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The Professional LearningCommunity Journey:

Creating a Schoolof High Expectations

Tim Brown

The Professional Learning Community Journey: Creating a

School of High Expectations

Tim [email protected]

twitter @ctimbrown

Climate of High Expectations

climate |ˈklīmit|noun• the prevailing trend of public opinion or ofanother aspect of public life: the current economic climate.

Students make learning a priority.

Goals and high expectations are clearly communicated by every adult.

Keynote Goals

Connect the big ideas of the professional learning community process with the beliefs and practices within a school.

© Brown 2016. SolutionTree.com.Do not duplicate. 1

“Animus non habeo stetitque oleum impleri, sed ligno triplici.”

Plutarch

“The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but rather wood that needs igniting.”

—Plutarch

Things I haven’t thought about

Things we’ve thought about and are doing

Things we need to address

Choose your attitude: Make the choice to approach our learning with a positive attitude.

Be present: Engage with your colleagues throughout the discussion.

Play: Have fun and enjoy the opportunity to reflect, share, and celebrate.

Make someone’s day: Consider positive possibilities.

Setting Norms for Today’s Work

© Brown 2016. SolutionTree.com.Do not duplicate.2

Definition of Professional Learning Community

A professional learning community “is an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.”

—DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, Learning by Doing (2016), p. 11

Three Big Ideas of the Professional Learning Community Model

¤ Focus on learning rather than teaching.

¤ Work collaboratively on matters related to learning.

¤ Team members hold themselves accountable for the kind of results that fuel continual improvement.


Six Characteristics of the Professional Learning Community Model

A shared mission with a focus on learning

A collaborative culture with a focus on learning for all

Collective inquiry into best practice and current reality

Action orientation: Learning by doing

A commitment to continuous improvement

Results orientation

The entire staff is a professional learning community.

Purpose, beliefs, assumptions, policies, practices, and procedures must relate to learning.

Decisions about curriculum, assessment, instruction, interventions, grading, and so on must filter through a framework to determine probable impacts on learning.

Embracing the Three Big Ideas


Accentuate the Positive

“Accentuate the positive.

Eliminate the negative.

Latch on to the affirmative.

Don’t mess with Mr. In-between.”

—Johnny Mercer

¨ Mission asks: “Why?” “Why do we exist?”

¨ Vision asks: “What?” “What do we want to become?”

¨ Values and Collective Commitments ask: “How?” “How must we behave to create the school that will achieve our purpose?”

¨ Goals ask: “How?” “How will we know all of this is making a difference?”

Foundational Blocks Developing a Shared Purpose

What kind of school are we striving to become?

Where Should We Begin?


What Kind of School Are We Trying to Create?

¨ Sort and select? Or create winners? ¨ Identify the students who get it right the first

time? Or provide extra time and support? ¨ Spot the talented? Or develop talents? ¨ Success for all students? Or success for some

students? ¨ Bring all of our students to the highest level

possible? Or provide the opportunity for those who want to succeed?

¨ Ensure every student learns at the highest level?

Our Mission: Success for Every Student

“[It is] a huge and daunting goal―like a big mountain to climb. It is clear, compelling, and people get it right away. It serves as a unifying focal point of effort, galvanizing people and creating team spirit as people strive toward a finish line.

“Like the 1960s NASA moon mission, a BHAG captures the imagination and grabs people in the gut.”

—Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t (2001), p. 202

Big Hairy Audacious Goal


“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

Success for Every Student?

¨ Relentless questioning of the status quo ¨ Seeking new methods and testing them ¨ Reflecting on results ¨ Maintaining a sense of curiosity and an

openness to new possibilities ¨ Recognizing that the process of searching

for answers is more important than having the answers

Engage in Collective Inquiry

¨ What is our primary purpose? ¨ What do we want our classrooms to look like for

students and for us? ¨ What assessment practices will we use to enhance

student learning? ¨ What does great instruction look like? ¨ What is our plan for intervening when students

struggle? ¨ How can we extend and enrich our students’ learning

experience? ¨ What’s keeping us from becoming the school we want

to become?

