You are a teacher working in a school, and your principal just got back from a two-day DuFour workshop. She is fired up to create a PLC at your school, and she tells the staff that you are going to start working in collaborative teams, creating common assessments, analyzing student data, and differentiating based on assessment results. You are skeptical.
What are all of the concerns that you have about this new initiative? If the principal were to ask you "Why shouldn't we do this?", what would you tell her?
35 comments:
Let me start by repeating something I heard another teacher say while at the DuFour's workshop: "This PLC stuff, just like all other educational fads, will be replaced in a couple of years by something else."
I would ask her how long did she stick with the last great educational initiative? Education Initiatives are very similar to techology, as soon as you get your hands on one it is already considered "outdated." If you are not committed to PLC's for at least three to five years we will never see the benefits or its ineffectiveness.
Well, I have to disagree. I don't know anything about the Dufours and I haven't been trained in PLC (I will be interested in hearing from people who have), but I have to say that collaboration sounds great to me. Anything that will get us talking and sharing and working more together would be a good thing. Especially in English, we have become islands that do our own thing and don't often agree on the way to do things when we could be supporting each other.
That is not to say I wouldn't have concerns. From what I hear about the Dufours, they envision collaboration a little differently than I do. I see the object of our collaboration as lesson studies, and I think they see it as people studies. We should do it, I would tell her, but it is how we do that we should talk about. I love the idea of coming up with good lessons that work together--as described in the book The Teaching Gap (I think that was the title...). I do not like the idea of comparing student results on tests and concluding that you must be a better teacher than I am so tell me what it is you do. The focus is all wrong. If the lesson is designed together we can look at it and if it isn't successful, it isn't someone's fault, it just was a bad lesson for some reason we need to figure out.
This way it isn't as threatening but hopefully the results are the same--kids improve.
I agree with Brad and Greg. My concern that the enthusiasm about PLC's is a lightly veiled "bandaid" approach to reform. I agree that the proof of reform comes three to five years down the road. How does she expect to get staff and parents fired up? She hasn't had time to think that through.
I would first ask the principal who was going to be in charge of the PLCs. If you have good leaders they can be very successful, but if you have weak leaders they can be painful. I would also ask her to make sure she has a solid plan in place before implementing the PLCs. I've seen PLCs be very ineffective when poor planning was done for them.
On another note, I agree with Robin on the important of increased collaboration. I never understood why teachers always seem to try and hide all their good lessons/ideas from each other. Its almost as if they only want their classroom to do well and the rest of the school to suffer. With appropiate planning and leading of PLCs I think they could prove to be very effective.
This is similar to what really happened at my school 2 years ago. Let me tell you, there were MANY concerns, such as...When would we do all of this collaboration? We already have limited planning time, where would this additional time come from. Would any of the old initiatives that we've put in place be discarded or would PLCs be an addition to our growing list of things to do (besides teaching). Would there be formal training for the staff. How would PLCs benefit our students. Would PLCs prompt cookie cutter classrooms? Is there any empirical data supporting the use of PLCs?
Christian brings up some very valid and real concerns. I had a principal that attended a major staff development each summer and at the beginning of each school year she would introduce the new intiative for us to all take apart in. I don't have a problem with new intiatives, but I believe that you can't pile things on top of each other if you want success.
Christian reminds me that my principal did see PLC's as creating cookie cutter classrooms--and she LIKED that idea. She would be frustrated when she did her walk throughs and we weren't all doing the same lesson. And we did at first balk at the idea of when we were going to do all this collaboration since our plates were already piled high and overflowing. We also did not have any direction about how to do this collaboration, and everyone had different ideas about it. You need a plan for how to do it.
And remember what Schainker says, two heads aren't necessarily better than one; IT DEPENDS on the heads! What implications does that have for PLC's?
I would also argue that PLCs won't work unless common planning time is built into the master schedule. No common planning, no PLCs. Furthermore, many people fail to realize that the PLC model is about more than just collaboration on instruction. The DuFours advocate a "Pyramid of Intervention" to help kids who are struggling for one reason or another. While my school had supposedly implemented the PLC model, there was no evidence of any Pyramid of Interventions.
