The Impact of PLCs on Curriculum | News | gothenburgleader.com – Gothenburg Leader

If you’ve gone to a Gothenburg Public Schools school board meeting or a Coffee Shop Talk, you’ve probably heard the term ‘PLC’. This abbreviation is often used by the school to explain the interworkings of the school building. But what exactly is a PLC? What is the role of a PLC in the school system? Do PLCs have a hand in curriculum selection? These are all questions that were brought to our attention and that we, the Gothenburg Leader, sat down with Angie Richeson to explore.

Richeson is the Gothenburg Public Schools Director of Teaching and Learning. The administrative team has their own PLC collaborative team that meets weekly, however, on Wednesdays when the staff meets for PLC time, the administrators spend time joining the department and grade-level meetings. Sometimes this looks like just dropping in to listen and support, and other times, a PLC team will request an administrator to join them to problem-solve and/or answer questions.

Richeson explained that PLC stands for Professional Learning Community, and is a group of staff members who work together to serve students.

“Professional learning communities (PLCs) are schools that empower educators to work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve,” Richeson explained.

PLCs do not dictate what curriculum and materials are chosen and adopted by the school, but they do have a say in whether they believe it is working correctly.

“At the heart of the PLC work process are four critical questions that drive the daily actions of every team member,” Richeson shared. “What is it we want our students to know and be able to do? How will we know if each student has learned it? How will we respond when some students do not learn it? How will we extend the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency?”

The job of a PLC group, according to Richeson, is to meet regularly to discuss the progress of students and to determine whether the curriculum and resources are meeting the needs of students.

“Collaborative PLC teams spend time diving deep into the curriculum to make sure all the essential learnings (as defined by the standards) are taught. They also establish pacing guides to help students achieve the essential learning within a year’s time and identify the prerequisite knowledge and skills students need in order to master the essential learning in each unit of instruction,” Richeson continued. “Teams then develop formative and summative assessments that help determine each student’s mastery of essential learning, as well as identify strengths and weaknesses of the instructional programs. And of course, PLC teams are constantly analyzing student data. All of this is a recurring cycle… PLC collaborative teamwork is never finished.”

If a student appears to be below benchmark (or below proficiency) in a specific class, the PLC team may suggest alternate ways for the student to ‘catch up’. This could include re-teaching a concept, additional in-class resources, extra study time, or even one-on-one guidance.

For students who excel above proficiency, PLCs will discuss and create a way for them to continue to have meaningful learning opportunities for academic and personal growth.

In other words, PLCs are a tool that has proven successful for the district not only in terms of offering collaboration for staff members, but also for determining and meeting the learning needs of every student.