Collective Inquiry


Reasons Students Are Failing?

¨ Lack of motivation ¨ Inability to value

education (student) ¨ Poor study habits ¨ Sleep deprivation ¨ Absences ¨ No strong role models ¨ Student culture and

emphasis on achieving at high levels

¨ Unpreparedness ¨ Too many distractions ¨ Weak vocabulary

¨ Failure to engage student ¨ Anger ¨ Low self-esteem ¨ Inability to value education

(parent) ¨ No connection to content ¨ Self-fulfilling prophecy ¨ Poor listening skills ¨ Incomplete homework ¨ Undiagnosed disabilities ¨ Low expectations (parents

and staff) ¨ No background knowledge ¨ Student mobility

¨ Lack of effort ¨ Poor attitude toward

learning ¨ Peer pressure ¨ Attitude that it is “uncool”

to get good grades ¨ Misplacement in program ¨ Being labeled as failure ¨ Lack of differentiated

instruction ¨ Lack of relationships with

staff ¨ Lack of organizational skills

¨ Truancy ¨ Lack of goals or dreams ¨ Can’t see work or needs

glasses ¨ Substance issues ¨ Poor policies ¨ Lack of accountability ¨ Failure to ask for

assistance ¨ Laziness or refusal to try ¨ Lack of consequences ¨ Lack of inference across

curriculum

Reasons Students Are Failing?

SNOW SHARKS?

YEAH, THAT GUY’S A

GONER


“Knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives.”

—Arbesman, 2012, p. ii

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

What are some questions you need to think about and begin to address as a team?

Some Principles of Learning


What is learning really all about?

What’s happening as the brain receives, organizes, stores, and retrieves information and develops ideas?

¨ Learning is continuous. ¨ We are more likely to hit the target when we

know what the target is. ¨ Without the opportunity to correct, learning

is likely to stop.

¨ We improve with multiple attempts.

¨ Effort and proper preparation are the main determinants of success.


¨ The brain is chunking, swirling, and searching for connections as we learn.

¨ We are natural problem solvers and explorers.

¨ People are wired differently with different experiences.

¨ We work harder and longer when we are internally motivated.

¨ We learn best in a positive environment.



“Think about your intelligence, talents, and personality. Are they just fixed or can you develop them?”

—Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006)

What Success Really Looks Like






Teachers are organized into collaborative teams.

A Learning Community Culture Asks

… various adult personalities to cometogether to think about how to best act on behalf of all the students.

It also says, “Don’t be content until every area where students aren’t doing well is erased and we are helping all students really be successful.”

(Kanold, The Power of Professional LearningCommunities at Work, 2007)

Learning Teams That Get Results William Ferriter

What we get Increased Student Growth and Achievement

What we want Teacher Effectiveness

What it looks like

Learning Teams Share: • Norms and values• Dialogue about learning and

teaching • Strategies and practices• A focus on student learning• Responsibility for students’

success

What it takes

Growth- Oriented Climate

Sharing Knowledge and Skills

Building Resilience

and Creating Solutions

Determining Priorities and

Creating Excellence


Four Critical Questions for Teaming

What do we want our students to learn?

• Essential• Guaranteed• Viable Curriculum

What Do We Want Our Students to Learn? Embracing Accountability

"Professional learning teams embrace accountability and see content mastery as their personal responsibility.

¨ They redesign the way they define their curriculum.

¨ They engage students in their own learning.

¨ They systematically track progress in their classrooms."

—Muhammad, Transforming School Culture:How to Overcome Staff Division (2009), p.18

Narrowing the Instructional Focus

“In the process we discovered that countless lessons from existing units could be eliminated because they did not address essential learnings. … Our work finally had the kind of clarity and focus necessary to create new systems for responsible.”

