Hunter Warner

Journal 4
C&T 100
25 March 2015
Professional Learning Communities
Dr. Richard DuFlour, expert on PLCs, believes that professional learning communities are
essential to improving public education because the only way to improve the schools is to
improve the people in them.
There are three Big Ideas of professional learning communities. The first one is ensuring
that students learn. This means that educators are not only providing students with the
opportunity to gain knowledge, but they also make sure that it gets through to them. The
school must engage in designing strategies to make sure that struggling students are always
given the time and support that they need. According to the Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development (ASCD), the professional learning communitys response to
students who are having difficulty is time, based on intervention rather than remediation,
and is directive. Schools that truly care about learning and are engaged in the PLC strategy
will give all students the education they deserve and will not let anyone fall behind.
The second idea behind professional learning communities is a culture of collaboration.
Those within a PLC must understand that they have to work together to improve learning,
and consequently must come up with structures to encourage a collaborate effort. Many
teachers work alone, but working together is by far the way to achieve success in schools.
Schools must make it a goal to ensure that each educator belongs to a team focused on
learning, and that each team addresses issues such as expectations, responsibilities,
strategies for improvement. In order for this to work out, schools also have to get rid of
some common barriers to success. This includes stopping teachers from sticking to state
standards, letting them have a say in state and district curriculums, and eliminating excuses
for failing to collaborate. As ASCD says, A group of staff members who are determined to
work together will find a way.
The final big idea behind professional learning communities is a focus on results. Educators
must work to improve learning with the goal of achievement. They must use data in a
productive way, using results from formative assessments to collaboratively analyze how
students perform. Working as a team to address results allows each teacher to obtain
strategies from the entire team. They also have to learn not to make excuses for the data or
make assumptions. Focusing on results in a professional learning community encourages
teachers to step out of the box and work together to meet the learning needs of each and
every student. Professional learning communities are hard work, but the benefits allow the
continuous improvement of education, -- which is what really matters.