Teaching in a Professional Learning Community

 Time for a New Story

All organizations and the people within them create stories about themselves that help make sense of their world. The process of changing an organization is the process of changing its story. For too long the story that has guided the work of educators is the story of the individual teacher responsible only for his or her students. This image has been perpetuated in contemporary society as well. Think of the messages of the films Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds, or Mr. Hollands Opus.

                                                                                                         A heroic teacher, working in isolation, fights the entrenched bureaucracy of the system and the low expectations of colleagues to make a differ­ ence in the lives of his or her students. The key to improving schools, according to this mythology, is finding more of these heroic individuals to lead their isolated classrooms.It is time to embrace a new story, a new image of teaching, one that celebrates professionals who work together interdependently to accom­ plish collectively what they could never accomplish alone.

Converting a Hard Fact Into Dangerous Half Truths

Gradually, educators throughout North America have come to acknowledge that working collaboratively offers a better hope of helping all students learn than working in isolation. Grudgingly, they are begin­ ning to acknowledge that they can play a role in tearing down the walls of isolation and building a collaborative culture. Once again, however, a hard fact regarding the importance of a collaborative culture has often been diluted into dangerous half-truths. First, educators often substi­ tute congeniality for collaboration. If the members of a group get along with one another or perhaps read and discuss the same book, they are satisfied they are a collaborative team. They are not - just as good friends or the members of Oprahs Book Club are not collaborative teams.

North America students working collaboratively

Collaboration-or co-laboring-in a PLC entails working together in­terdependently in systematic processes to analyze and impact professional practice to improve individual and collective results.
           The second half-truth asserts that “collaboration is good.” But there is nothing inherently “good” about collaboration. It represents a means to an end rather than the end itself. Collaboration can serve to perpetuate the status quo rather than im­ prove it, to reinforce the negative aspects of the culture rather than re­ solve them, to reiterate faulty assumptions rather than subject them to collective inquiry. Collaboration can, and sometimes does, dissolve into grouping by griping, a forum for petty grievances, and a reaffirmation of resignation and helplessness. A collaborative culture can be powerful, but as Fullan (2001) warns, unless people “are focusing on the right things they may end up being powerfully wrong”.

W. Edwards Deming

We are convinced that teachers typically do their best; however, they have not always known what to do. If the key to improving schools is “learning to do the right things in the setting where you work”, then the key to effective collaboration is to ensure that educators collaborate, or co-labor, on the “right” things the things that actually impact student learning. Therefore, we argue that effective collaborative teams will engage in collective inquiry into the four critical questions of learning. We address the first of these questions in some detail in this chapter, and the other three questions in the next chapter.

1. What is it we want our students to learn? What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do we expect them to acquire as a result of this course, grade level, or unit of instruction?

An absolute priority of every team in a PLC is to clarify what stu­ dents must learn. In doing so, members of the team will be called upon to identify both the most essential skills and concepts students must acquire, as well as curriculum content that should be eliminated to pro­ vide more instructional time for what is deemed essential. A common criticism of virtually all state standards is that there are far too many of them. W. James Popham (2005) contends that the typical process used to create state standards-convening sub­ ject-matter experts to ask them what is important and significant about their subjects -inevitably results in the conclusion that everything is important. As he writes, “These committees seem bent on identifying skills that they fervently wish students would possess. Regrettably, the resultant litanies of committee-chosen content standards tend to resem­ ble curricular wish lists rather than realistic targets.” Marzano (2003) estimates if schools attempted to teach all the standards that have been identified in the 49 states that have adopted standards, as well as the standards recommended by national organizations that have weighed in on the subject, it would require 23 years of schooling. He concludes, not surprisingly, that the American curriculum is not viable; that is, it cannot be taught in the amount of time available for schooling.

                                          We  are  unaware  of  any  movement  to  convert  the  American  educa­tional  system  from  K-12  to  K-22,  and  therefore,  teachers  will  continue to grapple with the endemic curriculum overload of public education in this country. That overload has resulted in two significant barriers to student achievement. First, too many teachers make coverage of the cur­riculum a priority. The ability to say, “I taught it” becomes the primary objective, and student learning becomes a secondary consideration. Second, the overload forces teachers to make decisions about what they will teach and what they will exclude. As individual teachers make those decisions independently, what students learn becomes a function of the teacher to whom they are assigned, rather than a function of a common curriculum experience. A sixth-grade teacher who is assigned students from four different fifth-grade teachers in her same school cannot be certain of what those students were taught, much less what they learned. There is no “guaranteed curriculum” to assure all students have access to the same knowledge, skills, and dispositions (Marzano, 2003).

                                                     Doug Reeves (2002) offers the most insightful recommendations as to how educators should respond to the plethora of standards they are called upon to teach. Reeves makes the common sense argument (one which he then supports by research) that not all standards are created equal; some are simply more important, or powerful, than others. For example, a state may include “identifying the main idea of a reading passage” and “naming the capital of each of the 50 states” among their standards for fifth-grade students. Few people, however, would argue that the ability to recall state capitals is as significant to a student’s suc­cess as his or her ability to read a passage and understand its meaning.

Reeves (2002) offers a three-part test for teachers to use to identify the most significant or powerful standards: endurance, leverage, and readiness for the next level of learning. As he explains:

Endurance

“Standards that meet the criterion of endurance give students skills or knowledge that remains with them long after a test is completed. Standards on research skills, reading comprehension, writing, map reading, and hypotheses testing are all examples of enduring knowledge”.

Leverage

“The criterion of leverage helps the leader and teachers identify those standards applicable to many academic disci­plines. Two examples that one can find in every set of academic standards are nonfiction writing and interpretation of tables, charts, and graphs. The evidence is quite clear that if students engage in more frequent nonfiction writing, their performance in other academic disciplines improves”.

Readiness for the next level of learning

To address this criterion, a collaborative team of teachers would ask the team of colleagues in the grade level above them to identify the essential knowledge and skills students must acquire to be successful in their class next year.

A school committed to helping all students learn at high levels must have a process in place to ensure that every teacher is clear on the ques­tion, “Learn what?” for each course, grade level, and unit of instruction. Reeves may refer to power standards, Marzano to a guaranteed and vi­ able curriculum, and Lezotte to clear and focused academic goals, but they all are advocating the same principle: Schools are more effective when the teachers within them have worked together to establish a clear and consistent understanding of what students must learn.

2. How will we know if each student is learning each of the essential skills, concepts, and dispositions we have deemed most essential?

This question serves as a linchpin of the collaborative team process. Before team members can answer it, they must back up to clarify what students must learn. And after attempting to answer it through a vari­ety of assessments, they will confront the challenge of responding to students who had difficulty at the same time they extend and enrich the learning for students who demonstrated proficiency. Thus, the work of the collaborative team flows up and down from the challenge of assess­ing student learning in the most authentic and beneficial ways.

3. How will we respond when some of our students do not learn? What process will we put in place to ensure students receive additional time and support for learning in a timely, directive, and systematic way?

We submit that what typically happens when a student does not learn will depend on the practices of his or her individual teacher rather than on any coordinated, collective response. Furthermore, in traditional schools teachers bear no responsibility for the learning of students who are not specifically assigned to their classroom. This traditional structure has contributed to the norm of teacher, isolation and to uneven and inequitable support for students.

4. How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are already proficient?

One of the concerns expressed about the PLC concept is that its attention to the learning of all students will divert resources and atten­ tion to students who are struggling to the detriment of students whose learning could be enriched.

Thank you.

Let's we will make better world..!

UBApepi team