When defining PLC in a podcast with me, Mike Mattos, one of the authors of Learning By Doing, A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work, suggested that rather than just the group of teacher working together, the larger organization was in fact the professional learning community. If a school commits to the process, the […]

What are the costs and benefits to teachers as they learn within PLC’s? Chad Dumas, the author of Let’s Put the C back in PLCs, answers this question and highlights how teachers can assess the effectiveness of their current PLC process along with strategies to improve its effectiveness. Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out […]

What might a coach consider as she plans to introduce a PLC mindset to a middle school staff? Listen in as this coach shares her questions and wonderings. Steve provides his thoughts, experiences and recommendations as she proceeds with her preparations. Visit the “hot topics” section of Steve’s blog here. Subscribe to the Steve Barkley […]

Zachary Herrmann published an article in ASCD’s EL titled, Cooperate or Collaborate, that made connections for me in my work with Professional Learning Communities vs Professional Working Communities and Teams vs Franchises. I’ve been defining these as: PWC – Professional Working Community –teachers collaborating to get work done. PLC – Professional Learning Community- teachers collaborating […]

The brain works in a natural process of finding patterns within complexity.  If you think about young children, living in very complex adult worlds, their brains find patterns that they bring into learning. One of my favorite examples is when you hear a young child say, “I ‘goed’ outside”. You realize that, hopefully, the child […]

How do we get teachers to be more open to observing in each other’s classrooms and discussing their thoughts and ideas with each other to create increased teacher learning leading to greater student achievement? Many school leadership teams need to explore strategies that decrease teachers’ reluctance to making teaching more public and teachers’ discussions more […]