Professional Learning Communities

With the implementation of the Common Core standards, many educational experts are saying that while the Common Core have more rigorous expectations for students, the implementation of these standards will be difficult unless teachers unpack those standards, discuss assessments and more importantly discuss instructional methods and strategies that will impact student learning.

Do you know the 4 PLC questions? 1) What do we want all students to be able to know and do? 2) How will we know that they learned it? 3) What do we do when they don't learn it, and 4) What do we do when they know it already?

These are the guiding questions for Professional Learning Community teams as they look at student learning. These guide the standards and outcomes for students and how we plan units, how we assess students, what are core instructional practices that everyone should be using because they are effective, how we provide support and interventions to those students who have not mastered the outcomes we developed and lastly, how we provide enrichment to those students that are already proficient and are more self-directed learners.

PLCs are collaborative teams whose members work to achieve common goals, learning for all. DuFour says, "Collaboration does not lead to improved results unless people are focused on the right issues....Collaborations represents a systematic process in which teachers work together interdependently in order to impact their classroom practices in ways that will lead to better results for their students."

PLCs have a commitment to continuous improvement. They gather evidence of student learning, look at students strengths and weaknesses, discuss teaching strategies and then analyze the impact of those strategies as to what was effective for student learning. Teachers learn from each other and the learning of the whole is more important.