Seven Steps for Purposeful PLCs: Ep. 15 of The Coaching Podcast
Have you ever heard the dreaded phrase, “this could have been an email,” as teachers walked out of your PLC?Too often PLCs are there to inform on things that need to change or events going on, but when people leave, nothing changes.
Why doesn’t anything change? Because we didn’t make a plan for them to change. In Episode 15 of Buzzing with Ms. B I’ll talk about using a 7 step structure to create a purposeful PLC!
To start, you want to do four “pre-planning” activities: Review Norms, Check-In, State Your Purpose, and Identify Roles.
Reviewing norms is simple! It doesn’t have to be a long speech. In fact, it can be a quick anchor chart you use to simply say, “These are my expectations during the meeting.”
Afterwards, you can check-in. Checking-In is so important because it’s an accountability piece for your teachers and for you! If teachers know you are going to check-in with them, they are going to be better prepared. You can find out more about why this is so important by going back and listening to Episode 14 of Buzzing with Ms. B.
Before you get to brass tacks, you need to state what you plan on getting done and what people are going to walk away with. This step is what separates the emails from the meetings. Walking way with something is vital. Listen to Episode 15 to find out why. If you want even more information on why this is vital, tune into my conversation with Lynn Mussle in Episode 9 of Buzzing with Ms. B.
Finally, you want to identify roles. Everyone needs to know what they are expected to do. These four pre-planning activities should never take more than 10 minutes to get done otherwise you will not get to the fifth step. While these first four pieces of the structure should not take long, they should never be skipped! If you don’t figure out a flow, your meetings will not be worth it!
Once you have everything ready and the flow is set, you can conduct your business. This is where you will do some collaborative planning or a data dig. Anything that you need to accomplish is done after you have all of your groundwork covered. You can find out how to do an amazing collaborative planning session by checking out Episode 7, a delicious data dig by turning into Episode 8, and listen all of Episode 15 to hear great PLC ideas!
After you’re finished with your business, there are two more steps that you don’t want to miss out on to finish out this PLC. Turn into the full episode of Buzzing with Ms. B the Coaching Podcast Episode 15 to find out what they are!
We all want our PLCs to be dynamic and meaningful. Follow this structure and you’ll not only see a better PLC, but also a better learning environment. Happy Coaching!
Ready for the how-to?
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Five Tips for Better Professional Development
Six Must-Use Strategies for PD
Helpful resources
Content Building Guides: PLC Tools
Professional Development Toolkit for Coaches
Check me out at buzzingwithmsb.com and on Instagram @buzzingwithmsb.
Podcast produced by Fernie Ceniceros of Crowd & Town Creative
