  Maybe this year’s students are far better at Math than last year’s group and our actions actually hindered them from scoring at 80% or better. ”

Our Response: There are two assumptions we can make about teaching and learning. One is that students will learn according to their effort and ability and that their teachers and their school have no impact on their learning. The other is that teachers and schools can have a significant impact on student learning, and as  teachers work more effectively and become more aware of more powerful strategies for teaching, assessing, and responding to students, they can help more students learn at higher levels.

Your question indicates that you subscribe to the first assumption - if Group B achieves at a higher level than Group A. it means the students in Group B are smarter. But, thirty-five years of research on effective schools and effective teaching indicate the second assumption is valid - some teachers are  able to help more students achieve at higher levels than other teachers in the same school teaching the same kind of students. I have no doubt that if you were to look at the achievement of all the students in your school over an extended period of time, the students of some teachers consistently outperform the others.

We advocate that teams set their SMART goal based on the assumption that the previous year of working and learning together will enable them to improve student learning for all incoming students. This kind of goal reflects the assumption that teachers make a difference.

If you would also like to establish a goal based on growth, and you had a valid way of assessing student proficiency at the start of the year, you could establish a growth goal as well. For example, a team might say, 83% of our entering students demonstrated proficiency on the state/provincial test in math last year. Our goal is to ensure at least 90% of these students are proficient on the state/provincial test at the end of this year. But I would advise that if you use a goal based on the growth of your students that you also use a goal based on your team’s growth as professionals. For example, of the students we taught last year,  85% scored proficient on the state/provincial test, and this year we want to get 90% to be proficient. Thus, you are setting one goal -90% proficiency - that has taken both student growth and teacher effectiveness into account. What I would not support is your establishing a goal based on incoming student proficiency that would result in lower student achievement than your team accomplished in the prior year.

Finally, here is a question we ask teachers. “Next year you have a choice of teaching either of two classes, both of which are grouped heterogeneously.  In Class A we have grouped all the students who believe they will be successful in your class if they are smart, and that they will not be successful if they are not smart. In Class B we have grouped all the students who believe they will be successful if they apply themselves and work hard. Which class would you rather teach - those who believe they will be successful based on their innate intelligence or those who believe they will be successful based on their effort.”

Every time we ask that question, teachers pick class B. If we want students to believe that their success will be determined by the willingness to continue to work and learn, we should model that assumption and recognize that our effort and willingness to continue to grow as educators impacts the achievement of our students. If, as you suggest, the only factor impacting their achievement is the ability they enter the class with, we could administer a pre-test and assign grades for the year since what we as educators do does not matter.

 

What’s the Difference Between a PLC, a Collaborative Team, and a Task Force?

November 27, 2007

By: Rick and Becky DuFour

We recently received an E-mail from a high school math teacher who attended a three hour PLC overview session we provided for all of the staff members of his K-12 school district. Prior to hearing about PLCs for the first time that morning, his high school had already convened three task forces to meet on a regular basis this school year to resolve the three pressing issues the faculty had identified:

Physical Environment: “This group is mostly concerned with the physical appearance of our school. They have already successfully lobbied for more garbage cans around the school but they looking for a “Five Year Plan” for our building from the School Board….”

Professional Practices: “This group is mostly concerned with the “nuts and bolts” of what teachers do. They are working on a “Teacher Policy Booklet” that would include items such as lates, attendance, forms to fill out, etc.; union items (dealing with other teachers, student boundaries, ethics issues, benefits, etc. and possibly school policy issues (steps for dealing with students who are not learning?)…”

Community Profile: “Our school has become the “third choice” for students in the district as there are two newer schools on the other side of the freeway. We are not doing a good job “selling” the school to the community…”

His question to us was: “In your opinion, do these three Task Forces fit the PLC model?”

We recognize clarity in terms is an important step in creating the shared foundation (mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals) of a successful learning organization. Here is an attempt to establish such clarity among educators attempting to apply PLC practices:

We refer to the school or district - the larger organization - as a PLC. Our definition of a PLC is: educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research in order to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLC’s operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators. (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many. 2006. Learning By Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree)

Each PLC is organized into a series of high-performing collaborative teams which meet on a regular (weekly) basis to focus on student learning. A team is a group of people working interdependently to achieve a common goal, for which members are held mutually accountable. (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many. 2006. Learning By Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree) Collaborative teams are the fundamental building blocks of PLCs.

In addition to structuring and supporting collaborative teams focused on learning, a school or district may also utilize a task force or committee structure to further disperse leadership while addressing current schoolwide/districtwide issues. A Task Force is a temporary group convened to addresses a specific issue/charge. Once the group has fulfilled its charge, the group no longer needs to meet.

The work of task forces could greatly improve school-wide programs, practices, and procedures if  the task forces focuses on the right issues and recommends action steps members of the school community should take in order to improve upon the current reality of their school.

