[00:01] SPEAKER_01:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:15] SPEAKER_02:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined once again on the podcast today by Daniel R. Venables. Daniel is an education consultant and executive director of the Center for Authentic PLCs, home of the Grapple Institutes, where Daniel helps schools in building, leading, and sustaining authentic professional learning communities. He's the author of several books, including How Teachers Can Turn Data Into Action and The Practice of Authentic PLCs, A Guide to Effective Teacher Teams, as well as his new book, Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs, The Human Side of Leading People, Protocols, and Practices, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:54] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:56] SPEAKER_02:
Daniel, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.
[00:58] SPEAKER_00:
Thanks for having me.
[00:59] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, so in this new book, you talk about the human side. You tackle the fact that no matter what our protocol or our structure is for PLCs, humans seem to be a common factor. Humans seem to always be involved, for some reason, in professional learning communities. And I wonder what needs you saw in the field, in your work with schools who are developing and strengthening their PLCs that brought about this book.
[01:23] SPEAKER_00:
So a couple of things. The first I would say is, you know, you're so right that everything in education really comes down to the human side. Our relationships with kids, our relationships with parents, as teachers, with colleagues. In the work of authentic PLC, it's easy to get sort of mixed up in the goings on of the day-to-day meetings and checking off things on agendas and forgetting that we're dealing with people. And therein lies, in my mind, the key to really having high-functioning, effective teams is to not only recognize that we have people who have come to the table with varying degrees of experience and, in fact, in some cases, baggage and all kinds of other things. It's really important to acknowledge those things, but also work with people for where they are, understanding that they're not all in the same place.
[02:13]
Whenever we're talking about any change or any anything that's hard and good in terms of doing work for kids, the people are going to come to the table in varying degrees of readiness, varying degrees of their understanding and their knowledge, their background knowledge. And that has to be addressed, I think, to really make this happen at a high level. And so the book was born from, I do a lot of work with teachers and we put on this institute you mentioned in the opening called the Grapple Institutes, where we train teacher leaders who are going to become or are PLC facilitators in their schools, we train them to be high functioning facilitators and really get them the skills that they need to do the heavy lifting, do the hard work, but also the good work, the stuff that makes a difference for kids. And so the human side and this third book of mine has to do with how do you facilitate these teams?
[03:04]
We know they're important. You know, there's been plenty of people before me who have shown the research, why they're important, why they make a difference for kids. So my particular focus in this third book is How do you lead them? We know what they are. We know what we're supposed to be doing. How do we lead other teachers in doing this important work?
[03:22] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. And it's a skill in its own right that I think is easy to overlook. I've had conversations with so many principals who say, you know, we've tried PLCs or we've been trying to do PLCs and it's just not working. We're not turning out the way I wanted them to. And I'm glad that you mentioned just right off the bat in our conversation that this is hard work, that this is not something that we can just kind of throw out there and expect it to just go swimmingly. So I wonder if we could jump into a couple of the key human challenges that schools face, because it's easy for us as leaders to kind of underestimate those challenges and say, well, yeah, PLCs are a best practice.
[03:57]
We know they work. We know they're great. We know they're effective. We know they're good for kids, so let's do it. But then we land our feet in reality and sometimes get stuck a little bit. So what are some of those human challenges that schools often grapple with and need to work through?
[04:12] SPEAKER_00:
One of the things is that with ubiquity becomes, you know, dilution. And they have become very popular in schools. And there are many, many, many different things masquerading as PLCs that I myself would probably not characterize or title PLCs. So, you know, we're at a point in education where every school thinks they have them or they call something a PLC. but they may in fact have started off on the right foot and then things got a little hard and the school year took over and all the things that are implied by that, the dizziness kicked in and they diluted or they became sort of just glorified faculty meetings. I see this a lot.
[04:54]
In fact, a lot of times I get emails from those principals you mentioned saying, come help us. Our PLCs are just, they're floundering. We need some direction. They're not what I hope they would be. They're not how they started out perhaps. So that's a very common obstacle.
[05:09]
So the first thing that, of course, we have to do or we think about is let's really hone in on what are these authentic PLCs, as I call them. How are they different from just a run-of-the-mill meeting or a department meeting or a grade-level meeting? Because they are different. And how, once we know what they are, how do we do the work? And, you know, if we're going to have really what DeFore, I think, called PLCs light, if we're going to have PLCs light, We don't need to build trust. We don't have to be concerned with teacher buy-in.