Keep Drop Create

—William Ferriter, Sixth Grade Teacher


What Do We Collaborate About?

How will we know they are learning it?

Frequent, team-developed, common formative assessments

Research on Formative Assessment

“When implemented well, formative assessment can effectively double the speed of student learning.”

—Wiliam & Leahy, Embedding Formative Assessment: Practical Techniques

for K-12 Classrooms (2015)


How will we respond when they don’t learn?

Timely, directive, systematic intervention


Answering the Third Critical Question

¨ Are students ensured extra time and support for learning?

¨ Is our focus prompt intervention rather than sluggish remediation?

¨ Is our response timely and directive rather than invitational?

¨ Is our response systematic?

“We must change from a model that picks winners to one that will create winners.”

—Hodgkinson, Michigan: The State and Its Educational System (1987)


How will we respond when they already know it?

Timely enrichment and extension






No matter which teacher your child has at our school, your child will receive the highest quality instruction, the best assessment practices, and extra time and support to learn at high levels.

Can You Make Every Parent This Promise?

Engines of HopeJon Saphier

Say it.

Model it.

Organize for it.

Protect it.

Reward it.

What we are doing here is important.

You can do it!

I’m not going to give up on you—even if you give up on yourself.


Questions About the Culture of Your School

¨ Do we believe that all of our students can learn at high levels?

¨ Do we believe that educators are the key contributors to student learning?

¨ Do we believe education is critical to the future of our students?

¨ Do we believe we can make a difference in the lives of our students?

—DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek, Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes (2009), p. 99

Thank You!


Six Characteristics of the Professional Learning Community Model

A Focus on Learning

The very essence of a learning community is a focus on and a commitment to every student learning. When a school or district functions as a PLC, educators within the organization embrace high levels of learning for all students as both the reason the organization exists and the fundamental responsibility of those who work within it. To achieve this purpose, members of a PLC create and are guided by a clear and compelling vision of what the organization must become in order to help all students learn. They make collective commitments clarifying what each member will do to create such an organization, and they use results-oriented goals to mark their progress. Members work together to clarify exactly what each student must learn, monitor each student’s learning on a timely basis, provide systematic interventions that ensure students receive additional time and support for learning when they struggle, and extend and enrich learning when students have already mastered the intended outcomes. A corollary assumption is that if the organization is to become more effective in helping all students learn, the adults in the organization must also be continually learning. Therefore, structures are created to ensure staff members engage in job-embedded learning as part of their routine work practices. There is no ambiguity or hedging regarding this commitment to learning. Whereas many schools operate as if their primary purpose is to ensure that children are taught, PLCs are dedicated to the idea that their organization exists to ensure that all students learn essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions. All other characteristics of a PLC flow directly from this epic shift in assumptions about the purpose of the school.

A Collaborative Culture With a Focus on Learning for All

A PLC is composed of collaborative teams whose members work interdependently to achieve common goals linked to the purpose of learning for all. The team is the engine that drives the PLC effort and the fundamental building block of the organization. It is difficult to overstate the importance of collaborative teams in the improvement process. It is equally important, however, to emphasize that collaboration does not lead to improved results unless people are focused on the right issues. Collaboration is a means to an end, not the end itself. In many schools, staff members are willing to collaborate on various topics as long as the focus of the conversation stops at their classroom door. In a PLC, collaboration represents a systematic process in which teachers work together interdependently to impact

their classroom practice in ways that will lead to better results for their students, their team, and their school.

Collective Inquiry Into Best Practice and Current Reality

Teams in a PLC engage in collective inquiry into best practices in teaching and best practices in learning. They also inquire about their current reality, including their present practices and the levels of their students’ achievement. They attempt to arrive at consensus on vital questions by building shared knowledge rather than pooling opinions. They have an acute sense of curiosity and openness to new possibilities. Collective inquiry enables team members to develop new skills and capabilities that in turn lead to new experiences and awareness. Gradually, this heightened awareness transforms into fundamental shifts in attitudes, beliefs, and habits which, over time, transform the culture of the school. Working together to build shared knowledge on the best way to achieve goals and meet the needs of clients is exactly what professionals in any field are expected to do, whether it is curing the patient, winning the lawsuit, or helping all students learn. Members of a professional learning community are expected to work and learn together.

