172. Action Steps for Effective PLCs with Bob Sonju, Maren Powers, and Sheline Miller

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

• ​Apple podcasts​
• ​Google podcasts​
• ​Spotify​
• ​Stitcher

---

In this episode, Bob, Sheline, and Maren share how we can effectively use Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to elevate teaching through reflective practice. In our discussion of their book, Simplifying the Journey: Six Steps to Schoolwide Collaboration, Consistency, and Clarity in a PLC at Work®, they emphasize the importance of student ownership and co-creation in their academic journeys, and effective strategies for coaches and leaders (they list tons of great coaching questions in their book). 

Bob Sonju is an award-winning educational leader, author, and speaker who is nationally recognized for his energetic commitment to coaching teacher teams and educational leaders in research-based processes and systems that create the conditions for lasting success. Bob has led two separate schools to national Model PLC at Work® status; one of his schools also received the prestigious National Breakthrough School Award from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. As a district leader, Bob led the implementation of the professional learning communities (PLC) process in a district composed of over 50 schools. He is committed to making the work of collaborative teams and school leaders both simple and doable.

Maren Powers is a national award-winning teacher, instructional coach, associate and author in St. George, Utah. Throughout her time in the Washington County School District, she has worked at two Model PLC Schools. In 2020, Maren received the Rebecca Dufour Scholarship that celebrates ten women educators across the country who demonstrate exceptional leadership in their school community. Maren earned a bachelor’s degree in English education and a master’s degree in educational leadership with an endorsement in school leadership. Maren is passionate about helping other educators implement, coach and lead through the PLC process.

Sheline Miller is currently an Assistant Principal for the Washington County School District. She has also been a Learning Coach and Social Studies teacher for the same district. She has worked successfully with teachers and teams to help establish two Model PLC Schools - Fossil Ridge Intermediate School (FRIS) and Washington Fields Intermediate School (WFIS). 
In her capacity as Learning Coach, she has had the opportunity to act as the lead Intermediate Coach to help bring clarity and consistency to schools in the district. Her presentations include Meaningful Goal Setting and Gaining Clarity. She is also the lead instructor for one of the classes offered for the district leadership certification titled, Leading in a PLC.

The Big Dream 

The guests articulate a unified vision for education where every student, irrespective of their background, can achieve at high levels. They dream of a future where students are empowered to take an active role in their education, understanding the relevance and direction of their learning. The collective goal is to view all students as partners in learning, utilizing collective expertise to ensure every child's growth.


Mindset Shifts Required

1. Embrace the belief that students can take ownership of their learning and be comfortable seeking help when they don't understand. 
2. Students are learning partners. 
3. Focus on learning progressions rather than aiming for scores.

Action Steps  

There are six actions in the book. In this episode, we talked about the following actions: 

Step 1: Identify essential standards and skills, distinguishing between the critical standards and those that are less essential, and establish a common understanding within the team.

Step 2: Gain shared clarity on what proficiency looks like, facilitating discussions that bridge differing opinions among educators and align on expectations.

Step 3: Employ effective questioning and coaching strategies to support teacher development and reflection on data, ensuring that teams can articulate their learning targets, strategies, and what the data reflects.

Step 4: Ensure time and support for PLC work. Leaders, validate and celebrate the work and student learning successes! 


Challenges?

Teams need time and support to do this work. 

Identifying time for PLCs could be: creating common prep periods, finding flexible funding in budgets to purchase substitute teachers so teachers have the time to collaborate, utilizing instructional aids to cover.

The authors remind me that we also need to be clear on what teams collaborate about (these are the 6 actions steps in the book), and there are several protocols and worksheets the authors made to help you navigate these challenges, ensuring that collaboration is effective and focused on student learning. (See the link to the free reproducibles below!) 

One Step to Get Started 

Gain shared clarity among educators regarding what proficiency looks like for essential standards, as this is “most often missed step”. 


Stay Connected

Here’s where you can find this week’s guests:
Bob: Instagram: @bob_sonju
Maren: Instagram and X: @learningpowers  and email at [email protected]
Sheline: [email protected]

To help you implement today’s takeaways, the group is sharing their free reproducibles from their book, Simplifying the Journey with you. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 172 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.
Quotes: 

