"Organizations are most effective when the people throughout the organization are clear regarding it's fundamental purpose" (Learning by Doing. Dufour, Dufour, Eaker, and Many).

Davidson County Schools shares the common vision that learning rather than teaching is the fundamental purpose of our schools.

A professional learning community (PLC) is a collaboration of teachers, adminstrators, parents, and students who work together to seek out best practices, test them in the classroom, continuously improve processes, and focus on results.

1.  What do we want our students to learn?

• Teachers work together to develop a viable curriculum.

• A viable curriculum is the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that have endurance, leverage, and are essential in preparing students for readiness at the next level.
  

• Teachers working together in a collaborative team is key
  

• Professionals in a professional learning community work on interdependent teams that share a common purpose.  They learn from each other and create the momentum that drives school improvement. They build the structures and vehicles within the organization that make collaborative work effective and learning productive.
  

 

2.  How will we know when students have learned?

• Teachers work together on collaborative teams to develop common formative assessments.

•     Formative assessments ask the question "How can we use assessments to help students learn more"?
  

•     The assessments are common because:
  
  
  • They provide teachers with useful information about each student's current overall mastery of the academic standards that will be measure on future high stakes tests.
    
    
  • They provide guidance to teachers about the instructional needs of students.  They provide information to students about the instructional targets and how they can close the gap between their current performance and the target.
    
    
  • They promote regular, job imbedded staff development as a part of the collaborative team process by increasing a teacher's knowledge of the content and mastery of a variety of pedagogical teaching techniques and strategies.

 

 

 

• An intervention is a specific and systematic response to a student need.

• Professional learning communities create a systematic process of interventions to ensure students receive additional time and support for learning when they experience difficulty.  The intervention process is timely and students are directed rather than invited to utilize the system of time and support.