The Educational Partners LLC
With Superior Solutions LLC
Your Partners in Educational Excellence!
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Increased Learning for All Students is Our Goal
Products:
Professional Learning Communities:
Part 1: An Overview of Effective PLCs (PDF)
Part 2: Research: PLCs as Effective PD (PDF)
Part 3: The Principal's Role (PDF)
Part 4: Reference Page (PDF)
Part 5: The Impact of PLCs on Achievement
Services:
Vision-Driven Walk Through Seminar
Being an Effective PLC Faculty-Meeting PD
PLC Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation Package
Just When You Need It PLC In-services
This includes half-day, one day, two day, and three day workshops.
Overview of Services
Focusing on Results PLC Seminar Package
This seminar package includes 10 days of team-based professional development workshops given throughout the year along with a mutually agreed-upon number of days of onsite coaching during the implementation and evaluation process. Learn More (PDF)
Vision-Driven Walk Through Seminar
This set of eight seminar sessions given throughout the year along with two to four days of onsite coaching a month is focused on helping your school develop a shared vision of what excellent instruction and active learning should look and sound like in each classroom.Becoming an Effective PLC Faculty-Meeting Staff Development Package:
This package focuses on helping your school/district develop the structures that are necessary to become a highly effective Professional Learning Community. It includes monthly or twice monthly full-staff workshops built around your school/district's data-driven student achievement goals. These workshops are designed to be delivered during staff meetings or district administrative meetings. In addition, it includes ongoing onsite coaching for the PLC teams. Learn More (PDF)
PLC Strategy Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation:
With the federal and state focus on all students making AYP, none of us in education can afford to wait until the end of the year to evaluate the success of the school improvement/student achievement goals we have put in place in our districts or schools. We need our goals to be written as SMART Goals with specific, multiple, ongoing ways to measure and monitor their success in increasing student achievement, but even more than that, the results need to used immediately to impact student learning.
TEP understands this need and can help you implement effective ways to monitor and evaluate the learning systems you are putting in place in your district or building. To do this, our team utilizes the inquiry-based data-driven decision making process, which is an ongoing process that utilizes SMART Goals, Action Steps, and data collection and analysis to provide ongoing evaluation of the program. Learn More (PDF)
Just When You Need It PLC In-services:
While TEP believes in job-embedded ongoing professional development around your goals, we realize that it may not meet your immediate needs. Therefore, we have several in-services for you to select from in this category. These workshops are highly interactive and are designed to meet NCSD’s Standards.
Ø Exploring the Possibilities: An Overview of What Research Says about Highly Effective Professional Learning Communities
Ø Developing a Learner-Centered School: Aligning Our Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals to Our Learners’ Needs
Ø Conducting Vision-Driven Walk Throughs
Ø Unlocking the Power of Teams by Building a Collaborative Culture
Ø Communicating Effectively within and across Teams: Moving from Conflict to Consensus
Ø Putting Our Assumptions on the Table
Ø Making Inquiry-Based Data-Driven Decisions
Ø Focusing on Results and Planning for Success: Creating SMART and Effective Action Plans
Ø Engaging in Action Research
Ø Creating and Using Common Formative and Summative Assessments
Ø Transforming Summative Assessments into Assessments for Learning
Ø Looking at and Planning for the “What if’s…” What do we do if our students don’t learn? What do we do for our students who already know it?
Ø Reflecting on the Past and Planning for the Future: End of the Year Review
Ø Implementing the Student Achievement Goals into the Classroom
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Research Says:
“Research emphasizes that coaching is a prerequisite for the implementation of new skills or strategies” (Showers, Joyce, & Bennett, 1987 in DuFour & Berkey 1995) like those that are part of a PLC.
This means that “providing teachers with ongoing support after the initial training is critical to the success of any innovation” (DuFour & Berkey 1995).
This is especially true with the formation of PLCs because most teachers are being asked to change long-standing instructional practices.
Therefore, “leaders need to assist teachers in improving their classroom performance; leaders can look to others, either inside or outside the physical building, but the leader must be certain that help is available” (Hord 1997 b) if they want the PLCs to succeed.
Therefore, coaching is an important resource in the development effective Professional Learning Communities.
TEP has a coaching service to match your needs.
There is a huge body of evidence showing the positive impact of Professional Learning Communities, so let’s take a second to restate some of the proven advantages here.
Effective Professional Learning Communities serve a dual purpose. First of all they center their full attention on student learning. By shifting the focus from “I taught it” to “my students learned it”, Professional Learning Communities have “contributed to high performance by:
Ø Ensuring that all students learn
Ø Fostering a culture of collaboration
Ø Focusing on results” (Fullan 2005)
Secondly, by engaging teachers in ongoing dialogue and discussion around student work and by providing job-embedded professional development, PLCs have had a positive impact on schools by:
Ø "Developing teachers’ skills
Ø Improving the quality of ongoing interaction among staff
Ø Achieving a coherent focus
Ø Mobilizing resources
Ø Developing school leadership" (Newmann, King, & Youngs 2000 in
Fullan 2005)
In looking at the above list it is easy to see that PLCs not only help the students, but they also help the educators. In fact, “recent research shows that the kinds of professional development that improve instructional capacity display four critical characteristics; they are:
Ø Ongoing
Ø Embedded within a context so that they meet the specific needs of a particular setting
Ø Aligned with reform initiatives
Ø Grounded in a collaborative and inquiry-based approach to learning” (Senge 1990; Knapp 2003 in Annenberg 2004).
All of the above factors are part of Professional Learning Communities.
In addition, research says, “effective professional development to improve classroom teaching concentrates on high learning standards and on evidence of students’ learning. It mirrors the kinds of teaching and learning expected in classrooms. It is driven fundamentally by the needs and interests of participants themselves, enabling adult learners to expand on content knowledge and practice that is directly connected with the work of their students in the classroom” (Corcoran 1995; Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin 1995; Little 1988; Elmore 2002 in Annenberg 2004). Again, we are describing PLCs.
Therefore, according to the research, along with increased student achievement, Professional Learning Communities are one of the best ways to engage in effective school improvement and productive staff development. As Schmoker says, “We can no longer afford to be innocent of the fact that “collaboration” improves performance” (Schmoker 2004). Stiggins and Chappuis agree with him saying, “When teams commit to shaping the ideas into new classroom practice, reflecting on the results, and sharing the benefits with each other, professional growth skyrockets. Teams reach their ultimate goal of changing classroom assessment practices in specific ways that benefit students” (Stiggins & Chappuis Winter 2006).
The National Staff Development Council goes on to explain that “staff development that has as its goal high levels of learning for all students, teachers, and administrators requires a form of professional learning that is quite different from the workshop-driven approach. The most powerful forms of staff development occur in ongoing teams that meet on a regular basis...for the purposes of learning, joint lesson planning, and problem solving. These teams...operate with a commitment to the norms of continuous improvement and experimentation and engage their members in improving their daily work to advance the achievement of school district and school goals for student learning” (NSDC). Thus professional learning communities become not only a means to improve student achievement and increase student learning, but they are also the most effective way to engage the staff in professional development themselves.
© 2007 The Educational Partners LLC