Navigating the PLC Journey: Your GPS to Fulfilling the Promise of Learning for All

Jason A. Andrews

This session is an ultimate navigation tool. Imagine your PLC journey as a transformative GPS where you plot paths and checkpoints. What mile markers let us know we are on the right route?

Jason A. Andrews goes beyond summarizing and connecting key aspects; he intricately maps out the intersections of essential PLC actions, revealing how they form a GPS-like framework for continuous improvement. Prepare to be motivated, invigorated, and equipped with turn-by-turn guidance needed to drive positive change in your schools.

Participants are challenged to embrace PLC at Work architect Robert Eaker’s advice to “get started, then get better—forever!” as a rallying cry for transforming challenges into opportunities. This session is the start of a journey with a clear destination. Your PLC GPS will guide you in fulfilling the promise of learning for all. Let the intersections mark your path as you embark on this educational adventure with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

How to Make Our Promise a Reality

Tim Brown

A complete examination of the PLC at Work process reveals six interconnected characteristics that shape a school’s cultural and structural change. Tim Brown further clarifies how these characteristics develop collective teacher efficacy and strengthen our capacity to organize and execute the actions necessary to move closer to accomplishing our mission, vision, values, and goals.

Transformational Leadership: Effectively Addressing Resistance to PLC Process Implementation

Luis F. Cruz

As a result of the pandemic, inequities revealed nationwide beg the question, Are we really all in this together? Since schools do not exist in a vacuum and have inherited social inequities, educators must embrace bold leadership approaches to ensure high levels of learning for all.

As we reimagine school leadership in a new and challenging context, we must accept that our PLC journey is ultimately fueled by changing adult behaviors. But what happens when well-intentioned adults in our schools refuse to commit to the necessary behaviors?

Luis F. Cruz, a former elementary, middle, and high school principal, reveals insights from his best-selling book, Time for Change: Four Essential Skills for Transformational School and District Leaders (Solution Tree, 2019), to guide participants in the work of creating robust PLCs. In addition, Dr. Cruz reminds us of the moral imperative we all share as the driving force for PLC implementation back home.

The North Star: Making Our Compelling Future a Reality

Brandon Jones

Poverty. Illness. Learning differences. Behavior problems. Lack of motivation. Social and emotional needs. Language barriers. Insufficient funding. Prerequisite skill gaps. Limited time and resources. Increased state and national expectations. Does this list sound familiar? If the answer is yes, then you likely recognize challenges that stand in the way of your school becoming all it could be. You could probably even add to that list!

The fact is, all schools struggle with issues that impede learning. Yet, some schools defy the odds year after year. These schools consistently make progress toward the type of school they want to become despite daunting obstacles. The secret to their success lies not in the newest shiny program or a charismatic leader. Instead, the answer is much more realistic, attainable, and sustainable than you might think.

Brandon Jones outlines how to create your own North Star, a steadfast navigation point your team uses to make decisions and commitments that improve culture, learning, and growth for students and educators alike.

Behavior Solutions: Leveraging the PLC at Work Process to Teach Essential Behaviors

Mike Mattos

The fundamental purpose of a PLC is to ensure high levels of learning for all students. To achieve this mission, we know that some students will need support in mastering the behaviors needed to succeed in school and beyond. Every school knows this universal truth, but many schools lack the systematic processes to achieve outcomes.

Mike Mattos demonstrates how a school can leverage the PLC at Work process to identify, teach, assess, and intervene when students lack essential academic and social behaviors.

Participants can expect to:

• Learn how the entire school—the entire PLC—must work together to teach essential behaviors.

• Apply the four critical questions of the PLC at Work process to identify, teach, assess, and intervene around essential behaviors.

• Consider systematic, tiered supports to target behavior interventions.

Taking Action: How to Create a Highly Effective, Multitiered System of Supports

Mike Mattos

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators face an unprecedented challenge: how to close learning gaps created by months of school closures and uneven access to learning opportunities. Mike Mattos discusses steps schools can take to create a highly effective, multitiered system of supports to target learning gaps. He shows how the PLC at Work process creates the larger, schoolwide framework required to intervene.

Participants in this session:

• Gain an understanding of the guiding principles behind a multitiered system of interventions.

• Learn the essential actions that collaborative teams must complete at Tier 1 to respond when students don’t learn.

• Explore how to target prevention, intervention, extension, and remediation.

• Prioritize resources to meet student needs.

From PLC Lite to PLC Right!

Anthony Muhammad

The PLC at Work process has been accessible to educators for over 25 years. Schools and school districts have been enamored with the concepts, and many have attempted to implement the process at scale. Unfortunately, not nearly enough schools have fully implemented the process. Most settle for a modified, scaled-down version called PLC Lite. Anthony Muhammad explores the key leverage points that will guide any school into PLC excellence!

Participants in this session:

• Learn how to organize an effective guiding coalition to guide a school into the six tight elements of a PLC.

• Benefit from 25 years of PLC wisdom in the best practices used to secure full staff commitment to the process.

• Examine surveys and rubrics to measure and assess a staff’s current reality in the PLC process.

The 15-Day Challenge: Win Quick, Win Often!

Maria Nielsen

Maria Nielsen establishes, reboots, or re-energizes the work of collaborative teams. Schools nationwide are using this simple learning-assessing process to connect the dots of a PLC. Maria helps teams see the big picture of a PLC and put it all together in a recurring cycle of collective inquiry. The 15-Day Challenge is a practical way to bring the PLC at Work process to life.

Participants in this session:

• Clarify the work of collaborative teams.

• Establish steps for a guaranteed and viable curriculum.

• Explore the learning-assessing cycle in a unit of study.

Protocols for Results: Using Data Discussions to Lead to Higher Levels of Learning for All

Jeanne Spiller

Is your system overwhelmed with data? Using protocols to transform data into information is an efficient and effective way to improve results. Participants examine team tools to use data to drive instruction, impact student learning, and identify specific processes to meet district needs.

Participants in this session:

• Review research related to and examples of data-driven decision making.

• Apply multiple protocols for data analysis.

• Reflect on their school or district’s current reality, while identifying tools that can be used or modified to meet specified needs.

Grading and Reporting for Learning: The Five Stages of Evidence-Based Grading

Eric Twadell

Standards-based grading has often been cited as the “third rail of school reform.” And yet, this is an important destination on the journey to becoming a PLC that embraces assessment and grading practices and supports student learning. This session provides participants with a roadmap for differentiating professional development for teachers and teams interested in implementing standards-based grading.

Participants in this session:

• Gain an appreciation for using a learning map to differentiate professional development.

• Explore challenges associated with traditional grading practices and reporting results.

• Learn how to structure professional development and a learning map for teachers and teams specifically focused on standards-based grading and reporting.

• Explore the five stages of evidence-based grading and reporting.