Action Orientation: Learning by Doing

Members of PLCs are action oriented: They move quickly to turn aspirations into action and visions into reality. They understand that the most powerful learning always occurs in a context of taking action, and they value engagement and experience as effective teachers. Teachers primarily work together in teams and engage in collective inquiry in order to serve as catalysts for action. Members of PLCs recognize that learning by doing develops a deeper and more profound knowledge and greater commitment than learning by reading, listening, planning, or thinking. Traditional schools have developed various strategies to avoid taking meaningful action, preferring the comfort of the familiar. Professional learning communities recognize that until members of the organization “do” differently, there is no reason to anticipate different results. They avoid paralysis by analysis and overcome inertia with action.

A Commitment to Continuous Improvement

Inherent to a PLC are a persistent disquiet with the status quo and a constant search for better ways to achieve goals and accomplish the purpose of the organization. Systematic processes engage each member of the organization in an ongoing cycle of:


their classroom practice in ways that will lead to better results for their students, their team, and their school.

Collective Inquiry Into Best Practice and Current Reality

Teams in a PLC engage in collective inquiry into best practices in teaching and best practices in learning. They also inquire about their current reality, including their present practices and the levels of their students’ achievement. They attempt to arrive at consensus on vital questions by building shared knowledge rather than pooling opinions. They have an acute sense of curiosity and openness to new possibilities. Collective inquiry enables team members to develop new skills and capabilities that in turn lead to new experiences and awareness. Gradually, this heightened awareness transforms into fundamental shifts in attitudes, beliefs, and habits which, over time, transform the culture of the school. Working together to build shared knowledge on the best way to achieve goals and meet the needs of clients is exactly what professionals in any field are expected to do, whether it is curing the patient, winning the lawsuit, or helping all students learn. Members of a professional learning community are expected to work and learn together.

Action Orientation: Learning by Doing

Members of PLCs are action oriented: They move quickly to turn aspirations into action and visions into reality. They understand that the most powerful learning always occurs in a context of taking action, and they value engagement and experience as effective teachers. Teachers primarily work together in teams and engage in collective inquiry in order to serve as catalysts for action. Members of PLCs recognize that learning by doing develops a deeper and more profound knowledge and greater commitment than learning by reading, listening, planning, or thinking. Traditional schools have developed various strategies to avoid taking meaningful action, preferring the comfort of the familiar. Professional learning communities recognize that until members of the organization “do” differently, there is no reason to anticipate different results. They avoid paralysis by analysis and overcome inertia with action.

A Commitment to Continuous Improvement

Inherent to a PLC are a persistent disquiet with the status quo and a constant search for better ways to achieve goals and accomplish the purpose of the organization. Systematic processes engage each member of the organization in an ongoing cycle of:


• Gathering evidence of current levels of student learning • Developing strategies and ideas to build on strengths and address weaknesses in

that learning • Implementing those strategies and ideas • Analyzing the impact of the changes to discover what was effective and what was not • Applying new knowledge in the next cycle of continuous improvement

The goal is not simply to learn a new strategy, but instead to create conditions for perpetual learning—an environment in which innovation and experimentation are viewed not as tasks to be accomplished or projects to be completed but as ways of conducting day-to-day business, forever. Furthermore, participation in this process is not reserved for those designated as leaders; rather, it is a responsibility of every member of the organization.

