Michael Howe

Leveraging the PLC Potential – How to Sustain Growth

Culture of sharing best practices

• The fly wheel effect ( momentum)
• Norms of collaboration
• Hard on ideas, soft on people
• Paraphrasing & speak affirmatively
• Watch your speech patterns

The nuts & bolts of feedback

• Be careful, feedback can be taken negatively.
• Must use effective communication
• Use directive feedback as it leads to the listener taking action.
• Descriptive feed back points out detail with next actions taken by the listener on their terms.
• Must be criteria related

Prompts for peer feedback

• What I heard you say was?
• Want to
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Leveraging Teacher Driven Growth ( The now):

Flexibility within a framework is most critical.

Knowing what Literacy means in your particular field.

• What does Text meanin your field ?
• How do experts in your field think about the author of a source or text?
• How do experts in your field approach problems ?
• What are the norms of communication ?

Critical issues – team considerations

Autonomy & Motivation

• To reach strategic & extended thinking & love of learning is key !!!
• Challenges must be “just right” for the student to motivate them.

Why PLC’s groupings matter:

• More than 5
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Ready . Set . Pause:   ( The how )

1. initiating the proactive culture. Frameworks to develop a shared lens & language.

• Consider potential problems
• Use a multi tiered system of supports
• Response to intervention

Tier 1 ( The foundation for all stuents)

Tier 2 ( Targeted responses )

Tier 3 ( Intensive personalized responses )

Social capitol & teacher – driven change 

Cultivates a culture of learning

Facilitator key rolls:

• Brings focus back to the group
• Encourages participation
• Clarifying the purpose of the work together
• Modeling how to challenge each other
• Encourages norm adherence
• Resolves issues & solidifies trust
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Laying the PLC Ground work - The Why:

A “PLC” ( Professional Learning Community ) is a group of teachers, from the same school, gathering regularly, to learn together, to share good practices & ideas. Some characteristics & attributes of a good PLC are:

• Lead by teachers
• Sets clear paths & goals
• Builds unity between departments
• Teams create higher quality solutions
• Expanded pool of ideas, materials & methods
• Serves as a ridge between teachers
• Challenges each other to grow.
• Confidence grows
• Should focus on instruction, not content ( process not outcomes).
• Is result orientated
• Is a continual process that
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Class room & school wide discipline are different in nature but work hand in hand.

Class room discipline should be handed with these things in mind:

• Be positive
• Be tactful
• Ask student to submit a brief statement on how they will improve their behavior
• Never lose ones temper
• Never ignore the issue
• As the student to meet right after the class to discuss the issue. ( correct issues privately)( address the behavior, & not the student directly)
• Always use “I” language & avoid “you” language.
• Always start class & end class on time.
• Continually evaluate how I handle discipline
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Great tips in this class.!!

Management styles:

I learned the 4 types of classroom management & which I am, the closest to, & which is the best to be.

• The controller
• The guide  
• The buddy
• The Apathete

I feel that I am the guide for the most part with some of the buddy attributes in there. I plan to be even more the guide with less buddy. The controller, I have many of the positive attributes. I aspire to focus on more of the positive sides of the three types, & be sure to never be a… >>>

Common Instructor Mistakes:

The most important thing about instructor mistakes, is that we are human & mistakes will happen. Be sure to not dwell on them, but learn from them. Use humor to explain how it occurred & talk about correcting it. Be real with my students. Be sure to “Laugh at myself”.

Things to keep in mind are:

• Create a positive instructor image. Be sure to reflect an image of a professional who is successful in industry, as the students are striving for this as well. Show care in them. Do not share personal issues, or compare theirs to
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Managing Student Behavior:

Managing student behavior seems to be a challenging yet fundamental process, Thru monitoring my students they whole class period. By monitoring Many positive outcomes will come to fruition.  It creates a positive learning experience, keeps students on task, helps them focus on outcomes, & makes for a more individual instruction, to name a few.

Ways to be a more effective student monitor are…….

• Move around the room
• Move distractors out of reach, such as book bags, phones, ect…
• Do the 20 second survey.
• Give students the 2 minute time frame to settle in.
• Move towards the distracted
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Dealing with challenging students:

There are many different types of challenging students, & each type takes a somewhat different approach, or method. I have experienced some of these types of students & some I have not.

I did learn that you can deal with challenging students with instrumental controls, & or with Normative controls.  Normative controls being the better way to do this.

Here is my take away on how to maybe handle them in a better way.

Un prepared students:

• Be sure to make expectations clear.
• Use class quizzes… ???
• Follow up on assignments. (This is being done as
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Great Course !! Many new things have been learned..

Setting the stage for success:

One needs to become a “ Instructional delivery expert”.  Points to help me in this are:

• Keep in mind that the students have a “what’s in it for me” mentality.
• Give them the rational for learning the specific content.
• Give examples, & show examples.
• Describe & go over the syllabus in detail.
• Go over the course goals & objectives the first day.
• The first day of class will be to go over this & give the general sense of the course, & how it breaks
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