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Schools

School District Creates Professional Learning Communities As Part of State Mandate

The development plan, part of a state mandate, involved each school establishing its own goals.

The Berkeley Heights Board of Education provided an update on a key New Jersey Department of Education-mandated program that calls for each school in a district to produce and execute its own development plan in addition to a district-wide plan on Thursday night.

The 2010-2011 mandate departs from previous iterations of the guidance, that called for implementing a single, district-wide development plan.

Guidance documents indicated that “each plan would be limited to the student and faculty population of an individual building to define student achievement,” explained Assistant Superintendent Patricia Qualshie. “The next step was to define what that school’s students needed accomplish to be considered successful and what the teachers needed to do for the students to become successful.”

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Qualshie’s presentation explained that a key element of the program was the establishment of professional learning communities (PLCs), essentially a group of teachers who embark upon a strategy on how to improve student skills.

The remainder of the presentation outlined the goals established by each school through its PLC. A synopsis follows:

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Mary Kay McMillin Early Childhood Center 

The school established as its goals as integrated therapies, or increasing speech and occupational therapy with daily routines rather than pullout, student familiarity with a Promethean Board, culturally responsive teaching and response to intervention or better ways to identify in need of intensive instruction. 

Mountain Park School

Goals included technology’s impact on general education and at-risk students, technology’s impact on language arts skills, politeness markers, or increased use of polite phrases and cooperative learning, including class participation and area bridge activities related to retaining information from one instructional session to the next.

Thomas P Hughes School

Goals included responding to open-ended questions, writing skills: using effective ledes, writing skills: transition words. Writing skills, framing your thoughts with emphasis on using predicate expanders to add details to writing pieces, and hands on study to gain appreciation for Mexican culture and traditions.

William Woodruff School

Goals included differentiated instruction, or proficiency through reinforcement activities, higher level thinking skills gained through music and/or reading classes and demonstrated through written responses, and cooperative learning, or the ability apply social and listening skills to work more productively and cooperatively.

Columbia Middle School

Goals included physical fitness assessed through an Aerobic Capacity Pacer Test, improving guidance through technology by making guidance readily accessible by parents, and completion of homework, through improved communication between school and home. 

Governor Livingston High School

The high school had three main goals, developing a climate of respect and integrity, including generating an action plan to foster the values of the community, preparing students to become responsible and contributing members of a community, including establishing a creative learning environment and reaching out to the community to share successes, and developing and extending knowledge and pedagogy for improved delivery of instruction, including developing ongoing efforts to motivate students toward achievement through homework activities.

Some PLCs, Qualshie said, will remain to continue their projects, while others  have ended their studies.

Board member Mary Ann Walsh said she was concerned about programming consistency across the district.

“How do we make sure that kids at all of our schools are getting some of these new PLCs and programs and skills that are being offered. I would hate to see us going back to the old days where, for example, the Hughes kids are really good at writing.”

Qualshie said that the teachers had been sharing the information and are aware of the differences between the programs. What is important to recognize, she said, is that the project has enegized teachers on their education efforts

“It really has generated this spark," Qualshie said. "Especially when it started last year while (the district) was doing budget cuts, we had this meeting in January with the administrators. When they reported back on how well the PLCs were functioning, it was so motivational for all of us.”

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