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Professional Learning Community
Norco High School has embarked on a unique journey designed to improve instruction with the ultimate goal of raising student achievement. Norco High School is a Professional Learning Community (PLC). The Professional Learning Community is composed of collaborative teams whose members work interdependently to achieve common goals linked to the purpose of learning for all. Characteristics of the PLC include: a shared mission, vision, values and goals; collaborative teams; collective inquiry; action orientation and experimentation; continuous improvement; and results orientation.
The goal of a PLC is to answer three critical questions: 1) exactly what is it we want all students to learn? 2) how will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge? And, 3) what happens in our school when a student does not learn? Professional Learning Communities provide the structure for teachers to answer these questions.
During the Professional Learning Community (PLC) collaboration period, teachers will be working on lesson planning and design, discussing “best practices”, sharing ideas, writing common goals and assessments, etc…. We are very excited in providing this program because it will quite simply allow our teachers to provide the very best research-based instruction, learning opportunities, and support programs to our students.
Every Tuesday will include a PLC period where teachers will meet from 7:15 a.m. to 8:10 a.m. School will officially begin at 8:18 a.m. on Tuesday mornings. Students who arrive early on the bus will have time to eat breakfast, do homework, form study groups, attend tutoring sessions, use the library or student store, talk to friends, etc… Students who drive and/or walk should arrive prior to 8:10 when the first bell rings. The other four days of the school week have a regular start time of 7:40 a.m.
Generally speaking, PLCs are not held during the two finals weeks, STAR testing or CAHSEE testing.
The 10 most Q/A Concerning Professional Learning Communities
1. What is a Professional Learning Community?
Professional learning communities give all stakeholders in our school time to collaborate to establish a shared mission, vision, values and goals; the focus is on learning with collective inquiry into best practices and current reality; experimentation; commitment to continuous assessment and improvement.
2. How much time per week do stakeholders get to collaborate to achieve the above goals?
At this time we are looking at starting Tuesday mornings from 7:15 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. (approximately one hour a week.) Starting date has not been determined as of this writing.
3. What is the purpose of building shared knowledge through PLC ?
Stakeholders make decisions based upon access to the same pool of information, which increase the likelihood that they will arrive at the same conclusions.
4. What are the important resources in building shared knowledge on essential outcomes?
There are many resources like state standards, district and department curriculum guides, assessment frameworks, data on student performance, examples of student work, textbooks, curriculum frameworks and work place skills.
5. What are some advantages of team discussion of essential learning?
a. Greater clarity regarding interpretation of standards
b. Greater consensus regarding importance of different standards
c. Greater consistency in amount of time devoted to different standards
d. Ability to create common assessments and team intervention
e. Greater ownership of and commitment to standards
6. If one of the PLC’s purposes is to ensure high levels of learning for all students, how do the schools help achieve this goal?
By clarifying what each student is expected to learn and monitoring each student’s learning on a timely basis.
7. What might be a team learning process?
The team needs to develop 8-10 essential common outcomes per semester by course/content area and develop at least 4 common assessments per year.
8. What are the advantages of teachers working in collaborative teams?
a. Gains in student achievement
b. Higher quality solutions to problems
c. Increased confidence among all staff
d. Able to support one another’s strengths and accommodate weaknesses
e. Ability to test new ideas
f. More support for new teachers
g. Expanded pool of ideas, materials and methods
9. Using the PLC concept, what are keys to effective teams?
a. Collaboration with Focus On Learning is embedded in routine practices
b. Time for collaboration built into the school day
c. Teams focus on key questions
d. Products of collaboration are made explicit
e. Team norms guide collaboration
10. What are some possible team structures using PLC?
a. Teachers teaching the same grade level
b. Teachers teaching the same course
c. Vertical/Horizontal teams
d. Interdisciplinary teams
e. District teams
11. Why is it so important to use common assessments when using PLC?
a. Efficiency-by sharing the load teachers save time
b. Fairness-promotes common goals, similar pacing, and consistent standards
c. Effective monitoring-provides timely evidence of whether the curriculum is being taught
d. Provides teachers with a basis of comparison regarding the achievement of their students so they can see strengths and weaknesses of their teaching
e. Collaborative teacher teams are able to identify and address problem areas in their program
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2065 Temescal Avenue, Norco, CA 92860 • Tel: (951) 736-3241 - Fax: (951) 736-3282
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