School Improvement and Professional Learning Communities

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• School Improvement and Professional Learning
  Communities

March 30, 2007 Dennis King, Ed.
D. dking_at_bluevalleyk12.org
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• Creating a
• Professional Learning Community
• is a journey...

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It begins with a shared understanding of where
you want to go, together,
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and is fueled by a continuous process of
building the skill and the will to share
responsibility for the success of all learners.
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When I shoot a 65 or 68, as close to a perfect
score as I can, I still have missed 5 shots.

• Jack Nicklaus

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What is the business of our business?

• Judith Bandwick

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What is the target?
PLC
Student Learning
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Professional Learning Communities

• The most promising strategy for sustained,
  substantive school improvement is building the
  capacity of school personnel to function as a
  professional learning community.
• Milbrey McLaughlin

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Fundamental Assumptions

• We can make a difference Our schools can be
  more effective.
• People improvement is the key to school
  improvement.
• Significant school improvement will impact
  teaching and learning.
• Re-culturing is the key to school improvement.
• Schools that function as a PLC is our best hope
  in re-culturing schools.

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Structure v. Culture

• if you want to change and improve the climate
  and outcomes of schooling - both for students and
  teachers, there are features of the school
  culture that have to be changed, and if they are
  not changed, your well-intended efforts will be
  defeated.
• Seymore Sarason (1996)

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Need for a Professional Learning Community

• Throughout our ten-year study, whenever we found
  an effective school or an effective department
  within a school, without exception that school or
  department has been a part of a collaborative
  professional learning community.
• Milbrey McLaughlin

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Big Ideas of a Professional Learning Community

• Foundation
• Shared mission, vision, values, goals
• Collaborative teams FOCUSED ON LEARNING
• Collective inquiry into best practice and
  current reality
• Action orientation/experimentation
• Commitment to continuous improvement
• Results orientation

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Barriers to Learning Community

• Inability to establish clear and focused
  educational purpose and goals.

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MVVG - The Foundation

• If a school is to withstand inherent turmoil
  involved in substantive change, the foundation
  must be solid.
• DuFour, Eaker, Dufour

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Foundation of PLCs

• Mission - Why do we exist?
• Vision - What do we want to become?
• Values/Collective Commitments - How must we
  behave in order to create the kind of school we
  want to become?
• Goals - What steps are we going to take and when
  will we take them?

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Mission Statement - Why do we exist?

• What is our fundamental belief?
• Focused on Learning

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Traditional School v. Learning Community Mission

• Statements are generic
• Statements are brief such as We believe all
  kids can learn or Success for every student.

• Statements clarify what students will learn
• Statements address the question, How will we
  know what students are learning?
• Statements clarify how the school will respond
  when students do not learn.

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Critical Corollary Questions

• If we believe that all kids can learn
• What is it we expect them to learn?
• How will we know when they have learned it?
• How will we respond when they dont learn?
• What do we do when a student has learned?

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Variations on a ThemeAll Kids Can Learn!

• Based on ability
• If they take advantage of the opportunity
• Something, and we will create a warm, pleasant
  environment for them
• And we will do whatever it takes to ensure they
  achieve the agreed-upon standards

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Vision Defined

• Vision describes a realistic, credible,
  attractive future, a condition that is better in
  some important ways that what now exists. A
  vision is a target that beckons.
• Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus

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Traditional School vs.. Learning Community
Vision

• Averages opinions
• Is dictated

• Builds shared knowledge
• Is shared

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Begin Building Shared Vision by Building Shared
Knowledge

• What does the research advise us in terms of best
  practices for improving schools?
• What is the current structure and culture of our
  school?
• What data are available about our school? Can we
  paint a picture of our school using nothing but
  data?

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A Vision that Focuses on Results Not Good
Intentions

• What is our current (data-based) reality?
• What is our vision of what we hope to become as a
  school?
• If we achieve our vision, what impact will we see
  on the data?

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Importance of Shared Vision

• You cannot have a learning community without
  shared vision.
• Building shared vision must be seen as a central
  element in the daily work of leaders. It is
  ongoing and never ending.
• Peter Senge

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My Ideal School

• Imagine that you could single-handedly transform
  your school into the organization of your dreams
  in five years
• What would the three BIG IDEAS be?

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Importance of Shared Vision

• You cannot have a learning community without
  shared vision.
• Building shared vision must be seen as a central
  element in the daily work of leaders. It is
  ongoing and never ending.
• Peter Senge

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Question Being Addressed

• How do we need to act in order to achieve our
  vision?