• “We see students, all students, as our students, not yours and mine, and we're gonna use our collective expertise, talents and experiences to ensure that all of our kids learn. That's my dream.” (Bob) 
• “My big dream would be to have students be empowered to be a part of their own education, so that they can understand and see why and where they're going, so that it's not just coming in and sitting in a class and trying to memorize dates or memorize something and spit it back out for the teacher, but to really understand how this might be applicable to our, to my future, how it might help me communicate with others.” (Sheline) 
• “Being able to have themselves reflect and reflect on their learning and understanding that, you know, a grade isn't necessarily you know, this is my grade the end all be all, but it's more just feedback for us teachers to be able to say, okay, you're close, you don't quite understand it. Here is some feedback that I'm taking and then let me see what I can do to help you so you can learn at a higher level.” (Maren) 
• “We collectively believe that good coaching is just asking very quality, targeted questioning questions of teams, and so we've included a lot of just great coaching questions.” (Bob) 
• “The L in PLC stands for learning and so we always ask you know, is that for student learning, adult learning, both learning, what is that for? And it's actually for teacher learning, and so kind of the idea of the PLC is for teachers to be able to learn what to do in order to get our students to grow at these high levels.” (Maren)
• “We can, as a team, sit down and say, okay, what's a student going to look like at each step of this learning journey? We can communicate that to students…They're amazing at self-assessing when we're crystal clear on the steps…they're going to be taking toward mastery.” (Bob)
• “We're going to have some people that are hitting it out of the ballpark, we're going to have some that are still just learning, and so and that's fine, because just like our students are going through a learning progression, so are our teachers. So none of our teams are failing. They're just all in different places and different levels, and that offers us the opportunity to let other teachers come in and part of their celebration could be hey, this is what we've done. It's worked really well. It might work for you. Maybe we can have learning walks where our teachers actually go and observe other teachers who have moved into that mastery format.” (Sheline) ​

TRANSCRIPT
0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Hello everyone. We got Bob Shaleen and Maren today. How are you all Good? 

0:00:10 - Bob Sonju
Doing great. 

0:00:12 - Lindsay Lyons
So good to have you on the podcast today. Really excited about this. I think we'll just dive into the first meaty question of you know I talk about Dr Bettina Love writing about freedom, dreaming with her quote, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, so really centering that justice and equity piece in our work. So, with that in mind, I'd love for each of you to just share what's that big dream that you hold for the field of education. 

0:00:39 - Bob Sonju
Erin, you want to take a? Take a shot at this uh, sure, okay. 

0:00:43 - Maren Powers
Um, I will say my dream, I think, for education especially, is just to be able to ensure that all students, no matter their backgrounds, are able to achieve at high levels. So I think, as especially from a teacher's perspective because I'm still a teacher and so especially from my perspective, being able to really support all of my students and in whatever needs that they may have, um, and keep um kind of just those expectations at really high levels for them, um, I think if we were able to do that in education across the board, I mean how life-changing that would be for all of our, all of our people. 

0:01:23 - Bob Sonju
So that's fine well, chalene, what do you think? 

0:01:30 - Sheline Miller
go ahead, um, I'll go ahead, um. So I think my big dream would be to have students be empowered um to be a part of their own education, so that they can understand and see why and where they're going, so that it's not just coming in and sitting in a class and trying to memorize dates or memorize something and spit it back out for the teacher, but to really understand how this might be applicable to our, to my future, how it might help me communicate with others. I don't know just any of that kind of stuff where students are empowered. 

0:02:11 - Bob Sonju
Love it so great and I kind of echo what my colleagues have said just this idea of just students being partners in learning that we see students, all students, as our students, not yours and mine, and we're gonna use our collective expertise, talents and experiences to ensure that all of our kids learn. That's my dream. 

0:02:38 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh, I love it and it's so aligned with all the things we talk about on this podcast, so what a beautiful episode this will be. I am particularly interested in reading through your book. I loved your book and I think I love the concept too of like we're simplifying the journey. Here are the things, here are the things you can do. There's reproducibles that listeners can grab online right and use immediately, which is so cool and tangible, and I think there's also, before we get to like those specific action steps, there's also kind of this first thing that needs to happen, where we're kind of shifting our mindset around some practices, or we're shifting our mindset around like what is PLC work really? Or there's a bunch of kind of mindset things I think that have to happen for this work to go well, and I'd love to know what your thoughts are on. Is that accurate? And if there are mindset shifts, you know what are those. 

0:03:32 - Maren Powers
Yeah, I think Shalene kind of touched on it but a big piece that we and it's one of the steps within our book but believing that kids can take ownership of their own learning and so being able to have themselves reflect and reflect on their learning and understanding that, you know, a grade isn't necessarily you know, this is my grade the end all be all, but it's more just feedback for us teachers to be able to say, okay, you're close, you don't quite understand it. 

Here is some feedback that I'm taking and then let me see what I can do to help you so you can learn at a higher level. So I think just that mindset shift of you know, students taking ownership and being comfortable to tell the teacher hey, I don't understand this, can you help me? Because inevitably that's our job. So I think that is one big kind of just shift that I don't think is necessarily a huge broad thing, because I think most teachers would also agree that that is super important and we see the most growth out of kids when they can do that. So Beautiful. 

