Episode 043: PLC Plus with Nancy Frey & Doug Fisher

Join us for an hour-long discussion with the education experts Doug Fisher & Nancy Frey. We ask them about their new book, PLC+ and the five questions that get to the heart of what collaboration time should look like in schools. Stay tuned until the end for a special promo code for our listeners for the PLC+ Institutes the authors will be hosting in Colorado in October!  

Connect with Fisher & Frey

Connect with Vrain Waves

Website: www.fisherandfrey.com/ | Twitter: @DFisherSDSU; @NancyFrey | Newest Book: PLC Plus, Corwin Press

Website: vrainwaves.com | Twitter: @VrainWaves | Becky Twitter: @BeckyEPeters | Ben Twitter: @mrkalb  

Links & Show Notes  

• Out of Our Heads & Into the Classroom: (01:30) 
  • American Express: Simple Guide to Lean Meetings 
  • Robyn Jackson on weekly team meetings
  • Have an agenda / protocol 
  • Techless meetings 
  • Pre-mortem from Daniel Pink
  • Collaborative notes & DRIs
  • Toby – Chrome Extension
• Introduction to Fisher & Frey & PLC Plus (08:12)
  • Their School: Health Sciences High & Middle College in San Diego
  • Questions: Where are we now? & the importance of pre-assessments
    • Side note: common questions for PLC work come from DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2010 as a PLC foundation: Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work; we acknowledge this foundational work when discussing PLCs 
      • What do we want students to learn? (essential standards)
      • How will we know if they have learned? (team-developed common assessments)
      • What will we do if they don’t learn? (systematic interventions)
      • What will we do if they already know it? (extended learning)
  • Collective Efficacy
  • Graham Nuthall, Hidden Lives of Learners  
    • Students already know between 40-50 percent of what the teacher is teaching (Nuthall, 2007)
  • Equity: Removal of Barriers vs. intervention as responses to student data
  • Activator: Someone to guide the group
• What are PLCs getting wrong? (13:21) 
  • Emphasis on the structural conditions can overwhelm the focus and mission of the group 
  • PLC must continually reinvest in itself 
  • Lack of attention to instruction – “How do we move learning forward?”
    • Literacy example (16:49) 
  • Curriculum / Instruction / Assessment
  • Recent research that ~20% of in-class tasks are on grade level TNTP’s The Opportunity Myth – and an article from EdWeek  
  • PLC+ Protocol – Assignment analysis (from The Education Trust) (19:34) 
    • Equity in Motion work from The Education Trust
• Trust and the importance of Relational Conditions (21:18) 
  • Activator helps keep the conversation moving 
  • Protocols provide consistency 
• PLC+ / PD (22:57) 
  • Roughly a 1 to 3 ratio – Full staff Professional learning to PLC+ Time
• Credibility & Efficacy (24:33) 
  • Teacher Credibility: Trust, Competence, Dynamism, Immediacy
• Self-Efficacy and Collective Efficacy (27:17)
  • Albert Bandura’s research on self-efficacy – 
    • From Leading Impact Teams, by Bloomberg & Pitchford (& based on Bandura’s research, as well as Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy): Efficacy = Mastery Moments, Vicarious Experience, Feedback, and Trust
• “Where are we going?” and “Where are we now?” (31:08)
  • 5 Questions in PLC+: Where are we going? Where are we now? How do we move learning forward? What did we learn today? Who benefited and who did not benefit? 
• Bringing data to the PLC+ (33:22) 
  • Student feedback 
• Equity / Cognitive Bias / The Decisions we choose to make: (35:52) 
  • Quote from PLC+: “Underlying every decision about what we choose to gather data on is an unspoken decision about what we won’t look at.”
  • Data should be aligned to team’s common challenge; then did we impact learning or not?
  • Invite students to PLC+ times for feedback 
• Protocols for learning walks
  • Microteaching protocols
  • What did we learn today? Every single day we should be formatively assessing
• Scheduling logistics (44:56) 
  • Two PLC+s – Grade level & Content level 
  • Vertical & Horizontal conversations are necessary 
• Grading at their school (48:19) 
  • Competency-Based / Mastery of Standards
  • Formative homework & classwork 
• All Learning is Social Emotional (50:41) 
  • Social Emotional Academic Learning 
• Removing institutional barriers vs. Intervention (54:27) 
  • Support each learner individually – help them find a way to mastery 
• Special offer for Vrain Waves Listeners!! (58:50) 
  • Promo Code: VRAINWAVES

Go to corwin.com/PLCColorado to register; Oct 3 & 4 in Denver at the Curtis Hotel