The Why, The What, and The
How of Implementing PLC’s
The process is a good form, a user friendly form
of INNOVATION in a school
 The approach is centered on student learning,
student achievement, and acquisition of
knowledge and skills by students
 The approach is centered on a team of teachers
and administrators supporting each other, and
reflecting on and calibrating their methods
 If done correctly, and over time, it becomes the
culture of relationships among colleagues
 Going from doing good work, to great work!

“Good is the enemy of
great…..good organizational
performance can cause
complacency and inertia instead
of inspiring the continuous
improvement essential to
sustained greatness.”
Jim Collins, 2001
“Yeah, but how are we going to have the time to
work in a PLC?”
 “Yeah, but how can we find the time to give
students extra time and support learning with
our current schedule?”
 “Yeah, but how can a PLC work in a school this
small, or this big, or this poor, or this rural, or
this suburban, or this inner city, or this low
achieving and despondent, or this high achieving
and complacent?”
 “Yeah but how can we make this work with our
ineffective leadership. Or our ineffective
teachers, or central office, adversarial teacher
association, and so on?”

What
is first order change?
What is second order change?
Have you heard of them before?
Do they apply to this school district?
At what stages are you?
 Proceeds
the next most obvious step to take
 After a need for a healthy change is
identified, the steps to making this change
are incremental, gradual, subtle, and
perhaps even comfortable
 A huge element of effectiveness for First
Order Change is as follows:
Incremental change fine-tunes the system
(Your school and system) through a series of
small steps that do not depart radically from
the past set of procedures, expectations, and
experiences
 Lets discuss a couple of examples.
Dramatic
departure from the
expected or usual routine, process,
course of action
A deep change which alters the
system in fundamental ways
A dramatic shift in direction
Requires new ways of thinking
Requires new ways of acting
Often requires new, expansive, and
extensive training
An extension of the
past
 Fits with existing
beliefs
 Is consistent
w/prevailing values
and norms here
 Can be implemented
with existing
knowledge, skills, and
resources
 Usually has common
agreement that the
change is necessary

A break from the past
 Does not fit with
existing beliefs
 Conflicts with
prevailing values and
norms
 Requires having new
knowledge, skills and
resources
 May be resisted
because only those
with a broad
perspective of the
school see it as needed

“Merging is change, but can be autonomous”






Determines the characteristics of the school which
colleagues desire to create (Address the current
reality of your program here)
Builds consensus on purpose and most important
focuses of the PLC work (Among this is universal
understanding of terms, concepts, and actions taken)
Establishes and keeps collective commitments to
others in the PLC
Establishes and tracks specific goals to monitor
progress
Crafts strategies for achieving these goals (each
member is accountable to each other for utilizing
these strategies)
Focuses on results through ongoing assessment, not
on activities or intentions
The rationale for any strategy
for building a learning
organization revolves around the
premise that this organization
will produce dramatically
improved results.”
Peter Senge, 1994, p.44
 “Remember
[…] if you are to move your
school and district towards greatness, you
must have the discipline to confront the
facts of your current reality, whatever
[those] facts might be.” Collins, 2001, p.13
 Culture vs. Climate
 Clarify
as a team, what your priorities are
 Based on your priorities, Identify a limited
set of focused goals, obviously embedded in
student learning
 Establish indicators of progress to be
monitored with watchful eyes
 Use well-defined processes to establish these
goals in each classroom, and to be spoken of
and used by each team member (remember,
consensus and collective commitments
PLC Goal
“Implementing
Best Practices for
Writing Learning
Objectives”
What have I
learned that I
am applying in
my classroom?
Evidence of
Implementation:
Evidence of Impact:
What have we
learned which
we are applying
in our
classrooms?
Evidence of
Implementation:
Evidence of Impact:
Which elements of
reading knowledge,
process, or
strategies to teach,
will we vertically
teach in all grades?
Evidence of
Implementation
:
Evidence of Impact:
Determines the characteristics of the school
which colleagues desire to create (Address the
current reality of your program here)
 Builds consensus on purpose and most important
focuses of the PLC work (Among this is universal
understanding of terms, concepts, and actions
taken)
 Establishes and keeps collective commitments
to others in the PLC
 Establishes and tracks specific goals to monitor
progress
 Crafts strategies for achieving these goals (each
member is accountable to each other for
utilizing these strategies)
 Focuses on results through ongoing assessment,
not on activities or intentions







