PLC at Work® and Your Small School

PLC at Work

P

Small-school leaders will:

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks to download the free reproducibles in this book.

SolutionTree.com

—Virginia Vandelicht

Director, Heart of Missouri Regional Professional Development Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri

“Daniels recognizes the uniqueness and challenges that come with leading a small school and outlines a path to success using the PLC process. This is a go-to book for leaders of small schools who want to build their collaborative culture and bring their staff members together.”

—Craig Mah

Principal, Walton Elementary, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada

DANIELS

• Learn how to develop a strong culture of collaboration among singletons and shared teachers • Discover how to effectively collect and use data to increase PLC effectiveness • Examine how to overcome barriers and embrace the positives in small schools • Find many real-world examples from smallschool PLCs and reproducibles and tools to aid implementation

“Small-school leaders often feel like PLC is for bigger districts and schools.

Daniels shows small-school leaders that they, too, can see success from developing and sustaining a PLC. This book will be tremendously helpful to small schools that may struggle with how to implement PLC tenets.”

Building, Deepening, and Sustaining a Culture of Collaboration for Singletons

LC at Work® and Your Small School: Building, Deepening, and Sustaining a Culture of Collaboration for Singletons is a guide for leaders seeking to transform their small schools into successful PLCs. Grounded in both research and her own experience as principal of a small, rural school in Wyoming, this book by Breez Longwell Daniels focuses on the unique role culture plays in many small schools—a role that should be central to PLC implementation. Daniels takes the reader through the big ideas and four critical questions of a PLC, providing guidance on how to best implement the big ideas and answer the questions in a small school with singletons and shared teachers. Leaders will also find guidance on effective scheduling, time management, use of data, and strategies to overcome obstacles unique to small schools.

and Your Small School

Building, Deepening, and Sustaining a Culture of Collaboration for Singletons

Copyright © 2020 by Solution Tree Press Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@SolutionTree.com SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks to download the free reproducibles in this book.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Daniels, Breez, author.

Title: PLC and your small school : building, deepening, and sustaining a culture of collaboration for singletons / Breez Longwell Daniels.

Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020005639 (print) | LCCN 2020005640 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949539615 (paperback) | ISBN 9781949539622 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Professional learning communities. | Small schools.

Classification: LCC LB1731 .D355 2020 (print) | LCC LB1731 (ebook) | DDC 370.71/1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005639 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005640

Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President and Publisher: Douglas M. Rife Associate Publisher: Sarah Payne-Mills Art Director: Rian Anderson Managing Production Editor: Kendra Slayton Senior Production Editor: Suzanne Kraszewski Content Development Specialist: Amy Rubenstein Copy Editor: Evie Madsen Proofreader: Kate St. Ives Text and Cover Designer: Laura Cox Editorial Assistant: Sarah Ludwig

Table of Contents Reproducibles are in italics.

About the Author Foreword

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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By W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Small School’s PLC Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 In This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Begin With the End in Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1 Breaking With Tradition

. . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The PLC Process and Small Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Challenges of Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Support for Cultural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The Seeds of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2 Establishing Vision and Goals

. . . . . . . . 23 A Vision Grounded in Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 A Process for Determining Essential Learning in Small Schools . . . 26 Evidence of Student Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 A No-Excuses Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Collection of Succinct and Reliable Baseline Data . . . . . . . . 34

3 Structuring Time

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 The Challenge of Structuring Time in Small Schools . . . . . . . . 41 What the Data Say . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Defining Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Essential Time in the School Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Intervention and Enrichment Within the School Day . . . . . . . . 66 Enrichment Versus Acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Maximize Minutes to Maximize Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 vii

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4 Building Your Culture

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Teacher Characteristics That Impact School Culture . . . . . . . . 74 Loose Versus Tight Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Culture and Staffing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

5 Supporting Collaboration

. . . . . . . . . . . 85 Types of Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Going Vertical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Vertical Teams in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Collaboration in the Smallest Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Roundtables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Site Intervention Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

6 Using Data

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Keys to Effective Data Use at the School Level . . . . . . . . . 110 A No-Excuses Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

7 Overcoming Barriers

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Maintain a Focus on Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Create Pathways to College Readiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Gain Support for the Value of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Address the Needs of Transient Families . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Have a No-Excuses Mentality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

8 Celebrating Success

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Celebrating Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Celebrating With Parents and the Community . . . . . . . . . 140 Celebrating Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Celebrating Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Ten Collective Commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Curriculum and Assessment Summer Work Protocols . . . . . .

Unpacking Essential Learning Through Vertical Alignment . . . .

Outcome Assessment: RI.6.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fall-to-Spring Data Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Student Reflection for English Language Arts Outcome Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Middle School Student Goal Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

References and Resources .

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151 152 155 158 163 169 172

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Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

About the Author Breez Longwell Daniels has served as fifth- to twelfthgrade principal for Hot Springs County School District #1 in Thermopolis, Wyoming, a rural community. She was principal of Thermopolis Middle School from 2012 to 2020, was interim middle school and high school principal for grades 5–12 from 2017 to 2020, and is now full-time principal of Hot Springs County High School.

In more than twenty years as an educator, Daniels has taught grades K–5 in small, rural schools, as well as eighthand ninth-grade reading strategies and social studies in a large junior high school. As an adjunct professor, Daniels traveled to more than fifteen U.S. states in ten years, providing on-site classes to hundreds of teachers in rural locations pursuing master of education in curriculum and instruction degrees through Lesley University.

Daniels was named Wyoming Elementary/Middle Schools Principal of the Year and a National Distinguished Principal in 2016–2017, and Wyoming Secondary Schools Principal of the Year in 2019–2020. At Thermopolis Middle School, Daniels and her team celebrated being named a model PLC in 2017, 2018, and 2019, and a finalist for the distinguished DuFour Award in 2018 and 2019. Daniels was also named a Rebecca Burnette DuFour Scholarship recipient at the Women in Education: Leading Perspectives Institute in 2019.

Daniels published her first article “Growing a PLC From Rural Roots” in AllThingsPLC Magazine in the fall of 2018. Daniels believes the Professional Learning Communities at Work® (PLC at Work) process transforms student learning in small schools through vertical-collaborative teams, the triangulation of data, and buildingwide roundtables for learning together. Daniels is an advocate for preparing small- and

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rural-school students for the academic rigor of college, career, and technical training, and military readiness, and she believes teachers in small schools are the crucial factors for student success.

Daniels earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a middle school endorsement from the University of Wyoming, a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Lesley University, and a K–12 principal leadership endorsement from the University of Wyoming.

