Professional Learning Communities with Steve Barkley

Teaching is a team sport and a transparent act. Steve Barkley shares his insights on the power of a Professional Learning Community. 

For the past 40 years, Steve has served as an educational consultant to school districts, teacher organizations, state departments of education, and colleges and universities nationally and internationally, facilitating the changes necessary for them to reach students and successfully prepare them for the 21st century. A prolific published author, his weekly blog, Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud, has evolved into a go-to resource for teachers and administrators all over the world.

Topics

• Steve’s unusual start to his career in education (2:11)
• Teaching as a Team Sport and a Transparent Act (5:39)
• Vulnerability in teaching, learning, and leadership (7:37)
• Power in a PLC (9:53)
• Teachers as professionals (12:03)
• Psychological safety (13:14)
• Steve’s Theory of Action (15:44)
• Forming a hypothesis (20:59)
• Individual-Franchise-Team (22:34)
• Coaching teams where they are (25:04)
• What are the outcomes for a Leadership PLC? (27:17)
• How PLCs effectively manage their time (30:29)
• DuFours 3 Big Ideas (35:47)
• Implementing best practices (36:27)
• PLC’s impact and achievement scores (37:48)
• Learning equity (40:26)
• Margaret Wheatley’s influence: “acting crisis like in non-crisis times” (43:14)
• Steve’s one thing: model the model (45:25)

Links and resources from the show:

• Learning by Doing: A handbook for professional learning communities at work
• Backwards planning
• Sharing vs teaming blog
• Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast: A Conversation with Jim Knight (14:40-19:00)
• John Hattie on Effect Sizes and a year’s worth of growth
• DuFour & DuFour: 3 Big Ideas
• Margaret Wheatley book, A Simpler Way 
• Steve’s references to Margeret Wheatley work: We are all in this together blog and Working Together podcast episode

Follow Steve Barkley on twitter @stevebarkley. 

Find more information about Steve Barkley at barkleypd.com

Take the next step with my free Collective Efficacy Assessment to identify the key leader actions to foster Collective Efficacy on your team(s). 

Learn more about how I can support your teams at johnwillcoaching.com or theteamingedge.com.