PLC

This past Thursday and Friday I attended a conference on "Professional Learning Communities". I have to admit, I did not go very willingly. PLC is our "theme" this year as a staff, and our principle has been having us do some reading on it. I really did not have a grasp on what at PLC was, so going to this conference was not something I was looking forward to.

However, the idea of PLC is becoming very exciting to me. It's an entire school philosophy that puts student learning first. The staff is organized into teams based on grade level. The team asks itself these three questions:
-What do we want our students to know?
-How will we know when they have learned it?
-What will we do if they don't learn it?
-What will we do when they do learn it?
PLCs stress frequent assessment for student learning (this does not need to take the form of a test), and immediate intervention when a student does not understand. This intervention is not academic support, but a small group or one-on-one time for a extra help until they get it. The key is that this intervention is mandatory - the kids don't have a choice not to learn it. The kids also start to take responsibility for their own learning and set goals for themselves (After all, teachers are working way too hard, and students aren't working hard enough. How many teachers do you know that after a day at school could make it through a 2 1/2 hour football practice?) It also stresses the idea of common assessments - each fourth grade class doing the same thing- so that teachers can compare results and strategies for what did/did not work.

In order for PLCs to work effectively, you need a decent amount of staff. There is no way that this would have worked at CCS, but it could work where I am now. You also need a group that works well together. I'm excited about what PLCs could mean for student learning and for PR for the school. There's a lot of questions I have yet, so I'm reading through the book they gave us at the convention. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!