On the 27th of September, ISE held a whole-school faculty meeting to discuss ISE's new "Open Classrooms" initiative and the development and arrangement of a fresh set of Professional Learning Communities at the school.

We started with a short presentation on PLCs, including a set of agreements focused on collaboration and trust that were adopted by the group. We agreed:

• ...that PLCs are voluntary professional development opportunities for those willing to participate
• ...that PLCs are inclusive: anyone from any department or division is welcome to participate in any PLC of interest.
• ...to adopt the 7 Norms of Collaboration developed by the Center for Adaptive Schools
• ...that "What's said in the PLC, stays in the PLC." I.e., while in a PLC teachers should feel they can be open about their frustrations as well as their epiphanies

The faculty then, knowing how quickly the year flies by, got down the business of identifying their key concerns in the form of topics to be adopted by the PLC members. These boiled down to the following topics and the following volunteer facilitators:

1. Modern Learning – Bill Tolley
2. Service Learning – James Forsythe
3. IB Best Practices – Lando Calrissian (not really--but that would be awesome) Lando Sterling
4. Montessori for Language learners -- Janika van Ekeris
5. Social and Emotional Learning --Leah Jaques

Three of the five have already held their first meetings and Modern Learning will be up upon our return from the October break.

If anyone in the ISE community wants to learn more about PLCs and how they help teachers help students, please contact ISE's Leaning Design Coach, Bill Tolley. And if you are interested in the subject matter of a particular PLC, feel free to contact the facilitator in charge. And, finally, whenever you are in the school, look on each classroom door for the "Open Classrooms" sign. Wherever see one, feel free to drop in and see what's happening inside!