Professional+Learning+Communities+-2

Leaders, Enclosed is a short summary of an article on Professional Learning Communities (PLC) which is the topic of the next training. Enjoy, Jim

2. Richard and Rebecca DuFour on What Constitutes a PLC In this advertisement in Education Week, author/consultants Richard and Rebecca DuFour respond to a query they received from a high school that had convened three task forces to address the school’s physical environment, professional procedures, and the need to attract more students in competition with two nearby schools with newer facilities. The school wanted to know if these three task forces fit in the Professional Learning Community (PLC) model. The DuFours politely said no. A real PLC is “an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve,” they write. “PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators. The fundamental structure of a PLC is collaborative teams of educators who work interdependently to achieve a common goal, for which members are mutually accountable.” A task force, on the other hand, is “a temporary group convened to address a specific issue or to fulfill a specific short-term charge.” The work of this school’s three task forces, while important, is peripheral to the core work of improving teaching and learning. Real PLCs are collaborative teams within a single grade, course, or interdisciplinary program with an ongoing focus on these four questions: - What do we want our students to learn? The team identifies the essential, guaranteed, and viable curriculum. - How will we know they are learning? The team creates or procures common interim assessments to measure all students’ learning and uses the results from the assessments to inform and improve team members’ individual and collective professional practice. - How will we respond when students don’t learn? The school orchestrates timely, directive, and systematic interventions for students. - How will we respond when they do learn? The school orchestrates enrichment and extension of learning for students who have reached proficiency.

“Clarity Precedes Competence” by Richard DuFour and Rebecca DuFour in Education Week, Oct. 13, 2010 (Vol. 30, #7, p. 18), no e-link available