The Extraordinary Educators Podcast

Unlocking Professional Learning Communities with Dr. Pendleton

• Sari Laberis • Season 6 • Episode 15

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Unlock the transformative power of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in schools with insights from our esteemed guest, Dr. Pendleton, Regional Director of Content and Implementation at Curriculum Associates. Discover how creating a safe and collaborative environment empowers teachers to enhance their skills and positively impacts student achievement. Dr. Pendleton shares her strategies for gaining buy-in from the school community and highlights practical, high-interest topics that teachers can implement immediately in their classrooms. This episode promises to equip you with actionable insights to foster a culture of continuous learning and accountability among educators.

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Sari Laberis:

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Extraordinary Educators podcast. It's Sari, and this week I am joined by my fabulous colleague, Dr. Pendleton, who is the Regional Director of Content and Implementation at Curriculum Associates. Dr. Pendleton wrote a really insightful blog about professional learning communities and how to implement these PLCs in your school, and the blog really talks about the operations and logistics and how to implement these PLCs in your school, and the blog really talks about the operations and logistics and how to do this. And so for the podcast episode, we really discussed the rationale and the reason why. Why should you have these? How does it better your staff and, in turn, your students, and so I hope you take away as much as I did from Dr Pendleton. Here is my conversation with her. Welcome, Dr. Pendleton. We are so excited to have you here today. Thank you for being a part of the Extraordinary Educators podcast.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

Thank you so much for having me. Super excited to talk to you.

Sari Laberis:

Awesome. So you wrote a fantastic blog about professional learning communities and kind of the operations behind how to implement these at schools, and so I wanted to talk to you today about the same subject, but kind of the rationale behind it. Just to start off like what kind of information or kind of context would be helpful for our listeners to hear from you in terms of what these are and why they're important.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

Right. So, Sari, professional learning communities that we affectionately call PLCs. They are a great part or addition to any school because they really focus on teaching and learning, and that's what we hope that all educators focus on. So if we place an emphasis on implementing professional learning communities, this creates a safe space for teachers to come together at least once or twice a week to really focus and hone in on specific content that they may be struggling with or a strategy that teachers would like to implement and expound upon in their instructional day. So these spaces are very sacred for teachers because they really help teachers to build their capacity, which, in turn, directly results almost always in student achievement outcomes, and that's what we want out of professional learning communities.

Sari Laberis:

Exactly. And if you're listening and you're curious about again how to implement these or the way it works, feel free to read Kiana's blog that we will link in the show notes Again for now, dr Pendleton, in terms of getting buy-in from the school community around this type of thing, what did you find successful when you were a school leader, and what advice do you have for either teachers or leaders who want to go about implementing this with their colleagues?

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

Oh, definitely the content, the subject, the topics are always of high interest to teachers, are always of high interest to teachers. They are current educator practices, best practices. They are catchy. The titles may even be enticing for teachers who want to learn more about the subject matter. So definitely something that's of high interest to educators, that they would want to be willing participants in, because you don't want it to seem like a an ordinary training that they might not find of high interest.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

But topics that are new, and one thing that I found fascinating about those topics is that they could be implemented immediately. They are very practical. Teachers can learn about a strategy and a PLC today and then tomorrow be ready to rock it out in their classrooms because it's an immediate impact. And that's the purpose of PLCs is to have something that is high impact, that can be implemented in a practical way in a short amount of time, so that the teachers can go practice it with their students and then come back the following week to discuss the results of it and how students responded to those said strategies that were discussed in last week's PLC. So they're really fun, you know, and teachers really get into them, because they become the leaders in their own right in those sessions.

Sari Laberis:

So they're amazing to be a part of yeah, and I think that's really helpful too in terms of thinking about the scope of these right it development for educators. They kind of learn about something and then it's just never mentioned again, right? So more about that follow-up or what you did as a leader to kind of either hold people accountable for testing it out or looking at the data from whatever they had learned about. Like, how does that system of feedback work for the educators?

