My Reflection on PLCs

I am fortunate enough to be in a school board and school that has focused on PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) for many years.  My school dedicates 30 minutes, every other week to staff working together in small groups as PLC time.  We have also been given the afternoons of many of our PD days to work in our PLC groups, an annual day with Allison Zmuda for our departments and (I believe) an on going offer of release time if we feel it necessary or beneficial to have more time to work on something specific with our group.  I have the impression that this is not the norm across the province, and I feel lucky to be in a board/school that dedicates this much time to the opportunity to work together.

(Can you hear the “But…” coming?)

Earlier this semester we were asked to share what we were doing in our PLC groups.  This was my reply:

_______ and I are currently using PLC time to work through the new Big Idea in 2D, and make sure our assessments match the Essential Questions for each unit.   I guess our goal is to have common assessments that we are comfortable with that focus on the Essential Questions and have a Big Idea that we can work with.

I hesitate to call this a Professional Learning Community, because I'm not sure what it is we are learning or that 2 people make a community.  I am disappointed that we do not have a clearer focus and I feel that we are on the same path we were on 4 years ago.  

I am also sad that no one else expressed interest in the book The Big Six, as I thought for sure that could be a unifying focus for history. ______ had told me she was willing to read it when I first mentioned it the first week of PLC. [Another colleague] didn't respond to the email about the book because she [is still working on a project in a different PLC], but she thinks she will be done by the next PLC time.  She is interested in reading the book, whether in a group or on her own. I was so sure this was would happen that I actually put it down on my ALP for my department goal.  

Lisa Unger

My concern was (is) that we are changing things simply because we have been given the time to work on something, and we don’t know what else to do.  The big idea and essential questions we have developed are not that much of a change from what we had before, and are not getting us better results.  I had previously suggested that we spend PLC time studying the book The Big Six to help us learn about teaching disciplinary skills in history.  I thought this would help us focus on our learning in our Professional Learning Community.  This had gone nowhere.  The response I got from my email was basically to stay the course.  That it was better to have 2 people making decision about a course than 5 so that something could be accomplished and that we are great teachers and will come up with something that everyone could use.

This past Friday we had Steven Katz as a guest speaker for our PD day.  He spoke about the importance of learning in a professional learning community.  Here are a few of my tweets from the session:

I really appreciated his message, and felt it fit really well with where I was in my PLC journey.  My challenge is figuring out how to make that learning happen.  I recognize that not everyone is in the same place in their journey.  One of my problems is getting to the “learning conversation” rather than “great discussions.”  In my PLC I have a problem with what Katz called being “superfice” (his word - cross between superficial and nice).

Our PLC has changed the Big Idea and Essential questions for each unit.  We keep playing with trying to come up with the ‘right question’ to ask grade 10 students that they can answer using evidence well. I feel like we are on a hamster wheel - we keep going around and around, but don’t get anywhere.  I think we need to figure out (i.e. learn) how to get students to use evidence better.  I am not convinced that it is about finding the exact right question as much as it is about increasing their skills with using primary sources or other evidence.  I just don’t know how to get off the hamster wheel to do this.