September 9, 2022
Our UES Professional Learning Community
By: Katie Barea
At UES, we are committed to working collaboratively to ensure high levels of learning for all of our Wise Owls. Our goal is that this will eventually lead them all to a limitless future. Across our district, curriculum teams have been working hard behind the scenes to name Prioritized Standards PreK-12. Prioritized Standards are those that have been identified as most essential to a particular grade level and content area. At UES, we are guaranteeing all students, at each grade, become proficient in the named priority standards. In order to guarantee this, we must work collaboratively. UES is a Professional Learning Community (PLC) school, which is defined by All Things PLC as, “An ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.”
The UES Guiding Coalition
At UES, we have a team of Educators and Administrators, UES Guiding Coalition, who supports this work. This team meets regularly before school and is representative of all areas of expertise across the building. The 2022-2023 UES Guiding Coalition is composed of representatives from: Admin, PreK, Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4, Special Education, Interventionist, Resiliency Team, English Language, and Essential Arts.
The GC members support all educators in our building by:
Nurturing collective teacher efficacy (belief in ability to positively impact students by working together)
- Building shared knowledge
- Clarifying expectations for curricular implementation
- Supporting team efforts & monitor team progress
- Celebrating successes
- Helping teams through rough spots
- Reinforcing accountability for collaborative practices
What Does This Look Like At Each Grade Level?
At UES, Grade Level Collaborative Teams meet weekly before students arrive, focused on the following Four Critical PLC Questions:
- What do our students need to know and be able to do?
- How will we know if our students are learning?
- How will we respond when our students don’t learn?
- How will we respond when our students already know it?
In essence, teams meet and work collaboratively to discuss and plan for how we are guaranteeing that all students become proficient in the named priority standards at each grade level and what happens along the way. For example, is the data showing that they need extra time and support? If so, which member of the team will be responsible? Is the data showing the student has already mastered the skill? If so, what are we as a team doing to help the student dive deeper into the concept?
Our collective commitment statement that was written this summer by our 2022-2023 UES Guiding Coalition and then adopted by our faculty and staff during August In-Service is as follows. “At UES, we are committed to working collaboratively to ensure high levels of learning for all students. To do this work effectively, we will focus on results and use data to respond to needs-We are Better Together.” We are excited for all of the learning that lies ahead for our Wise Owls this year!