 Each of the three above-mentioned issues could be effectively addressed by the task forces and the high school could realize a more appealing physical environment; more clearly defined practices & procedures for the adults to follow; more positive media coverage and yet realize no gains in student learning as a result of the task force work. These topics focus on issues that are outside, rather than within the classrooms.

Therefore, we want to stress two points. First, a school-wide task force in a PLC does not substitute for the work of teachers organized into collaborative teams based upon a shared course, grade level, or interdisciplinary program —-teams focused on the critical questions of student learning:

1. What do we want our students to learn? (essential, guaranteed & viable curriculum)

2. How will we know they are learning? (administer frequent, team-developed common, formative assessments)

3. How will we respond when they don’t learn? (Timely, Directive, Systematic Intervention)

4. How will we respond when they do learn? (Timely Enrichment/Extension)

In a PLC, the work of task forces is temporary, but the work of collaborative teams of teachers is always focused on learning and is on-going and never ending…it becomes “they way we do things” forever.

Second, task forces will not improve either student or adult learning if they focus on issues unrelated to learning. A task force can be a powerful tool, but only if it is focused on the right task.

Collecting and Analyzing Common Assessment Data

November 7, 2007

 By Sam Ritchie

While most teachers recognize the value of analyzing assessment data they often struggle with collecting the data. It is not sufficient to know how many questions each student answered correctly or how many students passed and failed. While collecting assessment data is possible without technology its use allows the collection and reporting of assessment data in a timely and user-friendly way.  Software programs that use a browser and the Internet (web-based) to collect and report assessment data tend to more user-friendly and are designed with the teacher in mind. These programs allow students to take an assessment on a scan form or online,  score the assessment, and report the results (data) almost instantly in a predefined format. Characteristics of such programs include:

1.      Assessments that are aligned, by teachers, to state and/or local learning outcomes and graded automatically.

2.      Automatic multiple choice and performance based assessment grading.

3.      Access to immediate, actionable achievement information that teachers and administrators can use to adjust curriculum variables and improve student outcomes.

4.      Access to immediate and actionable student performance data so teachers can design and deliver appropriate student intervention and enrichment programs.

5.      Access to disaggregated and aggregated data by any level (student, teacher, course, section, grade, school and district)

6.      Reporting achievement by any student demographic group (including ethnic, IEP, ESL, Free and Reduced Lunch, etc.)

7.      Access to trend, comparative and progress reports by student subgroups, teachers, courses and learning standards.

8.      Complete visibility of learning objective mastery, through simplified reports that make it easy to know what students have or have not learned.

Representative of this group of programs is Mastery Manager by GoldStar Learning (www.masterymanager.com). The under lying premise of Mastery Manager is that assessments should be created by those closest to the learning, the team, and that the resulting data should be directly accessible to the team.

Common Formative Assessments and the Question of Pacing

October 10, 2007

By: Rick DuFour

We received a blog query from someone who expressed concern that the way common formative assessments were being implemented in his district required teachers to have identical pacing - same page same day - and uniform instructional practice. Common formative assessments DO NOT and should not require teachers to use lockstep pacing or instruction. Instead, a team of teachers should plan a unit, agree on the skills and concepts to be taught, and the date they will administer the common assessment. Pacing on a day-to-day basis should be left to the discretion of each teacher. Furthermore, we believe schools should encourage varied instructional strategies as part of action research to determine which seems to be more effective in promoting learning. So while teachers in a PLC have agreed on what students should learn and how and when that learning will be assessed, they have great autonomy in determining instruction on a day-to-day basis.

Another question raised by this teacher was “does common mean exact.” We think the assessments should be as similar as possible to reduce the variables that could be used to explain results. If, however, individual teachers wanted to include additional items or assess in additional ways, they should be encouraged to do. For example, one teacher on a US History team may want to add some questions on a topic he covered that was in addition to the guaranteed curriculum or another might want to add an essay question that was not part of the common assessment. 

The writer asked if common assessments must replace unit tests. First, once again we have seen teams enjoy great discretion as to how frequently they use common assessments. In District 96 many teams are using common assessments every two weeks. Teams in other districts are using common assessments as infrequently as once a quarter. Furthermore, not every assessment needs to be a common assessment. Good teachers are checking for student understanding constantly. They never let a day go by without using some strategy to assess student understanding. Individual teachers may want to continue giving some of their own tests and should be allowed to do so. There are many advantages to using common assessments, but no single assessment strategy can provide teachers with all the information they need.

Finally, and very importantly, the more important questions about common formative assessments are these:

1.  Do they help our team to identify students who are experiencing difficulty in their learning?

2.  Do we have a plan in place to provide those students with additional time and support for learning?

3.  Do we provide students with another opportunity to demonstrate their learning once they have been required to devote additional time to learning the skill or concept?

4.  Do the results provide me with useful information as a teacher, helping me to identify areas where my students are not doing well compared with similar students pursuing the same curriculum?