To learn more about Breez Longwell Daniels, follow her on Twitter @breezLdaniels and on Instagram @breezdaniels.

To book Breez Longwell Daniels for professional development, contact pd@ SolutionTree.com.

Foreword

By W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear

I

n 1982, American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist Buckminster Fuller introduced his famous curve measuring the doubling of human knowledge. His thesis was that up until 1900, the compendium of knowledge doubled every century. We consulted Google and discovered the estimates are that human knowledge may be doubling as fast as every twelve hours! Microbiologist, science writer, and journalist Tim Sandle (2018) expects the rate to increase exponentially.

Educating students in an era of such vast information is a formidable challenge to any educator, let alone a floundering middle school in the southern reaches of Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Using the Professional Learning Communities at Work (PLC at Work) process, however, Thermopolis Middle School has managed to navigate a remarkable reversal. In the pages that follow, you will find the blueprint for how a small rural school district meets the challenge of preparing students for a sometimes bewildering, always changing, and increasingly complex world.

As anthropologists, historians, and authors who have made a career of studying and writing about of the collapse of cultures, we regard the modern world with more than a little trepidation. When futurist Alvin Toffler (1970) published Future Shock, he ably articulated the foundations of the world we now live in. Though education likes to adopt fads and proclaim relevance, as anthropologists we can tell you it remains one of our most conservative of institutions. Traditionally structured education is of as much value to students as buggy whips are to the modern transportation industry.

As author Breez Longwell Daniels so competently demonstrates in this book, our public schools must now become agile and responsive to an educational landscape that rapidly adapts to economic, technological, and cultural shifts. To do so requires that we jettison the rigid system that served our parents and grandparents so well; it xi

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was institutionalized at the end of the 19th century, after all—back when the aforementioned buggy whips were integral to getting across town.

The challenges of that task are immense. According to the Hoover Institution (Henry Miller, 2017) only 30 percent of Americans can understand the science column in the New York Times. A revolution in artificial intelligence will change everything from the way we drive, shop, travel, and communicate to our homes, aircraft, and medical procedures. Writing and understanding computer code is the new lingua franca—and not just for aspiring techies. Modern agricultural tractors are piloted in the field by GPS, and bulldozers move earth with computer-leveled blades.

Predictive statistics dictate management decisions in businesses that were once run on gut instinct. Daniels more than justifies the need for mathematical proficiency among all students.

No one explains globalism better than Thomas L. Friedman (2006) in The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. The notion that any small school district, be it in Wyoming, Alabama, or northern Maine, is either isolated or somehow insulated is a myth. Our young men and women entering the military will find themselves interacting with populations around the planet, and they won’t know the difference between a Shia, a Sikh, and a Shinto. Geography is no longer an academic abstract to those in military service or those multinational corporations hire. Students need to understand that in a “flat” world, an epizootic in Southeast Asia can bankrupt a chicken farm in Arkansas. We are inextricably tied together, and to be competitive in the world marketplace requires a diverse and complex skill set. It poses the question, How well are our schools meeting the challenge? Or should we ask, even if schools wanted to, “Could they?”

We live in an age where the divisions between belief and fact are becoming evermore blurred. Sensational fantasies are posted as incontrovertible fact, bias has replaced objectivity in journalism, religious doctrine supplants science, and a purely emotional argument is considered triumphant over cold logic. Like everything, the schools are becoming politicized, and here we make a plea for adoption of the PLC at Work process.

When the rate at which human knowledge is doubling and vocational complexity and specialization are cubed, most schools are faced with decreasing budgets and fewer hours of student class time. That complexity and specialization in the workforce requires ever-more intensive education to achieve even baseline proficiency.

Preparation for university admission will become more competitive in the 2020s. As Daniels points out, in the modern world, there is no such thing as unskilled labor.

While local school board members might like to delude themselves to the contrary, rural school districts are not isolated; they are inextricably tied to an increasingly

For ewor d

globalized economy, international politics, and geographic realities. Compounding all of this, preparing a student with the skills to sort out what is hyperbole, “fake news,” deceptive propaganda, scams, and absolute fantasy has never been more difficult. And then there is the ever-widening political divide—our modern form of declaring heresy.

What are we to do?

We could expand education—require more classroom hours, add staff, or go to a twelve-month school year. Right. Not going to happen! In the first place, we have a lack of political will to expand education. In the second, for most rural communities, the tax base couldn’t support the necessary revenue increase even if the will was there.

Which brings us back to the plea for the implementation of the PLC at Work process with its flexibility, reliance on unvarnished data, and dedication to the students—all students are our students.

As authors, we have published more than seventy novels based on archaeology, science, history, religion, mysticism, physics, and war. Though they are novels, we include bibliographies in many of the books. Our goal is to educate at the same time we entertain. At the beginning of our careers, we were not even close to proficient in those subjects. Neither of us ever had a class in either theoretical physics or southeastern archaeology. Instead, we had two fundamental skills: (1) we knew how to learn, and (2) we had been taught how to think critically.

Yes, PLC at Work is the most logical structure to provide students with a fundamental education in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.

Obviously, it cannot address all of the previously mentioned challenges. But at a more fundamental level, it provides a superior way for dedicated educators to teach students how to learn and how to think critically. With those two skills, students can conqueror the world!

References Friedman, T. L. (2006). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux.

Fuller, B. (1981). Critical path. London: St. Martin’s Press.

Miller, H. I. (2017). Scientifically illiterate America. Accessed at www.hoover.org/research /scientifically-illiterate-america on June 16, 2020.

Sandle, T. (2018). Knowledge doubles almost every day. Accessed at www.digitaljournal.com /tech-and-science/science/op-ed-knowledge-doubles-almost-every-day-and-it-s-set-to-increase /article/537543 on June 16, 2020.

Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. New York: Random House.

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Introduction

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ow does a small rural middle school in the middle of Wyoming effectively impact student learning in mathematics, science, and reading to become a model professional learning community (PLC)?

Thermopolis Middle School in Thermopolis, Wyoming, is a geographically isolated school with the Wind River Canyon at the south entrance, Yellowstone National Park one hundred miles west, and the Bighorn Mountains sixty miles north. In other words, there will never be an interstate highway in our backyard; a “traffic jam” in Wyoming is a cattle drive stopped in the middle of the road in late fall or early summer.