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Traditional school vs.. Learning Community
Values

• Random
• Excessive
• Articulated as platitudes or beliefs
• Focus on Others

• Linked to vision
• Few in number
• Articulated as attitudes, behaviors, and
  commitments necessary to advance the vision
• Focus on self

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Focusing on Ourselves

• Conversations about empowerment always seem to
  turn to a discussion of how we are going to
  change other people. The focus outward, looking
  for the difficulty in others is how we betray
  ourselves. The revolution begins in our own
  hearts.
• Peter Block

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Example Vision Statement

• Our school will provide all students with a
  common core curriculum. Student advancement
  through the curriculum will be based on
  demonstrated proficiency. There will be close
  monitoring of each students proficiency, and
  adjustments made to curriculum and instruction
  based upon that monitoring.

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Our Collective CommitmentsValue statements

• Identify a series of value statements for the
  school you hope to become in five years.
• In order to achieve our vision we will..
• We will teach to the agreed-upon course outcomes
  and provide evidence that each student has
  achieved those outcomes.

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Question Being Addressed

• What steps will we take and when will we take
  them?

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Traditional School vs.. Learning Community Goals

• Random
• Excessive
• Focus on means rather than ends
• Impossible to measure
• Not monitored

• Linked to vision
• Few in number
• Focus on desired outcome
• Measurable performance standards
• Monitored
• Short-term and stretch

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Goals Should Address the Following Questions

• Which steps should we take first?
• What is our timeline?
• What evidence will we present to demonstrate our
  progress?

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Identify a SMART goal for your school

• Strategic and Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Results-oriented
• Time bound

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Are These SMART Goals?

• By the end of the 2004-2005 school year we will
• Implement three new reading strategies aligned
  with the skills and concepts outlined in the
  state standards.
• Increase the use of cooperative learning
  activities in our classrooms by 25.
• At least 90 of second grade students will score
  80 or higher on the district reading assessment.

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The Biggest BIG IDEA of a PLC

• The guiding principle of a PLC is that the
  purpose of the school is to ensure high levels of
  learning for all students.
• Will focus the attention and energy of the entire
  school on learning.
• The frame of reference for all decisions will
  become, what is the impact on learning?

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Reflective Questions

• Think of policies and practices in schools that
  are inconsistent with the fundamental assumptions
  all kids can learn and success for all students.

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A Powerful Guiding Principle

• Great organizations simplify a complex world into
  a single organizing idea or guiding principle.
  This guiding principle makes the complex simple,
  helps focus the attention and energy of the
  organization on the essentials, and becomes the
  frame of reference for all decisions.
• Jim Collins

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Making the Complex Simple

• If we could truly establish high levels of
  learning for all students as the guiding
  principle of the school, and if we were willing
  to honestly confront the brutal facts of the
  current reality in our school, the right
  decisions about what to do and what to stop doing
  often become evident.

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Addition by Subtraction

• The challenge of becoming a PLC demands more than
  adopting new programs and practices. We must
  also demonstrate the discipline to discontinue
  much of what we have done traditionally.

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The Need to Stop Doing

• Most of us have an ever-expanding to do list,
  trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing -
  and doing more. And it rarely works. Those who
  built good-to-great organizations, however,
  made as much use of stop doinglists as to do
  lists. They had the discipline to stop doing all
  the extraneous junk. Jim Collins

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Collaboration is one of the Big Ideas that
drive a PLC

• We can achieve our fundamental purpose of high
  levels of learning for all students only if we
  work together. We cultivate this collaborative
  culture through the development of high
  performing teams.

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What makes an effective meeting?/Team Protocols

• Team norms
• Method of Consensus
• Vision
• Agenda with assigned minutes per topic
• Time keeper
• Critical Questions for Teams
• SMART Goal
• Interventions
• Product orientation

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To Do List Stop Doing List

• Create systems and procedures to develop the
  collective capacity of staff to work together
  interdependently as members of collaborative
  teams.

• Stop allowing teachers to work in isolation.
• Stop settling for collaboration lite.
• Stop focusing on congeniality more than
  collaboration

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What is congeniality? Avoiding the Mary Poppins
Principle.

