Q.

"I'1000 interested in developing professional learning communities (PLCs) in my schoolhouse. I'g excited near the philosophy, only I'yard wondering how hard information technology would be to implement this program school-wide?"

A.

Professional person Learning Communities (PLCs) have been effectually for more than xx years. Today there are many definitions of what PLCs actually are and how they operate.

How PLCs began

At the beginning the basic idea of PLCs was to shift the focus in schools from teaching to learning. Teachers would work collaboratively to ameliorate teaching. Intervention, rather than remediation, would assistance students who were having difficulty.

Equally a master, I was once function of an early initiative to implement a PLC programme in my school commune. Teachers were trained in iii waves over the year with follow-up preparation scheduled in subsequent years. The district began the initiative with a state grant, but when the grant ended, information technology was difficult to discover funding in the almanac budget to continue training. As a result, while we saw balance benefits for students from instructor collaboration, a general delivery to the program was hard to sustain.

What is a PLC today?

Over the years a simpler and perhaps more manageable definition of PLCs has emerged. Today information technology more often refers to groups of teachers who work together to study new developments in education, review information, implement best practices, and give ane some other feedback and support. Of course, teachers must take a degree of autonomy to make instructional decisions. They also have to accept fourth dimension to come across.

To me, the beauty of today's PLCs is that y'all can start small. Begin with teachers who are invested in learning more about their arts and crafts, implementing new ideas, and supporting 1 another'south efforts. Teachers tin grade their own professional learning communities, and there may exist several groups in a schoolhouse that coalesce effectually the idea of collaboration to ameliorate instruction. Studies bespeak that when PLCs work they not only increase student achievement, merely also amend teacher morale. Researchers caution, however, that unless teachers buy into the ideas and the goals and strategies are clear, some will see PLCs as "just another meeting."

Writing in EdWeek Teacher, Rick DuFour, ane of the originators of the PLC movement, notes that PLCs are even so viable if done right.  There are literally dozens of books to help y'all navigate this initiative if you cull to keep. One is DuFour's Learning past Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work.

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