[05:41]
We don't have to build a team in any way. We can just do the light lifting and not make a difference for kids, call them PLCs and continue day to day. The schools I work with are more interested and they're very interested in doing more, doing something else, something that really matters for kids. And the research is clear. If they're not high-functioning teams, they really tend not to make a real difference for students. So the challenge becomes, how do we go from just an ordinary run-of-the-mill meeting to something more substantive that really has an impact in the classroom?
[06:14]
There are lots of ways to do that. All my books really address that, what should be happening and how. The point that I want to stress is the leading of those teams is absolutely quintessential to the success because I believe that the PLCs, and I've seen this everywhere I go, PLCs are only as effective as the teachers who lead them. So we have to arm those teachers with the skill set and the knowledge. What should they be doing? How should they be doing it?
[06:41]
And what do they do if these obstacles arise, as they normally will? When we talk about doing the heavy lifting, looking at a colleague's work, looking at our students' work, it's very vulnerable, risk-taking for teachers to do that. not all already, you know, on day one. Those kinds of conversations have to be facilitated with some skill, else it's likely to be a train wreck. And that's where teachers start to get a bad taste in their mouth about PLCs. Oh, we tried that.
[07:11]
It didn't work. And a lot of times that just is, they had a false start. And sometimes it's just like a classroom. If the classroom, every first year teacher knows this, myself included, when I was a first year teacher, if the classroom management goes by October and It's much harder to get it in line, you know, by January. And the same thing is true for a PLC that was started off ineffective or wasn't doing the work with fidelity, et cetera. It's much harder to turn that around.
[07:37]
So I'm big on front loading it and saying, let's get the teachers who are going to lead these things, the skills they need first. And then let's mark some success and let's, you know, proceed from that point. You know, there's another DeFore I mentioned. There's a book called Learning by Doing. I think there's a lot of truth to learning by doing. You can do a lot of damage by learning by doing, too, if that makes any sense.
[07:58] SPEAKER_02:
Right. I think you hit the nail on the head in talking about skills and the principles that I've spoken with that are frustrated, maybe themselves have gone to some training. They've read some books, so they have the information. They have the model in their head for what they want those teams to look like. But knowing what you want to see and actually training teacher leaders to facilitate groups that are consistent with that vision are two very different things. And closing that gap seems to be, you know, the order of the day.
[08:25]
So what are some of the skills that teachers need to effectively lead those PLCs? So if we've got a principal who knows that they want to pursue PLCs or they want to deepen their implementation of professional learning communities, what are some of the skills that teachers really need to be equipped with in order to effectively lead those groups?
[08:41] SPEAKER_00:
In addition to having the background knowledge about the what, you know, what this team should be doing, they have to have some knowledge and some skills about how to lead other teachers in doing it. And that usually involves empowering the teachers, getting teacher buy-in up. And there are lots of ways to do that, and I have, I think, a whole chapter on buy-in and trust. How do you get the trust up in the group? If you're going to do the tough stuff, the stuff that really matters for kids, you have to have a bedrock, a foundation of collaborative skills, you know, trust within the group. So those things are ways that teachers who are leading these, the facilitators, can get their teams to be high-functioning.
[09:21]
That's part of the skill set. So how do you build trust in the team? What do you do? What don't you do? What is the role of the facilitator? I go to a lot of schools and their notion of the leader of the PLC is the teacher who's the best class and teacher at the table, the one who knows the most, often who's been there the longest, the one who the parents love the most, all these skills that may or may not be what we're looking for.
[09:45]
For example, I don't necessarily want the best teacher in the room to be the leading teacher. It's okay if that's the case, but it's certainly by no means a requisite for making these things work functionally. If the facilitator is my model of a facilitator, they're really not taking a front seat to what's going on in the meetings. They're truly facilitating. They're guiding the teachers through these meetings in a fairly organized way, but they're not the one who knows the most. They're not the one who is the best teacher in the room.
[10:17]
I mean, there might be those things. And that's up until I get to the school, that's what the principals have been looking for, for their leadership. They pick the best teacher and they say, well, shouldn't it be? And the answer is no. I've seen some of the very best PLCs, the very highest functioning PLCs I've worked with, have not had their very number one teacher at the helm in each of the PLCs. What they do have is they have good teacher leadership skills.
[10:40]
They are good with adult learners. They understand dynamics. They can read body language. They understand when people are not comfortable. They know how to differentiate their facilitation, when to ask the hard questions, when to back off, how they're being received. These are soft skills that not everybody is aware of how they're being received at a meeting.
