Building Collaboration in a PLC

Gail VarneyWVDE Title I School Improvement Coordinator

“Creating a collaborative culture is the single most important factor for successful school improvement initiatives and the first order of business for those seeking to enhance the effectiveness of their schools.”

Eastwood and Lewis

Essential Questions

• What does leadership look like in a PLC?• How do we organize staff into teams to

promote a focus on learning?• How do we find time for collaboration?• How do we help teams collaborate on the

issues that impact student learning?• How will we respond when teams

experience difficulty?

In PLCs…

Leaders motivate and inspire staffs to believe it can be done.

Leaders have strong opinions about what must happen.

Leaders clearly communicate the “musts.”

Leaders are “loose” around how the musts are accomplished.

Loose-Tight Leadership

• Neither “top down” nor “bottom-up” approach

• Genius of “and” instead of “or” (simultaneously loose and tight)

• Lays out the expectations• Produces strong leaders AND

empowered teachers

Loose-Tight Leadership

A culture built around the idea of freedom and responsibility …

Within the framework of a highly developed system.

Principals Cannot Go It Alone…

Shared Leadership

Develops the capacity of teachers throughout the school to assume leadership roles

Taps into and shares everyone’s knowledge and skills

Principal’s role becomes “leader of leaders.”

Guiding Coalition

“We can’t ignore the willingness and readiness of a staff to implement PLC concepts in order to devote all our time and energy to convincing a few holdouts of the worthiness of the initiative.”

DuFour, et al. (2006)

The “Right People on the Bus”

Leaders must have allies to pursue a new direction for their organizations.

Leaders need a strong leadership team.

This guiding coalition guides the process of the PLC journey.

Who is on Your Bus?

Activity

Share with the group at your table the names of people in your school who are ready to get on the bus. Make plans for how to get them on board.

How Do We Organize Staff Into Teams to

Promote a Focus on Learning?

Organize Teams According to Their Work so Members Work to Achieve Common Goals…

Essential outcomes

Common assessments

Interventions and extensions

Grade Level or Subject Level Teams

The best team structure is a team of teachers who teach the same course or grade level.

Vertical Teams

Teachers can be linked with those who teach content above and/or below the level of their students.

Specialists on Teams

Specialist teachers can become members of grade-level or course-specific teams that are pursuing outcomes linked to their areas of expertise.

Electronic Teams

Technology can be a tool to create partnerships with colleagues in the county, state, or world.

How Do We Provide Team Collaboration

Time?

“One of the ways in which organizations demonstrate their priorities is allocation of resources, and in schools, the most precious resource is time.”

Learning by Doing, DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, and Many, 2006, pg. 96

FINDING Time…

• Provide Common Planning in Master Schedule• Use Parallel Scheduling• Adjust Start and End Time• Share Classes• Schedule Group Activities, Events, and Testing• Utilize Substitutes• Bank Time• Use In-Service and Faculty Meeting Time• Embed Staff Development

PROTECTING Time…

Believe teachers will use collaboration time well.

Monitor/pay attention to how teachers use the time.

Communicate the importance of common time to parents and teachers.

Activity: Show and Tell

• Create a presentation to show how your school is structuring collaboration.

• Include information on collaborative teaming: how teams are structured and how time is provided for collaboration (or your plans to do so).

• Share these with the whole group.

How Do PLC Teams Collaborate on the Issues That Impact Student Learning?

First, how DO PLC teams Collaborate?

Collaboration is more than working together congenially -more than communicating well or working well together.

PLC teams work together interdependently to achieve common goals for which they are mutually accountable.

Same goal? Working in close proximity? Collaborative Team?

Same goal?Working in close proximity?Collaborative Team?

How do PLC teams collaborate?

Every major decision related to the learning mission is made through the collaboration process.

PLC teams use team consensus

to guide decisions.

Consensus occurs when everyone’s view has been heard and the will of the group is obvious.

Consensus means everyone agrees to support the decision, publicly and privately, once it’s final.

PLC teams pursue specific and measurable performance goals.

Each collaborative team should translate one or more of the school goals into one or two SMART goals that drive the work of the team.

Strategic & Specific,

Measurable

Attainable

Results-Oriented

Timebound

PLC teams develop team SMART Goals

• Team SMART goals should be short-term so they serve as benchmarks, tracking incremental progress.

• Frequent feedback and intermittent reinforcement help sustain the effort.

PLC teams develop norms to guide their collaboration.

By what standards of behaviors will a team agree to operate?

Team Norms• Each team should create its own norms.• Norms should be stated as commitments to act or

behave in certain ways (instead of beliefs)• Norms should be reviewed at the beginning and end

of each meeting for at least 6 months.• Teams should formally evaluate their effectiveness at

least twice a year.• Teams should focus on a few essential norms rather

than creating an extensive laundry list.• Develop protocols.• Violations of norms must be addressed.

Activity

Using a consensus building activity, develop norms for your School Improvement Teams.

We know HOW to collaborate…

Now what?

Purpose of collaboration - to help more students achieve at higher levels – can only be accomplished if the professionals engaged in collaboration…

collaborate on the

RIGHT THINGS.

Effective teams engage in meaningful collaboration that is beneficial to them and their students.

The effectiveness of any team structure will depend on the extent to which it supports teacher dialogue and action aligned with the big PLC guiding questions.

Teams need access to relevant information to build a shared knowledge necessary for collaboration…

School data

Professional Development

Educational Journals and Books

Web based resources

Focus on the Right Things!

• Identify the non-curriculum units and materials and get rid of them.

• Clarify essential outcomes by grade or course.• Develop/utilize pacing guides.• Develop common assessments.• Establish targets and benchmarks.• Analyze assessment results.• Plan for interventions and instructional

improvement strategies.

Other “Right Things” for Collaborative Team Focus…

• Instructional practices• Grading practices• Homework practices• Intervention programs

Team Products

One of the most effective ways to enhance the productivity of a team is to insist that it produce.

Products of Collaboration

Agendas/Minutes

SMART Goals

Norms

Pacing Guides

Data

Analysis of Data

Common Assessments

How Will We Respond When

Teams Experience Difficulty?

“The final challenge – and the one that solidifies success – is to build so much momentum that change is unstoppable, that everything reinforces the new behavior, that even the resistors get on board – exactly the momentum that develops in winning streaks.”

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Responding to Resistors

• Assume good intentions.• Identify specific behaviors essential to the

success of the initiative.• Focus on behavior not attitude. Monitor

behavior.• Acknowledge and celebrate small victories.• Confront incongruent behavior with specific

concerns and communicate logical consequences.

• Don’t confront everything – just what’s in your face at the moment.

• We must encourage others to express their concerns, seek to understand them, and address them honestly.

• We can acquire important insights from those who challenge us.

• Use restating and reframing skills when you hear a negative statement.

• What we reward and what we confront is a big piece of culture building.

• Goal is for teachers to confront each other – professionally – on what matters.

“You are more likely to behave yourself into new ways of thinking, not think your way into new ways of behaving.”

Michael Fullan

Review of Essential Questions

• What does leadership look like in a PLC?• How do we organize staff into teams to

promote a focus on learning?• How do we find time for collaboration?• How do we help teams collaborate on the

issues that impact student learning?• How will we respond when teams

experience difficulty?

“Creating a PLC is not advancing through a checklist of tasks to be accomplished;

It is a passionate, nonlinear, and persistent endeavor.”

DuFour, et.al. 2008