PLC stands for Professional Learning Community is one professional development program that a company should conduct in order to meet individual learning of their staff. PLC is mostly done in educational institution like school to empower collaborative learning among the teachers, school heads and administrators.
Our school tried PLC this year with the main aim is to improve teaching learning practice in the classroom. After getting several reference and brainstorming our own definition of PLC, the school staff came up with this statement “a Professional Learning Community is a professional group of people, motivated by a shared interest to collaborate and inquire through supporting and working with each other towards achieving a common goal that will improve their teaching practice so that it makes a successful difference to their students’ learning.”
On paper, theory about PLC seems ideal but in reality we did face some challenges throughout the process of the implementation. However I tried to compile several rules that probably you might want to follow when you want to conduct PLC and make it works at your schools
1. Make it as a part of professional development plan.
AS part of the appraisal system in our institution, every staff needs to have professional goals as their continuous commitment for their own professional growth. However they should not have extra goal only to include PLC as their PD; make PLC as one of the goals instead. It’s supposedly not an extra works which is outside their roles and responsibility.
2. Have an appointed supervisor/ mentor or an expert on the PLC focus
When you are working in a group, you must have supervisor or mentor who will help the groups to keep on track. The mentor ideally come from leadership team or senior management team. Basides, the group may also appointed someone to be their expert mentor for their PLC group e.g. school counselor if they are working on inclusive education. Another important thing to do is to elect a representative of the group who will help to coordinate the meetings.
3. Maintain a record or journal that details the PLC journey
It’s important to keep the record of their learning journey in any format. I would probably suggested blog as the media to record this, but some staff might choose paper and pencil to record their learning journey. Other options you might use besides using school server is Google Doc or other online collaborative tool like wiki. This will be useful when they present their learning to others, or when it’s published properly it might be useful research findings for other audience too.
4. Have focused area of interests
What we have on the list as options for area of interest include learning environment, methodology, instruction, management, communication and assessment. Initially, teachers wrote questions and leadership team sort them into focused groups based on the area above. However, it’s difficult when team tried to get an agreed focused inquiry, when everyone’s got something else in their mind. It’s the supervisor job to ensure that the group inquiry topic is not too broad to explore.
5. Celebrate learning and findings at the staff expo
PLCs are based on a spirit of sharing what we learn. Each PLC is expected to share their findings with the wider staff in an informal expo toward the end of the year. This is important step as the culmination of their learning and to give chance for staff to celebrate their PLC journey.