0:04:40 - Bob Sonju
Yeah. 

0:04:40 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah. 

0:04:42 - Bob Sonju
Kind of going along with that. I just think we need to. We advocate for just rethinking a traditional mindset regarding school. Just kind of that giving my kids, giving my class and leave me alone, I'm going to try to cover. There's an urgency to cover all of the standards. It's my job to teach, it's their job to learn, using assessment for a score in the book. Just rethinking all of those traditional, maybe antiquated, mindsets regarding school and see students as partners in learning. I love this idea and we write about this just students taking ownership in their learning. But that starts with the professional teachers and that team getting clear on what students have to learn. 

0:05:32 - Sheline Miller
So yeah, and, just kind of to add to that, the focus on learning. So we talk a little bit about learning progressions. That part of that mindset needs to change, with students as well as teachers. That it's okay not to know everything, as long as we know the path that's going to get us where we want. 

0:05:58 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, and I love that, Shaleen, it's not right or wrong, it's learning is a journey, right, and we take steps on our pathway to mastery of these absolutely critical things that all kids need to know and be able to do, grade level by grade level. And so less is right or wrong and more as learning is a journey. 

0:06:21 - Lindsay Lyons
I think this is a really good transition point to this next question of like what is the journey for educators then to like learn how to like what are you know what are those stages of kind of activities they're doing in PLCs? And also like what are kind of like any? I guess it's two questions kind of in one. Like as you identify places where challenges may come up, what you do in the book I love how the book is laid out, by the way like you know, coaching ideas and like leader questions and places where it lives. Also thinking about, like be wary of or be mindful of these things that could be challenges, super awesome. If there are things like that that stick out to you as we kind of go through these action steps, feel free. 

I'm wondering for the listeners. They might be familiar with the general PLC work framework, but I like how you all break it down into. I think you had like six steps. You conclude with this as well, like, which I think is really succinct. On that left one of the last pages of just like here are the six kind of bullet points of this work. Do you mind walking us through that, maybe to start? 

0:07:29 - Bob Sonju
Bob, I'll start the conversation, but these two really are experts in this. We felt like that just in our travels and our experience as practitioners in schools, that we know that the professional learning community process is best practice in the field. It's research-based, it's the science of our profession. But, that being said, there's four critical questions that drive the work of a collaborative team in a professional learning community. What is it we want them to know? How are we going to know if they learned it? How are we going to respond collectively if they didn't, and how are we going to extend the learning for those who already know it? 

I think most schools and educators know these questions, but what we've discovered is answering these questions. What does that look like? That's where we tended to struggle a little bit, in schools that we've worked in, as well as schools that we've seen around the country, and so the idea behind this book was based on this PLC framework how to answer these four questions in six action steps. Six clear and concise action steps, providing clarity for each action step, as well as examples and templates, and so on. So, maren Shaleen. 

0:08:48 - Maren Powers
Yeah, I want to add to kind of to that kind of and we talk about this a lot, just as like colleagues. But the L in PLC stands for learning and so we always ask you know, is that for student learning, adult learning, both learning, what is that for? And it's actually for teacher learning, and so kind of the idea of the PLC is for teachers to be able to learn what to do in order to get our students to grow at these high levels. So, for this book in particular, focusing on these six action steps, when we were setting them up, the biggest piece of it was we wanted to make sure that teachers and leaders and anyone in a school can take from our book and be able to implement it and have these actionable steps with the reproducibles and be able to implement it into any grade level, any subject, really anywhere, and so and be able to show that you know you can do this step-by-step in this process. 

0:09:51 - Sheline Miller
So yeah, yeah, and then, kind of just to add to that, if you think about a PLC, quite often as schools start to dabble in PLCs or even say that they're actually working as a PLC, it's usually a broad umbrella that we put a whole bunch of stuff underneath and say, oh, we're PLCing, this is what we're doing. And our book has kind of focused that in or focused down into, like we've said, like I think each of us have said, actionable steps. It's not some broad overarching idea. It's actual steps that teachers can do that will help them answer those questions very specifically. That can be drilled down to specific skills, specific students and specific strategies that teachers are using in their classrooms. 

0:10:47 - Bob Sonju
Lindsay along with that. I'm super motivated by quotes. I have just lists of quotes right from all of my reading, but one quote that's always resonated with me. That kind of you'll see it in our work. But Rick Dufour said that it's not the fact that you collaborate that will improve student learning, it's what you collaborate about. And I think far too often in schools we say, okay, I've given you a collaborative time, now go forth and collaborate, but it's what you collaborate about that will influence student learning and increase teacher efficacy. And so that was really one of the drivers. Let's get clear on when we collaborate, what do we collaborate about? So, Awesome. 

