Daniel R. Venables - Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs: The Human Side of Leading People, Protocols, and Practices

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for Ted Sizer (1932-2009)

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I dedicate this work to the late Ted Sizer, who has probably been the single biggest influence on my nearly 40-year career as an educator. He did more than inform me: he inspired me and deeply influenced my philosophy, attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions about teaching and learning. Moreover, thousands of educators could state the same claim. Ted questioned the status quo and took it head-on in many ways back when it was not terribly popular to do so. He did so because he cared about teachers and the kids in their charge. He was the Plato of education, raising questions and issues long before the rest of the (educational) population was ready to begin to discuss answers to the questionslet alone start asking them. Many of these issues are just now gaining traction in larger circles, often among educators who are too young to have heard of him.

Jude Pelchat also had a powerful role in helping me become a seasoned facilitator. I worked with Jude many years ago in my association with Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools. As my mentor facilitator, she led by example. I can still hear her advice today during my most difficult and critical conversations with teachers. So thank you, Jude; I still listen.

I wish to thank my Grapple Institute cofacilitators, Cari Begin and Shawn Berry Clark, for working so hard with me to do the very best we can for the teachers we teach. Though I am hard on you at times, know that I have learned a lot from both of you.

I want to acknowledge the wonderful folks at ASCD who have given their all at every step in the process. Particularly, I am so very grateful to Genny Ostertag and Miriam Calderone. In addition to bringing their many ideas and suggestions to the work, they listened to my vision, really got it, and in turn did their best to incorporate it into this work.

Finally and, as always, I owe the greatest debt of thanks to my wife, Brady, who supported me and this work in both little and not-so-little ways during this book's winding and lengthy journey from idea to Amazon.

Daniel R. Venables

Lexington, South Carolina

July 2017

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Like my previous two books (The Practice of Authentic PLCs and How Teachers Can Turn Data into Action), this book was born of need. In my work helping dozens of schools and districts to implement authentic PLCs, I learned that it wasn't enough to educate teacher teams about what authentic PLCs are, what they do, and how they do it. That information was essential, to be sure, but without strong and knowledgeable leadership, these PLCs would have at best a marginal influence on student learning.

Accordingly, in early 2010, I started the Center for Authentic PLCs, through which I began offering professional development to schools and districts training teachers to be effective facilitators of PLCs. These trainings would eventually become the Grapple Institutes (see www.authenticplcs.com for more information).

Although nothing beats in-person training for learning about something as complex as facilitating PLCs, this book emerged as a kind of handbook for leading authentic PLCs, intended both for teachers who have been through the training and for those who have not. These pages address just about every topic related to facilitating PLCs that the Grapple Institutes cover.

Facilitating teacher colleagues in doing the important work of authentic PLCs has been and continues to be one of the most challenging and rewarding endeavors I have pursued in my 30-plus years in education. For me, a major turning point in becoming a skilled facilitator was realizing that my effectiveness was directly dependent on my awareness of where my team members wereindividually and collectivelyin their understanding of and engagement with the work. In other words, my own understanding and readiness to embrace a new idea or protocol matter less than their level of understanding and readiness. I realized that for PLCs to rise to the next level, facilitators need to be in tune with where their teachers are and contribute just the right thing to move them forward.

Good instructors in any fieldyoga, piano, football, you name ittake their students to the next level; great instructors take their students to the next level without skipping any. To be able to do so, they must be continually aware of students' present understanding as well as their readiness for the next thing. Such is also true of PLC facilitators.

Developing this finely tuned awareness and acting on it accordingly may seem to be a daunting task, but with the aid of this book and some practice, it will become second nature. In the meantime, ask yourself, "What do my team members need right now to move forward in their knowledge, understanding, and readiness?" It's not terribly different from what master teachers ask themselves during classroom instruction.

Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs is divided into two parts: "Facilitating Teachers and Teacher Teams" and "Facilitating Tasks of Authentic PLCs." In .

There are many ideas in this book that require no direct action; they are there to inform the reader and raise awareness of the salient aspects of navigating the interpersonal waters of leading a team of teachers. In other cases, reading is informative but insufficient; some things need to be practiced with teachers in a real live PLC. There is a third type of information in the book that may not require direct practice but can best be understood and internalized through discussion with other teacher leaders. As you will see in , I refer to this practice as constructing community knowledge.

Throughout this book, you will find short vignettes that offer additional clarity and insight into the nuances of facilitation. Each "Fly on the Wall" section includes a narrative describing a scene from a fictional PLC's meeting, with footnotes providing brief analyses of particular points of interest. I suggest that when you are reading the text with colleagues (for example, in a book study), you first read the scene without looking at the footnotes. Then discuss why you think various parts of the vignette have been highlighted for analysis. After this discussion, read the footnotes and see where your thinking and understanding align with my own.

First of all, this is not my term; that would be really haughty. This appellation was coined by several participants at a Grapple Institute who observed that I uttered certain truisms over and over again in an effort to highlight any area where they applied. A broken record, me. The Grapple participants compiled a list and called them "Venablisms." I include them in this book not because I was flattered (although I was), but because they are that important. Each of these tenets is of paramount importance and gets at the heart of leading teams. (The only one the Grapple participants missedno doubt because I say it in jesthappens to apply to the rest of the list: Bumper stickers and T-shirts should be issued.)

Although the terms