These days, there’s a lot of talk about Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in education. Creating spaces for educators to collaborate and grow together is essential for student achievement.
With all the talk, it can be difficult to drill down to exactly how PLCs can positively impact student learning and teacher morale and how to set professional learning communities in education up to be sustainable and routine.
Research indicates that a high level of teacher collaboration significantly improves student achievement. PLCs that examine student work and analyze student data more frequently are likely to have higher levels of teacher morale.
BetterLesson recently held a webinar with educators from all over to discuss how we steer PLCs to focus on what matters most. Educators shared the following suggestions:
- “Close with a Recap and To-dos”
- “Exit tickets focusing on one take away to implement immediately”
- “I-D-S (Identify, Discuss, Solve, To-dos)
- “Closing with intention, even with a predictable sentence stem”
- “Narrowly defining a purpose and goal”
- “Today, we discussed ________, which was focused on one of our essential standards. My 2 biggest takeaways are ________; therefore, my 1 instructional intention for this week is _______.”
- Utilize the Data-Driven Instructional Improvement Strategy
Check out the full webinar on effective PLCs
When it comes to implementing professional learning communities in education spaces, educators shared it’s important to make time. Try out these educational strategies to get an intentional start to your PLC:
- Establishing Goals and Roles for PLCs
- Looking at Student Work
- Collaborative Professional Practices for Teachers: Lesson Study, Critical Friends, and Learning Walks
Creating PLC routines helps entrench the positive effects of professional learning communities in school districts. Educators have found that developing meaningful goals, aligning on the criteria of success (with student work, 8th grade, and science criteria examples), and maintaining strong, engaging PLC meetings will result in keeping your teachers invested and morale high.
Want to learn more about how a professional learning communities as part of a PD program can lead to increased teacher retention, higher educator morale, and engaging teachers to drive student achievement?
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