0:11:32 - Lindsay Lyons
I love this framing and so thinking about this for the listener who's thinking about the four questions. Thinking about what does it really look like? What are the actions rooted in teacher learning? Of course, great point, maren, about like that L is for teacher learning. Thinking about what happens in a PLC. Could you walk us through what some of those activities might be that you discuss in the book? Sure? 

0:11:58 - Maren Powers
I can start. So kind of my background is with as a teacher and so and a teacher leader and a team leader and so for me working with my teams and what that looks like. For each step we break down very specifically. So, for example, step one, identifying essential standards and skills, we have a way where you can break it down into what you think is essential. You know the like do or die essential standards versus you know maybe the standards that aren't as essential and we have a very specific way of doing it. 

And throughout the book I want to point out that we also acknowledge that there are inevitably going to be people that maybe disagree on teams. 

You know different levels of understanding. We have veteran teachers and first-year teachers and so being able to talk through and figure out how to get through each of these steps with a variety of individuals. We do try and kind of pinpoint in throughout the book but different activities. So, for example, like step two, for gaining shared clarity, me and Chalene figured that this like works really well with teams who maybe disagree on what proficiency looks like for a standard. Talking about how you know as a group, maybe you write down what proficiency looks like without talking at all and being able to then come together and you can have an instructional coach come in and support you and put everyone's up on the board and you might realize we actually are saying basically the same thing, maybe just a little bit different, and so coming together and being able to tighten that vocabulary and what the expectations are. So we go through each step and have very specific here's exactly how you would work each step as a team lead or a principal or someone who's leading it out. 

0:13:57 - Lindsay Lyons
That's one of the things I loved is there are very specific protocols and that specific challenge of team dynamics whether it's veteran, new teacher or just like we have a lot of different opinions. Those protocols directly address that challenge that I think a lot of folks are on perhaps a team, whether it's really a PLC or in that broader umbrella that, shalini, you're talking about. I think there are those challenges. So I love that your protocols really address that directly and inherent to the activity. Yeah, yeah. 

0:14:30 - Bob Sonju
Our first. Our first action step, obviously, is we got to get real clear on what kids have to know in this course, in this grade level, and so we're going to shift our focus away from trying to just cover everything and just ensure that students learn some high leverage things grade level to grade level. That's not saying we're eliminating standards, but we're just kind of reallocating our time. So our first action step is just simply let's get clear on identifying what those essential standards and skills are. But that's only a first step and what we've seen is that's where a lot of schools will stop. We've identified them and then we lit up the lamination machine and we'd laminate them, put them all over the walls of the school and then nothing happens. That's because we haven't our action step. 

Number two we haven't gained shared clarity and clearly defined what does mastery look like for that? So we know it when we see it. That's a critical step in this process. Once we're clear on that, that moves us right to action step three. Students can become owners of their own learning because they can self-assess their work as compared to mastery work, and so it just kind of works. It just connects together. So, Chalene, Ditto. 

0:15:50 - Sheline Miller
I was going to say you guys have just said everything, so I was going to say something about student empowerment by knowing that. But it's very important and it's I both people have covered this that we have to know what mastery looks like, like. There has to be something specific there. We have to know what that target is and it needs to stay like right there. It needs to be where teachers know what it looks like. Students know what it looks like. Something that hasn't been mentioned is maybe we've got some of those high-low examples we're giving. We're letting them know this is what success looks like. This is what it looks like if you make some of these common mistakes that we have seen, and so we can fix those mistakes before they ever occur or happen, and so I just think that that's part of what's really important, and then, again. 

That allows us to be very specific about what our kids are missing and what they are not understanding. It doesn't become this general well, you just didn't do well on your project. It becomes you didn't do well on this, this and this, you did well on this, this, this and this. We just need to work on this. It's a much more positive outlook. Students feel success regardless where they are, even if they still have to work on something, they're still feeling that success and feel like they can continue to work on something and do it because they know what it looks like. 

0:17:23 - Lindsay Lyons
That reminds me that I think one of the things that was really cool two things actually, bob related to what you were saying, I think the lamination, like problematizing the lamination and just leaving it it made. It pushed my thinking when I read that you all talked about like rethinking, like revisiting, re-plotifying each year at the end of each unit even and that was kind of mind-blowing to me because I had never thought about doing that I was like, oh, this is just kind of what it is and maybe if there's something wrong then you can go back and revise. So that is a really cool idea, I think, to keep it fresh, to keep it relevant, and also speaks to the idea of student ownership and co-creation. If every time you get new sets of students, you get more and more feedback from the students about does this make sense, is this clear? We'll get more examples of the high low, shall we to your point? 

