Working on PLC's

Last week I wrote a post about what our school was doing for PLC’s this year. Our large 2-building elementary campus has 1200 students from grades prek-6, and over 50 teachers. Honestly, I was worried how the new PLC model would be received. Given previous feedback, we felt it was critical to foster PD that was more teacher driven yet addressed the needs of our students. As our principal addressed the staff at one of our opening in-service days, she briefly introduced the menu of choices for the PLC’s and asked teachers to fill out the sign-up form. I heard some muffled claps behind me when she said that everyone would be able to earn CEU’s. I didn’t hear any whispers of complaint. These were both good signs. All of the sign-up sheets were turned in before the end of the day. Another good sign.

            Now the big job would be to organize the sign-up forms. This needed to be done quickly so that teachers could add the dates to their calendars. I started trying to put individuals together by first and second choice the other day but there where many factors to contemplate. We had several lunch hours and the PLC sessions were half-day. Coordination of substitute teachers would be an important consideration. Forming the PLC’s would require input from our math coach, Jill, district literacy consultant, Colleen, and our principals. Right now, my hope is that we are able to form the groups and get the meeting dates to the teachers by the end of the first day of school.