Highland Park Elementary School
3. Meadowlark Elementary School
4. Sagebrush Elementary School
5. Woodland Park Elementary School
6. Sheridan Junior High School
SCSD2 has been recognized as a National Model PLC. Six district schools have recieved the distinction of National Model PLC School.
1. Highland Park Elementary School
2. Meadowlark Elementary School
3. Sagebrush Elementary School
4. Woodland Park Elementary School
5. Sheridan Junior High School
6. Sheridan High School
And the National ESEA Distinguished Schools Program recognizes these three as National Distinguished Title I Schools (ESEA Network, n.d.).
1. Sagebrush Elementary School
2. Woodland Park Elementary School
3. Sheridan Junior High School
Additionally, Business Insider identifies SCSD2 as Best School District in Wyoming in 2018 (Loudenbeck, 2018). The district was listed on the College Board AP District Honor Roll in 2017 (one of 433 districts in the United States; College Board, n.d.). Niche.com (2019) identified it as the Number One Best School District in Wyoming in 2017 and 2018, and Number Two Best School District for 2019.
The district achieved the highest Wyoming district aggregate performance on state assessments in reading, mathematics, and science at all grades tested in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 (data come from the Wyoming Department of Education data reporting site; https://edu.wyoming.gov/data).
Sheridan High School has received the following accolades.
• Listed in the 100 Best Public High Schools in the United States (TheBestSchools.org, 2018)
• Awarded the US News & World Report (2019) Best High Schools Silver Award in 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017
• Identified in the Washington Post (Mathews, 2016, 2017) America’s Most Challenging High Schools in 2016 and 2017
Sheridan High School has also experienced the following distinctions in student achievement.
• National Merit Scholars: Sixty-seven finalists and eighty semifinalists since 2000
• Advanced placement (AP) scholars: Forty-seven scholars, seven with honor, twenty with distinction, and five national in 2018
• ACT district composite averages: Highest in Wyoming (using Wyoming Department of Education data) in 2016 (22.6) and 2018 (21.8), and highest among Wyoming 4A districts in 2017 (21.5)
• We the People Wyoming state champions: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 (Sheridan Media, 2018)
• Wyoming all-state music: Largest number of student qualifiers of any Wyoming district (Wyoming High School Activities Association, n.d.)
• 2018 AP exam pass rate: 72.7 percent (Wyoming, 55.5 percent; global, 61.3 percent) (College Board, 2018)
SCSD2 has had nothing short of outstanding outcomes due to its educators’ passion for student learning, continuous improvement of its utilization of the PLC process, and a mindset that drives it to engage in ongoing cycles of reflection and improvement in the classroom.
With this book, we wish to do two things. First, we highlight the elements that make the PLC process work. This information offers you either an important review or an introduction, depending on your stage of PLC implementation. Second, we take you under the hood of SCSD2’s high-functioning PLC and share its real-life applications of the PLC process so you can see how a typical public school district has successfully articulated and implemented this process. We want you to come away from this book feeling like you are a member of the SCSD2 family. And we want you to feel prepared to build your school or district’s living history of excellence with your own PLC journey.
As you learn about SCSD2, we hope you see your own school’s potential as a PLC. However, if your school is in a dramatically different place, or you find your story radically different than SCSD2’s, don’t lose faith! While the example we provide takes you inside a PLC, the true emergence of any PLC comes from one place—the heart. Schools of all kinds are using the PLC process, and when educators make that mental and emotional shift—a change of heart—everything else, including improved student results, will follow. So no matter what kind of school you work in, the examples, strategies, and approaches we provide in this book will serve to ignite your imagination, fill your heart, and nourish your mind.
Throughout this introduction, you will learn more about SCSD2 and how the PLC process helped dramatically reshape both the outcomes that the district achieves and the climate and culture that serve its students. If you’re already on the PLC journey, this book will help illuminate your path. If you are considering the PLC process or are just beginning your journey, you’ve picked the perfect place to start. Either way, we look forward to taking this tour with you!
The Tour
As the book’s title suggests, we intend to take you on a tour inside a real district’s PLC transformation. When implementing the PLC process, you will see your school or district change at the cellular level—in its basic structure and function. Deeply embracing the PLC process means forever altering a school’s inner workings. Committing to the PLC process and implementing it with fidelity will positively impact every stakeholder. The intricate and difficult work of PLC transformation and implementation is well worth the effort; it will yield incredible outcomes in student learning. We also know that the more we work in the PLC framework, the more complex the work becomes. SCSD2 has truly embraced this reality for the sake of its students.
One of the most valuable elements within the PLC process is that it helps educators discover, or in some cases rediscover, their why. In every profession there is a tendency to get caught up in the internal machinations of daily work—the ever-present constraints and the pressures. However, by consistently executing the elements of the PLC process, educators are drawn back to the basics of what it means to be an educator.
Throughout this book, as we explore the various elements of the PLC process, we take you inside SCSD2’s successes, challenges, and celebrations during the PLC journey. We look at the three big ideas of a PLC and the four critical questions (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016), and we explore how SCSD2 schools embody the foundational elements of a PLC. We discuss how collaboration and intervention are different in PLCs and traditional schools, and we reveal what inquiry strategies have led to SCSD2’s success as a PLC, as well as what can go wrong along the way. We hope this book gives you a clear sense of the system and spirit of SCSD2.
Before this tour begins, we will introduce your tour guides and the setting of the tour. We will share the hunger that prompted SCSD2 to change, the solution the district found in the PLC process, its continuing PLC journey, and the sense of fulfillment that PLC
