How Schools Thrive: Building a Coaching Culture for Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work®

by Thomas W. Many, Michael J. Maffoni, Susan K. Sparks

Strengthen your professional learning community (PLC) by building a highly effective coaching culture for collaborative teams. A companion to Amplify Your Impact, this resource drills deeper into the more complex aspects of PLC at Work®. Instructional coaches and leaders will acquire new insights and strategies for improving their team’s professional practice around the essential elements of the PLC process, including continuous improvement, collective inquiry, action orientation, and a focus on results.

Gain effective coaching strategies for implementing the PLC at Work framework in your school or

Review essential elements of effective PLCs and how these essential elements influence the instructional coaching of collaborative teams. Study the Strategy Implementation Guide (SIG) and Pathways for Coaching Collaborative Teams tools and how to use them in the coaching of collaborative teams. Acquire new insights, confront new questions, and explore new approaches that promote higher levels of student learning and effective professional learning communities for teachers. Discover numerous strategies to use during the effective group coaching of collaborative teams at every stage of learning to meet adaptive challenges.Learn the benefits of "drilling deeper" into the PLC process, as well as viewing the teacher as a reflective practitioner.IntroductionForeword by Robert EakerPart Making a Commitment to Coaching TeamsChapter 1: Creating Habits of Professional PracticeChapter 2: Identifying How the Essential Elements of a PLC Thrive in a Coaching Culture Part Understanding Essential Elements of Highly Effective Teams in a PLCChapter 3: Learning Together--The Power of Collective Inquiry Chapter 4: Staying Restless--The Impact of Continuous Improvement Chapter 5: Being Urgent--The Value of an Action OrientationChapter 6: Getting Better--The Significance of a Focus on ResultsPart Coaching Collaborative Teams in PLCs at WorkChapter 7: Coaching for Assessing a Team's Current Reality Chapter 8: Believing in Your Team--Coaching Collective EfficacyChapter 9: Creating an Action Plan for Coaching Collaborative TeamsAppendix Stages of Learning and Essential Elements of a Highly Effective PLCAppendix Action Planning TemplateAppendix Communicating the Roll-Out PlanReferences and Resources

274 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 25, 2019

Reviews

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Schools Thrive: Building a Coaching Culture for Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work by Thomas W. Many, Michael J. Maffoni, Susan K. Sparks, and Tesha Ferriby Thomas

Collaborate to thrive! This engaging and well organized book by Many, Maffoni, Sparks, and Thomas is an educational institution’s “golden ticket!” If you are looking for a resource that provides insight, strategies, and examples of what it takes to develop your organization from a mediocre campus to a collaborative school environment filled with motivation and energy, then get your copy of this book! Great for professional development and training.

How Schools Thrive addresses professional learning communities, teaching teams, mentoring in education, and teacher-professional relationships. The text provides ideas and strategies for leaders to coach teams towards effective communication and collaboration in the implementation of the PLC (Professional Learning Community) process. The book aligns to four key components that are essential to building an effective PLC, including collective inquiry, continuous improvement, action orientation, and a results focus. This is a follow-up to the authors’ book Amplify Your Impact: Coaching Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work.

The authors provide a clear conveyance of how to develop a Utopian professional learning community that can grow from the selection of members, questioning the team, and dividing of responsibilities. The authors provide resources that will develop teacher practice while fostering collaborative teams that will simultaneously nurture academic growth. Leaders will be able to use this tool to shift school learning and collaboration to the next level.

The text is an easily digestible read that is applicable for any organizational leader. The authors provide clarity in language that connects to leaders who are working towards building structures that empower collaboration on a team.

This book will appeal to school administrators, teacher leaders, K-12 coaches, and even teachers for its straightforward, effective approach to improving collaboration within teams. The appendices include useful resources such as templates, planning forms, and processes that will guide PLC leaders to build effective collaborative teams. Although this book is written for educators, it has a universal applicability that will benefit leaders in other types of organizations as well.

[Barbara Bingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Schools Thrive: Building a Coaching Culture for Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work by Thomas W. Many, Michael J. Maffoni, Susan K. Sparks, and Tesha Ferriby Thomas (2020) is a professional text that introduces the framework for coaching collaborative teams in a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work. Throughout the text, the authors discuss what they call the “three big ideas” surrounding this concept of PLCs at Work - “a focus on learning, a collaborative culture, and a results orientation” (p. 23). The authors also discuss the four critical questions that pertain to the “three big ideas” - “What do we want our students to know and be able to do? How will we know when they learn it? What will we do when they don’t learn it? What will we do when they have learned it?” (p. 23).

In fulfilling the promises of the introduction, How Schools Thrive… gives a clear pathway through an understanding of collaborative leadership to specific techniques to achieve it. This book is easy to read and has many great ideas and strategies for coaching collaborative teams. Our book club believes this text would be excellent for those who are going into a leadership role within a PLC or for building leaders who are unfamiliar with the PLC process. In the set audience, the book’s arguments are consistently supported with clear and understandable evidence that uses language common to school leadership. This text would also be helpful for those outside of the field of education who would like to implement a type of PLC group within their organization.

Since our book club is well-versed in PLCs, we didn’t find any new information; however, we did like how the book was organized and written. Key components that will be useful to its audience are hands-on application tools, clear definitions of terms, and solid justification for each assertion. Although the author’s concluding chapter was not as impactful for our team, we believe that it will be extraordinarily helpful for those less experienced with the PLC method. In addition, the Appendices, particularly Appendix C, are incredibly helpful tools to aid as an introduction to new team members to our PLC.

We would give this book a 4 out of 5 stars because it is a quality read for the inexperienced learner, but still a helpful reminder for the experienced PLC member.

[Tanya Salewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Instead, collaborative teams are seen as the engine that drives virtually every aspect of what occurs day in and day out,” (Many et. al., 2020 p. xvii)

How Schools Thrive: Building a Coaching Culture for Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work by Many, Maffoni, Sparks and Thomas offers practical guidance for any educational professional tasked with developing the collaborative teams on a campus. For anyone already familiar with the parlance of PLCs, the book is immediately accessible and offers some novel ways of thinking about and tackling the issues that can inhibit productive collaboration. However, readers well-versed in the Solution Tree library will also recognize that How Schools Thrive covers a lot of well-worn ground that may leave them feeling that there’s not much new to see here.

The book discusses the four essential elements of a PLC, which are collective inquiry, continuous improvement, action orientation, and results focus. There are good, usable, “hands-on” examples of how to bolster and support teams within. Additionally, there is useful information for coaches tasked with starting to form these committees. The authors share reproducibles that can help any organization begin using PLC’s. The text is easily digested by organizational leaders. Readers with a strong background knowledge of the PLC process may be less than entertained with the main topics. However, anyone seeking the next leg of PLC work in a coaching culture will quickly digest the information for immediate application.

Whether you are familiar with Rick Dufour’s book Learn By Doing or not, this book offers a deep dive into the core elements of the PLC process that will truly set collaborative teams up for success.

[Dave Moyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent tips for supervising PLCs with practical resources and examples to help principals and coaches develop individualized plans to meet teams where they are at and move them to the next point in their progression.