Slides from Alison Olzendam's standing-room-only presentation "But What are Your PLC's Talking About?" at the 2009 OSPI Conference.

1. But What are Your
PLC’s Talking About?
January 7, 2009
Leadership Innovations Team
Alison Olzendam, Ph. D.
alison@leadershipinnovationsteam.com

2. Targets for today
• Know and understand the research behind
effective teaching practices
• Understand why a PLC is powerful
• Know how to provide data driven staff
development

3. Operating principles for today
• Safe learning environment
• No learners can opt out
• No wrong answers
• Model, not mandate!

4. Strategy we will use today
• Find a partner for each of the following:
• Rock N Roll
• Disco
• Latin

5. Why an instructional focus? Why
leadership? Marzano
Scenario Percentile Entering Percentile Leaving
Average School / Average 50 50
Teacher
Highly Ineffective
School / 50 3
Ineffective Teacher
Highly Effective School / 50 34
Ineffective Teacher
Ineffective School / Highly 50 63
Effective Teacher
Highly Effective School / 50 96
Highly Effective Teacher
Highly Effective School / 50 78
Average Teacher

6. Why Collaborate in PLC’s?
Factors Affecting Student Achievement
School Factors
•Guaranteed & Viable Curriculum
•Challenging goals and effective feedback
•Parent & community involvement
•Safe and orderly environment
•Collegiality and professionalism
Teacher Factors
•Classroom curriculum design
•Instructional Strategies
•Classroom management
Marzano “What Works n Schools”

7. Why Collaborate in PLC’s?
Schools with strong Professional
Learning Communities (PLC’s) are
4 times more likely to be improving
academically than schools with
weaker professional communities.
Kappan “School Reform and Professional Development” Lewis, Anne.

8. 1. What conclusions can you make?
2. What are you curious about?
Grade 10, Writing 1999
100
Percent Meeting Standard
80
60
40
20
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percent Low Income (Free or Reduced Lunch)

9. Rock n Roll over to that partner
• Scatterplots.
• How do you explain the differences
between the two slides?

10. Effective Staff Development?
• Think of a training that was effective in
changing your practice
• What were the elements of that training
that made the difference?
• Write them down
• Disco on over
• Share them with your partner

11. Effective School…Effective Teacher
• How do teachers improve practice?
• Staff Development
• What staff development activities have the
greatest impact?

12. Professional Development Processes:
Impact and Use

13. Why a focus on instruction?
• “The top performing school systems
recognize that the only way to improve
outcomes is to improve instruction”
• McKinsey & Company. How the Worlds
Top Performing Systems Come Out On
Top (2007)

14. So how do students learn best?
• Instruction that works for all students
• How People Learn
• Project-National Research Council
• Funded by US Department of Education
office of Educational Research and
Improvement
• Research based messages that are clear
and directly relevant to classroom practice

15. Research: How People Learn
You have 20 minutes. Jigsaw “How People
Learn.” Groups of 4-similar roles
1-page 15 #1
2-page 16, #2
3-page 17, #3
4-page 18 Bringing Order, to page 19
Read to yourself first. You will then teach
your section to the group. Underline, etc.
What are the implications for your work?
Be ready to discuss.

16. Looking at the Research
How People Learn – Key Findings
• Students come to the classroom with
preconceptions about how the world works.
• To develop competence in an area of inquiry,
students must have opportunities to learn with
understanding.
• A “metacognitive” approach to instruction can
help students learn to take control of their own
learning.

17. How People Learn
• Adults are people too!
• Dance over to your Latin partner
• Read the last page of Chapter 2 of How
People Learn

18. Share your staff development training
With your partner discuss which elements were
present:
Learner centered?
Knowledge centered?
Assessment centered?
Community centered?

19. If instruction is the key, and PLC’s
are the structure
• How do we talk about instruction?
• An instructional Protocol
• Provides a common language and a clear
target
• The first instructional protocol?
• We use The Student Learning Protocol
• “The Essential Practices of High Quality
Teaching and Learning” MacGregor

20. What an instructional framework is
NOT…
• Intended to be used for evaluation
• A silver bullet
• It will not be the tool, but how teachers
utilize it that will make the difference
• A program, a new thing to add to already
overloaded teachers
• Teachers already talk about instruction
• This tool provides clarity and focus

21. Two powerful tools for teachers:
• A structure that allows them to talk to each
other and share knowledge
• Professional Learning Communities,
Critical Friends, etc.
• And a way to talk to each other, an
instructional framework or protocol
• Provides a common language and clear
target

22. THE GOAL!
• To turn over the ownership of student
achievement to those that have the greatest
impact…
• Teachers!
• And then support them.

23. Charlotte Danielson
• When teachers use the same framework,
they improve communication because
they’re using the same set of concepts
and terms to describe phenomena. In
addition, by using the framework, they can
be sure that the areas chosen for
improvement are truly those most in need
of work.

24. Using the Student Learning Protocol…
• Not every practice every day
• Look for evidence in what students are
doing
• Page for reflection

25. A tool for use in PLC’s
• Common language, clear target
• A Professional Learning
Community…what better way to improve
practice than with other experts?
• Teacher factor…school factor

26. PLC’s…collaboration? Talking about
what?
• The results suggest that although these types of
organizational reforms may succeed in
improving the culture within which teachers
teach, they alone are unlikely to improve
instruction and student learning. The
communities that develop are often not
communities engaged in instructional
improvement (Supovitz, 2002).
• It is clearly not enough for teachers just to
collaborate; there needs to be a focus on
instructional practice and an intentional
structure for observation and dialogue

27. A four year study in a district
• Developing Communities of
Instructional Practice
by Jonathan Supovitz
• About a fourth of the time
Professional Learning Communities
made an impact on student
achievement.

28. Effective communities of learners…
• First, effective communities prepare for
instruction collaboratively, taking
advantage of preparation as a learning
opportunity. They examine and discuss
student work in relation to standards and
how it is differentially produced through a
variety of instructional approaches.

29. Effective Communities of Learners…
• Second, community members sometimes
teach together, often observe each other
in the act of teaching, and always feel safe
in doing so. Based on these common
experiences, they offer constructive
criticism of each other’s strategies.

30. Effective Communities of Learners…
• Third, communities flexibly and
purposefully regroup their students to take
advantage of both the strengths of team
members and the advantages of small
student groups for particular instructional
purposes.

31. Together…
• A multiplier effect
• A structure, a Professional Learning
Community
• A tool that provides a target for instruction
• A survey that gives direction to
instructional teams
• Adults don’t argue with their own data!

32. Resources
• McKinsey & Company. How the Worlds
Top Performing Systems Come Out On
Top (2007).
• www.effectiveness.org The Essential
Practices of High Quality Teaching and
Learning. MacGregor
• Marzano, R. What Works in Schools.
• www.nsdc.org Graham, Ferriter. One
Step at a Time. Summer 2008, Vol 29 No.
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