Research on how teachers learn best indicates that as a professional support, community is key. Whether it’s learning how to implement curriculum or HQIM or use assessment effectively, teachers as professionals want opportunities to collaborate, to work with their colleagues to solve problems, design and test solutions, reflect, and engage in shared thinking about how to get better at what they do. This is especially true for new teachers.
That’s why we designed one of our recent federal Education and Innovation Research (EIR) grants on how to accelerate the power of coaching-based teacher professional learning communities to support retention, teacher effectiveness, and the overall culture of schools. The results have been transformative.
We talked with Tori St. Thomas with Kentucky’s Southeast South-Central Educational Cooperative, one of our EIR grant partners, about how NTC’s approach to PLCs can support teachers, including new teachers, to stay, grow, and lead. Tori has become the region’s go-to support for all things PLC.
In some schools you have to be lucky to get adequate support as a new teacher.
Far too many new and aspiring teachers come out of traditional or alternative preparation programs into workplaces that offer virtually no formal or coordinated induction support. In a career with such a steep learning curve and so much at stake, we can’t, Tori said, “just hope they’ll have a good next-door neighbor in the building who takes them under their wing.”
Unfortunately, that is all too often the new teacher experience. The result? They stay a year or two or three then leave the district to go somewhere else where they have support, or they abandon teaching altogether. It doesn’t have to be that way.
New teacher PLCs or communities of practice
One big benefit of getting novices together is new teachers realizing they are not alone, that there are others in the same boat. They are usually incredibly relieved to learn that whatever they are struggling with or feeling underconfident about might have less to do with them personally and be more a natural phase of development that most new teachers experience. This is important. Because feeling a lack of self-efficacy contributes to many new educators’ decisions to leave the classroom.
We asked Tori how she might encourage districts to bring the power of professional communities to induction design.
First, she cautioned against what she often sees. Schools will organize a few hours of afterschool support for new teachers based on “what somebody thinks new teachers are struggling with or need to know. Assumptions like: ‘Every new teacher has trouble with classroom management, so in August we’re going to meet and talk about classroom management strategies.’ Too often, she said, there’s no follow-up or coaching. “They just give them information and send them on their way.”
During those first years on the job, new teachers need ongoing opportunities to build professional knowledge and instructional expertise in safe spaces where they are less hesitant to share what it is they don’t know, what they struggle with, or what they are curious about. They might be able to do this one-on-one with a high-quality instructional mentor if they are fortunate enough to get one. Or, they could do this with other new teachers in their building or district, practicing analyzing student work together and digging into instructional strategies.
Tori observed: “For new teachers, building a community is super important. Probably the first thing I would do is use an NTC Collaborative Assessment Log tool with them as a group and ask: ‘what are your successes? What is not going so well?’ Once we find the things they’re really stuck on, that’s what we work on, using the collaborative time as a safe space to build the skills and knowledge they’ve identified.”
New teacher communities need to be structured so novices can build the “muscle” of analyzing data together, talk about instruction without feeling intimidated, go deeper in the areas they want to learn more about and perhaps focusing on those things they might think more experienced teachers already know.
Of course, as beginners, new teachers might not know yet what it is they don’t know, and more often than not, Tori said, that’s going to be around standards.
“They’re given the book and told to teach it, and sometimes they don’t even know what a standard is or where to find it. So it’s spending a lot of time establishing common ground to allow all of them together to have the conversation: what is the standard? What does it look like? What does it sound like? What should I be doing? What should the student be doing? How are we going to assess that?”
The benefits go far beyond just developing skills and content and instructional knowledge. They are also building a learning community. “They’re learning to trust each other. They’re talking about instruction. And, hopefully, with time, that carries over into the hallways, and when they’re at lunch, and they’re learning to lean on and support each other.”
To put this recommendation in context, consider what Tori shared about a middle school she works with: “…of 43 teachers, five teachers have five plus years’ experience; all the rest are five years or below; 30 of them are non-certified…. I have PLCs where almost every teacher is a non-certified or a brand new teacher.”
Call to action for systems and schools: Prioritize creating growth-oriented, instructionally focused professional collaboration opportunities for new teachers as a retention solution.
When they are with other new teachers, they are less hesitant to share what it is they don’t know, what they struggle with, what they are curious about.
PLCs as teacher-led, instructionally focused professional learning
New, mid-career, and veteran teachers all need opportunities to build collective knowledge and community.