All students in Hot Springs County attend one K–4 elementary school (Ralph Witters Elementary), transition to Thermopolis Middle School for grades 5–8, and then go on to Hot Springs County High School for grades 9–12. Approximately 650 students in the district and 220 students in each building represent wide-ranging socioeconomic backgrounds, with 45 percent of students eligible for the free or reduced lunch program and 14 percent identified for special education. Approximately 20 percent of students are transient due to the town residents’ reliance on the boomand-bust cycle for jobs in the oil and gas industry, while less than 30 percent of students represent the families of community health care specialists, engineers, teachers, and other professionals with postsecondary educations (ESSA, 2019).

Each school has a staff of about eighteen full-time certified teachers, six certified staff members (who are shared across buildings in the district), and twelve support staff members.

Prior to starting work to become a PLC, Thermopolis Middle School was consistently ranked in the middle to bottom of the pack on the state assessment among the forty-eight school districts in Wyoming, with particularly low scores in mathematics 1

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and science. In December 2016, an unfortunate national press release via social media platforms ranked Hot Springs County as the “least educated county” in the state based on the level of postsecondary education of the adult population (“The Least Educated County,” 2016).

On December 26, 2016, one of the only statewide newspapers in Wyoming, the Casper Star-Tribune, ran this story, reporting that of the fifty least-educated counties in the United States, Hot Springs County ranked number forty-nine, with only 19.5 percent of adults twenty-five years or older holding a bachelor’s degree or higher (“The Least Educated County,” 2016). This type of press not only creates negativity about education in small towns but also highlights the need for public schools to champion high levels of learning for all students.

At Thermopolis Middle School, we face the same challenges as many other rural schools. Our students have a generational perception that they can leave high school and obtain high-paying jobs in the oil and natural gas fields or other trades. Many families with deep ties to agriculture push for traditional vocational training in high school. The challenge of these perceptions is that the world has changed significantly since the 1980s; vocational jobs require a high level of technical training specific to reading, mathematics, and science skills, as well as a solid foundation in computer science and technology.

A 2006 ACT college and workforce readiness study concludes the mathematics and reading skills a student needs to be an electrician, a carpenter, or a plumber are the same as those needed to be a successful first-year college student (ACT, 2006). This same study was cited again in a 2018 ACT (www.act.org) white paper referencing “Ready for What?” (LeFebvre & Mattern, 2018) in relation to ACT college readiness benchmarks and the correlation between the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics individuals must have to be workforce ready: In an analysis of leading career preparation practices and policies at the state level, the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) Career Readiness Task Force emphasized the need for establishing rigorous standards for all students, and that career pathways must offer both a college-ready academic core emphasizing real-world applications and a technical core that meets industry expectations. (CCSSO, 2014)

Parents and grandparents cannot use their own educational experience as a reference for the education their children and grandchildren will need to be successful in a modern economy. Learning to fix a small gas engine is no longer a core prerequisite skill for becoming an automotive technician; instead, students interested in an autos career path should be taking computer science courses. The same can be said of a

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student interested in farming; learning the coding required to run the FarmBot (a robot farming machine) may be a realistic prerequisite agricultural skill for today’s high school student—a skill not even imagined by farmers thirty years ago.

Small schools, especially those in rural communities, must honor the values of their rural roots while supporting a goal of achieving 100 percent measurable academic growth in mathematics, reading, and science for every student, every year. The implementation of the PLC process makes that possible, as our transformation at Thermopolis Middle School shows.

The results at Thermopolis Middle School speak for themselves; the state of Wyoming rated the school as exceeding expectations in 2013–2014 and 2016–2017, I was named a 2016–2017 National Distinguished Principal and Wyoming Principal of the Year, and the school was named one of three finalists for the DuFour Award, which recognizes the highest-performing PLCs from around the world, in 2018 and again in 2019. All of these are firsts for the Thermopolis educational community and directly link to our work to become a PLC. So how did our PLC grow? How did our staff take the big ideas of a PLC and increase student achievement and teacher effectiveness simultaneously in a small-school culture?

A Small School’s PLC Journey This book captures what is at the heart of small-school PLCs. The small-school PLC journey has its own distinct experiences compared to those of larger schools. Small schools—whether rural, charter, religious, urban content focused (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM], arts, and so on), private, or public—often have unique characteristics. They tend to reflect the communities they support. The story of Thermopolis Middle School’s PLC transformation is an example of how the PLC process and research base is fully implemented in a school with fewer than 250 students and in a district with fewer than 1,000 students. Content-area singleton teachers in mathematics, English language arts, science, and social studies work alongside shared staff, who travel within the district to teach music, art, and physical education. The Farm to School program (taught by our vocational agriculture teacher) takes center stage in our work to build a community of learners reflective of our community roots. Although teachers at Thermopolis Middle School are known as singletons in the world of education, they do not work alone or in isolation; rather, they are part of a high-functioning PLC, and this book gives you a look into a small-school PLC in action.

Throughout this book, you will find examples of data charts, SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, results oriented, and time bound [Conzemius & O’Neill, 2014]) goals, scheduling options, and evidence of effectiveness from the small schools

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in Hot Springs County School District 1 and elsewhere. The book will highlight the differences and challenges unique to small schools with singletons, and how to build, grow, and sustain a PLC using Richard DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Rebecca DuFour’s PLC at Work process, with adjustments to better fit small schools with singletons, while firmly grounded in the evidence of effectiveness central to the process.

Each chapter reflects on the unique aspects of education in small schools and the challenges of singletons. Chapters provide an overview of the big ideas of a PLC and how these ideas look in a small-school PLC, including challenges and barriers to implementation. Chapters wrap up with a Recommended Book Study that ties to the theme of each chapter. Each chapter also includes a section titled Take Action.

These action steps summarize the work that will move a small school forward with a focus on high levels of learning for all students. Narratives and artifacts throughout the book highlight Thermopolis Middle School’s journey and the action steps of other small-school PLCs.

In This Book Chapter 1 explains how it is easy to lose sight of the why and just exist in the day-to-day business of teaching and learning in a small-school culture. This chapter explores how the PLC process puts the focus back on student learning using the three big ideas—(1) a focus on learning, (2) a collaborative culture, and (3) a focus on results (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2010; DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016)—and the barriers and challenges small schools may face when beginning implementation.

Chapter 2 focuses on the what: what drives many small schools and the vision small schools must create for PLC transformation.

Chapter 3 is about time and how small schools can organize singleton teachers effectively for professional collaboration and to maximize student learning during the academic day.

Chapter 4 describes key players in any small-school PLC and the importance of a simultaneously tight and loose culture to clarify expectations.

