PLC

Our district is in its third year of the PLC program. (Given the current financial situation in the district, it's probably the last year, too. But I digress.) PLC stands for Professional Learning Communities, and it's based on a model by the DuFours. The program is designed to give teachers common meeting time to address instructional needs as well as provide extra lessons in problem areas to students.

So every third day, a teacher comes to my room to give my kids an extra lesson in math or language arts. I meet with the other 4th grade teachers and plan ways to teach better. Each marking period, we're required to have a goal for our students and monitor how they are doing towards the goal. Right now, we are working on teaching the skill of writing a paragraph.

At any rate, the time has been invaluable to our team. We are very productive and work well together. When you look at the difference between schools in the U.S. and schools in China/Japan, one major difference is the amount of time given to teachers to plan instruction. Many of the teachers in the district do not like PLC time, though. They would rather be working with their students, and don't get along as well with their team or don't see the value in meeting. It's been an uphill battle of trying to get the others to see the value in the time before it's taken away from us.