And I love also that in the categories you have the categories of proficiency as, like one was supported. I had a teacher ask me that literally last week like what if they can do all the things? But it takes so much support? I'm like, right, that's just a level of proficiency. And then now you all have given me the language and the frameworks, be like right, that's level one on the proficiency. That is exactly what that is. 

0:18:28 - Maren Powers
So thank you, and I, and I want to add, kind of when you were talking about you know, we always have new students coming in every year. I also want to point out we also have new teachers that come in every year, and so when you get new teachers on a team and maybe you get another new teacher next year who hasn't gone through this work you want to go back through it every single year and kind of revisit it and see, kind of like you know, what do we need to fix, what do we need to tweak? Let's look at our data I think the biggest piece of it too, and we talk about this a lot. But if you have a team that has been a team for a while, you do still need to revisit it every year. But maybe the process is going to go quicker because you all already know what's going on. So just the idea of revisiting it every single year, no matter how well the team knows this, I think, is really vital to the success of the teachers and our students. 

0:19:30 - Sheline Miller
Absolutely, and then to piggyback off of that, the last part of each chapter is reflect to elicit change, and so every time we do something, we need to reflect on it. There's always going to be something that we through our learning, and it might be as simple as oh my gosh, I found an article that you to look at that and tweak it and see what the issues were with kids, with teachers, with understanding, with CFAs, with alignment, and it just helps us, as teachers, become better at our profession and that translates into higher student learning. 

0:20:23 - Lindsay Lyons
Bob, are you going to say something too? 

0:20:25 - Bob Sonju
Nope, I think that's great Okay. 

0:20:28 - Lindsay Lyons
One of the things I also Shalene your comment earlier about, like you know, student ownership and self-assessment made me think about the checklist rubric. 

I don't know what you all called it and I don't think it's maybe a reproducible, maybe just an example, but there was basically a rubric that you had turned into a checklist where at each kind of proficiency level, students could kind of check off where they were and what I really loved, and that part was cool. But what I really loved was then there was the question so it would be like what's my next step? So if I self-assessed at like a three out of four, like I'm not at a four, so what's my next step? And even at the level four you had like okay, so how would you apply this to the real world? So there's always that next step built into the self-assessment and I have never seen that and it's so simple and so great and thank you for that. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or any thoughts on your favorite, either examples from the book or reproducible templates from the book. I'd love to just hear what you think like. 

0:21:42 - Bob Sonju
We needed just a simple and doable framework for teachers and students to see learning as a continuum, not as right or wrong. And then we had conversations about what should it look like at each step? And so when we're clear on what mastery looks like, and then we can, as a team, sit down and say, okay, what's a student going to look like at each step of this learning journey? We can communicate that to students, and they can. They're amazing at self-assessing when we're crystal clear on on the steps you know, on their steps that they're going to be taking toward mastery. So, yeah, thoughts Maren Well. 

0:22:18 - Maren Powers
I, and I'll just add to it, because that rubric you're talking about specifically is for actually writing and as an English teacher, I mean us English teachers are notorious for bringing work home and grading and it takes forever outside of work, which is wild. 

Um, but what we found is because the mindset shifts from, instead of us grading students, it's now students self-assessing and taking ownership of their own learning. Um, our grading for writing has, I mean, cut down drastically because it's the students who are literally just self-assessing where they're at. And then I'm able to look at the rubric and I can kind of compare it to their writing and say, oh my gosh, you're absolutely right, here is the one piece, the one thing that you're missing in your writing. Just go back and fix that. You know exactly how to get there, because it's so clear, as Bob said, where mastery is and then above or beyond, and so being able to have that clarity for our students, it just it adds to student ownership. So I would say that, and the team reflection pieces at the end are my personal favorites. The coaching inventory is really useful as a coach to trying to get teachers to reflect. 

0:23:38 - Bob Sonju
So and Lindsay, just a plug for you, I was listening to your grading for equity, your competency-based learning episode, and I was like oh, she's speaking our language right? Yes, so well done. 

0:23:54 - Lindsay Lyons
I absolutely wanted to have you all on, especially as I was reading the book and like, oh my gosh, yes, there's such alignment here. So, thank you, this is amazing. So I, yeah, there's, there's so much that I love. I'm trying to be succinct in my questions here. I think another big question that I have is think of maybe a challenge it could be like a chapter of of the book, Cause I think you, as I said, a challenge, it could be like a chapter of of the book, Cause I think you, as I said, broke down what could challenges be in each section and like can you walk us through some of the leader coaching questions that you had for that specific challenge? 

Cause I thought those were brilliant. It really just for for listeners who have not yet read the book. They basically break down right, Like here's a potential thing that could happen and with a particular scenario, which also great scenarios, very real, See, I've seen most versions of them. And then it was like here's the leader you could ask these three questions to follow up or something right, Like so good, I don't know if you all have a particular favorite set of those, but I'd love us just to get a taste of one maybe. 

