Principal's Spotlight on Learning: Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

by Matthew Sidarous, principal

Especially if you're new to District 7, you may wonder why our students release earlier each Wednesday. School days are really busy and do not leave dedicated time for collaboration, learning, and analyzing our student data. A number of years ago, the district began learning more about this growing movement (which started gaining popularity in the 1980's!) called Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and all of our leaders agreed that not only would this accomplish the goals listed above related to collaboration, learning, and data, it actually would benefit the education of our students. I know that sounds crazy to believe that not having students in school would help them educationally, but PLC's allow teachers and staff the time to enhance the learning for all!

During our team time, teachers spend time creating assessments to quickly assess each student's learning, analyzing the most up-to-date information about their progress, and creating interventions and groups to meet their needs. At times, they'll meet with the grade level above them to identify ways they can have the students even more prepared for the next grade. Having dedicated time during the day to do this makes this all possible! This cyclical process ensures that we are clear on what our students should know, how we measure if they know it, how we will respond if they don't learn it, and finally, how we'll extend the learning for students who already know the material.