Leading PLCs: How should we structure our time?

Article

“Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems.”

- Clayton Christianson

This year, I have been more "hands off" with our professional learning communities. Our teachers meet weekly on Wednesday afternoons for almost two hours. Previously, I would make daily rounds to every grade level or department, stopping in to see if teams needed anything. I also felt obligated to be visibly present weekly, even if briefly, to ensure that PLCs were operating as expected.

While the former reason is laudable, I was concerned about the latter. Was I being trusting by checking in to ensure compliance? And yet, how do I know if our collaborative skills are fully developed and sustained? I felt this internal pull to be available competing with an external push for accountability.

So for the last four months, I've spent PLC time preparing for future professional development around curriculum development (Note: we meet once a month as a faculty during our weekly PLC time to learn together). I traded less visibility for conveying more professional trust and a release of responsibility.

And then I received an email from a principal at a nearby elementary school. "Would you and a teacher or more be willing to speak to our faculty about how your PLCs work?" Our district adopted this collaborative model before I arrived in 2016; because we are one of the first, we get these calls from time to time.

Uhhh... I wasn't sure how to respond. I hadn't attended a meeting in months. Still, I agreed to meet with them and recruit some faculty members.

A month later, and I had no takers from my school. "Sorry," I replied to the principal via email. "I think teachers are not feeling great about taking an afternoon off on a Friday." The school still requested I visit and share, so I asked to join a team as a colleague to revisit how PLCs were going for supporting teaching and learning.

Push, Pull, and Nudge

Sometimes we can be too “helpful”, teachers and leaders. If we aren’t doing something, then what is our purpose? Yet prior experience was telling me that I needed to allow others’ agendas to surface during discussions to ensure that I wasn’t coming in with my own agenda that might be unaligned with what people needed.

Upon arrival at the grade level meeting, I reinforced with the team that I was there primarily to learn. "Mind if I take some notes?" I also shared an article that describe a process for PLC meetings. "I'd be interested in your thoughts on this idea, whenever we have a moment." The following were my notes during our discussion.

Writing Assessment: Mid-Year

The prompt ensured students had background knowledge to write about (making and donating fleece blankets, how to show compassion —> informative writing)

• Concerned ahead of time with the quality of writing.

  • Are they meeting mid-year expectations?

• Decided to read silently and put writing into two piles: strong and okay (or below).

  • Laughter when reading the creative spelling or unique language of the students.

• Discussion: Do we assess the writing based on how well the students followed the prompt or the quality of the writing?

  • Brought up sequencing/transition words, introductions, ideas as skills noticed.

  • One student asked if they could use the “chart” (anchor chart). 

  • Possible writing strategy: Read aloud own writing, ask “Where am I pausing?” (to teach importance of conventions/grammar)

  • Getting started is a hard part about writing, plus going back in to revise.

  • Noted that students are now paragraphing their writing.

• What did we noticed about students’ writing and the process?

  • They didn’t use scratch paper to take notes even though encouraged by teachers.

  • One teacher noted that the students did use more strategies for their social studies writing.

  • Using a one-point rubric now to simplify assessment process. Standards-aligned, but some subjectivity.

  • We can take parts of papers that are strong examples of one element of strong writing and share them as exemplars in other classrooms (anonymous).

• Feedback on how the team meeting went.

  • You have so much developed already: a student-friendly rubric, strong writing samples to use for future lessons, agreed upon norms for collaboration. 

“I’ll share my notes with you once I’ve had a chance to clean them up,” I commented as I left the meeting, not staying for the whole time so they could carry on as a group. Later I followed up with an email to the three team members, attaching my notes now transposed into the new PLC meeting format.

(Click to view —> PLC Team Meeting Format w/ Notes)

I didn’t ask if I could create this document…nor did I push the team to adopt this approach to guiding their professional conversation. Rather, I found an entry point in which I could engage in their collaboration, as a learner and colleague who also wanted to affirm their work by sharing their experience with an area school. This is the reality of work in professional learning communities: feeling out the culture and knowing when to push, to pull, and to nudge others along toward a destination.

Unexpected Outcomes

Considering the practicality of the team meeting template, along with how well our PLC conversation fit within that format, I thought the team would find it helpful.

I was wrong.

Following up a week later at the next PLC meeting, I asked the team what they thought about this protocol for collaboration. After a bit of silence, a teacher spoke up.

I don’t know if we need this. To be honest, we have these types of conversations all the time, not just on Wednesdays. We discuss student learning in the hallways, at lunch. It’s what we do.

I acknowledged their capacity for collaboration. Following up, I wondered aloud if this protocol would be helpful for teams that might not be at their same level of success. Another teacher spoke up.

Yes, I think so. The format follows the four questions of a PLC. It could defintitely help guide conversation if teams are feeling like they are new to this or are spinning their wheels.

This teacher then pulled out her copy of Learning by Doing, the Professional Learning Community at Work handbook all PLC Institute attendees receive. “You know, I was just looking through this book, rereading some pages, just to confirm how the process we followed last week aligned with what works.” The third teacher concurred, noting that she brought up some of the PLC keynote videos online to also review. Afterward, they agreed to let me share their feedback with the area school about the template.

On the surface level, I found out that this format was too structured for this team. Buy beyond the obvious, the following outcomes were realized:

• This team was affirmed in their collaborative practices.

• They were prompted to go back into prior learning and reflect on their work.

• Another school learned from their experiences.

• We have a new template that teams within our own school can use.

Engaging in dialogue around the PLC process - the “how” - can be as important as what we focus on and why. It ensures our time is effectively utilized on behalf of teaching and learning. Who learns from this trial and reflection is often dependent on leadership. We don’t have to know everything, just enough to ask the right questions.