0:25:01 - Sheline Miller
I was going to say that's all. That's kind of learning coach stuff and it's what I was dealing with. So most of those are questions that I was just like okay, what are, what are we doing? So we have a question bank and I'm I'm thinking that's kind of maybe a little bit about what you're talking about is we have these question banks that you just can go through and ask, ask yourself these, and then our goals are what's something I can start, stop and continue. 

So those are things that I think were really good for me to be able to go into a team and look at them and say, ok, you say you have all this. Show me, can you articulate what those learning targets are? Do you articulate them as a team? Do you articulate them to your students? And just asking those questions can either tell me if a team is doing something or the team is going to be saying no, I can't, and that will lead us to where they need to be. So have you done this, have you done this? Oh, so you do actually have those, and sometimes they do actually have them, but they just don't know that they have them. 

And so these questions at the end um, and then the questions um, with the scenarios, just help us learn where teams are, because our teams within our buildings are going to be in all like all over the place. 

We're going to have some people that are hitting it out of the ballpark, we're going to have some that are still just learning, and so and that's fine, because just like our students are going through a learning progression, so are our teachers. So none of our teams are failing. They're just all in different places and different levels, and that offers us the opportunity to let other teachers come in and part of their celebration could be hey, this is what we've done. It's worked really well. It might work for you. Maybe we can have learning walks where our teachers actually go and observe other teachers who have moved into that mastery format. So it just opens up a lot of avenues for us to help our teachers learn by using those questions and looking at these scenarios and seeing ourselves in those scenarios and going oh, maybe I did that. Maybe some of those scenarios were me. 

0:27:32 - Bob Sonju
And we collectively believe that good coaching is just asking very quality, targeted questioning questions of teams, and so we've included a lot of just great coaching questions that elicit the work that you're looking for there From a leadership perspective. Oftentimes leaders don't quite know what to do in regards to these six action steps, how to lead it and questions to ask, and so we outlined just four steps that leaders need to take. They need to think about this pattern as they're leading. Number one we have to clarify what the work is. We can't just say, go and collaborate or go identify essential standards. We have to clarify what that work looks like or go identify essential standards. We have to clarify what that work looks like. 

And then step two is we have to support teachers and teams as they learn, together with time, with resources, with coaching, with all of these things. And then next we need to monitor, and that's not to say micromanage, but just like we constantly formatively assess in a classroom, so we can provide feedback, targeted feedback, for a student regarding their strengths and next steps. We need to do this as well with our, with our colleagues. We monitor by asking targeted questions, and that helps us identify strengths as well as next steps for teachers and teams, as well as next steps for teachers and teams. And then, finally, the fourth step I think is crucial for all leaders is to validate the work when you see it and celebrate that with teams. And I think sometimes we forget this in the busy of schools. We forget to take time to validate the hard work teachers are doing and celebrate. And so, yeah, those four things, maren. 

0:29:25 - Maren Powers
You know, spot on for both leaders and coaches. 

0:29:32 - Lindsay Lyons
I wanted to follow up too on that validate and celebrate. I love how you get very specific and you offer some language and concrete examples in the book of if you're a leader, who who is now to Jalene's point. A lot of times we look at scenarios and we're like, oh, that's me right. If you're a leader thinking, oh, that's me, I totally don't validate and celebrate enough. I'm maybe not familiar with how to even do that. Well, there's a ton of examples in the book, so, never fear. 

One of the things I also was thinking about as a challenge I've heard a lot with you know organizations that I coach like you know networks, district school level or just folks in general who are listening to the podcast, like, well, I'm not sure about where this lives a lot of times right, like we don't have the time built in currently to our schedules. Or you know how do we get PLCs like together at the same time? You all offer some different ideas in the book about this. Do you mind running down like a couple of things? Identifying where it can happen or when during the day it can happen is a really helpful kind of starting point for leaders to get over that initial challenge and get into the work. 

0:30:38 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, yeah, I can take a crack at it here and just share a couple of things that we've discovered, I think, as well as what we've seen in other schools. 

But just creating common prep periods, finding flexible funding in budgets to purchase substitute teachers so teachers have the time to collaborate, just utilizing instructional aids to cover just different ways, that you create time for teachers to collaborate I think is absolutely critical. But that's only the first step. Then we have to get crystal clear on when you have this collaboration time, what do you collaborate about? In chapter seven we just get real clear here's what you collaborate about and essentially it's our six action steps. But there's questions. There's questions that teams can ask as they plan their units of instruction, as they're in the middle of their unit and then at the end and they're reflecting on their unit, as well as questions that evidence based questions that leaders can ask of teams to monitor how they're doing. And so it's more than just creating the time. It's getting real clear on what happens during that time and then supporting teachers as they learn together. 

