PLCs

The educational world is notorious for its in vogue jargon and acronyms. A current one is 'PLC' - Professional Learning Community. The last two days, I have been in Seattle with hundreds of other educators being instructed and inspired in how to develop PLCs in our schools. Essentially, PLCs are teams of educators (grade level teachers or subject unified teachers) that work together to analyze existing student performance and develop strategies to improve student learning (how's that for educationeeze!) More simply, it's teachers working together rather than just working in their own 'kingdoms.' Research shows that schools who have developed strong collaborative teams are having significant improvement in student performance. I actually enjoyed the conference and believe that our school will benefit from more structure in our collaboration. I got to experience the Seattle commute for a few days. The Vashon foot ferry makes it convenient for me to walk out my door onto the ferries which puts me downtown. It was about a half hour walk to the Weston Hotel, which was enjoyable exercise. I'm sure the commute would get old eventually; especially considering the hour and a half time each way.