At my former school PLC's were a great thing. (For teachers that taught EOC's) If you did not teach an EOC the administration did not check to see if you were meeting. My PLC for Civics had so many differences of opinion, one of our AP's had to be there when we met every week. I think the collaboration goes through stages. Once people stopped praising themself for their own test scores and their own great lessons we finally started to get things accomplished.
The problem with PLC's is what if you are the only person in your school who teaches Psychology, then you have to find someone around the county to meet with on your own time. This is not a very big problem, just a minor glitch in PLC's
I agree with Brad. PLCs can be a good thing, with the correct settings in place. My school uses PLCs and we have common planning and delayed opening time to meet instead of afterschool time. However, the problem comes in when teachers have multiple preps. You can not be in two meetings at the same time. If you have EOC courses the priority, what about those courses that do not have EOCs? What about courses where there is only one teacher in the school such as Physics? (It has an EOC but at my school there is only one teacher due to the numbers.) Who does he collaborate with?
Last week, in Dr. Schainker's class, we spent some time with the ITCOT simulation and it seemed to me that 'building collegial relationships' was one of the components that provided the foundation for the most synergy. PLCs are developed around those relationships, and like many have mentioned above, PLCs are a process, not an overnight miracle-maker. I agree that PLC implementation must be strategic, and like all reform, must rally the stakeholders to buy-in before going forward.
Greg, I agree with you that much of the focus of PLCs is collaboration, and you make a great point that there is actually much more to the DuFours concept. You mentioned the Pyramid of Intervention which touches on the third of DuFours essential questions, "what happens when students don't learn?" I think your points remind us that if we are to truly embrace PLCs we must not only foster relationships within our teams, but we must also look critically at the current systems of intervention to target (and change) the points where we are failing to meet student needs - Capper's book reminds us that we should not tailor student needs to meet existing interventions, but we should instead tailor interventions to meet student needs.
Although I am not at my school this year, I volunteer and sub there on a regular basis and for the first time they have worked on the pyramid of interventions. For the previous two years, our principal introduced PLCs and required us to meet at least once a week. This year at the first staff meeting, they discussed the pryamid of interventions and put a plan into place.
I agree that PLCs can increase collaboration but I haven't seen evidence that this collaboration increases student achievement. At least not at my former school.
Do these interventions focus on the students or the lessons? That is a crucial difference to me. The PLC group is teachers working on teaching, I think ideally, not teachers working as counselors and social workers. I am guessing that my problem with the DuFours is that they focus on what else teachers can do besides teach, and frankly, that is their job--they are not social workers or psychologists or counselors. That is why I prefer a lesson study approach.
This scenario reinetrates the importance of thinking through a major school decision that is going to affect the entire faculty. There are so many components that are affected by this decision: scheduling, time for planning and training, materials, etc.
Although I like PLCs, to play devil's advocate....What about the other staff development opportunities for the staff? Since my school system has invested time and alot of money into DuFour, they do not have the monetary resources to send faculty to other staff development such as AP training. Teachers now have to pay for this out of their own pockets if they are going to teach those classes.
If I was skeptical, I would question how the PLC model is different than other new programs that teachers have been asked to adopt. I would want to know how this is going to effect how I teach. I would also want to know if the PLC model will get the proper time and support it needs to be effective. Many noble programs lose their effectiveness due to limited resources and time.
Some excellent articulation of challenges and criticisms associated with the PLC model.
So let's say that you're the principal in the situation described in the first post. Pick one of the criticisms/challenges voiced so far -- how would you answer it?
Having been fortunate enough to be part of the training at DuFour's conferences for the last two years, I can tell you that we ALL got really fired up about the potential this PLC system of collaboration presented for our school. It's not that the idea is new, it's that they have aligned it in such a way to increase time for teachers TO collaborate and outline strategies for implementation that seems credible to actually fully implement within a school. My principal said that we would build the system together with the guidelines the DuFours created, but tweak it as we go. We were in our second year last year, and there were far greater efforts being made to work collectively toward student success than I've ever seen. Teachers were starting to realize that they truly could not do alone what a team can accomplish together.
