Nationally recognized consultants Richard and Rebecca DuFour will lead a two-day workshop addressing the most current research and practice related to developing and sustaining Professional Learning Communities in your district.   Plan now to attend this event.

Professional Learning Communities at Work: Bringing the Big Ideas to Life

By Dr. Rick & Becky DuFour

The research is clear: The most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is developing the capacity of school personnel to function as a professional learning community (PLC). When schools operate as PLC's, staff members are united by a clear sense of purpose, a common understanding of the school they are trying to create in order to achieve that purpose, collective commitments regarding what they must do to move the school in the desired direction, and shared goals that provide benchmarks of their progress. Staff members work together in collaborative teams that engage in recurring cycles of collective inquiry on the big questions of teaching and learning, engage in action research, build continuous improvement cycles into the routine practices of the school, and assess their efforts on the basis of results rather than activities.

As a result of engaging in this event participants will learn specific, practical strategies that have been proven in the real world of schools to:

• Shift the focus of a staff from teaching to learning,
• Develop systematic responses that provide students who are struggling with additional time and support,
• Create the collaborative culture essential to a PLC,
• Focus collaborative teaching teams on the critical questions that drive PLCs,
• Utilize the leadership strategies most effective in creating PLCs at Work.
• Establish SMART goals that serve as indicators of the school's progress,
• Provide each teacher and team with relevant feedback that will inform teaching practice, and
• Engage in productive crucial conversations

Click here to view Rick’s article: “How Do Principals Really Improve Schools”

Please read these articles prior to attending the PLC conference:

• Work Together But Only If You Want To
• What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
• Beyond Instructional Leadership: The Learning-Centered Principal
• Building A Professional Learning Community
• In Praise of Top-Down Leadership
• Common Mistakes in Building Consensus

Please also visit the following no-commerce PLC website: www.allthingsplc.info