Gather evidence of current levels of student learning
Develop strategies and ideas to build on strengths
and weaknesses in both instruction and student
learning
As a team, implement, monitor, and evaluate
implementation and actions taken
Analyze the impact of those steps and strategies on
student achievement and instructional practice,
determining whether they were effective and why, or
not effective and why
Apply in practice the new knowledge, strategies,
etc., learned from this
Measure the impact of implementation on student
learning and achievement through observation,
reflection, and multiple forms of assessment
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 build good to great [teams
and organizations] make as much use of
“stop doing lists” as they can with “to-do”
lists. They have the discipline to stop doing
all the extraneous junk.”
Jim Collins, Good to Great, p.139
What
are they supposed to be
learning? What knowledge and
skills should every student
acquire as a result of this lesson,
unit, etc.? What are we using to
determine this? (Idaho State
Standards and Objectives,
Pacing, etc.)
 How
will we know when they have learned
it? In other words, how will we know
when/that each student has acquired the
essential concepts, knowledge, skills, and
ability to apply new concepts and skills?
What are our indicators? What determines
when we are satisfied constant learning is
happening?(Classroom based assessments,
observation, formative assessment,
summative assessment, attentiveness to the
Spiraling curriculum)
What
are we going to do if they
are not learning the knowledge
and skills? What determines
when we either step in and
intervene, or trust they will pick
it up through repetition and
mastery? What determines the
types of and frequency of
interventions?
Total Instructional Alignment
I
C
E
Instruction
Curriculum
Evaluation
 Vertical
curriculum alignment
which leads to
 Common understanding by each
teacher/administrator, of what each
teacher teaches, what the goals are
which leads to
 The creation of common assessments
and
 The creation of common interventions
Measures common or congruent concepts
 Provides similar data driven by congruent
concepts
 Vastly enhances the commonality of dialogue
about student learning an progress when
teachers and administrators can relate to each
others’ students and data information
 Are efficient, and are equitable for students
 A best strategy taken by a team for determining
whether the curriculum is being taught, and is
aligned to state objectives
 Builds a team’s capacity to improve the program
 Show individual teachers how their students are
performing due to their instruction, compared to
other members of the team

PLC Goal
“Implementing
Best Practices for
Writing Learning
Objectives”
What have I
learned that I am
applying in my
classroom?
Evidence of
Implementation:
Evidence of
Impact:
What have we
learned which we
are applying in
our classrooms?
Evidence of
Implementation:
Evidence of
Impact:
Which elements
of will we
vertically teach in
all grades?
Evidence of
Implementation:
Evidence of
Impact:
Response to Intervention
Tier 3
Tier 2
Tier 1
Getting started
Determines the characteristics of the school
which colleagues desire to create (First, address
the current reality of your program here)
 Builds consensus on purpose and most important
focuses of the PLC work (Among this is universal
understanding of terms, concepts, and actions
taken)
 Establishes and keeps collective commitments
to others in the PLC
 Establishes and tracks specific goals to monitor
progress
 Crafts strategies for achieving these goals (each
member is accountable to each other for
utilizing these strategies)
 Focuses on results through ongoing assessment
and debriefing, not on activities or intentions

1. What are the students to
supposed to be learning?
2. How do we know they are
learning?
3. What are we doing if they
are not learning?
Gather evidence of current levels of student
learning
 Develop strategies and ideas to build on strengths
and weaknesses in both instruction and student
learning
 As a team, implement, monitor, and evaluate
implementation and actions taken
 Analyze the impact of those steps and strategies on
student achievement and instructional practice,
determining whether they were effective and why,
or not effective and why
 Apply in practice the new knowledge, strategies,
etc., learned from this
 Measure the impact of implementation on student
learning and achievement through observation,
reflection, and multiple forms of assessment

“The most effective change processes are
incremental—they break down big problems
into small, doable steps and get a person to
say ‘yes’ numerous times, not just once.
They plan for small wins that form the basis
for a consistent pattern of winning that
appeals to people’s desire to belong to a
successful venture. A series of small wins
provides a foundation for stable building
blocks for change.”
-James Kouzes and Barry Posner (1987, p.210)