The staff at Vista del Lago High School know that having a model Professional Learning Community is not a destination — it’s a process. And it’s one that has taken years to develop and refine.

Beginning in 2015, the school’s PLC journey has led to a culture shift where “my students” are now “our students,” and teachers have a shared understanding of what success looks like for all students.

One outcome of the PLC’s work is the creation in 2017 of a tier 2 intervention program called FlexTime, which provides students 35 minutes of intervention/enrichment three times per week. The results were almost instant: Students receiving at least one D or F in the 1st semester of that school year fell to 15.9 percent from 18.8 percent the previous year and further decreased to 12.2 percent in the 2018-19 school year.

In 2023, the school’s many efforts earned it a Model PLC designation from Solution Tree, making Vista del Lago one of five comprehensive high schools in California to receive this recognition.

We asked Principal Kimberly Moore to share how she supports her school’s PLC.

How does the PLC work at your school? We have built-in designated team collaboration time after school, three of the four Wednesdays a month. This collaboration time is approximately 90 minutes in length so teams can really delve into the work that needs to be done. We give our teams a lot of flexibility to determine what they need to utilize that time for, with the expectation that their meeting time is focused primarily on one of the four critical questions:

1. What do we want all students to know or be able to do? 2. How will we know if each student has learned it? 3. What will we do when a student has learned it? 4. What will we do if a student demonstrates proficiency to extend learning?

We utilize Google Docs for teams to capture their meeting notes and for the admin team to review to support.

As a site leader, how do you support your PLC? Just like any good teacher in a classroom, I try to best support our teams by differentiating what they need. Some teams need additional support on the foundation of a good PLC structure and need support just building consensus and holding each other accountable. Other teams have a lot of great things in place but struggle to analyze student data in a timely manner. ... My assistant principals and I really try to know where each of our teams are in this journey and then provide them with what they need to continue to improve and be better together, whether its additional collaboration time in the form of a sub day or professional development opportunities.

Why is it important for teachers to lead the work of improving student performance? If we really want to improve teaching and learning for all students, then we must provide a systematic way to improve teacher effectiveness across our campus. We already have so many amazing teachers so we need to acknowledge them, celebrate them, and share what they are doing to increase our capacity as a school. It’s important for teachers to be the ones to lead this work because they are the only ones that can improve teaching and learning for all.

When teachers implemented FlexTime, and students started showing improvement — what was the reaction? Before we even had the school-wide data to back up improved student learning, we already had a lot of anecdotal evidence. Teachers were feeling a shift in their classrooms. ... I remember one particular World Language teacher who articulated to me that once he had a system for identifying students needing intervention and then providing that intervention in a timely and systematic manner, his struggling students showed pretty dramatic growth. We can talk about it and plan it all out, but until we see it play out in real time for our teachers and students it is difficult to fully wrap your head around.

What advice do you have for other sites starting a PLC? My advice would be similar to so many others that we’ve all heard before — go slow to go far. It is critical to get a strong foundation for a PLC to be successful and reach its intended goal of improving teaching and learning. It’s a messy process and we definitely had a lot of times where we took two steps forward and three steps back, but we stayed on the journey and kept learning together. I would also remind site leaders to stop and celebrate with your team often. There is no end point for this work, so we have to find all of the times along the journey to authentically celebrate how far we’ve come.