Chapter 5 explores collaborative teams specific to the unique structure of small schools plus roundtables that provide meaningful and authentic ways for singletons to work together to achieve high levels of learning for all students.

Chapter 6 describes how data can be taboo in small schools, and how to overcome this challenge through shared knowledge, shared goals, and mutual accountability.

Chapter 7 takes a critical look at key areas where small high schools struggle when creating a no-opt-out learning environment for all students.

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Chapter 8 provides insight into how small schools recognize and celebrate when they are achieving success with student learning. The chapter ends with a description of traditions and innovations that will make any small school vibrant and student centered.

The appendix provides real tools for real schools. These are actual templates and exemplars from Thermopolis Middle School.

Begin With the End in Mind By the end of this book, the reader will have a full understanding of the multiyear process for bringing singletons together in small schools to improve learning for all students. As educator, author, and keynote speaker Stephen Covey (1986) notes, you should begin with the end in mind. At Thermopolis Middle School, we established ten collective commitments that define our day-to-day work. They are a reflection of our values as educators and professionals. These commitments represent our shared purpose and guide our daily work and decision making.

1. As educators, we are committed to continuous improvement, learning, and personal growth.

2. We will regard all students as our students.

3. We will keep student learning as the central focus.

4. We are committed to learning from one another and capitalizing on each person’s strengths.

5. We will provide challenging, rigorous, and developmentally appropriate curriculum through collaborative work on the four critical questions of a PLC. 6. We will focus on measurable academic growth for every student in reading, mathematics, and science.

7. We will establish and communicate high expectations for all students in a positive manner.

8. All staff members will demonstrate an understanding of the critical role each plays in student academic growth and achievement.

9. Mutual accountability is key to our success. We will continue to develop a student-centered culture of shared leadership and decision making.

10. We will continue to seek creative ways to celebrate one another (students and staff).

These ten collective commitments did not happen by chance. They do not outline an easy way to run a school or teach students. They represent the hard work and dedication it takes for the PLC transformation of schools, and they provide a glimpse into the work of our small-school PLC.

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n their report, “Here’s How America Uses Its Land,” coauthors Dave Merrill and Lauren Leatherby (2018) illustrate how the forty-eight contiguous states encompass 1.9 billion acres, with cropland making up one-fifth of the country, pastureland onethird, and forest and timberland one-quarter. “There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Between pastures and cropland used to produce feed, 41 percent of U.S. land in the contiguous states revolves around livestock” (Merrill & Leatherby, 2018). This same report says urban areas make up just 3.6 percent of total U.S. land use, with a concentrated population of four of five Americans living, working, and playing in metropolitan areas. This leaves one of five Americans spread out over more than three-fourths of the United States and living in small towns surrounded by rangeland, pastures, cropland, and forests (Merrill & Leatherby, 2018).

The isolation of small schools across the United States can perpetuate traditional education practices from generation to generation; traditional beliefs can make change difficult, beliefs such as it is the teachers’ responsibility to teach something, and the students’ responsibility to learn it; some students are “math students” or “English students,” and some just aren’t; if parents don’t care about student learning, then teachers aren’t going to be able to make students learn; or let’s just focus on getting these students into hands-on electives—that’s the only thing that keeps “these kids” in school. Adults tend to want their children’s schools to look and feel the same way schools did when they attended, even if their schooling experience was not entirely positive.

If people in your community are not necessarily clamoring for change in their schools, especially in academics (if the typical focus is around athletics and personnel), then why change? Why upset folks about academic expectations when things have been working fine for decades? Why push for shifts in professional practice? Why not maintain the status quo?

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

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Breaking With Tradition

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The challenge for leaders of small schools in implementing any significant change is often in establishing the why and then dealing with the inevitable pushback that will occur when your school begins the journey of transformation.

The PLC Process and Small Schools

The PLC process is ideal for small schools because community is such a key feature in these schools. With PLC implementation, a small school community will have a common purpose (goals) focused on the work of learning together (as professionals) to improve academic achievement for students through higher levels of learning for all.

PLC expert and author Richard DuFour (2015) provides the research basis and rational for the PLC process in his book, In Praise of American Educators: Researchers from around the world have confirmed the power of the PLC process. It has been endorsed by virtually all the professional organizations for educators in the United States.

It is consistent with recommendations from organizational theorists outside of education. Each of its various elements is grounded in a solid research base. . . . The PLC process creates internal accountability that is more powerful and effective than current efforts to hold schools accountable. (pp. 81–82)

The PLC process is built on three big ideas (DuFour et al., 2010, 2016). The first big idea is a relentless focus on student learning. The second is the creation of a collaborative culture through the use of high-performing teams working interdependently to create common goals for which members hold one another mutually accountable. The third big idea is a passionate and persistent focus on results—the improved learning of each student. Members of a PLC have a shared mission (answering the question, Why do we exist?) to ensure high levels of learning for all students. They have a shared vision (answering the question, What must we become?) to create the structures and culture to ensure all students learn. They hold collective commitments (answering the question, How must we behave?) that clarify how each individual will contribute to achieving the vision. And members have shared goals (answering the question, Which steps must we take and when?) that identify indicators to monitor progress (Mattos, DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2016).

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Small schools must pivot from traditions to a clear focus on learning. The challenge in pivoting is that it throws staff and parents off balance, until the results begin to validate the change. Staff and parents will notice a change in the work students are expected to do during the school day. They will notice students are being held to higher standards of performance, and that students are gaining confidence in their learning (something staff and parents themselves may have never experienced during their own schooling). They might hear students talking about “loving math” or “being scientists” or “reading interesting news articles.” These changes may come as a surprise, and parents and some staff members may push back, even as students push forward.

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A Focus on Student Learning

Years can go by without any clear shared knowledge of whether students are making measurable academic gains. It can be shocking to learn a small-school secretary is the one primarily in charge of deciding the number of classes the school will offer, which teachers will teach the classes, how students are placed in the classes, and that the school principal is not involved in determining the academic schedule that drives student learning for the entire school year. It can seem preposterous that state and national assessments measure mathematics, science, reading, and writing skills to determine student proficiencies, but the school budget for certified teachers does not reflect an emphasis on these teaching roles, and the schedule does not emphasize time in core-content areas during the school day. These actions do not reflect what we, as educators, say we value.

