Collaborative Professional Learning Communities ensuring student success in District 54
When a fifth-grade Muir student was struggling to stay motivated and complete classwork, his teacher Emilio Saraga sought help from his Professional Learning Community.
"I got so many great ideas from the other fifth-grade teachers, as well as other staff members who work with the student or just had suggestions for how to support him," Saraga said. "Some of the ideas that were shared had an immediate impact on him, such as breaking down tasks and getting his 'must-do' tasks done first."
Regular, timely staff collaboration to meet the academic, social and emotional needs of all learners is one of the benefits of the Professional Learning Community (PLC) structure District 54 put in place more than a decade ago.
"We know that we must work together to create the structures necessary to ensure high levels of learning for all District 54 students," Assistant Superintendent Paul Goldberg said. "In District 54, Professional Learning Communities are more than another educational acronym or a term to describe teacher meetings. PLCs produce more great teaching more of the time."
Teams of teachers, along with other District 54 staff members such as literacy coaches, acceleration teachers and bilingual teachers, collaborate regularly to improve learning for all students. They create lessons, plan interventions for struggling students and extension for students who are proficient in the curriculum, develop assessments and dig into data to monitor student learning.
"If a student is struggling with something, such as reading below grade level, we can all talk about it and figure out how to help," said Natalie Snow, a first-grade teacher at Collins.
Planning together gives their students consistency, and they know each teacher has the same expectations, added Brooke Barber, another Collins first-grade teacher and a member of Natalie's team.
While they each have their own class, "each student is not just my student - they are all of ours," teammate Amanda Trandel said.
Each team member has different strengths. Therefore, they are always learning from one another, she added. If a lesson didn't work - or if one of their classes did particularly well on a lesson - they can all benefit from figuring out why.
"We see our whole building as a PLC, and within that PLC we have teams that work together," Muir Principal Carolyn Allar said. "Having everyone at the table when problem-solving for a student, even if they don't work with a student directly, allows everyone to add to the toolkit of strategies to support that student. Our teachers are always learning from one another, which improves the way we meet students' academic, social and emotional needs."
"We're planning for all of the fifth-grade students, rather than just our own class," said Julia Bolotin, a fifth-grade teacher at Muir.
Her colleague, Traci Reiner, said the team also sets a common behavior goal for their students monthly so students can see that the expectations are the same no matter what class they are in.
Recently at Muir, the fifth-grade team discussed how to introduce the concept of mixed numbers. Karen Starke, the school's intervention/enrichment teacher, suggested tying it into cooking and asking students to figure out how many ¼ cups of flour they would need to add to a recipe to get 1 ½ cups.
"That way it's connecting it to real life - that's good," Bolotin said.
Eisenhower Junior High Principal Heather Wilson said in social studies and science, collaborative discussions are focused not just on helping students learn the subject matter, but on knowing each student's reading level to be able to support them in the content area.
"They are really designing their instruction with the name and need of each of their students in mind," she said.
Wilson remembers a student who lacked foundational skills in reading and worked with a staff member on phonics sounds. When the student was finally able to read, he was so happy he cried - and all of the teachers who worked with him had tears in their eyes, too, Wilson said.
Trust among staff members is key to the success of their PLC, Wilson said. If they are willing to be champions for each other and engage in open, transparent discussion about successes and struggles, they can help each other better meet student needs.
"Teachers work very hard to build those relationships with students, but they have to problem-solve with their teammates and champion each other to best support those students," she said.
As a result of the environment of success that staff has created, District 54 has been recognized as one of only two All Things PLC Districts in Illinois and 18 nationwide.
"Our teachers collaborate often and their focus is not on teaching, it is on learning," Goldberg said. "They share and analyze best practices all for the purpose of bettering the results for the students they serve."