The Handbook for Highly Effective Teams in a PLC at Work®: Essential Actions for Tackling Critical Issues

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Bob, Anissa, and Kim. Bob Sanju is an award-winning educational leader, author, and nationally recognized speaker celebrated for his engaging style and practical approach to school improvement. He's led two schools to achieve national model PLC at work recognition, one of which also earned the prestigious National Breakthrough School Award from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Named Utah Principal of the Year and a finalist for National Principal of the Year, Bob's leadership and insights have been featured in numerous Solution Tree publications, including the recently released Simplifying the Journey, as well as in Principal Leadership Magazine. Dr. Anissa Baker Busby has over 20 years of educational experience serving as an elementary school teacher and administrator.

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Her passion is to help schools build systems of support for collaborative teams that will ensure high levels of learning for all students. She was the 2008-2009 Teacher of the Year for Miller Elementary School and holds an Ed.D. in K-12 Educational Leadership. She is the author with Nicole Dimich of the handbook for Design in Five, Assessment Tools and Protocols for Teacher Teams. And Kim Monkers is the principal of Crimson Cliffs High School located in St. George, Utah.

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She began her career almost 25 years ago as a high school English and communications teacher and has coaching experience as well. Kim's been fortunate to work in many capacities and has a passion and appreciation for the collaborative process in education, serving as a learning coach, assistant principal, athletic director, middle school principal, and state activities director. Kim has experience with creating high functioning collaborative teams, professional learning communities, curriculum development, curriculum design and mapping, instructional coaching, and RTI, and they are the authors together with William Ferreter of the acclaimed new book, The Handbook for Highly Effective Teams in a PLC at Work, Essential Actions for Tackling Critical Issues.

[01:57] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[02:00] SPEAKER_02:

Bob, Anissa, and Kim, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Well, thank you. We're excited to join you. I wonder if we could start by talking about what need you saw in the field and within the PLC at Work portfolio. What did you see happening in schools and what did you bring from your experience working with schools to put this book together? All right.

[02:18]

And I love the term need there because that's what this book was written for and designed for was to fill a need. We got together as authors and we're also practitioners, but we recognize that this professional learning community work we know is the foundation for ensuring high levels of learning for all students. It's the science of our profession, but there's misinterpretations of what the work looks like all over. And in our work in schools and districts, we see students, various interpretations or misinterpretations of what this work looks like. And so the need was just to clarify exactly what the work of highly effective teams looks like. And we framed that in four kind of sub chapters.

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Four sections, if you will. And then each each section has very clear action steps framed around what the action of the team is, why effective teams do that. And then most importantly, how this is what that work looks like. And so that was the need we were looking to fill.

[03:18] SPEAKER_01:

Just to piggyback off what Bob was saying is just providing a lens of clarity on the what and why of collaboration. instead of teams, not really giving teams a, I don't wanna say a peak, it's a deep dive into what should be happening in their collaborative time and their collaborative conversations. And to provide that clarity on what should be their focus, and that should be results, results in student learning and results of their teaching strategies and what teaching strategies are proving to be most effective. to provide the student outcomes that they're seeking. And that can't happen really with just putting teachers in a room and saying, be a teacher team, meet at this time, and not having a roadmap or a guide, if you will, on what that looks like.

[04:10] SPEAKER_00:

And I would say in most of our work and working with teams, they have expressed needing something that they can just see clear action steps like, hey, we don't have a lot of time. How can we just really make this doable? And what are we supposed to be doing when we come together? So as a team, we took the critical issues of collaborative teams from learning by doing, and then that's how we were able to create this book. Also mirroring the take an action framework where we had the parts, as Bob mentioned, and how we were breaking them down into simple action steps so that the teams would be able to see, hey, this is, and they can look at the table of content and see exactly what they need and then go to that section and be able to work and get clarity on the how, the why, and the what, as Kim mentioned.