Results Orientation

Finally, members of a PLC realize that all their efforts in these areas—a focus on learning, collaborative teams, collective inquiry, action orientation, and continuous improvement—must be assessed on the basis of results rather than intentions. Unless initiatives are subjected to ongoing assessment on the basis of tangible results, they represent random groping in the dark rather than purposeful improvement. As Peter Senge and colleagues conclude, “The rationale for any strategy for building a learning organization revolves around the premise that such organizations will produce dramatically improved results” (1994, p. 44). This focus on results leads each team to develop and pursue measurable improvement goals aligned to their school’s and district’s goals for learning. It also drives teams to create a series of common formative assessments that are administered to students multiple times throughout the year to gather ongoing evidence of student learning. Team members review the results from these assessments in an effort to identify and address program concerns (areas of learning where many students are experiencing difficulty). They also examine the results to discover strengths and weaknesses in their individual teaching in order to learn from one another. Most importantly, the assessments are used to identify students who need additional time and support for learning. Frequent common formative assessments represent one of the most powerful tools in the PLC arsenal.


Why Should We Commit to Learning for All? We must prepare students for their future, not our past.

Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl (2010) provide a fascinating but disturbing glance into the fates of students:

• In 1970, only 28 percent of jobs required postsecondary education. By 2015, 67 percent of jobs will require postsecondary education.

• In 1970, 74 percent of the middle class was high school graduates and dropouts. In 2007, only 23 percent of the middle class was high school graduates, and only 8 percent were dropouts. In the same period, the percent of middle-class Americans with college degrees increased from 26 to 69 percent.

Those who have not learned how to learn will be left behind.

According to Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl (2010), high school graduates and dropouts will find themselves largely left behind in the American economy. The authors also observe:

• Postsecondary education and training is no longer just the preferred pathway to the middle and upper classes—it is the only pathway.

• In the 20th century, illiterates were those who could not read. In the 21st century, illiterates are those who have not learned how to learn or have not continued their learning beyond the K–12 system.

Not all have adequate access to the American Dream as the land of opportunity and social mobility.

A child born to a high school dropout has a one in 17 chance of earning a bachelor’s degree (Esdall, 2012). Ongoing statistics show that not everyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps equally, according to Greenstone, Looney, Patashnik, and Yu (2013):

• A child born in the bottom 20 percent of family incomes is ten times more likely to stay there than a child in the top 20 percent is of falling to the bottom 20 percent.

• A child born in the top 20 percent is five times more likely to stay there than a child in the lower 20 percent is to rise to the top 20 percent.

• Education is the most powerful tool for helping students of poverty rise.

• More than 80 percent of children in the top 20 percent earn a bachelor’s degree.


American education no longer leads the world in many areas.

Some policymakers and leaders believe that American education was once the world’s best but has fallen behind:

• The US dropped from first in the world in percentage of high school graduates to 22nd out of 27 advanced economies (The Broad Foundation, 2013).

• The US dropped from first in the world in the percentage of young (aged 25–34) workers with college degrees to second in 1995 to fourteenth in 2012 (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2011).

• For the first time in American history, we have a higher percentage of 55–65 year-old college graduates than those who are 25–35 years olds (The College Board, 2008).

Our current system isn’t working for all students.

The educational system that served our nation well in the 20th century is not serving us as well in the 21st century:

• 30 percent of students who enter high school will drop out (Swanson, 2009).

• Potential dropouts can be predicted as early as first grade and identified with accuracy by third grade (Sparks, 2013; American Psychological Association, 2012).

• More than one-third of students entering college require remedial courses (Strong American Schools, 2008).

• 34 percent of students who enter college drop out within the first year (ACT, Inc., 2012).

• 36 percent of students who enter a four-year public college earn a bachelor’s degree within five years (ACT, Inc., 2012).

• Only 29 percent of those who pursue a two-year degree earn it within three years (ACT, Inc., 2012).

High school dropouts face serious implications.

Finally, young people who fail school face a bleak future:

• They are three times more likely to be unemployed. These students are more likely to live in poverty, earning an annual salary of $20,241 or less (Breslow, 2012).