So, if the mission of a PLC is high levels of learning for all students, we must first define what that means. Who is all? That’s a great question, right? We don’t really mean all students will learn, do we? Most educators trapped in the traditional beliefs of teaching and learning modeled in small schools don’t believe all means all. Rather, all means the students who want to learn. All means students who are motivated to do their work with minimal feedback and a sense of responsibility to follow adult directives. All means the students who have parents who will pressure them to improve their grades and do their homework. These attitudes can be especially challenging to overcome in small schools.

Another challenge for small schools is also a benefit: educators literally know all students. It is easy to make excuses or accept the status quo and lower expectations when you have known generations of the same family. A few new students may stand out in a small school—especially in a place like Thermopolis, with industry that keeps a flow of families moving in and out of the area. Educators may think it is impossible for these students to recover missing skills before their families move on again, so why try?

Indeed, excuses can be plentiful in small schools. A challenge for leaders is to turn these perceptions around. What if, instead, the school staff took ownership of each student—not as a reflection of where he or she comes from, but as the person who may someday be our mayor, our county commissioner, our pastor, our local hardware store owner, the contractor we hire to build our dream home, or even the person who

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

It is common for the day-to-day focus of a school to be on everything except student learning. Teachers can get into the rut of using prep time to visit with a colleague next door, writing a last-minute end-of-unit assessment, cruising through the school year without any clear targets, and just hoping some students are learning. It is too easy for school leaders to get mired in issuing student discipline, managing staff, organizing activities, and just plain performing time-wasting, bureaucratic tasks.

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grows up to marry our own child? A New York Times article reported, “The typical American lives only 18 miles from Mom. . . . Americans have become less mobile, and most adults—especially those with less education or lower incomes—do not venture far from their hometowns” (Bui & Miller, 2015). The students who are struggling to meet proficiency or grade-level targets today are the same people who will live in your community a decade or fifty years from now.

Helper Middle School, Helper, Utah; Mika Salas, Former Principal Helper Middle School in Helper, Utah, is a small middle school with approximately 180 students and 11.5 full-time teachers. Our community is rural and supported by the coal mining industry, which has depleted over the years. Our intergenerational poverty level (families having received assistance for two or more consecutive generations) is 16 percent, which is the second highest in Utah).

All of our elementary schools are Title I, and even though we didn’t receive Title I funds as a middle school, we consistently have between a 47 and 52 percent poverty rate. Unfortunately, Carbon County also has an extremely high opioid prescription rate—the highest by far in the state of Utah (and in all neighboring states). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2017), the county rate is at 154.1 opioid prescriptions per 100 persons (1.541 prescriptions for every single person in our county).

I tell you this because what our teachers were able to do is nothing short of miraculous.

As a school, we decided every student would be successful. We determined we would make all decisions based on that belief, and if something distracted from it, we wouldn’t do it. We were willing contributors on a team that refused to be stopped.

We labored over a new mission statement. Our previous mission was something about 21st century learners, how everyone should continue learning . . . blah, blah, blah. No one really knew what it was. We had a sign made years earlier when we were up for accreditation. It looked great, but no one read it. More importantly, no one believed in it, and we never referenced it for decision making. We needed something better.

We decided on a simple, yet profound, statement: “We ensure that all students will learn and grow at high levels.”

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

All means all means that every single student who walks through the doors of a small school has the right to achieve measurable learning targets and show measurable growth during the course of a school year, every year. The PLC process keeps a focus on student learning as the primary mission of the school—no excuses! The following story from Helper, Utah, shows how one small school crafted its mission.

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First, ensure: Can we truly guarantee that regardless of teacher, grade, set of courses, student abilities or disabilities, or family struggles, all students will be successful? Yes, we can!

Second, all: Can we truly guarantee that every single student will learn and grow at high levels? Everyone—even that one? Yes, we can!

We used our mission statement to guide our decisions. We put in place a tiered system of support for academics and then for behavior. We added flex time to our schedule and accounted for every single student, every day. We paid for software development to allow schools to schedule students for intervention time. We added a free clothing closet for students, which is free of charge; worked with the United Way for students who needed shoes; and added a food pantry in our main office. We provided time for students to sleep in our sick room when they had a particularly hard night at home.

We started grief groups for kids who have lost at least one parent to overdose or other reasons; we partnered with the Division of Juvenile Justice Services to provide Adapt groups to build resiliency skills and explicitly taught Second Step lessons Tier I (using Second Step resources [www.secondstep.org]) to support students who were not acting out, but still needed social and emotional skills. We partnered with the staff of Adult Parole and Probation and asked them to provide incentives when parent offenders attended school functions (such as games or parent-teacher conferences).

We set out to prove our students could be as successful as students from urban or more affluent areas, and in that quest began addressing all kinds of needs.

The academic growth we experienced was simply a by-product of the care and attention each and every staff member paid to our wonderful students. John Hattie (2014) shows that collective teacher efficacy is the most powerful strategy for increasing student learning. I have seen it work, and I truly believe it! (M. Salas, personal communication, July, 19, 2019)

A Collaborative Culture

Collaboration as a professional practice among teachers is the key to higher levels of learning for all students. It is the second big idea of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2010; DuFour et al., 2016). In Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes, coauthors Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Gayle Karhanek (2010) identify commitment to a collaborative culture as key to transforming schools:

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Finally, high levels: We believe all students can learn something, but what about at high levels? Can we truly get all students to master grade-level skills? Even when more than 20 percent of students are reading at a second-grade level or lower? Even when we had to enlist every mathematics teacher, several teachers of subjects other than mathematics, and every aide to help students develop their multiplication-fact skills in the first few weeks of school? Even when we had to teach our kids basic social norms? Yes, we can!

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We cannot achieve our fundamental purpose of learning for all if we work in isolation. Therefore, we must build a collaborative culture in which we work together interdependently and assume collective responsibility for the learning of all students. (p. 21)

In Leaders of Learning, researchers and coauthors Richard DuFour and Robert J. Marzano (2011) provide a review of the research on the tradition of teacher isolation in K–12 education and evidence of a culture of professional isolation. DuFour and Marzano identify a study from the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future that describes isolated teaching in stand-alone classrooms as “the most persistent norm standing in the way of improving schools” (p. 50).

Through professional collaboration and mutual accountability, teachers become experts in what students should know and be able to do at each grade level and in each unit of instruction. Singleton teachers begin working together to prioritize essential learning, identify learning targets, and define specific skills to embed in instruction units—even in the grade levels they don’t currently teach.