Robin, regarding your belief that it is more teacher-centered than student, I suppose that may happen if the system fails. The intentions seem to be that collective development and evaluation of methods and outcomes will identify areas of improvement in instruction in order to improve students learning. I strongly recommend for any system that is not working well together, operating as "seperate islands", to consider the strategies of PLCs as a means to improve upon their instructional objectives.
I have to agree with Greg (and others who agreed with him). I went to the DuFour workshop and I thought "GREAT! Something ELSE I have to do!" (very sarcastically of course). I think the idea of PLCs sounds good, but I'm starting to wonder about a statement that Dr. Reed made, with all of these new and "innovative" ideas that keep popping up, aren't they just "rehashing" of a previous idea? Teachers should already be collaborating, working together, thinking about students, planning together.....right?
I would also agree and say that if a school is not plugging in the time for teachers to collaborate, then what's the point of PLCs? Right now my school does the PLC during the Half-day PLC time. What sense does that make. Teachers are already wanting to leave when the students do or want to spend their time catching up on grading papers or something else. Then if they are only doing it during the half day time, which only occurs once every 2 or 3 months, then how effective is that collaboration? If you want teachers to work together, as an administrator you have to make a master schedule that accomodates.
I like the PLC idea because it requires interventions to help students before they fail rather than remediation after they fail. My greatest concern has to do with this principal's approach to creating a PLC. She returned from a conference full of enthusiasm and mandated a change. I would have presented the idea at a faculty meeting, and facilitated a discussion regarding the pros and cons of implementing a PLC and what it would look like in practice. If the majority of the teachers favored the PLC model, then you have the type of commitment to move forward. In order to completely transform a school, which is what a PLC seems to do you must have the commitment of the teachers.
In response to Dr. Graham's question. I would like to suggest some solutions to the criticisms regarding the need for common planning time, the differences of opinion among teachers, and the pyramid of interventions. As a principal, I would create common planning periods for each team of teachers to allow collaboration. I would also schedule an "intervention" period, so that students who have been identified through formative assessments for extra help can receive it during the school day. Finally, the differences of opinion and tension among faculty members that Brad brought up is a very real problem. I do think that the principal can play a major role in creating collective efficacy among department members. The principal must make it clear that the focus of all conversations during collaboration time is to be on student learning, data analysis, instructional strateigies, and student interventions. Teachers should leave whatever personal issues they may have with other teachers at the door. If this is not possible, then some changes in teaching positions may need to occur. Overtime through new teacher recruitment, the principal could slowly bring more teachers on board who understood up front that they would be working in a PLC school.
If I was principal, I would talk about the ability to share ideas and lessons among teachers. For instance in the Civics course, there are some teachers who are really strong in teaching government while other teachers are strong in economics. With PLCs, the students get to have both sections taught strongly due to teachers sharing ideas.
Also it makes life a little easier for ILT and new teachers to the school to have something concrete to look at when planning lessons and they can focus on small units at a time for benchmarks instead of the large picture of the end of the year which can be overwhelming.
One aspect of the PLC model that I do like is the analysis of formative and summative assessments by the teachers. The data can help teachers determine concepts that need to be re-taught and students that need extra tutoring. The data can also indicate areas of potential growth for each teacher during the clinical supervision process.
As a principal, I think you do have to be cognizant of the way you present the data. I would not present the data to the entire faculty with it disaggregated by teacher. Only data that pertains to the entire school should be shown to the faculty. In my opinion, individual teacher scores should only be shared with their team members. There is a lot of emotion tied to test scores, and I think principal's need to always remember that when working with data.
Marcia, I had not thought about the benefits for ILTs. I agree with your comments. I would also add the collaboration aspect of PLCs would allow new teachers to work with veteran teachers which would benefit both of them. The veteran teachers could help the ILTs with instruction and classroom management. They could also provide an outlet for the ILTs to share frustrations and successes. In my opinion, PLCs can help reduce new teacher turnover, keep veteran teachers current on new teaching methods, and develop collegiality among new and veteran teachers.
