The "Health Care" Based Professional Learning Community

What do you get when you combine Professional Learning Communities, the health care system, and some imagination? It would be participatory, planned, predictive, preventive, progressive, and personalized.

I have spent a lot of time listening to the sorts of words that educators use when talking about student learning, student achievement, and teaching. What has surprised me is how much it sounds like the terms you would hear from health care professionals and those working in the health care system. I found this interesting. Working at a high poverty, high second language learner, and low achievement school these teachers talked about their work like they were trying to save lives and get kids “healthy.”

So I wondered, how would implementing a Professional Learning Communities system at a school look if it was modeled off of a health care system. Here is where my imagination lead me.

First and this is very important, all 4 phases rely on two ingredients. Great questions and hard data. Great results begin with great questions. And without data all we have are our own opinions.

Phase 1:Participatory
Health care talks all the time about getting people to participate in their own health management. So I used the term “participatory” to represent the philosophy behind phase one of the change. The staff would have to participate in PLCs. The focus would be “Systematic.” Teams would have to meet during set times and on set days. Teams would be responsible for documenting the outcomes of their meetings using an agreed upon record keeping sheet.

Phase 1 focuses on getting the staff used to meeting with each other, sticking to the schedule, and documenting what they were doing.

Phase 2: Planned, Predictive, and Preventive
Health care systems used these terms to talk about what needs to be done to handle health care needs. They plan for what will happen, think about and predict likely issues and prepare for them, and attempt to prevent common illness before they begin.

Teachers too can improve their effectiveness when they are planned. Planning included common pacing and using Standards Based Lesson Plan design. By predicting what it is students will need to know at various assessment intervals, teachers can ready students and not be racing to catch up or failing to teach a standard all together. Finally, teachers prevent common mistakes because they are planned and predictive about what students will need to know and what they will do for those who don’t master a standard or who have mastered the standard.

The focus here is standards, skills, and strategy. What is it that students need to know? Thinking about power standards, essential standards, and deconstructing them into excellent focused lessons. What skills must they demonstrate and how can we equip students for the needs of the next grade. And what are the most effective strategies to teach students and help those who need more assistance in learning.

Phase 3: Progressive
Health care systems are progressive in the terms of the treatment options it brings to its patients. The goal was to move teachers to being just as progressive in response to “academic casualties” and special needs. It is in Phase 3, after teachers had moved from meeting to talk about student learning, to planning for student learning, we would put into place our Response to Intervention (RtI) model. The focus is on student learning and being progressive about meeting the needs of each student by moving them progressively through the Tiers as needed of the RtI model.  Truly meeting the needs of each students learning needs.

The focus here is symptoms and solutions. What is that our students’ need and what is that we can give them?

Phase 4: Personalized
The best health care system meets your needs. It gives you exactly what you need. Here our PLCs would become a place where we meet the needs of each and every learner. Not content to merely talk about percents of student who know or don’t know a standard, or sub-groups of students, etc; but truly knowing what each and every student in the classroom knows and needs; Differentiation at the most personal of levels.

Our focus is on students. Not groups, not percentages, not achievement or proficiency bands but a student with a name. Our PLCs will work to meet the needs of that student.

Here is chart that graphically displays the four phases of implementation.

You never know where a little imagination might you take you.