5.  Does student success on our common assessments translate into success on other high-stakes assessments such as state and national exams?

I strongly encourage this school to clarify the logistical questions this teacher has raised, and begin to examine the far more important questions I have presented above.

Good luck.

The Role of an Elective Teacher in a PLC

September 26, 2007

By: Rick DuFour

A frequent question that surfaces when schools attempt to implement the PLC concept is, “What about the electives. Where do they fit?”  If an elective teacher is the only person in the school who teaches a particular subject, we have suggested vertical teams (for example, the middle school band teacher teaming with the elementary school band teachers to create a strong band program).  Another possibility is all the teachers of a particular elective area being released for district-teaming on a regular basis (for example, all the elementary school art teachers convening monthly to clarify what skills students should acquire, ways of assessing the skills, and practicing assessing actual student work to ensure consistency of standards).

Elective teachers can also look for connections with core curriculum teachers. The following letter comes from Susan Williams an elective teacher from Freeport Intermediate School in Brazosport, Texas who responded to an inquiry about how she “fits” in the PLC model at her school. Freeport is nationally recognized middle school featured in Whatever it Takes. Its principal, Clara Sale-Davis is an extraordinary leader, and Ms. Williams articulates the PLC concepts with exceptional eloquence. She has given us permission to share the correspondence with blog readers.

Rick DuFour  Septermber 25, 2007

My name is Susan Williams and I am the Spanish teacher at Freeport Intermediate School.  My principal, Mrs. Davis forwarded me the message that you sent her concerning the role of elective teachers in our continual journey for academic excellence.  First of all let me thank you for taking the time to contact us with you questions.  We are proud of our school, community and students and are always thrilled to hear from other educators who share our vision and interests.  

 We, the teachers at F.I.S. share a common goal.  That goal is to do whatever it takes to push our students to the highest levels of academic, emotional and social well being.  We learned many years ago, thanks to the outstanding leadership of our principal, Mrs. Davis that a common goal is met only through collaborative efforts.  Teachers cannot work in isolation and expect school wide success in core subjects, electives, student behavior or extracurricular activities.  Students must expect uniformity throughout their curriculum and their school day. 

 As to how I, as an elective teacher am able to impact the goal of our school in a positive way, it is simple.  Through our weekly agendas that are placed in our boxes on a weekly basis, I stay informed as to the material that the core teachers are presenting and then find ways to incorporate it into my lessons.  For example, at the beginning of the school year, I cover geography of the Spanish speaking world.  In doing so, we label continents, major bodies of water and basic geographical features.  It so happens that they are doing the same thing in 7 th grade Social Studies only I do it with them in Spanish.  By doing so, students receive constant reinforcement from two different teachers with different personalities and teaching styles.  Additionally, they are meeting a part of the scope and sequence for high school Spanish 1.  This same practice continues throughout the school year allowing me to not only teach in my content area, but to collaborate with other teachers on projects and interdisciplinary units. 

 I feel that it is my moral responsibility to help mold and create good citizens who are educated and understand how the world is interconnected.  Collaboration is a perfect opportunity to do so.  For example, two years ago, our school participated in a school wide interdisciplinary lesson on great inventions throughout history.  In History, students researched inventors and inventions.  In Science, students created their own inventions.  In Language, they helped put together the research that was done in history class in narrative form.  In Math, students researched the measurements and mathematical principles behind great inventions.  In my class we researched great inventions such as the railroad that helped connect the Spanish speaking world to other industrialized nations.  We then helped the Art department make etchings and prints of the inventions.  Our awesome band learned about music that came about as a result of inventions or that had inventions as a part of their title or musicality.    

 On the day of the school wide presentation, our artwork was put on display; the history students acted out and or read the narratives written by the language students.  Our band presented information about what they had learned about inventions and inventors and performed fabulous music.  Then, as icing on the cake, our science students entered their original inventions into a school wide competition in which various winners were chosen in an after school science fair.  Parents, district administrators and community members attended the presentation which was the culmination of a couple of weeks of lessons.  We have done similar school wide units on immigration and jazz music. 

Thus, through collaboration, communication and creativity, I am able to stay abreast of the academic climate of our campus and am able to help reinforce the core subjects and enrich what they are learning through the added material in my class.  Lastly, I do not think of myself as an elective teacher.  I am simply a teacher who happens to have a specialty area that others do not posses.  As a result, I can do additional things that other teachers may not be equipped to do.  For example, I tutor ESL students in writing and in any other way that helps the core teachers and other electives effectively teach students who are not proficient in English.  As a result of this collaboration, ALL of our students excel. 

 I hope that I have been able to shed some light on the question that you proposed and I would love for you to be able to come and visit us here and Freeport and share in some of our Rowdy Redskin hospitality. 

Sincerely,

Susan Williams

Spanish teacher F.I.S.