Of course, it also helps to hear experienced educators talk about instruction. Induction researchers have long elevated the benefits of teachers working collaboratively across experience levels. When implemented well, PLCs can also be a fantastic opportunity for new teachers to get better faster working with expert teachers. In well-run PLCs, new teachers are participating in job-embedded, teacher-led professional learning. In addition to the instructional knowledge and practice wisdom they are exposed to, they are observing examples of teacher leadership, and in the best cases, demonstrating their own strengths and leadership.
PLCs that promote deep professional conversations about instruction are mutually beneficial to teachers no matter what their experience level. According to Tori: “What I also find in these conversations is even experienced teachers will say, ‘wow, I didn’t even realize that was part of the standard. No wonder my kids aren’t meeting that part on the assessment.’ And it helps new teachers hear that from the veterans.”
Of course, the problem is that PLCs are not universally well implemented. In some schools, PLCs function like administrative meetings. In others, existing PLCs never really bounced back after the pandemic. Many teachers, especially those who’ve had bad experiences, are not eager to participate. As Tori recounted: “In some schools, all they’re doing is getting teachers together in a room and telling them things they could have shared through email. Consequently, some teachers view PLCs as a waste of time, a missed opportunity. It’s just another teacher meeting for them.”
To reset and rejuvenate PLCs truly focused on instruction, Tori has used the NTC Analyzing Student Learning tool as a structure for intensive collaborative work: “In week one, they’re planning, they’re talking about standards, they’re breaking down standards, they’re talking about how they’re going to assess. Then they go teach and bring back samples of student work from that assessment, and they collaboratively analyze and develop a plan based on where kids are, and then they go back and reteach and reassess and then come back and repeat the process.”
She continued: “We need to put the L back in PLCs, the learning part. We should all be learning from each other and if we’re not learning and talking about instruction then we don’t have a PLC, we can’t call it that.”
Call to action for systems and schools: Existing PLCs need to be examined and reorganized to focus on the collaborative work that teachers and students benefit from most. New ones need to be set up for success
PLCs as teacher leadership and capacity building
Teacher empowerment. Teachers supporting teachers.
Among the top reasons teachers leave the profession is the lack of career advancement pathways. To improve retention, we must provide teachers with career growth opportunities and more options for leadership outside of moving into administration. It’s especially critical for new teachers to observe professional role-models to help them envision a career trajectory to aspire to. Otherwise, a new teacher who is already struggling will find it hard to make a commitment to a professional future that looks stagnant and bleak.
In training PLC facilitators at schools, Tori says she often works with lead teachers who have been trained as coaches. When this is the case she offers communities of practice for PLC facilitators to learn how to extend their coaching experience to working with teams.
In other cases, she has to start from scratch.
“The perception a lot of times is a lead teacher will just take notes on what the group talked about. There’s no structure, there’s no vision for the PLC.”
PLC facilitators need training and resources to lead teacher communities effectively. Teachers can be trained to lead PLCs as facilitators and guides. Effective facilitators use an inquiry lens, intentionally moving teams through instructional cycles — planning, teaching, assessing, and analyzing student work — using coaching stances to build teacher agency and curiosity and to ground conversation in students and curriculum. Opportunities for reflection are built into meetings and shared leadership fosters engagement and capacity building.
These are learned skills.
Call to action for systems and schools: Cultivating teacher leaders with expert PLC facilitation skills builds instructional leadership capacity in schools.
PLCs as a schoolwide culture builder, climate shifter, lever for high achievement
When everyone buys in, it’s a game changer.
Tori is convinced that PLCs are the key to transformative change IF leadership gets behind them. She describes her approach as ensuring district and/or school leaders understand that they are “the lead visionary of PLCs and that they must be present regardless of who’s leading or facilitating. There has to be principal buy-in for the teachers to have a good experience. My biggest problem of practice is getting the principals to understand that regardless of who’s leading the PLC, they have to be in the room for their teachers to buy into it.”
In some districts Tori works with, principals came together once a month to practice facilitating a PLC before leading or supporting teachers to lead PLCs in their buildings. “Basically, it’s coaching principals as a community of practice to feel what a well-facilitated PLC feels like. Then they go work with their lead teachers in PLCs to become expert facilitators, and now everybody in the district is being coached through PLCs.”
Call to action for systems or schools: There has to be principal and assistant principal buy-in and support to realize high-performing PLCs. Leadership makes the difference.
Pull quote: The places where this takes off are the districts where the principals want to be a part of it. They’re willing to learn with their teachers. They develop that true professional learning community because they are in there themselves showing teachers they are also learning. That’s the key to it.
Through our EIR grant partnerships and ongoing work with partner districts across the country, we’ve learned how to capitalize on teacher peer power through PLCs.
Access our Effective Professional Learning Communities framework and other PLC resources and stories here.