• Congeniality has to do with the extent to which
  teachers and principals share common work values,
  engage in specific conversation about their work,
  and help each other engage in the work of the
  school.
• The emphasis on human relations management has
  resulted in the value of congeniality becoming
  very strong in the way schools are managed and
  led. Congeniality has to do with the climate of
  interpersonal relationships within an enterprise.
  When this climate is friendly, agreeable, and
  sympathetic, congeniality is high. Though
  congeniality is pleasant and often desirable, it
  is not independently linked to better performance
  and quality schooling.
• Thomas Sergiovanni, 2004

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The Focus of Collaboration

• Collaborative cultures, which by definition have
  close relationships, are indeed powerful, but
  unless they are focusing on the right things they
  may end up being powerfully wrong.
• Michael Fullan

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Critical Corollary Questions

• If the mission is focused on learning,
• what is it we expect them to learn?
• how do we know they have learned it?
• how will we respond when they dont learn?
• how will we respond when they already know it?

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What is Collaboration?

• A systematic process in which we work together,
  interdependently, to analyze and impact
  professional practice in order to improve our
  individual and collective results.
• DuFour, DuFour and Eaker

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Culture Need for a Collaborative

• 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

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Need for a Collaborative Culture

• If schools want to enhance their capacity to
  boost student learning, they should work on
  building a collaborative cultureWhen groups,
  rather than individuals are seen as the main
  units for implementing curriculum, instruction,
  and assessment, they facilitate development of
  shared purposes for student learning and
  collective responsibility to achieve it.
• Fred Newmann

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Interventions

• What do we do when students dont get it?
• Classroom Interventions
• Grade Level or Department Interventions
• School Interventions

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Pyramid of Intervention Strategies
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INTERVENTION PYRAMID
Special Education Placement
Screening and Evaluation for Special Education
Problem Solving Team
Systematic School Interventions How does the
school respond when students dont get it?
Grade Level / Department/Classroom Interventions
- SMART Goals Early Interventions What do we
need to know prior to the start of school?
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Results Orientation

• Big Idea 3

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PLC - Results Focus

• We assess our effectiveness on the basis of
  results rather than intentions. Individuals,
  teams and schools seek relevant data and
  information and use that information to promote
  continuous improvement.
• Becky DuFour

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Results Oriented Culture

• Shifting paradigms from
• We taught it, but they didnt learn it, to
• They didnt learn it. What do we need to do
  differently?

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Culture

• What is culture?
• How do we define culture in a PLC?
• How is culture defined in your school?

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Change is Complex!

• Any significant innovation, if it is to result in
  true change, requires individual implementers to
  work out their own meaning.
• Michael Fullan

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Myth vs. Realities of Change

• Myth Everyone wants to embrace change because
  the organization wants to change
• Realities
• Most people act first in their own self interest,
  not in the interest of the organization
• Most people do not want to understand the What
  and Why of organizational change
• Most people engage in organizational change
  because of their own pain, not because of the
  merits of change
• Jerry Patterson, Coming Even Clearer About
  Organizational Change

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From Theory to Action Closing The Knowing -
Doing Gap

• Ten Barriers to Action
• Substituting a decision for action
• Substituting mission for action
• Planning as a substitute for action
• Complexity as a barrier for action
• Mindless precedent as a barrier to action.
• Internal competition as a barrier to action
• Badly designed measurement systems as a barrier
  to action
• An external focus as a barrier to action.
• A focus on attitudes as a barrier to action.
• Training as a substitute for action

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From Good to Great

• When all these pieces come together, not only
  does your work move toward greatness, but so does
  your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to
  have a great life unless it is a meaningful life.
  And it is very difficult to have a meaningful
  life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you
  might gain that rare tranquility that comes from
  knowing that youve had a hand in creating
  something of intrinsic excellence that makes a
  contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that
  deepest of all satisfactions knowing that your
  short time here on earth has been well spent, and
  that it mattered. - Jim Collins

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What we know today does not make yesterday
wrong, it makes tomorrow better.
Carol Commodore

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Professional Learning Community Schools

• Community begins with a shared vision. Its
  sustained
• by teachers who, as school leaders, bring
  inspiration
• and direction to the institution. Who, after
  all, knows
• more about the classroom? Who is better able to
• inspire children? Who can evaluate, more
  sensitively,
• the educational progress of each student? And
  who
• but teachers create a true community for
  learning?
• Teachers are, without question, the heartbeat of
  a
• successful school.
• Ernest Boyer
  (1995, p. 31)