The district has made Profesional Learning Communities, or PLCs, a top priority for next year. Each school will have an early release every Wednesday, for teachers to begin to create these learning communities.
The time the teachers will be using after school is for PLCs, which is time for teachers to do a number of things that help them create better lesson plans and activities for students.
“In PLC training, teachers will be doing a lot of planning, looking at student work, and looking at student data to make good instructional decisions,” said Cyndi Black, Assistant Principal of Instruction.
Solution Tree, an organization dedicated to PLCs, published research that links student achievement to schools who utilize PLCs. About 50 teachers throughout the district, including eight from the high school, attended three days of Solution Tree PLC training in February. The training revealed that teachers need to spend more time analyzing student data, in order to figure out where they need to focus their lessons.
“I think that giving the extra time to teachers will be a good thing for future learning because they will be able to look more closely at students’ work to make adjustments to curriculum,” said Kyle Schutza, a junior.
Students were affected by COVID-19, and missed out on a lot of instruction. Since the country is behind, the hope is that giving teachers more prep time will lead to growth in student achievement.
“With a half day on Wednesday I plan to do homework and ride my dirt bike,” said Landon Lugo, a junior.
The time after school on those half days will allow kids to have mid week break and also some extra time for schoolwork and their own time. Wednesdays will not be half days, but early release. Which means students will get out about an hour early. The board approved the measure at the January 28 board meeting.