How Schools Thrive. Susan K. Sparks

This disconnect between what is known to be “best practice” (collaborative teaming) and what actually occurs (teacher isolation) is one of the great mysteries of modern educational practice.

      However, there is good news! The increasing popularity of the Professional Learning Communities at Work® (PLC) framework has resulted in more schools embedding collaborative teaming into district and school structures and cultures. In short, in a high-performing PLC, collaborative teaming is not viewed as an innovation or initiative, or a unique structure to try. Instead, collaborative teams are seen as the engine that drives virtually every aspect of what occurs day in and day out. In PLCs, collaborative teams are the vehicle by which data-driven, research-based best practices are embedded within the daily routines of the district office, schools, teams, individual classrooms, and importantly, the support staff. In a highly effective PLC the use of collaborative teaming has become simply “How things are done around here!”

      An important caveat is in order; in and of itself, collaborative teaming will do little, if anything, to improve student learning. Collaborative teaming is a vehicle—a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Effectiveness—improved student learning—will be determined by the quality of the work being done by teams. Effective teams engage in the right work, in the right ways, at the right times, and for the right reasons!

      Engaging teams in the right work will not happen by accident or invitation. If teams are to thrive, they need a number of things such as a rationale (the why for each task, product, or activity), time to meet, training, examples, monitoring, feedback, encouragement, support, along with frequent and timely celebration. In short, teams need to be effectively coached!

      It’s not enough to merely recognize that supporting and improving team effectiveness can be accomplished through coaching. The issue is what are concepts, practices, procedures, and tools that educators can use to effectively coach teams? What tools are available to coach coaches? How can coaches get better? In How Schools Thrive, Thomas W. Many, Michael J. Maffoni, Susan K. Sparks, and Tesha Ferriby Thomas present research-based concepts, practices, and protocols that can enhance team effectiveness and are grounded in years of successful practice. The result is a collection of tools that leaders can implement, in a reasonable amount of time, and when taken together and used with fidelity, are proven to be effective.

      How can teams and coaches keep “getting better” in a culture that, by its very definition is never ending? The answer, in part, lies in continually drilling deeper into the work, coupled with sharpened specificity. How Schools Thrive moves far beyond how to effectively coach teams in addressing the three big ideas of a PLC (a focus on learning, collaborative teaming, and a focus on results.), or the four critical questions associated with learning (What is essential that all students learn? How will we know if each student is learning—skill by skill? How will we respond as a school and as a team when students struggle with their learning? And, how will we extend the learning of students who demonstrate proficiency?) The authors provide specific suggestions and protocols for drilling deeper into both the structural and cultural aspects of embedding the characteristics of a high-performing PLC into each team—task by task.

      Drilling deeper implies, in part, making conscious what is often unconscious. For example, many teams simply evolve (or devolve) into a set routine that is rarely examined. In How Schools Thrive, Many, Maffoni, Sparks, and Thomas provide specific ideas for coaching teams into developing effective routines, tasks, and habits that revolve around such practices and collective inquiry, developing an action orientation that is reflected in action-research, creating a sharp focus on results—improved student learning—all within the framework of continuous improvement.

      Of course, it is difficult—if not impossible—to coach a team into enhanced effectiveness unless teams recognize a sense of urgency. Readers of How Schools Thrive will find ideas for collaboratively analyzing data to create an accurate picture of a team’s (or school’s) current reality and pragmatic ideas, practices, and protocols for developing specific plans for moving forward, In short, How Schools Thrive is a resource designed to coach those who coach teams. The bottom line is this: just as improved student learning is inextricably linked to adult learning, adult learning is linked directly to the learning of those whose task it is to help teams improve. Helping teams thrive depends on coaches thriving. The ideas, concepts, practices, protocols, and other resources inside this book are powerful tools for enhancing team performance and ultimately student success. What is more important than that?

      INTRODUCTION

      Coaching-based initiatives are being leveraged and developed to support and change organizational cultures strategically and with positive results.

       — HELEN GORMLEY & CHRISTIAN VAN NIEUWERBURGH

      In our first book together, Amplify Your Impact: Coaching Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work (2018), we introduce a framework for coaching collaborative teams in a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work. In that book, we share examples of how coaching improves a team’s professional practice around the three big ideas—a focus on learning, a collaborative culture, and a results orientation—and the four critical questions—What do we want our students to know and be able to do?, How will we know when they learn it?, What will we do when they don’t learn it?, and What will we do when they have learned it?—of a PLC (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). In this companion book, How Schools Thrive: Building a Coaching Culture for Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work, we share more concrete ideas and strategies for coaching collaborative teams around the successful implementation of the essential elements of a PLC. We have created this resource to use either in tandem with Amplify Your Impact or separately on its own.

      Both texts explicitly advocate for and identify the advantages of a shift from coaching individual teachers to coaching teams of teachers. Both books are grounded in the PLC process and both focus on promoting the development of highly effective collaborative teams. Both Amplify Your Impact and How Schools Thrive are anchored in the concepts of clarity, feedback, and support and promote the use of tools like the strategy implementation guide (SIG) and the Pathways for Coaching Collaborative Teams (pathways; Thomas, 2016) to assist those who coach collaborative teams.

      Although the two books share many common elements, they are different in other ways. A useful construct for understanding the differences is based on the work of Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky (2002). Heifetz and Linsky (2002) believe that change presents itself as a bundle of technical problems and adaptive challenges, but that change never involves exclusively one or the other—technical problems or adaptive challenges. Solutions to technical problems are fairly quick, straightforward, and readily apparent, while answers to adaptive challenges typically take longer, are more nuanced, and are less obvious. Clearly, PLCs have both technical problems and adaptive challenges.

      In Amplify Your Impact, we offer specific strategies that help teams with the implementation of the more explicit tasks of PLCs—things like prioritizing and unwrapping standards, identifying learning targets, developing common assessments, holding productive data conversations, and using protocols to ensure that results—not best intentions—drive decisions. These tasks are the most common starting places for schools working to become a PLC and are more closely aligned with the kind of technical problems Heifetz and Linsky describe.

      In How Schools Thrive, we shift our attention to coaching teams around the essential elements of the PLC process—continuous improvement, collective inquiry, action orientation, and a focus on results—and make a conscious effort to drill deeper into the more complex aspects of the PLC process. Mastering these PLC essential elements share many of the characteristics Heifetz and Linsky (2002) identify as adaptive challenges.

Taking PLC Practice to the Next Level

      In an effort to improve their schools, principals often ask, “What’s the next level of PLC training?” Or they might say, “My staff is ready for the next generation of PLC workshops.” This kind of thinking reflects the notion that advanced training equals advanced content and levels of proficiency, similar to the way algebra II follows