[04:55] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And I'm just going to read the section titles. You say that highly effective teams have a common foundation, highly effective teams focus on learning for all students, highly effective teams effectively use assessments and data, and highly effective teams provide extra time and support for learning. And then, of course, the chapters are on precisely how to do that and what that looks like. It strikes me in looking through this book that you essentially cover, you know, the entire field of curriculum instruction and assessment in what is not a extremely short book, but it is concise and it is very, very action packed. In thinking about all of those aspects of identifying the essential learnings and the prerequisite knowledge and skills and, you know, paring things down and focusing on the essentials and scope and sequence and assessments, where do you see some of the highest impact from teams that go from, hey, we're meeting, you know, we're quote unquote doing PLCs.

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And I'm sure you hear from lots of schools that are quote unquote doing PLCs. What do you see as the big transformation that occurs when they really get dialed in and they really start to cut the fluff and focus on the high leverage actions? What are some of the highlights for you?

[06:02] SPEAKER_00:

I will say in my work, especially recently, as I have been working with teams, as they have been using our book, I've actually seen it's a big shift and even how they conduct their meetings. So I've heard them talk about, you know, when we, we thought that we were really coming together to have effective collaborative planning or that we were really an effective team but we had all these barriers that kept getting in the way that will provide that were preventing us from doing the work every time and so as they have been going through the book they realized that hey we may have had norms but our norms didn't speak to the needs of us as adults so that it could govern our behavior when we were coming together We also didn't know how to truly have those critical conversations when norms were broken. And so to be able to speak to like, hey, we have a norm that address our pet peeve and these are needs that I have to stay focused. It was so much easier for them to address

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those barriers and stay focused on the right work. Another shift that we have observed in doing this work is when they get down in the work and start doing it, the impact of having exemplars. And we talk about how to create those exemplars and how to teach students how to judge their work. Like that is usually a next step for teams, but to realize how impactful that is and the impact that it has on students taking ownership and being invested to see the results of learning. Like that has been really huge shifts in new learning for them, but they now see it as part of their PLC at work process or their collaborative team processes when they are coming together.

[07:33] SPEAKER_01:

I would completely agree with Anissa in that a lot of teams, I think that what we all probably see the most is teams not having clear guidance on what to do when there's some conflict within their group. And that could come from a lack of norms, lack of knowing their norms or following their norms. But then again, it's just getting once they get that and they get in deeper, it's really transformative to be able to understand and identify. Oh, you know what? We maybe are giving the same assessments, even common formative assessments. But our interpretation of what success looks like is different.

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And oh, now we're at a place where we can have that conversation and get on the same page as to what student success actually looks like in this standard and then communicate that to students. So that learning target is very clear to students. If it's not clear to teachers, then it's not clear to students. So that teacher team conversation when they have that realization is, hey, we're not calibrated the same on this. is so powerful and so impactful as the team moves forward in their work.

[08:46] SPEAKER_00:

So in the very first chapter, we talk about how to structure your team. So we give them three structures. We talk about norms, roles, and protocols. And the beautiful part about that, throughout this book, in every single part, we're giving them protocols to use to help improve their practices to become a highly effective team. and to make sure that they're focused on the right work. And you will see protocols and examples all the way through.

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So even if they get stuck, we have an example of a protocol that they can use, and then we have given them tools to be able to implement those things. And I think that was very powerful that we talk about norms and we talk about roles on the team so that they know how to work together as a collaborative team, but then the power of protocols to help them stay focused on the right work when they do come together. And that is just a plus. Because in every single section, we have a protocol for them to use to be able to do that work effectively as a collaborative team.

[09:42] SPEAKER_02:

And I think that speaks to why this work has been so successful and so enduring, is that it's not just a process of cramming four independent practitioners into a room and saying, you know, get to work. There are protocols, as you said, and there is a major shift from saying, okay, you are, you know, three, four, five completely independent solo practitioners doing your own thing and being forced to talk about it for an hour. versus being a collaborative team, working as a team. And Anissa, you and I have elementary backgrounds and some of the teaming is natural on a grade level or in a grade level team. But often at the secondary level, people feel as if they don't really have any teamwork to do. And certainly people want to feel that if they're being asked to work as a team, that the task is actually team oriented.

