PLCs

At out school we are studying RTI. So our PLC's are using the Mary Howard book on RTI. This helps us as sped teachers and also gives us ideas on our part in RTI. We also have PLC's based on our interests or concerns like behavior, brain research or school climate. With all these groups we can meet as sped teachers or meet with teachers across the subject areas. Hope this helps.

In our district we are using On Comon Ground by Rick DuFour, and Whatever It Takes. In addition Learning by Doing is an incredible hands-on book that will help the practice of creating and maintaining relationships in a PLC. Everyone, including Spec. Ed., is using the books in our middle school, so I think the information in the books translate well across disciplines and levels.

Debb

Fortunately our principal has supported our time in PLC's. We now meet twice a month for 75 minutes while our principal takes our 4th - 6th graders to the gym. When we first started meeting, he was able to pay substitutes and we met as a group in a room at the administration building for an entire day. This is where we made substantial progress on programs and learning strategies for our struggling students,and for the advanced students. Recently our PLC's have resembled staff meetings; however, we are planning on meeting some afternoons in order to go back to our original intention of focusing on student progress in the core areas. One aspect that did come out of our studies, was that the only students who did not make progress with all our various interventions were those students who had behavior problems.

Our school has moved to "late start Mondays" to give us the opportunity to meet with our colleagues. While this is a great step forward for our district, we are limited to meeting with our grade band department. I wish we had the opportunity to choose the group we meet with.