0:32:13 - Maren Powers
And I'll add to that too, what's nice about the reproducibles, because there's so many of them within the book and there's very specific kind of like goals or targets that we want to get to for each action step. Obviously it makes it really clear for learning leaders or principals to be able to say here's exactly what I want to see happen today. Are you getting through steps one and two? Just step one, what is it you're working on? And then for teachers to be able to say here's exactly what we worked on and here's all the evidence to show, kind of, where we got to. It then creates a way to have dialogue between teachers and principals and to talk about okay, what are our next steps, where do we need to go from here? For principals it's how else can I support you, do you need more time? Or it looks like you guys are really on the right track. You know so different ways. That kind of creates that dialogue back and forth between teachers, coaches and principals and knowing exactly where the support is needed within that collaboration time. 

0:33:35 - Sheline Miller
Well said, yeah. And within that framework it also allows for those critical conversations to occur without the judgment or the I'm the process in their learning, so that we can offer them specific help. 

0:33:53 - Maren Powers
that's not judgmental, but it is student learning focused what Shaleen's saying too, because we are practitioners and we literally did this at our school from my perspective as a teacher, when Bob, who was our principal, would come in and be like, where are you guys at, what are you doing? It made it so much easier to communicate to my boss here's exactly what I'm doing, here's what we're doing as a team, here's where we're going. And so it made it to where it was just really easy to be able to talk to my boss, rather than feeling like he's coming down hard on us, like you know, you have to do this and this. Instead, it was more of a conversation, and he held us accountable, but we were also able to reach those goals because we knew where they were. We could see the target. 

0:34:47 - Bob Sonju
So Boss sounds so harsh. How about colleague on a learning journey? 

0:34:54 - Maren Powers
You technically were our boss. 

0:34:57 - Sheline Miller
He's our friend boss, though. 

0:34:59 - Bob Sonju
He is. 

0:34:59 - Sheline Miller
He's our colleague boss. 

0:35:03 - Lindsay Lyons
I really I appreciate so much kind of that teacher perspective, one on, like this, accountability and the way that accountability happens actually is helpful to us as teachers, like versus threatening or imposing or whatever Like that is. I think a really helpful perspective saves teachers or ELA teachers in your example time when students right, there are like not just benefits for students, there are benefits for teachers in all of this work as well. And, shalene, to your point about really decreasing that judgment, I saw that show up a lot in your book when you were talking about how, when we look at the data, it's about the data and a leader. I really thought about this. One like a leader or a coach is helping teachers look through the data. Ask about what you are learning from the data, versus giving the kudos like your team is doing or your students are doing great Rah rah, you right, it's like what are we learning? It's not about the individual teacher's success or failure. It is about the student learning at the heart of everything, which really, I imagine takes a lot of pressure off of teachers as well, right, and so there's so many benefits to teachers in all of this, which is awesome, I think. 

In closing, I'm curious to know if you all will have one shared answer to this or if you have different perspectives. Would love to get this too. But what is like that one first thing? When the administrator or teacher person listening is done with the episode they're driving to work, they're like I'm going to start today. What is that thing? What is that first thing that they can do right away after listening to this episode to get started with some of the things that you lay out here? 

0:36:51 - Sheline Miller
with some of the things that you lay out here. I'll jump in. I think and I think we bring it up in the book the most often missed step is step number two, which is gaining shared clarity. So if I were to start with somebody, that's where I would go. I would look at and I and like, I think we're assuming that they, they, have these essential standards and skills and they, they, they're like I'm on my way, I'm on my way, but do you agree? 

As a class, is it going to look the same in teacher A, teacher B and teacher C? Because quite often we hear T. You know, and this is something that I heard friends would call me up and they're like hey, what language arts teacher should I put my kid in? And I, at our school, would literally say, well, yes, I would say Marin, but I would literally say you know what? You put your kid in any of my language arts classes, they're going to leave our school with the same knowledge base because our teachers are aligned and they understand what mastery looks like and so you're going to get the same education regardless of teacher. 

So that is the one skill, and I think Maren is going to agree with me I don't know if she can jump in here and I think, bob, because they they just don't, aren't aligned together with what mastery looks like, so it looks different, even though they've talked about what's essential and they've even talked about it. But then they go to their classes and all of a sudden, this person emphasizes this and this person emphasizes something else, and then we all take our cfa and they're all different because we've never come to what shared clarity is, what mastery looks like and what it means, and we're not on the same page and I think, and I agree and kind of adding on to Shalene too just even just the word clarity, whether it's clarity on mastery, clarity on expectations, clarity on collaboration. 