[10:59]
And these folks have to be. So there's a bunch of skills. And of course, I mentioned them all in the book and talk about how to generate high degrees of functionality within those skills. But there's more to it than certainly than meets the eye. And it's not just a teacher who's been there the longest.
[11:13] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Daniel, I know one of the key challenges interpersonally for members of a team is keeping other people on track so I'm wondering what advice you have for schools where maybe there are a few people perhaps concentrated on one team who maybe have not fully committed to the process and they're you know they're willing to work together but as far as sticking to a protocol or staying on topic you know it might very easily get off track and veer in a different direction what are some of your guidelines for facilitators to help keep those meetings on agenda
[11:43] SPEAKER_00:
Okay, so that's one of the things that we teach them in our Grapple Institute because that comes up all the time. I mean, I'm glad you asked that one because it's so very prevalent. When the meeting is being facilitated well, it's very unlikely for teachers to get off task. The burden of keeping the group on task falls pretty much on the lap of the facilitator, although in a really high-season and high-functioning team, everybody has that ball in a sense. Teams have norms. They don't always stick to them, and there's a whole lot about when norms work and when norms don't work, but norms can help keep people on track.
[12:15]
Protocols, you mentioned, very, very good at keeping teachers on task because of the way protocols are structured. However, they have to be well facilitated, right? Otherwise, we're right back to having conversations about what happened last period with an angry parent in the office. You know, we can get way off the subject if the protocol is not. So the protocol isn't a panacea, but it's a tool. if the facilitator is using the protocol with fidelity as it's designed to be used it's very hard to have meetings get off track here's a rule of thumb the better the meeting the more the teachers walk away saying this wasn't a waste of my time this isn't so bad you know buy-in and having good meetings are highly correlated part of having good meetings is for the facilitator to keep her team on track, whether that's with the protocol, using norms, or some other way, but that's a skill that they need.
[13:07]
When I do work with teachers, their mouths are hanging open after the first day of our work because they are suddenly seeing what it really is like, and they're like, this is not at all what we do in our PLCs. and their eyes are open to something else, and that's part of the magic for me.
[13:22] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Daniel, I know there is so much potential in PLCs to talk about a shared text if people are doing a professional reading together, to talk about student work, to talk about teacher work like unit plans, to talk about data, to talk about dilemmas. There are so many different ways that we can be helpful to each other in that context with the right training, with the right set of goals, with good facilitation, skillful facilitation. And I'm appreciative of the fact that you've written this book to help schools develop those skills in their teacher leaders. And again, the book is facilitating teacher teams and authentic PLCs, the human side of leading people, protocols, and practices. And Daniel, if people want to learn more about your work or get in touch with you, talk about maybe having you come out to their school, where's the best place for them to find you online?
[14:12] SPEAKER_00:
They can just email me, which is at dvenables at authenticplcs.com. That's also the website, www.authenticplcs.com, or go to thegrappleinstitute.com.
[14:25]
All of those places, I can be tracked down. Of course, all this information is in the book. But if people don't want to get the book, that's fine. They can just email me directly, and I'm happy to help.
[14:35] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Daniel, thanks so much for joining me once again on Principal Center Radio.
[14:38] SPEAKER_00:
Thank you for having me.
[14:40] SPEAKER_01:
And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.
[14:44] SPEAKER_02:
So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Daniel Venables about authentic PLCs and the human side of facilitating those collaborative groups? One of the things that again stands out to me, and you've heard me say this previously on Principal Center Radio, is the importance of training. It is absolutely not enough to get an idea from a book and then tell your staff to implement it. And again, I've talked to people over and over again who have a great model in their heads, a great model they've read about in a book. And maybe they've even bought that book for their staff which is a great idea but when it comes to doing the skillful work that leading plc's truly is there is no substitute for training so if you feel like you're stuck if you feel like you had a false start as daniel said i want to encourage you to take a do-over and say hey you know we are on to something here we didn't get it right the first time but that's okay this is a learning curve and we are committed to climbing it
[15:46]
So, if your PLCs have stalled out, I don't want you to say, you know, those PLC things don't really work. The jury is in. This is a well-known fact that when they're run skillfully, PLCs make an enormous difference for teaching and learning. So, if you feel stuck, here is what I want to encourage you to do. Invest some effort and some time and some resources in training. Focus on those facilitators.
[16:13]
Focus on giving them the skills and the confidence they need to be effective facilitators of PLCs. And again, if you want to get in touch with Daniel, it's AuthenticPLCs.com.
[16:24] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at PrincipalCenter.com slash radio.
