Why PLCs Matter

Certainly what we have learned over these several decades is how very important it is that what it is that teachers know and the relationships that adults have with one another. That relational trust is absolutely critical to be able to advance the learning of students. And I'm going to do a shout out one more time for Elaine Allenssworth. Her work on relational trust and how it impacts the learning of students is phenomenal. Now, here's the trouble with PLC's. The trouble is that there actually hasn't been a lot of formal ongoing development of what professional learning communities are. There's little attention that is given to how it is that adults work together during teacher preparation programs. And I want to be really really clear about about all of that too because I work in teacher preparation programs. There's a lot of content that we're subscribed to be able to do by the state. And so adult learning, unfortunately, is not a part of those teacher preparation standards. And so here's what happens. A new teacher is fresh out of the university, is hired in their first school, and they look over what the agenda for the week is going to be. And it says something on there about that there's a PLC meeting on Wednesday mornings. And so they go with whatever the meeting is on that particular day. And that becomes the way that they believe PLC's should function. Now, there are lots of good, really, really good professional learning communities that are out there, but there are also a lot of professional learning communities that have kind of gone sideways, much like the whisper game, where the message has really degraded along the way. Another uh another item that gets in the way in terms of how it is that professional learning communities should be implemented is a fundamental misunderstanding about what the professional learning community is. The professional learning community is the organization. There are teams that function within that organization, but the professional learning community itself is the organization, whether it is the school organization or the district organization. And so what that means is that there need to be mechanisms for how it is that we feed innovation. There are brilliant things that some teams are able to accomplish, but if there's never an opportunity to be able to share what those innovations are, then we end up with this silo. There's a there are silos of excellence that are in existence, but we don't get to be able to spread innovation. And that really undermines the consistency and the coherence of the school organization itself. And again, massive amounts of research, including Elaine's research, about how very important consistency and coherence are in being able to move school organizations forward. I hope I've articulated an argument that PLC's have to be done, right? Doug and I have been working now for a number of years along with other colleagues around really kind of reconceiving what the next generation of professional learning communities uh can be and and should be and what they look like. That model is really five questions that help to drive the investigation cycle. That investigation cycle starts with that first question where are we now? The second question, where do we want to go? That third question, how do we move learning forward? That's the instruction question that seems to be have been left out of lots of models. That fourth question, what have we as adults learned from one another today? And that fifth question, who benefited and who did not? Now across those crosscutting values, those crosscutting values include how is it that we hold high expectations? How is it that we ensure that collective efficacy among the adults continues to be built? How is it that we ensure that there is equity and fairness in all of the work that we do? How is it that we make sure that we are continuing to learn from one another? Again, it's really about being able to equip educators with decisionmaking authority to make consequential decisions about what it is that they're doing, what it is that they're learning about.