About SE

The creation of the Professional Learning Community at Sundance Elementary has been an ongoing journey that began over ten years ago.  Our Academic Coach at the time attended a PLC Summit and brought back the idea of collaborative teams and daily intervention to Sundance.  Teams met for weekly PLC meetings initially led by the Academic Coach.  One grade-level team piloted daily math interventions and the use of collaboratively created common formative assessments.  Sharing the data of their success worked to build interest and buy-in for all other teams.  From there, more teachers experienced a PLC Summit and we developed a master schedule that created protected common prep times, both vertical and grade level, and a school-wide daily intervention time.  This uninterrupted time has helped to develop action-oriented, collaborative teams with a focus on student learning.

Our PLC journey has had continued success because each year we have refined our work through reflective practices.  Teams have taken ownership of their PLC, creating their own agendas and leading collaboration, and their designated collaborative time has become so much more than a meeting.  Governed by the four guiding principles of a PLC, established roles and team-created norms have supported our work as we moved to shared responsibility and accountability.  Through the creation of a Guiding Coalition, lines of communication have been established to communicate clear expectations of what a PLC collaboration looks like and sounds like.  Through the Guiding Coalition, teams developed a shared mission, vision, values, and goals for our school which have been routinely reviewed and updated over time.

In the past four years, our commitment to continuous improvement led us to become certified as a High Reliability School.  We have been certified at Level 1, Safe and Collaborative Culture; Level 2, Effective Teaching in Every Classroom, Level 3, Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum, and Level 4 Standards Referenced Reporting. As part of our work, we developed an Instructional Model for our school with the input of the entire staff.  This has been fundamental in continuing to develop a shared knowledge and the effective application of instructional strategies.  We have utilized our Instructional Model to determine professional learning needs and to grow all staff in utilizing the outlined best practices.  We have also been able to take the key elements of our Sundance Instructional Model and apply them to routine classroom walkthroughs and formal observations of teachers. The HRS certification process has allowed us to continually monitor our effectiveness by gathering evidence of our current levels of performance, set goals for improvement, and reflect often which have all supported our community of learners.

Goal setting for both teachers and students has been essential to our commitment to continuous improvement.  Every student in our school develops a data binder in which they keep evidence of their performance, reflect on their current levels of performance, and set goals for growth.  Teachers have extended this idea to their own growth by selecting one of the forty-one elements of effective teaching from The Art and Science of Teaching model as a goal area and routinely reflecting on their progress toward growing in that practice.  

Another pivotal attribute of our successful PLC journey has been the structures we have in place which allow collaborative practices to enhance student learning daily.  Daily intervention includes all students and all staff, and has moved beyond math interventions alone to include English Language Arts skills.  Support staff work with grade-level teams which allows for targeted instruction and utilizes every team member's strengths to support students.  Each team has 75 minutes of collaborative team time weekly (45 minutes of grade-level team time and 30 minutes of vertical grade-level collaboration).  This time has been critical for focused intervention, the development of quality assessments, collaborative discussions about students, and building high-performing teams.  Each team functions differently, but the expectations are consistent for all teams.  New expectations that have enriched our professional learning in the past two years are peer observations and using the SWIVL camera for self-reflection.

Our staff is committed to the PLC process and continuous improvement which allows us to move forward to reach all student learners and enrich the knowledge of our staff.  We have been able to utilize the best practices introduced to us and have customized them to best meet the needs of our staff and students.  This work will never be finished, however, collaborating and problem-solving to meet the needs of all our students has become essential to our culture.