Joel Zehring

I just finished talking with a student teacher who is wrapping up her “take-over” time in second grade. Now that she’s off active duty for a few weeks, she’s checking out other classrooms before finishing out the semester. Of course, I welcomed her to visit, with one request.

Give me feedback on my class, my lesson, my interaction with my students, and anything else you observe.

Constructive feedback based on empirical observation is hard to come by in elementary education. I’m going to request it from whomever I can. Plus, this teacher-in-training may have some insights and suggestions that are new to me. The trenches of teaching aren’t always conducive to researching new practices.

As a bonus, the student teacher gets to experience a little bit of real professional learning community. Instead of being talked down to, she gets to flex her collaboration muscles and contribute to my students’ learning by helping me to run a better class.

I’ve just finished the book that started it all; the PLC Bible, if you will. Professional Learning Communities at Work feels like the education version of Good to Great. It’s not quite up to par with Jim Collins’s canonical business success book, but PLCs at Work is very good. Some points that stood out to me:

• A school is a PLC (p.23). Previously, I was informed that collaborative teams and teachers in grade levels were PLCs. Calling a collaborative team a PLC is a like saying Arizona is the entire United States.
• “Shaping culture is not a task to complete; rather it is an ongoing commitment” (p. 148).
• Professional development should develop organizational capacity, not just individual teacher skills (p. 261).
• PLC is a passionate, non-linear, persistent process.

I wonder what percentage of teachers and admins currently working on PLC roll outs have read this book? How many educators have received the Good News of PLCs second-hand, from a well-intentioned district leader or a one-day-wonder inservice speaker?

I don’t see why this book shouldn’t be the subject of the first book study that any school staff completes as they begin to develop a PLC. I know I would have jumped on the PLC bandwagon a long time ago if someone would have just handed me this book.

I’ve been elbow-deep in PLCs this week, and I’m receiving a world-class education on the model. Dr. Rick DuFour has been incredibly gracious and responsive to the questions and comments from all the participants, even my half-baked remarks. Bill Ferritter, the host of the conversation (and the author of a new PLC book), has contributed with encouragement toward every participant and even made some rather raw confessions about his own practice. It’s amazing and inspiring to hear such honest reflection from a North Carolina teacher of  the year.

Several key ideas stand out in my mind so far:

• For all the emphasis on standardization, high stakes testing, and common assessment in the popular discourse education, DuFour is really promoting a balanced approach to assessment. We need both standard and individualized assessments to really know what students know.
• Technology will be our friend. Eventually.  I seem to remember Rick mentioning technology as a catalyst for improvements in student achievement. However, both DuFour and Ferritter mentioned that computer software needs to gain in quality and sophistication before teachers and students can realize their full benefits in a Professional Learning Community.
• They don’t call them communities for nothing. Dr. DuFour explained in very clear terms the reasoning behind the selection of the word “Communities” in the title of his groundbreaking book and model: it’s about people and their values and beliefs, not just structures and efficiency.

I know I dogged VoiceThread for being clunky and slow, but I’m enjoying the the tool more and more. Despite VT’s minor shortcomings (no RSS, crashes my system), I’ve found myself planning the times when I can check back to read and listen and watch new comments and questions. I can only blame the crashy-ness on Adobe and my dinosaur of a PowerBook.

VoiceThread - Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at work

Bill Ferritter is hosting an online discussion with Rick and Becky DuFour, the creators of the Professional Learning Community model. It’s definitely helped me to develop a more balanced view of PLCs in schools and how they might function to improve student achievement. While I don’t yet consider myself a PLC fanboy, I do agree that breaking down the isolators between educators in the same building remains the single best way to improve student achievement. Look for the Wiimote avatar to view my text comments.

As for Voicethread, I’m not sold. It feels a little clunky, but I definitely see the benefit of audio and text intermingling for conversation. I posted all my comments as text because my son was sleeping, and I think overall, I prefer the speed of reading to the fidelty of audio. I’m happy to interact with Voicethread, but I’m not itching to use it for my own projects or use it in my classroom yet.

VoiceThread - Revisiting PLCs at Work

Dan Pink asserts in this video that the modern workplace will thrive on three factors: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

I especially like the idea of a FedEx day. What if teachers the district were given a full day to work on anything they wanted? We’d only need one rule:

You have to present your creation to the rest of the staff at the end of the day.

This kind of self-directed development reminds me of the Idea Stock Market that I wrote about a while back. With any luck (and leadership), the days of stale, stagnant professional development are numbered.

The phrase “Professional Learning Community” has always struck a flat chord in my mind. Perhaps it’s because I first heard of the PLC in an inservice meeting for my district. I seem to remember an administrator or an instructional coach spending all of eight minutes defining the concept of a Professional Learning Community before handing each grade level a worksheet about improving test scores.

Bill Ferriter’s post about the book Professional Learning Communities at Work gave me a new, exciting slant on a term that has carried very corporate connotations for me.

Finally, “experts” were arguing that teachers should be centrally involved in decision-making.  Finally, “experts” were arguing that conversations between teachers that were focused on teaching and learning were a meaningful form of professional development.  Finally, “experts” were arguing that the key to successful schools rests in the hearts and minds of classroom teachers.

I’ve asked the instructional coach for my school to loan me a copy of the book that seems to have ignited a movement. I’m looking forward to learning about the theory that has been mangled in lack-luster inservice presentations and buzzed about in administrator meetings.

The Tempered Radical: Reviewing Revisiting PLCs at Work.