Among the guiding coalition’s important tasks are the following.
• Building the shared foundation for the PLC process: Earlier in this introduction (page 4), I describe this task, which includes mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals. Focusing on the four pillars of mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals creates a strong foundation for the PLC process.
• Establishing a common language so people have a shared understanding of key terms: A principal who expects collaborative teams to develop shared norms, a guaranteed and viable curriculum, and common formative assessments will have little impact if those terms mean different things to different people throughout the faculty.
• Building shared knowledge: Once again, building shared knowledge together about the school’s current reality and the most promising, evidence-based practices for improving it is an essential aspect of decision making in a PLC.
• Establishing clarity about the right work: Collaboration is morally neutral. If ambiguity arises over the work that should take place or over quality indicators regarding the work, teams will almost certainly flounder.
• Forming systems to monitor collaborative teams’ progress: By monitoring its collaborative teams, a school can responsively help find solutions when a team struggles.
• Creating a celebratory culture: A celebratory culture should reinforce examples of the faculty’s collective commitments and progress toward the school’s shared vision.
Collaborative teams should not have sole accountability for students and their learning. Leaders should also have accountability—accountability for the teams that work with students to promote their success.
Reciprocal Accountability
Many definitions for the term leadership exist. My colleagues and I prefer this one: leadership is creating the conditions that allow others to succeed at what they are being asked to do (DuFour et al., 2016). This means that central office leaders, principals, and guiding coalition members must commit to reciprocal accountability. To hold teams accountable for engaging in certain processes and completing certain tasks, leaders at all levels must accept their own accountability. This way, they provide teams with the knowledge, resources, training, and ongoing support essential to their success. Effective leaders demonstrate reciprocal accountability when they do the following.
• Assign educators to meaningful teams
• Provide sufficient time to engage in meaningful collaboration
• Establish clarity regarding the work to be done and why it is important
• Monitor and support teams
• Demonstrate a willingness to confront individuals and groups who are not contributing to the collaborative team process
• Celebrate small successes along the way
Assign Educators to Meaningful Teams
We can structure educators into teams in a variety of ways. Vertical teams combine different grade levels, such as a K–2 primary team or a team of junior high and high school band directors. Interdisciplinary teams typically bring together teachers of different subjects for a particular grade level, such as seventh-grade language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies teachers. Access to technology means individuals can also link up with electronic teams, such as a team of all the art teachers in a district.
Research consistently cites that the most effective team structures for improving student achievement feature teachers of the same course or grade level, such as all the algebra teachers or second-grade teachers in a particular school (Gallimore, Ermeling, Saunders, & Goldenberg, 2009; Little, 2006; Robinson et al., 2010; Saphier, King, & D’Auria, 2006; Stigler & Hiebert, 2009; Wei, Darling-Hammond, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). These structures suit the collective inquiry of collaborative teams because members share an inherent interest in addressing the six critical questions of the collaborative team process (see page 6).
Leaders who create artificial teams do damage to the PLC process. We have witnessed principals create the leftover team. For example, a principal may find that almost everyone on the staff fits easily into a course-specific team, but three singleton teachers—a dance instructor, an auto-repair teacher, and a band director—remain unassigned. So he or she asks those three faculty members to form a team, but it remains unclear to both the principal and the team members exactly what the three teachers should accomplish. Leaders should assign every member of a PLC to a team, but each team should serve a clear purpose—to improve student and adult learning. If the optimum team structure isn’t apparent, leaders should engage teachers in a dialogue about possible team structures and get their input on which structure will most benefit them.
Provide Sufficient Time to Engage in Meaningful Collaboration
As my colleagues and I write in Learning by Doing, Third Edition:
Reciprocal accountability demands that leaders who ask educators to work in collaborative teams provide those educators with time to meet during their contractual day. We believe it is insincere for any district or school leader to stress the importance of collaboration and then fail to provide time for it. One of the ways in which organizations demonstrate their priorities is allocation of resources, and in schools, one of the most precious resources is time. Thus, school and district leaders must provide teachers with time to do the things they are being asked to do. (DuFour et al., 2016, pp. 64–65)
Some school and district leaders continue to lament that they cannot find time for teachers to collaborate. No group of educators has ever found time to collaborate; they have to make time to collaborate because they consider meaningful collaboration an absolute priority. The professional literature effectively—and often—addresses the issue of finding time for collaboration, and that literature is readily available for those who have a sincere interest in exploring these alternatives. AllThingsPLC’s (n.d.b) “Tools and Resources” webpage (http://bit.ly/2g9JBLJ) provides different strategies for making time for educator collaboration that do not require additional resources. Readers can go to AllThingsPLC’s (n.d.a) “See the Evidence” webpage (www.allthingsplc.info/evidence) to read about hundreds of schools that have made time for educators to collaborate and have willingly shared their strategies and schedules for doing so.
These first two elements of reciprocal accountability—organizing people into meaningful teams and providing them with ample time to collaborate—are structural issues that effective school leaders can address. Other aspects of reciprocal accountability require more than managerial skill; they require leadership.
Establish Clarity Regarding the Work to Be Done and Why It Is Important
District and school leaders can support the collaborative team process in a PLC by ensuring all team members clearly understand both the nature of the work they need to do and why that work is important. Ineffective or unproductive team meetings create cynicism and only serve to sour teachers’ attitudes toward teaming up while simultaneously reinforcing the norms of isolation so prevalent in our schools (Boston Consulting Group, 2014).
As my colleagues and I write in Learning by Doing:
We have seen schools in which staff members are willing to collaborate about any number of things—dress codes, tardy policies, the appropriateness of Halloween parties—provided they can return to their classrooms and continue to do what they have always done.