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

Right. So the number one thing is that it's very intentional and it's planned, meaning that my teachers got a copy of our PLC plan as a part of their own boarding. So at the beginning of the year, in August, they had a whole year's worth of PLCs planned out already from either the previous year's data or perhaps a teacher survey or maybe a current trend in education that I found to be of interest to teachers. So they already had their topics already laid out. So that's definitely one key piece for implementing the PLCs, so that people can know exactly what's going on and what's coming up and they can become a part of the learning. So that's definitely helpful in terms of proper implementation of PLCs Making sure that teachers know about the topics well in advance so that they can become a part of the learning. And the best part about PLCs is that teachers lead them. So quite naturally, I model the expectations at the beginning of the process, but well, after, maybe the second week, teachers were becoming the leaders in there and you asked how I implemented it. That's what you asked me.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

The title of ours was from theory to practice, so the follow-up piece is, I believe, what you were um getting at.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

The follow-up piece is that a topic would be introduced day one or week one, right, and they would learn about the topic, the content that would be the theory piece, and then days after that they would be expected to implement those in their classrooms.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

And then the following week we would have what we call practice. So from theory to practice, where teachers would actually model what they learned in last week's PLCs in front of their peers, or they may have gotten an opportunity to work with their students on that specific strategy and I might have, as a principal, recorded them in action and brought that video back to PLCs so they can see how actually it works in a real setting in real time. And then the third week would be me actually observing what they learn in PLCs. So it's actually a three-week process. You learn about the theory of it, then you practice it with either your students or your peers, and then the principal comes to observe it and then, quite naturally, I would expect to see how that transcends to actual student retention and achievement through an assessment, either formative assessment or assumptive assessment.

Sari Laberis:

That's really helpful. Thank you for sharing that. When I was a teacher, my principal did something similar and during those smaller meetings in between after we learned it, she sometimes would show a video of someone from the school implementing it and we kind of talk about what they did well together or have someone demonstrate it live. And I feel like that's also a good opportunity for teachers who might not get the spotlight shown on them, or for folks who might not have the ability to like observe their colleagues during the day because they're so busy or whatnot. Really see greatness that's happening down the hall or, you know, learn from their peers as well.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Sari Laberis:

Awesome. Well, before we close out, dr Pendleton, is there anything else that you wanted to share, any tips or parting advice or anything else that that worked for you as a leader, for our listeners, as they are thinking about implementing this in their building?

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

Yeah, I'll just leave people with this parting gift. Plcs are an excellent way to yield student achievement results. It's almost always a direct correlation between building teacher capacity and student achievement. So for those folks that are listening that are interested in learning more about PLCs, of course you can learn more by reading the blog and through listening to this video, but also there's lots of research out there on PLCs and making sure that they actually separate a PLC from a staff meeting, because those two can. They are not mutually exclusive. They do not mean the same thing.

Dr. Kiana Pendleton:

So making sure that those topics are sacred to actual instructional topics and then reserve the right for those topics that may be aligned to more day-to-day operations for staff meetings. So that would be my very just kind of sincere advice for a leader, a school leader that's looking to implement these, or even teachers that are implementing these in their grade level sessions, because these don't have to always be the job of the principal. This may be a smaller setting where teachers may actually think of these topics that they can do in their grade level planning meetings, and then it may grow into a school level PLC or vice versa. It can trickle down or up either way, depending on the setup and makeup of the school. So that would be my number one advice is to separate these topics. Reserve these for instructional topics and then those that may be more fitting for a staff meeting. Reserve those for that time.

Sari Laberis:

Yeah, that's really helpful. You can't just slap a name PLC on a staff meeting and expect it to have the same results, right, like you actually have to hold the time sacred for the learning to happen and then have that other thing feel different, right? Otherwise you're doing a disservice to your staff, essentially. So thank you for that, dr Pendleton. This has been so insightful and I'm sure our listeners appreciated it as well. So thank you again for being here, of course. Thank you so much, sherry. Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on X @CurriculumAssoc and on Instagram @MyiReady. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or if you want to be a guest email ExtraordinaryEducators@ cainc. com, please subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators, just like you, join the conversation and please leave a review. Remember, be you, be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates, editing by Shane Lowe, social media by Atziri Hannon, guest booking by Sari Laberis, production by Hayley Browning. This podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.