[10:30]

I wonder if we could talk a little bit about how that works if we're talking about common formative assessments and identifying learning targets and success criteria and interventions. When people feel like, well, your job is different than mine and we're on the same team for some reason that I can't figure out. Maybe we teach the same subject, but different courses. How do we bring people together as a team, especially at the secondary level or at the elementary level, if they feel like they're not really on the same team?

[10:52] SPEAKER_01:

So I'll speak a little bit to that just from a secondary lens. I've been in secondary my whole career. And I think what is impactful is when you bring teams together is teachers together is to find commonalities within what they teach. When you sit down with their core, their standards, there are so many, I've had teams come together and I say, bring your standards, bring your core, whatever you use to kind of outline your year to create your common pacing and scoping and all that and once they do that and I say now find in their highlight you know the skills that you are teaching your students that you want to see the outcomes of and it's so enlightening for them to see oh you you who I think is so different for me have summarizing

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you also have explaining and you know what does that look like to explain you know if i say to a student explain what does that look like and that may be different in u.s history than it is from psychology but as social studies we're in the same department so can we come up with you know, an agreement on what explaining looks like and create a common rubric, if you will, a common expectation. But I think a lot of times they just get caught up in that we're so different, yet there are so many universal skills that we want our students to be able to learn and demonstrate. And it's just a matter of weeding through our standards, through our learning targets and finding those, and then creating some commonalities on what success would look like in those skills.

[12:30] SPEAKER_00:

I would say recently I've had the opportunity to work in secondary schools more than I have done in the past. And that work is very true. Like a lot of them will come together and say, well, we don't have anything in common other than the students. And so recently we in a particular school that I am working with, we started collaborating around competencies, doing exactly what Kim was talking about earlier. identifying those competency skills that students must be able to show or to exhibit in their work or be able to prove the learning in their work. And that has helped out a lot because we were able to now, starting in one particular high school, we started with, well, actually it was a middle school that feed into the high school.

[13:12]

We start with creating like a portrait of a graduate. So we took these 21st century competencies and as collaborative teams, although we taught different subjects, we all can be able to present or speak on certain topics. And then what are certain behaviors that they have to do? What does critical thinking look like for those things? So when we started talking about that, they all had something to say. And then we realized, like, yes, because these competencies show up across all content areas.

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And they're embedded in our standards. And so we were able to do exactly what Kim was doing and realize, hey, we all have these things in common, but we were able to unpack the competencies. We were able to talk about what the competencies were. in particular may look like in terms of proficiency per grade level, per content area. And then they were able to build like proficiency scales and rubrics so that they're able to collect evidence along the way that the students are creating this portrait of a graduate. When they finish, they will have a portfolio that's showing that they're meeting these competencies that they collaborated around.

[14:13] SPEAKER_02:

You know, Justin, one of the things I love about this book is this is a book written by practitioners. You know, there's a proverb that says to know the road ahead, ask those coming back. The four co-authors of this were practitioners. Like we've been down this road and we've seen, we've made mistakes and we've identified some areas where we really felt like just compelled to be able to help. And so that was kind of the essence of this book is let us share some experience, share some things that we know work in the classroom and in the teams and in the schools to move learning forward for students as well as with teams. I think that's so powerful to look at, as you said, the portrait of the graduate, the set of skills that we want students to walk away with, knowing that each class that students take is going to give them a different disciplinary angle on those skills.

[15:08]

Being able to communicate in science is different than being able to communicate in civics. And we can work together to figure out how we each play a role in that. Well, talk to us about some of the features that people will find in the chapters and how you envision teams using them.

[15:21] SPEAKER_01:

In each chapter, there's a dialogue box of, I hope I get the phrasing right, so you two correct me if I don't get this correct. But what less effective teams say versus what highly effective teams say.

[15:32] SPEAKER_02:

That's the language of groups versus the language of highly effective teams.

[15:36] SPEAKER_01:

And I think that's so powerful because, as Bob mentioned, you know, we're practitioners. We've been down this road and, you know, I can look back on the days of, you know, collaborating with my team as an English teacher and thinking of the missteps that I took. And I found that I sometimes was in that column of a group where that language came out of my mouth. And then to see it rephrased in what an effective language. team player would say, oh, wow, that really is powerful for I believe all teacher teams to see. This is what I might initially think because in my frustration, my lack of time, my trying to get through content, this is what might be the first thing that I think about.