• They will earn 33 cents for every dollar a college graduate earns, which is the largest discrepancy of all major economies in the world (US Census Bureau, 2006; Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009).


• They are more prone to ill health (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009).

• They are four times more likely to be uninsured (Olshansky et al., 2012).

• Female dropouts live an average of 10.5 fewer years than females who graduate from high school. Male dropouts live an average of 13 fewer years than males who graduate from high school. The gap for both sexes is widening (Tavernise, 2012).

• High school dropouts are 63 times more likely to be incarcerated (Breslow, 2012).

• On average, each high school dropout costs taxpayers $292,000 over his or her lifetime (Breslow, 2012).


Developing the Principles of Learning

Principles of Learning Classroom Practices That Support

the Principle

Most children enter school with a growth mindset.

Learning is continuous

Without the opportunity to correct, learning is likely to stop.

We improve with multiple attempts.

Effort and proper preparation are the main determinants of success.

Reflect to learn (processing time) o The brain is chunking,

swirling, and searching for connections as we learn.

We are natural problem solvers and explorers.

People are wired differently with different experiences.

We work harder and longer when we are internally motivated.

We learn best in a positive environment.

REPRODUCIBLE

© Brown 2016. SolutionTree.com.Reproducible.24

REPRODUCIBLE

How Can We Create a Result Orientation and Foster Continuous Improvement?

PLCs “require that [team] members reflect openly and honestly together about their own practice, intentionally seeking ways to do their work better and continually building their capacity to do so.” Failure to collect, present, and analyze evidence of student learning and the reluctance to make work public are major barriers to effective professional learning communities (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 2005).

“One mark of schools that make headway on the achievement gap appears to be their propensity to promote and organize conversations based in evidence of student progress” (Little, 2006, p. 10).

“In our work, we help practitioners frame the next level of work by examining what they are currently doing, looking at evidence of student learning for clues about what is strongest in their practice and where they might see opportunities for improvement, [and] strengthening the capacity of colleagues to work collectively on instructional issues” (Elmore & City, 2007, p. 26).

Excellence in education requires that teachers work in collaborative teams to clarify the learning intentions and success criteria of their lessons, gather evidence of student learning, and discuss the effectiveness of their teaching based on that evidence. “Teachers [need] to share evidence about their teaching with their colleagues”; in fact, “the key question is whether teaching can shift from an immature to mature profession, from opinions to evidence.” The education profession will not mature as a profession until professional dialogue focuses on evidence of student learning rather than opinions (Hattie, 2009, pp. 252, 259).

For the first two years, none of the schools in the study experienced gains in student achievement. The dramatic gains only occurred when collaborative teams focused the collaborative inquiry on “jointly and recursively identifying appropriate and worthwhile goals for student learning; finding or developing appropriate means to assess student progress toward those goals; bringing to the table the expertise of colleagues and others who can assist in accomplishing these goals; planning, preparing, and delivering lessons; using evidence from the classroom to evaluate instruction; and, finally, reflecting on the process to determine next steps” (Gallimore et al., 2009, p. 549). REPRODUCIBLE

“In high-poverty schools that are helping students learn at high levels, look at student achievement data” to identify which students need additional support and which need greater challenges. But this evidence of student learning is also being used to inform teacher practice. Teachers discuss why one member of the team is having success teaching a


particular concept and another is not, and “what the more successful teacher can teach the less successful teacher” (Chenoweth, 2009, p. 41).

In schools that double student performance, teachers use results from common unit and interim assessments to help members of collaborative teams compare strategies and adopt those that are most effective. Instructional practice is out in the open, the subject of public and professional conversation, and the source of ongoing, job-embedded professional development (Odden & Archibald, 2009).

“The expansion of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) is indicative of the increased emphasis on teacher collaboration as the means of powerful professional development. … PLCs are an indication of a broader trend toward professional development that is increasingly collaborative, data-driven, and peer facilitated, all with a focus on classroom practice” (Barber & Mourshed, 2009).


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