If you have ever attended a large sporting event or concert, you have witnessed the sheer amount of planning and designing it takes for the event to go well. Getting hundreds, even thousands of people into a venue safely with the needed amenities really makes you stop and think about the work behind the scenes that must happen. Every single scenario is thought through and proactively planned.
Schools are much the same when you think about it. Hundreds of kids ride buses, arrive in cars, or walk to school each day. Staff is ready with breakfast and great plans for a day of learning. It takes a small village to make it all happen. Every player has their role and we all depend upon one another. That is a system. And not everything will always go perfectly, but it is our job to use our resources and make it work.
When it comes to learning, the Community Schools of Frankfort embraces collaboration among teachers through a system called Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). These are meetings that happen on a regular basis with teacher teams to discuss teaching and learning. While many different meetings happen throughout our schools, it is the PLC meeting with our instructional staff that has the greatest impact. The product of our work is learning and we must find ways to ensure all students are learning.
Blue Ridge Primary, like all of our schools, schedules weekly PLC meetings with grade level teams to discuss current learning objectives and how we know students are learning. These meetings are all about action. How have we been teaching the content? Are the students learning? What will we do to make sure all students meet and exceed our objectives? Data collected from student learning is what drives the conversations. If you were to sit in one of these meetings, you would be smiling ear to ear at the problem solving these teachers do to help all kids. You would hear them ask one another questions to see how they can better reach students’ needs. There is talk about individual students’ needs to make sure all succeed.
What makes a system successful? It produces the outcome in which it sets out to do. That is what you get from the Blue Ridge team. Teachers provide instruction over grade level standards in three week chunks with a common assessment at the end of that time to determine if students learned the objectives. This data is shared in these meetings and next steps are taken to ensure learning. The predictability and the expectations are what make them successful. The accountability of each member being active members and prepared allows for the work to be done. Most importantly, the relationships these teachers have with one another give the team life. Trust, high expectations, belief in all students, and a joy in what they do are the secret ingredients that make this system thrive.
Great systems are the result of collaboration. They don’t begin overnight. And they certainly don’t just become successful without deep, meaningful effort. When people set out to do the work they love, the results are so much greater. A microscope is such a powerful tool to help us see what the eye cannot behold. A microscopic look at a system gives a new perspective. I encourage you to stop and ponder this when you are at the next school function or even sitting in the car rider drop-off line. Remember how many people have collaborated to make our schools function or bring a special event to life. Say thank you to those who made it happen. It’s a tough world out there and if we only listen to the critics, we become mired in that nothing is going well. Think of these Blue Ridge teachers sitting around a table and the effort they put in to say individual students’ names and the plans they make to help them succeed. I promise that it will make you smile.
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