in part, lies in continually drilling deeper into the work, coupled with sharpened specificity. How Schools Thrive moves far beyond how to effectively coach teams in addressing the three big ideas of a PLC (a focus on learning, collaborative teaming, and a focus on results.), or the four critical questions associated with learning (What is essential that all students learn? How will we know if each student is learning—skill by skill? How will we respond as a school and as a team when students struggle with their learning? And, how will we extend the learning of students who demonstrate proficiency?) The authors provide specific suggestions and protocols for drilling deeper into both the structural and cultural aspects of embedding the characteristics of a high-performing PLC into each team—task by task.
Drilling deeper implies, in part, making conscious what is often unconscious. For example, many teams simply evolve (or devolve) into a set routine that is rarely examined. In How Schools Thrive, Many, Maffoni, Sparks, and Thomas provide specific ideas for coaching teams into developing effective routines, tasks, and habits that revolve around such practices and collective inquiry, developing an action orientation that is reflected in action-research, creating a sharp focus on results—improved student learning—all within the framework of continuous improvement.
Of course, it is difficult—if not impossible—to coach a team into enhanced effectiveness unless teams recognize a sense of urgency. Readers of How Schools Thrive will find ideas for collaboratively analyzing data to create an accurate picture of a team’s (or school’s) current reality and pragmatic ideas, practices, and protocols for developing specific plans for moving forward, In short, How Schools Thrive is a resource designed to coach those who coach teams. The bottom line is this: just as improved student learning is inextricably linked to adult learning, adult learning is linked directly to the learning of those whose task it is to help teams improve. Helping teams thrive depends on coaches thriving. The ideas, concepts, practices, protocols, and other resources inside this book are powerful tools for enhancing team performance and ultimately student success. What is more important than that?
INTRODUCTION
Coaching-based initiatives are being leveraged and developed to support and change organizational cultures strategically and with positive results.
— HELEN GORMLEY & CHRISTIAN VAN NIEUWERBURGH
In our first book together, Amplify Your Impact: Coaching Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work (2018), we introduce a framework for coaching collaborative teams in a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work. In that book, we share examples of how coaching improves a team’s professional practice around the three big ideas—a focus on learning, a collaborative culture, and a results orientation—and the four critical questions—What do we want our students to know and be able to do?, How will we know when they learn it?, What will we do when they don’t learn it?, and What will we do when they have learned it?—of a PLC (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). In this companion book, How Schools Thrive: Building a Coaching Culture for Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work, we share more concrete ideas and strategies for coaching collaborative teams around the successful implementation of the essential elements of a PLC. We have created this resource to use either in tandem with Amplify Your Impact or separately on its own.
Both texts explicitly advocate for and identify the advantages of a shift from coaching individual teachers to coaching teams of teachers. Both books are grounded in the PLC process and both focus on promoting the development of highly effective collaborative teams. Both Amplify Your Impact and How Schools Thrive are anchored in the concepts of clarity, feedback, and support and promote the use of tools like the strategy implementation guide (SIG) and the Pathways for Coaching Collaborative Teams (pathways; Thomas, 2016) to assist those who coach collaborative teams.
Although the two books share many common elements, they are different in other ways. A useful construct for understanding the differences is based on the work of Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky (2002). Heifetz and Linsky (2002) believe that change presents itself as a bundle of technical problems and adaptive challenges, but that change never involves exclusively one or the other—technical problems or adaptive challenges. Solutions to technical problems are fairly quick, straightforward, and readily apparent, while answers to adaptive challenges typically take longer, are more nuanced, and are less obvious. Clearly, PLCs have both technical problems and adaptive challenges.
In Amplify Your Impact, we offer specific strategies that help teams with the implementation of the more explicit tasks of PLCs—things like prioritizing and unwrapping standards, identifying learning targets, developing common assessments, holding productive data conversations, and using protocols to ensure that results—not best intentions—drive decisions. These tasks are the most common starting places for schools working to become a PLC and are more closely aligned with the kind of technical problems Heifetz and Linsky describe.
In How Schools Thrive, we shift our attention to coaching teams around the essential elements of the PLC process—continuous improvement, collective inquiry, action orientation, and a focus on results—and make a conscious effort to drill deeper into the more complex aspects of the PLC process. Mastering these PLC essential elements share many of the characteristics Heifetz and Linsky (2002) identify as adaptive challenges.
Taking PLC Practice to the Next Level
In an effort to improve their schools, principals often ask, “What’s the next level of PLC training?” Or they might say, “My staff is ready for the next generation of PLC workshops.” This kind of thinking reflects the notion that advanced training equals advanced content and levels of proficiency, similar to the way algebra II follows algebra 1, but the truth is there is no PLC Plus or PLC 2.0. The elements of the PLC process are constant, and while the big ideas and basic tenets don’t change, what does change is the depth at which teams understand, and the fidelity with which they apply, the PLC process to their teams and in their schools.
During his work in schools, Richard DuFour, one of the architects of the PLC at Work process along with Robert Eaker, often shared that principals frequently asked him about the availability of advanced levels of PLC training. Rick always answered their question same way: “There are no advanced levels of PLC training; we didn’t hold anything back.” He would continue this thought with, “We have shared our best thinking about how to ensure high levels of learning for all; you must now go back to school and do something with what you have learned.” Bob Eaker agreed, adding that while there are no advanced levels of PLC training, he believed that teams can move beyond initial levels to more sophisticated levels of PLC practice.
We agree with both DuFour and Eaker; there are no advanced levels of PLC training, however, there are advanced levels of PLC practice. So, instead of asking about the next level of PLC workshops or training, a better question for principals would be, “How can we move teams to the next level of PLC practice?” For more and more principals, the answer to this question is found in the idea of coaching collaborative teams around improving their professional practice.
Eaker explains that teams in the early stages of the PLC process are focused on “getting started” and improve their practice when they begin to “drill deeper” (personal communication, 2018). When teams are getting started, they focus on putting structures in place. They work on things like developing a common language and establishing norms. They might prioritize and unwrap the standards to identify the highest leverage learning targets. Initial steps might also include designing common assessments, using protocols to facilitate productive data conversations, or creating master schedules that allow students to access more time and support without missing direct instruction in another subject. As terrific as all this work might be, Eaker suggests that improving a team’s practice requires that teams drill deeper into the PLC process.
When
