Professional Learning Communities and School Improvement

Collaborating group: Alder Elementary School
Faculty contact: TBA

Alder Elementary is located in Reynolds School District. The school has a consultant from the Oregon Department of Education who is working with administrators and teachers to create a School Improvement Plan. We have been working with the school in two ways, first by helping them to create a Professional Learning Community (PLC), and second by assisting them to re-think their bilingual program design.

As consultants, we help establish a Instructional Leadership Team made up of teachers, support staff and administrators and assist in looking at data to help the school identify an area of instructional focus and two strategies that they will everyone at the school will become an expert in within that focus. The benefit to the school is we can assist in accessing research on best practice and protocols for PLCs including data analysis, walkthroughs, looking at student work, and planning using the PLC cycles.