Director’s Message

In lieu of my own words this month, I’ve included a current Press Release for your information.

TeachFirst will help BCPS pilot PLCs in ten selected schools. Like many large school districts across the country and in Florida, our district is focusing on sustainable and systemic approaches to improving student learning. The sixth largest district in the country, Broward County has invited TeachFirst to help implement key elements of their Effective Schools program through TeachFirst’s Professional Learning Community (PLC) framework in six secondary and four elementary schools.

PLCs are a major initiative across the entire State of Florida, where they are a key component of the Florida Professional Development System Evaluation Protocol. Broward County has been preparing to implement PLCs, but moving from theory to practice can be challenging, and fraught with a range of instructional, institutional, and logistical obstacles.

Dr. Leontine Butler, former Assistant Superintendent for Human Resource Development and current Area Superintendent for the North Central Area of BCPS, is committed to the implementation of effective PLCs in BCPS, but believed the district central office needed support to effectively implement PLCs on a large scale. TeachFirst has been engaged to leverage the district’s resources to efficiently implement the model simultaneously across multiple schools.

TeachFirst will help Broward County’s PLCs focus on their own Effective Schools framework which includes three key sets of research-based strategies: Lawrence Lezotte’s “7 Correlates of Highly Effective Schools” Patricia Davenport and Gerald Andersons “8-Step Instructional Process” Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock’s “9 High Yield Strategies”

PLCs will utilize TeachFirst’s video models of instruction and Instructional Conversations, which align with each of the Effective Schools strategies. The video models help teachers "see" what effective instruction looks like in real classrooms with real students, and the Instructional Conversations are discussion guides for Teacher-Leaders to use in facilitating PLC meetings.

TeachFirst will work closely with BCPS school and district leadership teams to plan, deliver, follow-up, and evaluate how effectively the PLCs increase teacher learning and transfer instructional strategies into the classroom. Once the program is up and running effectively in the 10 designated pilot schools, BCPS will consider a roll-out strategy for additional schools in the district. The TeachFirst initiative receives support from the Broward Education Foundation.

TeachFirst is the leading provider of “whole-school” based collaborative professional development to improve teaching and learning in K12 schools and districts across the country. The TeachFirst model drives sustainable results by integrating research-based instructional strategies with professional learning communities, and is supported by video models, online tools, and full time consultants.

Linda S. Whitehead
Director, Teacher Development/HRD