Introduction
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e have had the privilege to work with collaborative teams across the United States as they implement the practices of professional learning communities (PLCs). During this process, we’ve worked with people assigned leadership roles, such as Curriculum Directors, Staff Developers, and Team Leaders, in school districts as well as with informal teacher leaders—teachers who are recognized as leaders by their colleagues and collaborative teams. We recognize the hard work it takes to make change happen and to commit to a belief that all students can learn at high levels. We’ve also been able to watch and support the work as these teams embrace and begin teaching the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; NGA & CCSSO, 2010g). In our work with these high-performing teams, we’ve learned a great deal about the collaborative process it takes to make this significant transition. This book is a product of our own learning: learning about the process and the CCSS themselves. We’ve noticed that there are some processes that remain the same in this change. Good teams function well when they have a common mission to ensure learning for all and a common vision of what learning will look like when it happens for their students in their grade level or course. Team members make commitments to each other and to their students—commitments that they are accountable for. They set stretch goals for success—goals that challenge them to reach higher than they thought might be possible. High-performing teams also know that they must do some things differently as they make this change. The culture of continuous improvement in a PLC will help your team meet these new levels of rigor for learning and will allow you to embrace new instructional strategies needed to support this rigor. Your team must be willing to look at your current common assessments and intervention processes to see how they must change to achieve deeper learning around more complex text, embedded mathematical practices, and literacy expectations in all subjects. Knowing that you are a part of a team makes the change less threatening. This book is intended to help stimulate your team’s work by providing ideas about how team members can support and facilitate change, examples of how other teams have successfully implemented the CCSS, and tools and templates for your team to use and modify to make CCSS implementation work in your own setting. We’ve written the book to support teams who are already answering the four critical questions of a PLC using their own state standards and who want to make the shift to the Common Core State Standards as smooth as possible. Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas Many (2010) identify the four critical questions of a PLC that provide a foundation for the work of collaborative planning teams. 1. What do we want our students to learn? 2. How will we know if our students are learning? 3. How will we respond when some students don’t learn? 4. How will we extend and enrich the learning for students who are already proficient? 1