In 2010, principal, Chantal Cazabon and vice-principal, Lucille Caron recongnized the to change the school culture. It was essential to break the cycle of closed classrooms and individualist attitudes. 

To establish a successful PLC, the leadership team worked with  the school community in order to establish norms and practices that would be condusive to learning. Educators were asked to outline what practices and behaviors they wanted to see in their school to promote learning. 

Pratices:

- all decisions must be made based on what is best for the students and learning;

- give the teachers time to collaborate with colleagues;

- strategies would be chosen from best practices and based on recent studies;

- decisions would be made based on hard data from provincial testing or in class data;

Behaviors: 

- professional courage to express differences without personal judgement;

- collaboration with colleagues towards a common goal;

 These pratices and behaviors became non-negociable.  Teachers were then able to have honest and professional discussions to increase student achievement.

 

 

 

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

In 2010, principal, Chantal Cazabon and vice-principal, Lucille Caron recongnized the need to change the school culture. It was essential to break the cycle of closed classrooms and individualist attitudes. 

To establish a successful PLC, the leadership team worked with the school community in order to establish norms and practices that would be conducive to learning. Educators were asked to outline what practices and behaviors they wanted to see in their school to promote learning. 

Pratices:

- all decisions must be made based on what is best for the students and learning;

- give the teachers time to collaborate with colleagues;

- Strategies would be chosen from best practices and based on recent studies;

- Decisions would be made based on hard data from provincial testing or in class data;

Behaviors: 

- Professional courage to express differences without personal judgement;

- Collaboration with colleagues towards a common goal;

 These practices and behaviors became non-negociable.  Teachers were then able to have honest and professional discussions to increase student achievement.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

Over the past 5 years, the Faculty at l'École élémentaire catholique Arc-en-ciel has embraced the PLC model. Our goal to assure the success of student has seen significant improvements in subjects tested: reading, writing and mathematics.

Academic alignment at precise times throughout the school year demonstrates what is the “end in mind” and what learning is required of every grade level.

A schedule for collaborative meetings was set up to allow same grade level teachers to meet approximately every 3 weeks within the school day. The attendance of the Principal to all collaborative meetings was essential to ensure this alignment, helps to keep the focus and also speaks to the commitment towards teacher development and student success. Ressource teachers  also are assigned to every collaborative team to provide content specific solutions and best teaching practices.

At these meetings, teachers chose a particular learning outcome, wrote common summative et formative assessments, discussed best practices et strategies, analysed data collected from formative assessments all while keeping in mind the 4 critical questions:  What do we want our students to learn (know, understand, do and communicate)?, How will we know (common assessments)? What will we do with students who have learned the essential outcomes? What will we do with those who have not learned the outcomes? What are the best practice strategies to implement and share with all collaborative teams?

For those students who had learned and those who had not learned, the collaborative groups of teachers created more time and differentiated instruction. As needed, students were regrouped according to level of achievement and specific instruction strategies were implemented. All students belonged to every teacher. The success of the students belonged to team of teachers because they all played a part in the student's success.

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

School culture can be very fragile. It is important to return and repeat our school's core values and vision regularly. The emphasis is put upon a growth mindset where errors are seen as opportunities of growth. Staff believes that the expectation where all students are learning at a high level also comes with high support from all the adults in the building.

In our collaborative teams, there is an expectation that each teacher identifies the learning needs of each student in relation with the learning outcomes that have set by the team. This information is shared with the team in order to identifiy best strategies to help each student.

By using student data to set our SMART goals, teachers have increasingly high and realistic expectations for our students. Teachers hold each other accountable to achieve these goals and in a successful PLC, teachers help one another achieve them. Success is celebrated by the team to allow this, all collaborative groups had an opportunity to demonstrate their work to other education professionals.

Our strategic planning for student success is monitored throughout the school year in the collaborative teams through our data walls and success comities created to maintain the focus on student learning based on relevant data.

These collective efforts make École élémentaire catholique Arc-en-ciel an effective PLC. 

Additional Achievement Data

The Frasier Institute  rated our school as the number one rated school in our district. As indicated in the table below, in 2013-14, our school was rated as 51st out of 3037 schools in Ontario.

2013-14 Rank 51/3037 Rank in the most recent five years 369/2348

FI Rating 9.3/10

School Information
Gr 6 enrollment	60
ESL (%)	n/a
Special needs (%)	21.7
Parents' average income ($)	n/a
Actual rating vs. predicted based on parents' avg. inc.	n/a

Academic Performance 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Trend Gr 3 avg. level: Reading 3.2 3.4 3.3 3.4 3.8 — Gr 3 avg. level: Writing 3.3 3.3 3.1 3.5 3.6 — Gr 3 avg. level: Math 3.1 3.3 3.1 3.2 3.5 — Gr 6 avg. level: Reading 3.0 3.1 3.0 3.5 3.8 — Gr 6 avg. level: Writing 3.0 3.2 3.1 3.5 3.5 — Gr 6 avg. level: Math 3.0 3.3 3.3 3.7 3.8 ▲ Gender gap (level): Reading F 0.4 E F 0.5 F 0.1 F 0.2 — Gender gap (level): Math F 0.2 M 0.1 F 0.6 M 0.2 E — Tests below standard (%) 15.0 12.3 20.2 4.3 1.7 — Tests not written (%) 0.9 1.4 0.3 0.9 0.9 — Overall rating out of 10 6.4 7.8 5.3 8.5 9.3 —

 

Our school was recognized by our superintendent as a host school welcoming educators from across Canada who wished to implement PLC in their school.

Recognized by the Frasier Institue as number one rated school in our District (2013-2014);

EQAO results: 

 

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