Sticky Issues
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Sticky Issues Archive >
In this section, principals tell how they handled a challenging situation, how some policy that was in place actually worked, and the lessons learned from dealing with these Sticky Issues. Send your stories to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
We Will Be a TEAM!: PLCs Don’t Just Happen
See Stories from the Field for background on this issue.
I remember being very excited about my new principal assignment. I went in armed with all of the latest professional development ideas. I was looking forward to developing a climate of trust, collaboration, risk-taking, and high levels of professional learning for both staff members and students. In short, I was excited about developing a Professional Learning Community and involving everyone in professional development. What I found was a school characterized by isolation, competition for favors and resources for each of their own classrooms, cliques, and lack of interest in any new ways of teaching and learning. I cajoled my staff that I wanted them to avail themselves of the professional development they needed to become risk-takers and to challenge themselves to learn all they needed to know in order to make their students successful. I talked about the notion of “shared leadership” I wanted all of us, including students, to be leaders as well as learners. Amidst continual bickering among staff factions, I remember emphatically standing my ground and saying at a staff meeting, “We WILL be a team!” We set up structures to allow them time to have team meetings. I gave them all of the appropriate paperwork for them to attend professional development opportunities. We wrote and received grants to support their professional development work. Then I sat back and waited for them to become a Professional Learning Community. It wasn’t happening. No one took me up on it. It was business as usual.
What did I learn? That PLCs don’t just happen. Collaboration doesn't just happen. It took us many weeks of focused professional dialogue about our hopes and dreams for our students. It took time for the staff to trust their leader and depend on not being sanctioned if they took a risk and failed. It took time for them to trust that I really believed in shared decision making and that when they made well-informed decisions, I was not going to second guess them. I learned you need structures in place to support a PLC. So we went back to square one. We carved out some time for teachers to meet by restructuring the time in the morning when students arrived to allow teachers extra planning time. (See Carving Out Time for Professional Learning Communities for a detailed explanation.) We had several conversations about when we would meet and how we would provide for the students. We went as a group to a suburban conference where Rick DuFour was speaking about Professional Learning Communities. Several times the teachers would nudge me and whisper, “He’s saying what you’ve been saying!“
We evolved over time into a model staff. Teacher leaders called and hosted meetings in their own rooms to accomplish important work. Teams kept minutes and reported at the regular staff meeting about their work. We tried and succeeded at several initiatives such as being among the first to fully implement technology, developing a math and science focus, developing a rigorous parent involvement model, implementing a new literacy focus, developing the concept of looping in several classrooms, initiating student-led conferences, being a model for inclusion, implementing a gifted and talented program and being known as a staff who could work with difficult children. We received several honors, grants, and special designations.
I learned to trust the brilliance that is within every individual to grow and perform to high levels when the climate is fertile with high expectations, trust, and hard work.
