Blog
Eliminating Bias in Grading: Teachers Collaborate on Student Assessments
The work of a professional learning community team is never done. Instead, teachers continuously navigate the world of standards, assessments, interventions, and extensions, using inquiry in an informed way to improve student learning. They begin a journey that becomes… Read more
PLCs and Self-Efficacy: What Is the Connection?
For those on the PLC journey, one of the most puzzling and frustrating realities is that we still see what Rick DuFour calls the “knowing-doing gap.” We know what to do, but we just don’t seem to… Read more
Fostering Shared Leadership
When teachers begin taking ownership – alongside administrators – for poor student achievement, they will gain ownership of solutions that are developed as a team. In 1933, Edward VIII shocked the world by abdicating the throne of England in order to marry Wallis Simpson, a divorced American socialite… Read more
Twitter for Singletons in a PLC
Bill Ferriter has been working to introduce learning teams and singletons to a range of free products and services that can make collaboration more efficient. This is an excerpt from his blog . . . Read more
Professional Learning Communities That Work in the Classroom
While reading Professional Learning Communities at Work™, I considerably marked up the margins with check marks and the letter U; the check marks meant “this is so important” and the Us symbolized that the ideas, as I saw them, were important because… Read more
Grading Formative and Summative Assessments
We received a question about grading, specifically how to balance grading between formative and summative assessments. The author was concerned because the grading practices of the teachers in the . . . Read more
Do We Have Team Norms or “Nice to Knows”?
Some teams do a great job of developing norms. Members agree and commit to them, even posting them on chart paper to be prominently displayed at every meeting. Elementary school teams often add… Read more
How PLCs Use Assessments
We received a series of questions from a school grappling with developing common assessments. I summarized the questions and attempted to provide a brief response for each… Read more
Adapting the PLC Framework for Small Schools
The professional learning communities approach (a collaborative focus on learning with the yardstick for success being the results obtained) resonates with so many educators right off the bat… Read more
Building Consensus for Change
Change involves managing the complex matrix of relationships and beliefs that exist in an organization and aligning them toward a mission of higher learning for all. In my career, there is no better example of this approach than when I recently implemented a new bell schedule to… Read more
Which School Improvement Approach Works?
It seems to me that there are three competing approaches to school improvement in the United States today that are based on very different assumptions… Read more
Self-Directed Teams Contribute to Sustainability
We received a question from a school where teachers were upset that the administration seemed to be dictating what was to occur at their team meetings. Teachers resented being micromanaged, and administrators felt… Read more
Join the Conversation With Rick and Becky DuFour
Just a reminder that this is the second day of our conversation which ends tomorrow. Click here and join in using VoiceThread. If you do not have an account, create one for FREE! Then you can . . . Read more
Special Education Used as Intervention
Isn’t the system of interventions what special education is designed to do? Some people think the PLC concept is just another version of special education. They suggest, “If the kids can’t cut it, why not just put them in special education? That’s why we have it… Read more
Tracking Team-Based Interventions
Preparing for our upcoming conversation with Rick and Becky DuFouron the steps that highly functioning professional learning communities take to provide enrichment and remediation opportunities for . . . Read more