Small schools must change how teachers interact in order to become a hotbed of talent for this type of work. Sharing results as part of the collaborative processes provides transparency around student learning. It is natural for teachers to become more reflective of their own skill set and begin to notice their colleagues’ instructional strategies when student learning data are readily shared. Asking the question, “How did you do that?” becomes instinctual, not forced. Best-selling author Daniel Coyle (2009) states: If you were to visit a dozen talent hotbeds tomorrow, you would be struck by how much time the learners spend observing top performers. . . .

The sweet spot is that productive, uncomfortable terrain located just beyond our current abilities, where our reach exceeds our grasp.

The ability of singleton teachers to begin the process of professional collaboration—to talk to other teachers who will teach the same content, to the same students, the year

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

The idea of teacher collaboration as a catalyst for improving student learning may seem contradictory to traditional thoughts on how to improve schools; educators often blame one another and their students for a lack of retention or skill deficits from year to year. The truth is, when singleton teachers begin to work together to understand the progression of student learning grade by grade and skill by skill, they gain expertise that can directly impact student learning this week, this semester, and this school year.

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before or the following year—is practical and doable. These are the teachers right down the hall or in the same community in a school down the street.

In a small school with singleton teachers, collaboration looks different than in a large school with multiple teachers per course or grade level. Singleton teachers most often form vertical teams across grade levels, focusing on what students will learn skill by skill, grade by grade. Scaffolding learning becomes a key component of the vertical-content teams’ work across grade levels. These singleton teachers will not teach the same standards, but they will teach the standards that scaffold learning from the year before and set the stage for learning the following year in the next grade level.

For example, a K–6 team of reading teachers will discuss leveled readers and the progression of reading instruction specific to the standards, while a grades 6–12 mathematics team will discuss algebraic thinking and the developmental progression of mathematics skills. Teams caught in the middle of vertical collaboration, for example grades 6 or 7, will collaborate up sometimes (with secondary) and down other times (with elementary) depending on the focus of the work being done or the building or district logistics. Over time, this type of collaboration will solidify the academic vocabulary teachers use with students, define high expectations for student learning, and help individual teachers become a team of experts with shared knowledge of each other’s content areas, regardless of grade level.

There is the traditional belief in small schools that each grade-level or content singleton teacher is an island unto him- or herself—that, for example, a second-grade teacher is an expert on second-grade standards and really has nothing to share or learn from a third-grade teacher. This attitude is at odds with a PLC’s collaborative model, but it is a common mindset for teachers stuck in the belief that a team is specific to a grade level or course within a content area. In a traditional small school with singletons, each teacher operates in his or her own wheelhouse, accountable to no one because no one else has “this group of kids” or “teaches this grade” or “teaches this course.”

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

A tricky aspect of collaboration in small schools is that everyone knows everyone very well, so setting the stage for formal collaboration can be challenging. Often the informal friendships and routine of being workmates in the same building, being neighbors in the same small town, going to the same church, or having children in the same 4-H club for many years will make the formality of setting norms and building agendas for collaborative team meetings seem fake and unnecessary; however, this familiarity can be the first roadblock on the journey of building a small-school PLC. Don’t take setting formal team norms and agendas lightly; doing this is the first key step for leadership to create a meaningful why and shared mission for learning together and implementing best practices for improving student achievement through collaboration.

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Building a collaborative culture is a critical juncture for the small-school leader. It is at this point that leaders must begin to figure out what teachers have in common (scaffolding of English language arts standards, implementing mathematics skills, crosscutting concepts in science, and so on), instead of being boxed in with traditional differences (in grade levels or courses).

1. What do we want students to know and be able to do? In small schools, this means, What do we want our students to know and be able to do across grade levels and courses through alignment and scaffolding of essential learnings by domain, standard, and skill?

2. How will we know if students are learning? In small schools, this means, How will we create transparency around essential learning assessment data by domain, standard, and skill across grades or courses in a timely and consistent manner?

3. How will we respond when students don’t learn? In small schools, this means, How will we work together to create and share, by student and by skill, intervention time across grades and courses to ensure students get meaningful interventions with teachers instructionally skilled in the content?

4. How will we extend learning for students who are already proficient?

In small schools, this means, How will we provide extensions and accelerations for students demonstrating solid proficiency by standard and skill within the current grade level or course? (Too often, small schools send students out of the class to other grades or courses as an acceleration, but don’t actually extend learning in the current grade or course to ensure the student can perform standards at an advanced level necessary to meet college and career readiness benchmarks.)

It takes time to build collaborative bonds in small-school teacher teams when members each teach a different grade level and group of students; however, collaborative team members will become reliant on one another over time to the point of never wanting to work alone again!

Creating norms for professional collaboration is essential to creating a small-school working environment in which teachers can share instructional strategies, debate essential learning, work cooperatively to build common assessments, and, in the end, trust the team norms will create a safe place to share student data, skill by skill.

Figure 1.1 shows how a vertical team of four English language arts teachers (grades 5, 6, 7, and 8) begins planning for collaboration over the coming school year. Each

Š 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Collaborative teams in a PLC work together in a cycle of continuous improvement to address the following four critical questions of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2010, 2016).

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Thermopolis Middle School English Language Arts Vertical Collaboration (2018–2019)

Team Members: Cassie Hetzel, Jacob Strenger, Trey Ottley, and Kristin Ryan Meetings: Tuesday and Thursday, 7:30–8:05 a.m.

Conflict Resolution Plan: 1. Address concerns in a timely, positive, and productive manner 2. Strive to compromise 3. Remain student centered in disagreements 4. If issues cannot be resolved in a healthy way, take the issue to the principal or vice-principal as a team

Agenda: y Do some digging about cooperative structures (meetings and agendas) y Review student work samples y Discuss methods for exiting students from ReadLive (https://readlive.read naturally.com) Source: © 2018 by Thermopolis Middle School Grades 5–8 English Language Arts Team, Thermopolis, Wyoming. Used with permission.

Figure 1.1: Sample norms and agenda for a small-school vertical team.

of them will teach approximately fifty students at his or her grade level. Figure 1.1 shows the norms and fledgling agenda from the team’s first meeting in late August.

In their book Taking Action, response to intervention (RTI) experts and coauthors Austin Buffum, Mike Mattos, and Janet Malone (2018) provide helpful tools for creating a culture of collective responsibility for collaborative teams by providing a ten-step activity on the difference between cooperation (which is what a group does) and collaboration (which is what a team does), stages of team development, a team action-planning template, and a survey on trust in a team. Resources such as these can set the stage for small-school teams to begin forming and setting norms effectively.

(Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks or go.SolutionTree.com/RTIbooks for links to these resources.)

A Focus on Results

The third big idea of a PLC is a focus on results. Focusing on results means that teams in a PLC must measure student growth. In small schools, it is essential to measure growth using a third-party tool—and not simply noting how many students earn honor roll grades within your own system. Teaching teams (or the school or

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Norms: y Start and end on time y Be student centered y Maintain confidentiality y Provide honest feedback y Don’t beat the dead horse

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Teams must also decide what high levels of learning means. State and national assessments in public schools often target proficiency as representing the 50th percentile on a traditional bell curve. A challenge in small schools is that the few students who score over the 50th percentile may control the bar for current expectations; in other words, the highest-performing students in your small school are considered the pace-setters (even if they are performing just above the 50th percentile), and thus they are not expected or asked to grow, learn, and achieve at higher levels.

By using a third-party tool and having a core belief that all students will grow in their learning every year, it becomes necessary to redefine the bar based on individual students achieving higher national percentiles—the 80th, 90th, or even the 99th percentile. Every student is competing against him- or herself to demonstrate measurable growth in each core content area, each year. This shift will allow all students in small schools to push themselves to higher levels of learning and enable teachers to help individual students set growth goals aimed at national benchmarks.

An integral piece of a focus on results is classroom assessment, which is built into the PLC process and the four critical questions mentioned earlier. Assessment experts and coauthors Cassandra Erkens, Tom Schimmer, and Nicole Dimich Vagle (2017) place assessment at the center of learning: Classroom assessment is central to every teacher’s success and every learner’s success. It is central to addressing the standards. It is central to guiding instruction. It is central to making individual and program improvements. It is more than just a measure of learning; it must promote learning. We hold the vision that assessment practices must build hope, efficacy, and achievement for learners and teachers. (p. 5)

In larger schools, same-grade-level or content-alike teams collaborate to create common formative assessments. In small schools, vertical teams collaborate to create vertically aligned formative assessments that scaffold the learning of students by

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

district) must decide on a normed-assessment tool—for instance, a state or national assessment. Does this mean a student must move from below basic (low performance) to proficiency (average to high performance) in a school year? No, that would set up singleton teachers and students for failure to achieve unreachable goals. But what if every student achieved one point of growth from the spring of one school year to the spring of the next school year, every year, on a normed assessment in every core subject—mathematics, reading, science, and writing? Would this be a reasonable and reachable goal? Would some students “blow up” that goal and achieve double-digit growth? You bet! But if every student had a positive growth trajectory every school year in each of the cores, what would that say about your teams and your school? It would clearly demonstrate a belief in your school that all students can learn and grow academically in every content area, every year—no excuses!

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Figure 1.2 shows Thermopolis Middle School’s first simple goals used to measure results in 2014–2015 as the PLC journey began.

100 Percent Academic Growth Thermopolis Middle School SMART Goals 2014–2015

Vision: Thermopolis Middle School will be the top-performing middle school in the state of Wyoming.

We believe in . . . y Learning as our fundamental purpose y Collaborating for continuous improvement y Focusing on results y Partnering with parents and community y Preparing all students for their future Goal one: Ensure 100 percent of students grow from fall to spring on the NWEA MAP assessment in reading and mathematics.

Goal two: Ensure 100 percent quality team collaboration that is data driven.

Source: © 2014–2015 by Thermopolis Middle School, Thermopolis, Wyoming. Used with permission.

Figure 1.2: Thermopolis Middle School’s 2014–2015 goals.

Working to change traditions in small schools and communities to make the three big ideas of a PLC a reality will be challenging. There will be pushback. Educators might not truly believe all students can learn at high levels. Some teachers will prefer to teach in isolation. Setting goals may make some staff feel threatened. The next section discusses some challenges.

The Challenges of Transformation If you haven’t experienced it yourself, you’ve probably seen it on television or at the movies: a school in small-town America, proud of its roots, waves the red, white, and blue, and is the hub of the community. Teachers, students, parents, grandparents, and community members come and go from the school. The Veterans Day assembly and the elementary school Christmas program fill the gym or district auditorium to

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

standard or skill. The vertical articulation of each standard or skill plays out across grade levels or courses in an “unpacking” of the standard in its truest form. These vertically aligned formative assessments are then validated by third-party assessment tools two to three times a year as students take the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) or Aspire or another tool that provides teachers with a skill-by-skill analysis of student performance. The vertical collaboration process will be explained in detail in upcoming chapters.

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maximum seating capacity every year. School athletics and activities are the social events of the week, and most community members wear school colors every Friday from homecoming weekend in the fall to graduation in the spring or from the first football game to the last home track meet, win or lose.

This strong pride is often evident in small schools and can bring everyone together.

Also evident, unfortunately, is school politics, which can be extremely divisive.

Most small schools have an elected school board of community members. The challenge for small schools considering a cultural shift to the PLC process is that key teachers can push back against this process by directly lobbying school board members who attend their same church or have children the same age and in the same activities, immediately placing the work of focusing on higher levels of learning in question. It may seem like an altruistic goal such as improving learning outcomes for all students would be difficult to sabotage; however, it is not. Working to improve student learning data is too often judged as “teaching to the test.” Teachers may feel like they are drowning in data if they don’t have the right tools or support while collaborating. This can lead to rumors that teachers don’t have time to teach kids because they spend all of their time analyzing data. School staff or parents may begin to push back against the school by making generalized statements that “the school only cares about test scores.” Principals in nearby districts who don’t want to change their own practices may hear about your school’s success and begin saying, “Our school cares about students, not state testing.” It will be critical for school leaders in your school or district to talk to staff, parents, and the community about student learning versus data or scores during all phases of your PLC journey. PLCs use data and scores to ensure high levels of learning for all students.

To avoid the perils of small-town politics during transformation, school board members must participate in creating a shared mission to launch a successful PLC journey. School board members must understand the urgency of improving student achievement. After all, school boards hire (and fire) the superintendent, set policy, manage the budget, set salaries for school employees, and are actively involved in many personnel decisions.

Leadership Turnover

Constantly changing leadership is a problem for any school—large or small. Schools with high turnover struggle to sustain effective teaching and learning practices. Even in a small school (two hundred or fewer students), it can take up to two years for a new principal to learn the names of all students, begin to make family connections, understand staff dynamics, establish a productive culture, and outline clear goals.

