1. Identify the part(s) of your plan you were able to implement.

Part 1: I was able to implement building a PLC to address teacher clarity and effectiveness. We successfully implemented standards based proficiency scale assessments into each quarter of the school year.

Part 2: The PLC lead two professional development afternoons for the entire staff to encourage them to use these tools in their classes.

2. How successful was your action plan at addressing the challenge?  

The challenge was to establish a peer learning community that fosters sustained inquiry and reflection on instructional practice. Meeting every week with teachers who were engaged in the same process allowed us to collaborate about what worked well and discuss ideas of improvement and growth. When we shared how things went in one of our classes, other teachers would want to want to try it as well. For example, Teacher B tried a new rubric method for assessing a writing assignment and shared how it informed students to work differently and allowed her to give specific and helpful feedback (Artifact #18). I adopted this new rubric and adapted it to fit the requirements for a project in my class. Students expressed liking seeing something familiar across multiple classes because it let them know what to expect. I shared with the PLC comparisons of student work on the project from past years (based on the old rubric/guidelines) to this new one and we reflected on how it improved the depth of what they were being asked to do.

Further evidence of the action plan success can be seen in Artifact #13 (each of the standards I assessed with a proficiency scale over the course of the year) and Artifact #14 (examples from my small group during the first professional development afternoon)

3. Which stakeholders and association practice or program were impacted?  How do you know (site evidence)?

Teachers: The whole staff did professional development lead by the PLC (Artifact #14).

Students: I saw a big difference in the quality and depth of the work I saw from students by using this process for assessment. I was able to give extremely clear guidelines about my expectations for what a student would need to do to be at a 1.0-4.0 proficiency and I was routinely impressed with students who chose to challenge themselves. At one of our meetings Teacher C expressed that he noticed one of his summative assessments only had 1.0-2.0 level questions and an early assessment was asking students to answer a 4.0 level question. This lead to a great discussion in our PLC about how much weight should be put on each of the levels within different types of assessments, depending on where the class was in learning a standard, and what the standard was.

School Board/Administration: The work done in the PLC was taken to the school board and adopted as       BCHS's multi year assessment plan (Artifact #17). 

4. How were your four chosen competencies used in the implementation of your project?

Adult Learning: Because I knew about needing to respect where an adult learner is in their process, I knew getting handed several large packets of copies from textbooks (Artifact #8) would turn teachers away from wanting to even try to implement these new strategies. I developed a simplified template for staff so what we were teaching would be approachable and applicable to all content areas (Artifact #10-14). 

When planning the first professional development afternoon I suggested that we break the whole staff up into small groups with a PLC member leading their group through using the template and offering guidance (Artifact #4 and #5). In a large group setting there are always a few loud dissenting voices that get the whole group off track, and it is easier to skate by and not actually engage in the work being done. Intentionally splitting up the groups in a way that was diverse (across experience level, subjects and grades taught, social groups) shifted the staff out of their normal group habits and put everyone on an even playing field. Keeping the groups small allowed for a great deal of collaboration and discussion as each teacher worked on their own standard.

Interpersonal Effectiveness: During one of our PLC meetings while working on implementing our first proficiency scale, teacher A appeared frustrated and quietly expressed a desire to leave the group. I had a few conversations with her privately and I learned her frustration came from feeling like she was too old to learn something new (that would probably just go away with the next administration anyways) and a lack of confidence in her own skills and understanding of the standards. I suggested that she communicate with the whole PLC her reservations because it would help everyone else lead the PD with the staff in the future. I also made sure to shift how I was speaking in the meetings, first about the why of our PLC. We weren't doing this because it was mandated by the admin or the state, it was to be able to make sure we were clearly teaching and assessing students in an equitable way. The other way I shifted how I spoke in our meetings was to start filling out the template from what we already did in our classrooms. We needed to start with the assessments we already use and look at them through this different lens-don't start over from scratch. This terminology of "using a different lens" to look at what we each do already caught on and each of the PLC members used it when working in their small groups during PD #1.

Explore and Challenge Inequity: I thought about the diverse backgrounds and experiences of the teachers when designing the templates teachers would be using as well as how we went about putting teachers in groups for PD #1. I consistently facilitated discussions within the PLC during our meetings about making our assessments inclusive and equitable to all types of learners (Artifact #16).

Facilitating Collaborative Relationships: After PD #1, it was clear some of the less experienced teachers were having some major issues in their classrooms with simple behavior expectations, particularly among the teachers who had freshman classes. How were they supposed to focus on high level learning and assessment when students were being defiant? I proposed those freshman teachers and two of our PLC members have a work day where they collaborate together to address the main behavior issues seen across the classes and create a clear unified set of behavior expectations that all of the freshman teachers agree to. We weren't able to get everyone subs for a work day so I had individual conversations with each of the teachers about their experiences and strategies, and then connected them during other times we met throughout the year (BFT meetings, staff meetings, etc).

5. What obstacles, if any, did you encounter?  How did you address them?

The main obstacle was that the school's Superintendent/Principal, who was a key stakeholder and the main driver of the action plan's goal, announced that she would be retiring at the end of the year. This occurred just before the PLC was scheduled to lead our first professional development afternoon. The rumble through the school was very quickly, "why are we doing this proficiency scale work when the new administration might have us do something else?" There was also a frustration that the administration had tried to implement all of the staff being a part of a PLC about two years ago, then the work that was done in those PLC's wasn't followed through. When I started at BCHS the push was to have "literacy across curriculums" but that was also pushed to the wayside, so I understand the teachers resistance to trying something new when the push might not be there from the next person in charge. To address this problem I used what I learned when speaking to Teacher A about the language we use when introducing proficiency scales (explained in question 4). It also ended up working out that the principal was not able to be at the first PD session, so the learning opportunity came entirely from our PLC group and not an administrator (Artifact #4 and #5).

6. Given the outcomes, describe any changes you might make to the Capstone Project’s action plan.

As the year was coming to a close (pretty much all of quarter 4) and people started to look to what would be happening next year with a new admin energy towards the PLC meeting each week and spending time on proficiency scales during professional development petered out. Continuing to set intention towards this work or meeting with the new Principal/Superintendent about its importance would have been a good adjustment as it was losing steam.