Breaking Down Walls at The Yelle School

I recently had a chance to be a fly on the wall at a fifth grade teacher “Professional Learning Community” (or “PLC”) at the Yelle School. All I can say is I was blown away!

PLCs are basically opportunities for teachers to get together and share ideas on how best to teach. But it’s more than that. They look at the nitty-gritty on every kid in their classrooms and determine how the student is doing based on MCAS, classroom work, “benchmark tests”, and so on. They then put this on an index card for each student and mark them as pink (high risk), yellow (some risk), and green (low risk). The index cards are then posted on a wall, and their goal is to move everyone out of the pink and get as many as possible into the green.

And that’s where the rubber meets the road. They hash over strategies for teaching different concepts. Remember struggling with decimals or fractions? They must have shared half a dozen ideas on how to best help the kids “get it” (“I just loved your dice idea”, “I made copies of this matching game for everyone to look at”, “I found this wonderful old workbook in my closet”).

It wasn’t just the idea sharing either. There was energy and a palpable enthusiasm in the room (at then end one teacher said, “what a great way to start the day!”). And they clearly treasured the time they spent together and didn’t want to waste any of their precious moments talking about their weekends.

Traditionally teachers were each in the 4 walls of their own classroom and seldom had time to interact, never mind do so in such a productive way. “Teacher A” had her own ideas that worked but had a handful of kids she couldn’t reach, while right down the hall “teacher B” had answers to her challenges but had issues of her own to which teacher A had solutions.

It’s hard to overestimate the power of this kind of collaboration. This team of teachers is continually refining their methods and looking closely at each and every kid. And every week they have that wall of pink, yellow, and green – a powerful visual reminder of how they are doing. The best part about this is that this isn’t the only PLC in town. A number of others have popped up in our schools and it’s really just a matter of time before this model becomes widespread. And while construction crews will soon be using sledge hammers to break down walls for the high school renovation, the Yelle PLCs will go on breaking down their own – by sharing their ideas, talents, and experience in their quest to help the students of Norton succeed.