SUPPORT

What policies, practices, and structures do we have in place to support quality teaching and learning?

Documents

PLC Observation Form

Guide to Designing Effective Assessments

Unwrapping The Standards

The Collaborative Expertise

Despite compelling evidence indicating that working collaboratively represents best practice, teachers in many schools continue to work in isolation. Even in schools that endorse the idea of collaboration, the staff's willingness to collaborate often stops at the classroom door. Some school staffs equate the term “collaboration” with congeniality and focus on building group camaraderie. Other staffs join forces to develop consensus on operational procedures, such as how they will respond to tardiness or supervise recess. Still others organize themselves into committees to oversee different facets of the school's operation, such as discipline, technology, and social climate. Although each of these activities can serve a useful purpose, none represents the kind of professional dialogue that can transform a school into a professional learning community.

The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement.

From: What is a Professional Learning Community, by: Richard DeFour

At North Marion School District we know that the thing that has most powerful impact on student learning, is a "teacher's collective efficacy" (Hatti). For North Marion this takes the form of Professional Learning Communities, as well as other professional development and leadership opportunities that provide teachers with the support they need to be the best teacher they can be.

We have built our support structures to provide teachers with the knowledge and skills they need to teach in the 21st century, and continually commit to providing the needed time and resources to support teachers in all that they do for students in our district.

At North Marion we base our PLCs on the structures mapped out by Richard DeFour in his book "Whatever it Takes." By utilizing the data team process, we are able to take a close look at how our students are achieving, and design new and innovative ways to better meet their needs.

From All Things PLC

"The very essence of a learning community is a focus on and a commitment to the learning of each student. When a school or district functions as a PLC, educators within the organization embrace high levels of learning for all students as both the reason the organization exists and the fundamental

responsibility of those who work within it. In order to achieve this purpose, the members of a PLC create and are guided by a clear and compelling vision of what the organization must become in order to help all students learn. They make collective commitments clarifying what each member will do to create such an organization, and they use results-oriented goals to mark their progress. Members work together to clarify exactly what each student must learn, monitor each student’s learning on a timely basis, provide systematic interventions that ensure students receive additional time and support for learning when they struggle, and extend and enrich learning when students have already mastered the intended outcomes."