I write this article this morning inside the Phoenix convention center, waiting for the final keynote speaker at a phenomenal conference about Professional Learning Communities.  It has been 3 days of tremendous learning and powerful takeaways.  

Professional Learning Communities, or PLC’s, have been around in education for a long time.  The basic premise of PLC’s is: by working collaboratively together, schools can have profound impacts on student learning, by identifying targeted learning goals, creating common assessments, and (this is the key element) then making sound instructional decisions based on the data.   There are, of course, more details to the process, and the process can look different from site to site.  But, this idea of professional collaboration, working as a team using a cycle of of inquiry, and dedicating the school to a continuous cycle of improvement is really what it’s all about.  

Fundamental to the PLC process are the 4 critical questions that teams of teachers, working together, should answer: What is that we want kids to know and able to do? How will we know if they learned it?  What will we do if they didn’t learn it? What do we do for the students who did learn it (extension learning)?  LASD teachers were exposed to these questions at our Jan. 19th professional development day and will use these questions as guides to improve student learning.

Have a great weekend.

Wade Spenader-Principal