2016-2017 School Year 

Our PLC story began with a volunteer book study of It’s About Time: Planning Interventions and Extensions in Elementary School by Austin Buffum and Mike Mattos. As a district we had adopted the Multi-Tiered System of Support -- MTSS framework and were really struggling with getting any positive results and articulating what the work should look like. As the new principal of Clark Elementary, Kimber Fessler came across the book It’s About Time and instantly knew this would help us gain some traction. She opened it up as a volunteer book study and encouraged all  teachers to participate.  Kimber even bought fancy flavored  K-Cups and brought in the Keurig with different coffee creamers to make it extra special! When we finished the last chapter, we came to realize that we could not move any further until we had a Master Schedule that built in the extra tiered support for students. From where Kimber was sitting as the “rookie” principal, this made her very uncomfortable and yet very excited!  She knew it wasn’t going to be easy but also knew this core group of dedicated teachers were up for the challenge.  So we rolled up our sleeves and got to work planning how we would get the rest of the staff up to speed. 

We began with a picture of our current reality and the need for change. Our students were in the midst of an “educational lottery” and we simply couldn’t function this way anymore.  We knew better, so we needed to do better on behalf of our students. We put together a presentation and gained staff consensus that our first step was to “blow up our Master Schedule”.  We needed to insert What I Need -- WIN time during the regular school day, interventions and enrichments could no longer be a choice for those students willing to come early or stay late. Just like any change, we were met with some resistance and hesitation.  Some of the concerns raised included: sharing students (my kids vs. our kids), sharing resources, planning as a team, and giving up classroom time. In response to this, our school leader, Mrs. Fessler made it a priority to meet with every team each week to address these concerns and scaffold their work to ensure the expectations were clearly articulated and implemented at every grade level. 

The first year we learned by jumping in and following one school’s example (from It’s About Time) of having reading WIN (What I Need) time at the same time, so K-5 WIN time was from 9:10-9:35. We realized that was not the best use of our support and resources and adjusted the schedule the following year so that each grade level was flooded with support at different times during the day and also added another WIN time focusing on mathematics. 

These seemingly small changes have led to big things for our school!  It forced us to ask and answer questions like, “How can we use this WIN time more effectively for all of our students? What do we really believe as a school about student learning? Which standards do we need to focus on and what do we really want kids to know and be able to do? How do we have conversations with parents regarding their student’s progress? What are we truly committed to as a staff?” 

In hindsight, we “put the cart before the horse”. We began with the intervention/enrichment time but in doing so, this led to a sense of urgency to define the priority standards and determine how we would measure student progress using common formative assessments created by teams. 

Luckily as we have evolved, so has our district. Our grade level teams have 70 minutes of common planning time daily so teachers have been able to meet during the regular school day. We have been blessed with the opportunity to have “Late Start Mondays” where teachers get two hours of embedded professional development and team time focused around the PLC process. As a school and district, we have worked with consultants from Solution Tree and Marzano such as Aaron Hansen, Maria Neilsen, Jan Hoegh and Tammy Helflebower to learn and implement the PLC Process and “learn by doing”.  During the 2019-2020 school year, Clark Elementary applied and was accepted to the Wyoming PLC Cohort. This has allowed us to send a group of five teacher representatives to dig deeper into the PLC process and return to our building to train and implement the tools and learning with our teams. Our teacher teams are meeting at least twice weekly in order to plan units of instruction around our Priority Standards, create CFAs, analyze data, and organize WIN groups. 

This year 2020-2021, Kimber brought our school data picture to our Guiding Coalition to discuss whether or not we were in a place to put our application in. As we dug deeper into the schoolwide data we determined that we hadn’t made as much growth as we needed to at every grade level to apply. This led to tough conversations about whether we “polish it up” and submit the application or move forward with the work and get our growth data where we knew it could be. As a team, we decided we owed it to ourselves and our students to continue the process with a greater sense of urgency and get another year of growth data before applying. This was tough but it was the right thing to do for our school. 

It has been exciting to see the transformation of Clark Elementary. We have truly gone from good to great! What started as a simple MTSS framework has grown into a culture of ensuring high levels of learning for ALL students, ALL the time.