0:39:19 - Maren Powers
I think that clarity piece from principals, from instructional coaches, from team leaders, is vital in this process and just in PLC in general. So, starting off with getting really clear as a leader, especially if I'm a principal or a team lead, that's driving home, you know, after listening to this, getting really clear on what I want to do with my teams, where we want to go and then how I'm going to get there, which I think, at least in our book, through these steps, that's how you are going to get there. But that clarity is just so important. 

0:40:04 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, and I would say, gosh, as educators, you're doing good work, but we're bombarded Just the sheer number of initiatives and shiny things that we have thrown at us every year, that sometimes we build up this defense to what Doug Reeves calls initiative fatigue. We just are like, oh, what's the latest flavor of the month? And so if I could share anything, it would be just this. There's a lot of great things in education, a lot of things that are wonderful, but let's simplify and focus on some things, some research-based, high leverage strategies that we know make a difference in student learning and in teacher efficacy. And then let's just get really good at those things, and that's really at the heart of our book. These six action steps are just they're simple, they're and doable. They're not, they're not easy, but but simple and doable to move you forward in your learning, but simple and doable to move you forward in your learning. 

0:41:07 - Lindsay Lyons
Amazing answers, I love all of those. And, shalina, I will hold on to the example you used to indicate yours. Like whose class should my kid be in, right? Like whoa, that's a deep question. Like, thank you for that example. So this is going to be a little bit of a lightning round, I think, for each of you. So this question is just for fun. So this is going to be a little bit of a lightning round, I think, for each of you. So this question is just for fun. It could totally be unrelated to your job, to the book, to education in general, or it could be totally up to you. What is something that you have been learning about lately? We've been talking about learning a lot today. What have you been learning? 

0:41:43 - Bob Sonju
I can't wait, maren, let's hear yours. 

0:41:47 - Maren Powers
Well, I have a newborn and a two-year-old. I'm on maternity leave, so I am learning how to manage two small humans at the same time. So that is what I am learning at the current moment. That's a lot of learning. 

0:42:05 - Bob Sonju
I actually called Maren and I said hey, what are you reading right now? And she's like I'm reading about dinosaurs and sharks and cars and cars construction sites, yep, all of those fun things. 

0:42:21 - Sheline Miller
Shalene, I'm almost learning kind of the same things. I have a grand, a brand new little three week old grandbaby, but um, really what I'm learning is I just moved into from an intermediate school sixth, seventh grade into high school. So I'm an administrator now in high school and um, dealing with, uh, student behaviors and all sorts of stuff that has never, been like my wheelhouse. 

So I think I'm having to learn how to still think I'm an effective person when lots of parents and students hate me. So I'm still trying to learn how to navigate all of that. So that's kind of just that opening being real that as an administrator we have to wear a lot of hats and sometimes kids and parents are going to react well and love you and respond, and then at other times they're not going to agree with anything that you do, regardless of what you say or do. And I still have to believe I'm being effective. So I'm learning how to do that. 

0:43:31 - Bob Sonju
And Lindsay for me. I was introduced to this term a few months ago and it's really fascinated me, and so I've been doing a lot of reading and studying. But this idea of intellectual humility and it's a term, it's, it's really kind of cool if you check it out, but it's, I think it's something that we're losing in the fabric of our society, right, but it's a term, it's really kind of cool if you check it out, but I think it's something that we're losing in the fabric of our society, right, but it's recognizing and owning that our own intellectual limitations, right, that our opinions, beliefs, viewpoints, they may be flawed, but there's research saying that we all believe that 90 of the decisions we make are the right decisions, right? Um, and? And this intellectual humility idea is just being a just being able to recognize that your opinions and your thoughts may be flawed, your beliefs may be flawed, and we need to continue to learn, listen to opposing opinions and continually pursue understanding and truth and be more compassionate with one another. So there's intellectual humility. 

0:44:40 - Lindsay Lyons
Wow, those are all so deep. Very good answers. Wow, impressive, all of you All right. Final question Very good answers Wow, impressive, all of you, all right. Final question when can folks either connect with your book, engage with your book, get your book or follow any or all of you collectively or individually? Feel free to answer that in whatever way you'd like. 

0:45:00 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, you can find. We can find our book on on solutiontreecom and also for sale on Amazon, and, and I can be reached. I've got an Instagram. I know it's a miracle, you too. Wow, I'll finally create it, but Instagram at Bob Sanju. 

0:45:17 - Maren Powers
So and my Instagram learning powers and yeah. 

0:45:25 - Sheline Miller
I'm. I'm just in good old email, so if you'd like to reach out, it's mill M-I-L-L. Shaleen, s-h-e-l-i-n-e at Gmail. 

0:45:36 - Lindsay Lyons
Amazing. Thank you all so so much. This has been a beautiful conversation. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you so much for having us. 
​

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below: