PLCs, Collaborative Teams, and Singletons
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1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level? 2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills? 3. How will we respond when some students do not learn? 4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? (p. 36)
Clear Direction for Singletons and Their Leaders Through our work in schools, we see teachers and leaders struggling with how to appropriately organize singletons in meaningful teams and support members of singleton teams to successfully answer the four critical questions of a PLC. We wrote this book to provide clear direction on this issue for PLC leaders and singleton team members. We recommend involving and empowering singleton teachers when advancing the PLC process across a school or district, as well as for the professional development of those singleton educators who so often work in isolation. Our goal is to make the step-by-step process for collaboration clear and more meaningful for singletons, and it is our intent to enhance singletons’ motivation to collaborate as well. This book is for both singleton educators and administrators, as both must know and ensure effective implementation of the PLC process for the benefit of students. Both must also ensure structures are in place and time is available for every teacher to engage in meaningful collaboration if educators ever hope to see all students learning at high levels. Chapter 1 seeks to bring clarity to what collaboration in a PLC looks like and how to ensure it is meaningful. Educators build key understanding of what is and isn’t meaningful collaboration, and we elaborate on what actually impacts student learning. In this chapter we also describe in greater detail the singleton dilemma all schools on the PLC journey face. Chapter 2 introduces readers to the three distinct on-ramps (or entry points) singletons can take to have meaningful collaboration with other educators. These on-ramps are starting points to collaboration for singletons that then guide singletons
©️2022 by Solution Tree Press
The task of organizing teachers in collaborative teams to answer the four critical questions is straightforward when it comes to schools with multiple teachers at any given grade level or teaching the same course. Naturally, those teachers will be able to collaborate. But what about singleton teachers? All schools have singletons, and some schools have many singletons or are made up solely of singletons.