Ryan and Marcia, I agree with you regarding ILTs. PLCs can serve as a great support to new teachers. When I was a first year teacher I relied a lot on my grade level team to help me with lesson plans, discipline, organization, etc. PLCs are not that much different than grade level teams, department meetings, etc. Its just a fancy name for meetings we've always had!
Teaching is one of the slowest evolving professions. One of the reasons that we have not seen more advances in teaching is because educators do not collaborate enough. Look at the medical field, in comparison to education. In order to be a doctor you are required to work with other doctors for an extended period of time before you can ever practice on your own. Can you imagine how great teachers would be today if they had to do the same thing? Educators need to collaborate more and I think PLCs are a great way to do that.
I think I would question where in the world is she going to find time for the staff to do this. With all of the other programs and activities we have happening before school, after school and during school where would the time come from?
Greg-We have common planning at my school and it does help because we have time to meet together as a grade level and a subject level within our grade. We meet once a week and generally the meetings are productive. I could see this time shifting easily into PLC time. I agree with you though, no common planning, I just don't see it working.
I would advise my principal to be careful of any new programs implemented. Our school is in its second year of PBS and there are several members of the staff that struggles with they why this program has been pushed on them. Now, we have begun having weekly PLC meetings during our planning time and again, we struggle with what is its purpose when we only have 25 mins. To be completely honest, during this time, I find myself trying to plan for what I have going on in my classroom and checking the clock to see if I am late getting them from specials instead of paying attention to the topic.
I have enjoyed the readings this week since this is a new concept being implemented into schools.
If PLCs are truly focused on the learning of the students, and addressing students at-risk, then I am for its implementation within my school. The difficulty, as with any program, is timing and funding. My school has been discussing bringing in subs once a month in order for teachers to truly meet as a team, to plan to discuss students, meet with parents, ect. The problem is where are we to find the time and if we can find the funds. Our principal and SIT team voted that this was a great idea but have yet to see it come to fruition. We are hopeful and will press on with our weekly PLC meetings. Again, we are in the beginning stages and I am sure once we have a handle on the concept, we will be successful and students will reap the benefits of the program.
SharonC, I thought your comment about the rushed 25 minute planning time was very perceptive and honest. That does seem to be an issue...having time to have a quality PLC. If I was responding to the criticisms per Dr. G's last question, I would focus my answer on the student. If the teacher had the best interest in the students and if they are learning, I would tell the teacher that PLCs will help us focus on what the student is doing. It is not focused on the needs of the teacher, it is focused on the needs of the student. This might help show how it is different than other things that have come and gone. I also agree with Ryan's criticism of how this principal presented the idea.
I tried to obtain a good understanding of what exactly a PLC is. I tried to compare it with my own background and see if we do something similar. I suppose we do. Of course we don’t call it a PLC, but I would have to say that it is beneficial only if there is a fair amount of time available for the teachers and administrators to devote in order for anything to be successful. The mentality of the PLC needs to be cultivated among the students, otherwise if it’s not embraced by students and faculty, it shall fail.
I think a lot of the success for PLCs depends upon the drive of the administator. The principal I interviewed wanted to improve the collaborations on the PLC teams with a main focus being on the children and how were the students benefiting. She attended PLC meetings and helped facilitate the type of collobration and problem solving she believed was necessary. The results were that the students who were struggling with subject matter were able to receive addtional tutoring the very week they needed help. The teachers were able to identify these students immediately following the lesson. At the beginning of the year, the PLC talked about what was and was not working, their frustrations and concerns, and together came up with a more workable plan for everyone. If this type of possitive outcome is not being reached by everyone, maybe there were missteps in the implementation or reasons for the initial establishment. Sometimes, administrators are looking for a quick fix and don't really examine to see if their solutions are realistic or a good fit for their staff.
This blog reminds me of the in class discuss about the important of a mission statement (those that knew/use the school's mission statement thought it was a positive and gave direction to the school community). It seems as if you are involved with a well run PLC team, you love the idea and the help it provides. If you are opposed to the idea, or your committee is meeting to check it off their 'to do' list, it is a waste of your time and pointless. I spoke with another counselor at a different school and she said they only had one very productive PLC in the school.
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