Books

PLC at Work® and your small school: Building, deepening, and sustaining a culture of collaboration for singletons is a guide for leaders seeking to transform their small schools into successful PLCs. Grounded in both research and her own experience as principal of a small, rural school in Wyoming, this book by Breez Longwell Daniels focuses on the unique role culture plays in many small schools – a role that should be central to PLC implementation.

The PLC at Work® model helps teachers around the world produce better outcomes for their students. But when it comes to putting theory into practice, many find themselves unsure of what to do in collaborative team meetings and how it all translates to the classroom. With Collaborative teams that work, leading PLC experts and authors Colin Sloper and Gavin Grift take the confusion out of the collaborative process for school leaders and educators. Whether your school is just starting out on its PLC journey or your team is ready to take student learning to the next level, this essential guide will bring clarity and focus to your team meetings and generate real results for the students you serve. Carry Colin and Gavin’s decades of experience into your next cycle of learning with Collaborative teams that work.

Bridges out of poverty is a uniquely powerful tool designed for social, health and legal services professionals. Based in part on Dr Ruby K Payne’s myth-shattering A framework for understanding poverty, Bridges reaches out to millions of service providers and businesses whose daily work connects them with people in poverty.

The autism lens helps teachers connect to students with autism and support them confidently within inclusive classrooms. Exploring communication difficulties that affect socialisation and learning, this book removes the guesswork by offering practical solutions.

In Success for our youngest learners: Embracing the PLC at Work® process at the early childhood level, author Barbara W Cirigliano provides guidance for preK educators seeking to improve their schools with the Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work process. She details how the foundational ideas and concepts of a successful PLC can work for teachers of young children. Embracing the PLC process at the early childhood level gives teachers invaluable tools to drive dramatic improvement and ensure that all students receive the best possible start to their education.

In Teaching for transfer: A guide for designing learning with real-world application, author Michael McDowell provides F–12 teachers with a road map for reconfiguring classroom instruction to ensure that students learn to expertly apply their knowledge and skills to different contexts. McDowell outlines three levels of complexity in learning – (1) surface, (2) deep and (3) transfer – and explains that while the foundational levels of surface and deep are essential and allow students to understand and relate ideas, transfer-level work is key; it involves the interdisciplinary problem-solving students need to practice to become creative, well-rounded citizens who can meet and overcome unexpected challenges.

Writing, redefined gives teachers the power to change what ‘counts’ as writing in schools and classrooms, opening the doorway to students who may not consider themselves to be writers, but should and can. Shawna Coppola offers alternative, engaging writing assignments that are visual, aural and multimodal that will involve all students.

Shifting from me to we provides common-sense guidance for creating and implementing a strong collaborative school culture. Author Michael Roberts shares evidence-backed tools and concepts for overcoming common roadblocks to PLC implementation.

For nearly four decades, Russ Quaglia has been laying the groundwork to inform, reform and transform schools through student voice. That deep commitment is reflected in this inspirational book. Quaglia and his coauthors at the Quaglia Institute for School Voice & Aspirations deftly synthesise the thoughts and feelings of hundreds of thousands of stakeholders and offer a vision for schools where everyone’s voice matters. They posit that students, teachers, administrators and parents must work and learn together in ways that promote deep understanding and creativity. Making this collaborative effort successful, however, requires widespread recognition that all stakeholders have something to teach and they all have a role to play in moving the entire school forward.

In this second edition, Parrett and Budge show you how your school can achieve similar results. Expanding on their original framework’s still-critical concepts of actions and school culture, they incorporate new insights for addressing equity, trauma and social-emotional learning. These fresh perspectives combine with lessons learned from twelve additional high-poverty, high-performing schools to form the updated and enhanced Framework for Collective Action. Emphasising students’ social, emotional and academic learning as the hub for all action in high-performing, high-poverty schools, the authors describe how educators can work within the expanded framework to address the needs of all students, but particularly those who live in poverty.

In Collaboration for career and technical education: Teamwork beyond the core content areas in a PLC at Work®, authors Wendy Custable and Paul C Farmer provide guidance for readers who wish to integrate their career and technical education (CTE) programs into the professional learning community (PLC) process. The PLC process is proven to help CTE teachers, who are often singletons, develop rigorous academic standards and best practices to effectively prepare students for their lives after graduation. The authors share vital information and strategies that CTE teachers will need to define their purpose and customise and improve their collaborative efforts in a PLC.

This must-have resource provides gifted education teachers, specialists and coordinators with methods and strategies for successful coplanning, coteaching, coaching and collaboration with a variety of school professionals. At the classroom level, collaboration enables effective management of differentiation and increases educators’ understanding of gifted students’ needs. The book includes considerations for working with special populations, including twice-exceptional students, underachievers and culturally, linguistically and economically diverse learners, as well as meeting students’ social-emotional needs, collaborating with families and communities and advocating for gifted education.