[16:18]

But let me reframe what I'm thinking right now and think of myself in a highly effective team and a highly effective team player. What would the other side of that be? And those are really powerful statements and questions that are on that side of the box.

[16:34] SPEAKER_02:

Aren't these folks wonderful? It was such a pleasure to write together with these colleagues of mine. And I wish Bill was here because he's just such a powerful educator and a powerful voice. But Kim, yeah, share with us.

[16:47] SPEAKER_01:

You know, probably my favorite part of the book is a couple of things. So I apologize if I'm going to take your answer, Bob and Anissa, but I love the tools and the protocols throughout. As Anissa mentioned before, this isn't just a bunch of chapters that says, you know, you should do this without any examples or any guides or any tools to help teams, you know, try to work through the challenges that they face as a team. There are actual practical tools. And my real favorite part is when teams assess their reality and they get real about where they are and where they need to go. And at the end of each chapter, there's a section of some slightly different colored pages And they're titled Critical Issues for Team Consideration.

[17:40]

And I just love the idea that you've read about what highly effective teams do. And now think about that in respect to where you and your team are today. Where are you and what work is next to tackle? And I think that's just so powerful for teams to really have an assessment and an idea of getting real.

[18:05] SPEAKER_00:

I just want to give credit. Kim and I were joining these two dynamic authors who was doing this work and we have had the opportunity to know both of them for a while. And so when Bill came up with this idea that this is how he really wanted to have a tool like this for the teachers, the whole impact of how the book was designed and from the parts to the action steps to the language of ineffective teams to the language or ineffective groups to highly effective teams, and then going in to make sure that teachers understand the importance of the why and the how. to do this work. So because we know that resistance happens a lot with teens when they don't understand why they are asked to make certain shifts. So that we took the time through every single section to provide teachers with the why.

[18:52]

And those the two guys, Bob and Bill, were our lead authors. And so they took this book and made sure that when all the parts were put together, that we were having a conversation with teachers. So it is written in conversation language like they can truly just read the book. It is not where it is a lot of jargon that they do not understand. It is not heavily just research. It is practical conversation language that teams need to be able to say, hey, when I'm short on time and I'm not exactly sure what to do, I can go in, I can understand the background of it.

[19:26]

They're going to tell me how I'm going to do it. And then they're going to tell me what I need to do or the tools that I need to use to be able to get that done. just the way that we did this with the teachers in mind. And every single time that we were coming back together, it was the thought of making sure that this book was a useful tool for teachers. We wanted this for them to see. And all of us were practitioners at the time when we started writing this book.

[19:50]

I was fresh off of coming from a principal, like fresh off, like just coming out of the principalship. Kim was still there. Bob was still was coming off of that as well, had been doing this work for a while. And Bill had just retired. when we did this work. So we actually wanted to make sure that we had a tool that we could put it in the teacher's hands, that they could go part by part, read it and see themselves in the work to see what they need to do next.

[20:16] SPEAKER_01:

100% Anissa, what would I use as a teacher? What would be valuable to me as a teacher? If I put myself in a teacher spot again, what would be helpful to me? And then also as a principal, what would be helpful for my teams?

[20:31] SPEAKER_02:

And I think, Justin, just to sum this up, I think the most powerful part for me, and I think our co-authors would agree, this is a playbook. This is what the work of highly effective teams looks like. If we want to move toward this idea of ensuring high levels of learning for all students, And that's as it should be. But at the end of the book, we talk about being beacons of hope for students, because we as educators stand as beacons of hope for students, for the students that we serve every single day. And so when we collaborate effectively, when we provide extra time and support, when we identify those things that kids need to learn, and then we work to make sure we're sending the message that you care And we're going to make sure, we're going to make sure in our collective efforts that these things happen. So the book is The Handbook for Highly Effective Teams in a PLC at Work, Essential Actions for Tackling Critical Issues.

[21:25]

Anissa, Bob, and Kim, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having us.

[21:30] SPEAKER_01:

Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

[21:33] Announcer:

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