Cycle Three: Schools as "Embryonic Communities"

Several years ago our district began on the Professional Learning Community journey.  While this journey started as a 9^th grade transition intervention it soon bloomed into a district wide initiative that is now just part of the “way we do things around here” philosophy.  In an effort to reduce 9^th grade failure rates we began a system of breaking the 9^th graders down into smaller teams that all shared a common set of teachers who met 3 times a week to discuss curriculum, analyze data and conference with students and parents.  The success of the PLC model reduced the 9^th grade failure rate from 35% to now less than 5%, with a 0% failure rate still being the goal.  Soon the PLC model would extend beyond what we call 9^th grade teaming so that every teacher was a member of a PLC with time to meet built into the school day.  Becoming a PLC school is not something that happens overnight.  There has to be a large culture shift within a school.  Teams have to establish norms and protocols, and teachers have to learn how to function as a collaborative group.  Teachers are used to having a closed door policy.  Many educators have the attitude that “this is my classroom, I do what I want, I teach my curriculum and this is my data” and to function as a PLC school an individual or groups of individuals cannot have this attitude.  On the website All Things PLC there are many great articles about PLC’s, how to start PLCs, change the culture and how PLC’s are successful.  PLC’s don’t just have to be within one district they can be between schools districts.  Upon the success of PLC’s within our own district, a regional PLC began between 5 schools and their biology departments.  The biology teachers from 5 schools would meet and study the Iowa Common Core against our own curriculum, exchange ideas and resources and analyze test data.  We were a regional PLC. 

I think the part about PLC’s that directly influenced success rates, is that we were looking at the students as individuals and trying to ensure the success of each individual student.  With a team of teachers watching over a smaller group of 9^th graders we were able to see issues with individual students earlier on and intervene.  We were more focused on the success of each student rather than just class averages.  One example is South Elementary School in Missouri which has also found success with PLC’s. The same things that derived from PLC’s in South Elementary happened in our school as well.  Our focus became about the learning, not the teaching.  As South Elementary discovered “In a PLC school, teachers work together by writing common assessments, planning curriculum, and sharing teaching duties. Teachers often refer to students as “our” students instead of “my” students, reinforcing the collective atmosphere. Teachers work together to identify at-risk students, and teams problem-solve to intervene for each student. “   

A PLC can then lead to the undoing of the “factory system school” as Dewey calls it.  On our journey as a PLC school this is where I see my classroom and our district at now.  Through our PLC system we have taken the focus off the classroom as a whole and put the focus on each individual student.  As Dewey points out in his book, The School and Society, schools will only be successful “by being true to the growth of all individuals”.  PLC’s help by focusing on the growth of each individual student.  As schools go deeper into the PLC process they will discover that the teacher and student need to be a partner in the learning process.  In Dewey’s book The Child and the Curriculum he promotes “an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student”.  Through PLC work teachers begin to look at students as individuals and how to make each one successful.  Teachers believe that if they can function as a community of teachers than their classrooms can function as a community as well.  Now if we can fertilize the communities with a little technology this whole concept of “embryonic communities” begins to really take shape.  When I think about Dewey, I think he would have loved the concept of Wikipedia and Google and 1:1 initiatives in schools.  As a teacher, if I can stop being the vessel of all knowledge then there is more time to be attentive to each students interests and needs.  I can begin to differentiate instruction based on students’ interests and academic level and I can help my students to build a community culture.  This is where technology and the flipped classroom allow for the classroom Dewey, and I, envision.    

In the article, Building Community in Schools, it is written that, "People are bonded to each other as a result of their mutual bindings to shared values, traditions, ideas, and ideals" and “that we might better understand, design, and run schools as social rather than formal organizations and, in particular, as communities”.  When I think of my classroom I want it to be a community with an attitude of, “All for One and One for All”.  A place where it is acceptable to fail if you try again until you succeed, where we value our individual interests and learn from each other, where the goal is learning and we will all help each other to learn.   At the high school level this is difficult because they are part of the “factory system” and we are trying to change the factory when they are only a couple years from exiting.  As students experience the culture at a younger age it will be easier to continue that culture at the secondary level.   Good school reform is finally here.  While Dewey’s book is from the early 1900’s he had ideas that were never implemented the way they should have been and his ideas are exactly what needs to be happen to education in the year 2012 and beyond.  Sometimes I think things weren’t implemented or changed because teachers are not trusted, but if a schools begins with PLC’s, builds a collaborative culture for teachers, allows teachers to be leaders, the snowball effect will be school reform that ends the “factory system” of education and finally creates schools that resemble real life.  

Resources:

Culture Making - One of the major things that has to happen to create a community in schools is to change culture.  Culture change can be very difficult and can not just come from administrators but from colleagues.  

Changing the Culture of Schools - In this article it talks about how PLC's can bring about the necessary culture change.

All Things PLC - Everything there is to know about PLC's

Coalition for Community Schools - Great FAQ about community schools