1. Professional Learning Communities Setting & Revisiting Team Norms
PLC Module 1

2. “The most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is building the capacity of school personnel to function as a professional learning community. The path to change in the classroom lies within and through professional learning communities.”
Milbrey McLaughlin

3. Lost Luggage On an index card, please write down the following:
Your name
One of your personal talents or hobbies
A goal you would like to accomplish
An interesting fact about yourself
Your favorite subject to teach

4. Lost Luggage
At the signal, stand up, make eye contact with someone across the room
Discuss the information on your index card with your partner
Exchange index cards with your partner
Thank your partner for the opportunity to talk
Look for another partner to repeat the process using your partner’s card
Continue repeating the process until the time is up 4

5. Agenda Mixer Outcomes PLC Leadership Training Overview
What is a Professional Learning Community?
Effective Team Norms
Wrap-up/Closure

6. Outcomes
Introduce Professional Learning Communities’ structures and tenants
Begin discussion and dialogue about the PLC process
Understand the site role, necessary training, and support
Create an understanding of how to develop team norms

7. What is a Professional Learning Community?
“Professional Learning Communities are our best hope for reculturing schools.”
Robert Eaker

8. What is a Professional Learning Community?
Read through the article introduction & your group’s assigned Big Idea from “What is a “Professional Learning Community”?
With your table group, discuss your assigned idea.
List the Big Idea at the top of the poster paper
Create a graphic or poster that illustrates the essence of the idea & be prepared to explain it 8

9. Professional Learning Communities
“To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.”
Richard Dufour
Three Big Ideas
Ensuring Student Learning
Culture of Collaboration
Focus on Results

10. Site Structures

11. Site Tasks in a PLC Mission, Vision, Values, Beliefs and Goals
Site Collaborative Calendars
Responsive Site Systems of Intervention
Monitoring Student Results and Team Effectiveness 11

12. Collaborative Teams
A group of people working interdependently to achieve a common goal for which members are mutually accountable. 12

13. Collaborative Team Jobs
Creating/Revising Grade Level Norms
Setting Team SMART Goals
Clarifying What Students Must Learn
Pacing Essential Learnings
Creating Common Local Assessments
Calibrating Expectations and Grading
Monitoring Student Data/ Adjusting Instruction/Providing Intervention 13

14. PLC Process

15. Four Essential Questions
What do we want students to know?
How will we know when they have learned it?
What do we do when they don’t learn it?
What do we do when they already have it? 15

16. Advocacy and Inquiry Probing for Specificity Pausing
Presuming Positive Intentions
Paraphrasing
Inquiry
Advocacy
Pursuing a balance between advocacy and inquiry
Paying attention to self & others
Putting ideas on the table

17. Norms guide collaboration of high performing teams
Team Norms
Norms guide collaboration of high performing teams

18. Creating/Revising Norms
Norms should be revisited and discussed at the beginning of each team meeting for the first six to eight meetings
Each time a new members is added, norms should be revisited
Begin and end each meeting for the first trimester with a review of the norms
Use the team evaluation periodically
Less is more!

19. Developing Norms

20. Principal Norms
We will all participate actively and respectfully in discussions and decisions.
We will come prepared.
We will start and end on time.
We will use data and research as a basis for our discussions.
We will insure that members will share the floor.
We will revisit our group process every six months.

21. Creating Team Norms Activity
Learning by Doing, pp

22. On the back of your index card:
Wrap-up
On the back of your index card:
3 Write down three things you learned today
2 Write two concerns you have about working as a Professional Learning Community
1 One thing you’re looking forward to doing

23. “Making these cultural shifts is difficult and nonlinear
“Making these cultural shifts is difficult and nonlinear. Remember, what you need to reculture your school lies within. Collaborate with one another. Support one another. Care for one another. Encourage one another, and remarkable things will happen.”
Robert Eaker