RSA1: Online Professional Learning Community

 What is a Professional Learning Community?  The Delsea Regional High School district states it as a way to collaborate on the right issues to impact children and adult learning (2009).  The main keystones are to create a culture of collaboration, ensuring that students are learning, and with a focus on results (Dufour, 2004).  It answers the questions, "What is it we expect students to learn?" and "How will we respond when they don't learn?" (Strauss, 2007)

Others have noted similar sentiments in their own districts.  Mink comments that a Professional Learning Community (PLC) never stops and it spans in both different courses and grade levels (2014).   "All educators in a PLC understand the importance of collaboration and take responsibility for sharing and working together for the common good of the student, the school, and the community at large" (Mink, 2014).  She states that PLC's are not a cure all, but an opportunity for small success, which eventually lead to larger ones.  Gorsuch and Obermeyer also share how collaboration is important for student success, but through an administrative point of view.  The focus of their article is on how administrators and teachers worked together to implement the PLC process (2014).  They discuss how at the Valley Center-Pauma USD both the administrators and teachers committed to be a true PLC rather than doing a PLC.  The administrators spearheaded their commitment by providing teachers with consultants and training so that teachers would have the resources to create assessments and learn new teaching strategies.  The PLC's worked so well for them that they were able to work the district off t=hird party support (ie. consultants and trainings) and start the transition to Common Core by themselves using their own PLC teams to research common core instructional practices and create model lesson plans for the district.

Looking at all the sources related to PLC's it is clear that collaboration is a key component.  Dufour counts it as a main keystone (2004).  Each article and resource also emphasizes that student learning is the ultimate goal centered on the following four questions (Mink, 2014):

1.       What do we want our student to learn?

2.       How will we know they have learned it?

3.       How will we respond when learning has not occurred?

4.       How will we respond when learning has already occurred?

When discussing about PLC's, teachers' thoughts naturally tend to flow towards how they can work collaboratively toward student learning in their own subject area and how their departments could work together to achieve their goals.  Gorsuch and Obermeyer, however, bring in the perspective that PLC's are not just teacher driven but a whole school endeavor where there is collaboration at all levels to stay the course of district goals by creating structured systems of student support through trust, honesty and transparency (2014).  PLC's are a never ending process as "It changes from year to year to meet changing student needs and differences in data analysis" (Mink, 2014).

Time.  Time is the one thing that teachers never seem to have enough of.  There is never enough time to create the best possible lesson for their students or never enough time to keep up with their emails.  Between their responsibilities in and outside of school, teachers have barely enough time to do anything.  They find themselves often surviving alone rather than thriving together.  Professional Learning Communities offer a way to combat this.  With the Defour's PLC keystones of collaboration, student learning, and a focus on results in place (2004), it is obvious that the never ending process of evaluating student learning and student outcomes from data analysis  that Mink (2014) describes needs time.  Administrative support is crucial, as set forth by the Gorsuch and Obermeyer example (2014), time can be carved out from the academic school year to first provide support for teachers in training and professional development with the goal to ultimately lead to competent teachers working together to plan lessons together, work through understanding new standards, and achieving district goals.  Collaboration is just not with fellow teachers, but with everyone in the district.  In the classroom of one teacher, that teacher will struggle to create their own lesson, give their own tests, view their own results, and make their own learner specific modifications.  But in a classroom involved with a PLC, the whole school and district are involved.  Administrators give time for teachers to meet and discuss student shortcomings.  Together they come up with a plan to implement involving counselors, academic coaches, and third part resources.  The teachers then execute the plan in their own classrooms, "understanding that among team members that lesson can be taught according to an individual teacher's style and still end with the desired outcome" (Mink, 2014).  They then come together to share their results, analyze data they collected, and celebrate if their goals were reached or reevaluate to start the process again.  With given time teachers of PLC classroom thrive together to improve student learning.

References

Delsea Regional High School. (2009). Building a Professional Learning Community [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from http://www.powershow.com/view/3bd6e3-ZDU1N/BUILDING_A_PROFESSIONAL_LEARNING_COMMUNITY_powerpoint_ppt_presentation

DuFour, R. (2004).  What is a "professional learning community?"  Educational Leadership, 61(8), 6-11.

Gorsuch, M., & Obermeyer, L. (2014). FULL SPEED AHEAD: the road to success. Leadership, 43(4), 18-20.

Mink, P. L. (2014). Seeing the Light-Together. Education Digest, 80(1), 19-22.

Strauss, B. (2007). Four Blocks of a Professional Learning Community [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_KukVC2gXs