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

School Politics

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Leadership consultant and author Philip B. Warrick (2019) describes how schools “shift down”—like a semitruck putting on the brakes—each time a new principal takes over a school. Warrick goes on to say that, through a research-based operations system, a school or district can reduce the amount of backsliding or starting over when leadership changes occur. The PLC process is such a sustaining system; it propels a school and a community forward.

The Challenge of Cultural Change

The work of changing the culture of any school can be daunting. It can be a threat to the status quo in any community, and for some it will appear to cost too much political capital. A few times a year, other schools’ leaders will reach out to ask our staff for advice about the work of a PLC or ask to visit Thermopolis Middle School to see our PLC in action and talk to our teachers about their collaborative work and student learning.

For example, one visiting principal (who also brought a team of teachers) pulled me into my office for a one-to-one conversation after only two hours into a site visit. He told me to continue the site visit with his teachers, but he didn’t have any intention of fulling implementing PLCs when he got back to his home district; it was too much work, his veteran teachers would be resistant, and the students in their district were already scoring above the state average on the American College Test (ACT).

He went on to say his community was happy with the current high school academic record. He also identified teacher-created common assessments as a barrier not worth overcoming. “Just flip to the end of the textbook,” he said, “and ta-da! There is an assessment!” The crew of skeptical veteran teachers with him made it obvious he was willing to allow them to control the culture of the school—that is, adults first, students second. And finally, the visiting principal made it plain he did not want to lose his job by initiating a change of this magnitude in a small community where everyone was happy with mediocre results. Why change what’s not broken?

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

It is easy for small-school leaders to get caught up in building projects, micromanaging staff complaints, responding to social media criticism, and hiring new personnel, among many other tasks. If the focus becomes high levels of learning for all students with implementation of the PLC process, small-school leaders must set the stage for growth over time. This is essential to creating a community that invests together in higher levels of learning for all students! If the school board and the district administrative leadership team (superintendent, principals, director of special services) want a quick boost in staff morale, a feel-good initiative for the community, or just short-term positive public relations for the district, PLC transformation will be unsuccessful.

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Many school leaders say they want what is best for student learning, but they are unable or unwilling to make the commitment to do the work and make the cultural shifts necessary to get the result of all student learning at high levels.

Support for Cultural Change

Most school board members are hardworking people who make their living day to day as small-business owners, farmers, ranchers, health care workers, oil field workers, stay-at-home moms or dads, first responders, and even educators themselves. Most of them run for the school board because they want to ensure a quality school experience for their own children or grandchildren. By clearly articulating the mission of ensuring high levels of learning for all students through a collaborative culture, school leaders can communicate the why behind the work. Just as teachers can no longer work in isolation and expect great results, neither can school board members, principals, or superintendents. With a clear focus on evidence of effectiveness and sharing the collaborative results of teacher teams, district leadership can begin to support the three big ideas of a PLC.

The Seeds of Change Planting, growing, and harvesting the rewards of the PLC process is much like the work of a farmer. Planting in the spring is energizing—the sun is shining, soft rains fall, and everyone is optimistic about the crop. Then, over the summer months, the mosquitoes come out, drought hits, the banker wants to meet to talk about your loan, and a random hailstorm moves through. The farmer and his crew spend long,

Š 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Supporting schools beginning the PLC journey will impact the rate of change and sustainability of the process. The district board trustees, in partnership with the administrative leadership team, must make a commitment to focus on student learning. This includes making time to read and understand measurable goals and data specific to schools. For district board trustees, this work can feel like learning a foreign language. Data presentations must become routine for school and district boards. This is intimate work in a small school district. Data will link directly back to a singleton teacher in a grade level or content area, and this person will be clearly visible to board members. Many small school districts have avoided this kind of transparency since the dawn of standardized testing. Establishing board norms for viewing this data will be critical to the overall success of sustaining the PLC process in a small school district and community. Data must directly align to goals with an understanding that these data will not be used for condemnation or coronation of individual teachers, but instead drive the work of learning together and implementing best practices.

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hot days in the field tending the crop. The work is difficult and time intensive. But in the fall, all the hard work is realized with a successful harvest. Plans are made for next year’s crop, and the cycle continues.

TAKE ACTION 1. Focus on student learning. Define your mission. Make your mission a collective decision based on what the school or district believes is achievable specific to student learning.

2. Commit to learning together as educators in a small school on this journey. No more “islands”!

3. Form collaborative teams of singleton teachers who share goals and are mutually accountable for results.

4. Identify and address the challenges of transformation in your school.

Consider how you can work to support cultural change.

RECOMMENDED BOOK STUDY Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work

by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Thomas W. Many, and Mike Mattos (2016).

© 2020 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Whether you are energized to start the work of a PLC by attending a conference, summit, or institute, or by reading one of the many books about PLCs, it is important to take note of the long-term commitment and arduous effort required to implement the process effectively. It will be hard work!

PLC at Work

P

Small-school leaders will:

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks to download the free reproducibles in this book.

SolutionTree.com

—Virginia Vandelicht

Director, Heart of Missouri Regional Professional Development Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri

“Daniels recognizes the uniqueness and challenges that come with leading a small school and outlines a path to success using the PLC process. This is a go-to book for leaders of small schools who want to build their collaborative culture and bring their staff members together.”

—Craig Mah

Principal, Walton Elementary, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada

DANIELS

• Learn how to develop a strong culture of collaboration among singletons and shared teachers • Discover how to effectively collect and use data to increase PLC effectiveness • Examine how to overcome barriers and embrace the positives in small schools • Find many real-world examples from smallschool PLCs and reproducibles and tools to aid implementation

“Small-school leaders often feel like PLC is for bigger districts and schools.

Daniels shows small-school leaders that they, too, can see success from developing and sustaining a PLC. This book will be tremendously helpful to small schools that may struggle with how to implement PLC tenets.”

Building, Deepening, and Sustaining a Culture of Collaboration for Singletons

LC at Work® and Your Small School: Building, Deepening, and Sustaining a Culture of Collaboration for Singletons is a guide for leaders seeking to transform their small schools into successful PLCs. Grounded in both research and her own experience as principal of a small, rural school in Wyoming, this book by Breez Longwell Daniels focuses on the unique role culture plays in many small schools—a role that should be central to PLC implementation. Daniels takes the reader through the big ideas and four critical questions of a PLC, providing guidance on how to best implement the big ideas and answer the questions in a small school with singletons and shared teachers. Leaders will also find guidance on effective scheduling, time management, use of data, and strategies to overcome obstacles unique to small schools.

and Your Small School

Building, Deepening, and Sustaining a Culture of Collaboration for Singletons