Professional Learning Community
Continuous Learning, Continuous Reflection
Vision:
In partnership with the community, our school will be an innovative leader in education with excellent, focused, collaborative programs and staff.
Mission:
We will maximize learning and empower all students to prepare for tomorrow's opportunities.
Educators in our small 4K-12 school are committed to the work of becoming a true Professional Learning Community to ensure that ALL students learn at high levels. Using our resources, including collaboration time on Wednesday's from 2:30-4:00, we focus on the following four questions:
1. What do we want students to learn?
2. How will we know when they have learned it?
3. What will we do if they have learned it?
4. What will we do if they have not learned it?
This work uses the Response to Intervention (RtI) model for addressing student's academic and behavior needs.
We are glad you are here to learn more about this important work.
Our PLC Journey
The PLC Journey for the Independence School District can be traced as far back as the 2005 school year when we began Response to Intervention (RtI) in Academic areas and then Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) in 2009. In 2011 a number of changes occurred to accelerate our journey. First, we switched from a block schedule to a seven-period day that included time for interventions and enrichment. Also that year, a group of administrators attended a PLC Institute in Minneapolis. From that moment on, the Independence School District “drank the kool-aid” and committed to becoming a true Professional Learning Community.
The size of our school and our master schedule was a challenge for PLC implementation. Being a District of about 400 students, we had numerous “singletons” and only random times for teachers to collaborate. That all changed in the 2012-13 school year when our District adjusted its Master Schedule to allow early dismissal of students every Wednesday and time for teachers to collaborate from 2:30 - 4:00. During the 2012-13 school year, the District focused on the first question of a PLC, “What do we want our students to know?” and extensive work was put into identifying Power Standards. This continued into the 2013-14 school year when we subscribed to Mastery Connect to host our Curriculum Maps and assessments that were tagged to each standard. We also began using Mastery Connect for student trackers, allowing our teachers to easily identify the proficiency levels of students on each standard.
Another major undertaking of the District began in 2014-15 when a committee did extensive research on grading practices. This committee developed guidelines and then policies to move completely away from traditional grading practices. In 2016-17, a standards-based system was implemented at the elementary school level and a standards-referenced system at the middle and high school levels.
In 2015-16, the District revisited its Mission and Vision statements. Previous to this year there were different statements for the schools and the School Board. Through a series of meetings and feedback from staff, administration, and the School Board a District Mission statement was created. “We will maximize learning and empower all students to prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities.” Consensus was also reached on a Vision statement, “In partnership with the community, we will be an innovative leader in education with excellent, focused, collaborative programs and staff.” This committee also created a list and definition of five values and set District goals.
Throughout this process, we have continually sent staff and administration to the PLC Institutes in Minneapolis. About 90% of our staff has attended at least one Institute and most of them have gone multiple times. We have also sought to bring in solution tree associates to our District. In August on 2016, Tim Brown spent a day and this past spring Ken Williams visited for a ½ day to address the teachers of a four-school cooperative in which Independence is a member of. This Co-op is now beginning its journey into the PLC world as the four schools have created common schedules and calendars, all of which have early dismissals on Wednesdays to allow for cross-district collaboration of our teaching staffs. They are also sponsoring a PLC mini-Institute from August 12-14 in 2019.
For the past few years, the District has worked hard to create a guaranteed viable curriculum supported by quality assessments to determine the proficiency of the standards in this curriculum. The school-wide goal is, “80% of our students will score Proficient or higher on classroom summative assessments on 80% of the Objectives (Power Standards).” The validity of this goal is determined for individual standards by comparing classroom results with standardized test data. Also during this time, the middle and high school began developing rubrics to help in the assessment of Disciplinary Standards in Speaking and Listening, Reading, and Writing. The disciplinary literacy work was a mechanism for our small District to have common standards across subject areas. Since most of our departments were singletons, this work enabled us to create and analyze common assessments on these standards. In 2018-19 the Middle School and High School dedicated most of its scheduled collaboration time on Wednesdays to the disciplinary literacy standard in writing.
Currently, the District is in a cycle of continuous improvement, by analyzing data and collaborating to build capacity to improve areas of weakness.