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Session 5. Hard Moments, a Year Plan and Evidence of Impact
Objective. Use simple scripts and structures for conflict and uneven participation, draft a year plan that keeps the PLC going, and gather light evidence of impact on pupils' work.
A PLC is judged less by its first meeting than by its tenth. Between September and June it will face a tense discussion, a month of exams, a member who leaves and a head teacher who asks what it has achieved. Teams that survive do not have fewer problems; they have ways of repairing trust, lighter routines for heavy weeks and a habit of writing down, modestly, what they saw. This lesson adds those three practices to the scripts and calendar you already have.
Key ideas
Disagreement is healthy, conflict about people is not
- Teachers who care about pupils will disagree about homework, marking or methods. This is a sign of a working PLC. It becomes conflict when the topic shifts from ideas to people: 'You always...' or 'Your class is...'.
- A three-move script for the facilitator: name it ('I hear two views: A and B'), slow it ('Let us each say what we have seen in pupils' work'), return to the pupils ('What would help the pupils most?'). If views stay different, agree to try one approach for four weeks and then look at the work.
- Personal tension goes to a private talk, not the meeting: 'When... happened, I felt... Could we agree on...?' The head teacher is not a judge of the PLC; ask for help only if a private talk fails.
Uneven participation: who speaks and who does not
- In most groups one or two people speak most of the time and others say nothing. Reasons are often status (a senior colleague, a deputy head), shyness, being new, or a fear of being wrong in front of others. Silence does not mean agreement.
- Use structure rather than hints. Write first for two minutes, then speak. Pairs before the whole group. A round where each speaks once for one minute before anyone speaks twice. Ask the newest teacher first and the most senior last. Rotate the facilitator so that the loud voice must also keep time.
- Invite, never force: 'Dilnoza, you teach Grade 6 too; what did you see in these answers?' Share the work fairly: if one person always prepares and writes the notes, rotate those jobs.
Keep a PLC alive for a whole year
- Most PLCs begin well and fade by December because exams, reports and substitutions push them out. Plan the year in blocks: September launch (charter, norms, goal); October to November cycle 1; December review; January to March cycle 2; April review; May to June share and plan the next year.
- Protect the slot on the school timetable, make meetings lighter in exam weeks (a 20-minute check-in instead of 40), celebrate one small win each month, and if two meetings in a row feel useless, change the format or stop and ask why.
- Plan for people changing. The charter and the inquiry log are the PLC's memory; give every new member both and one buddy. Once a term, share one finding with another PLC in the school.
Simple evidence of impact
- A PLC needs to show to itself and to the head teacher that its time is well spent. Course 11.8 (Designing Professional Learning) set out four levels for a workshop. For a PLC, three light kinds of evidence are enough: pupil work before and after on the same kind of task, a short note by each member on what they tried, and a three-question team check.
- Team check, three questions every term: Did we look at pupils' work? Did each of us try something because of it? Did pupils' work change in the way we hoped? Write the answers honestly in one paragraph.
- Be modest in claims. Five pieces of work in two classes do not prove a method works everywhere, and pupils change for many reasons. Say 'what we saw' and 'what we will try next'. Guskey argues that evaluation should go beyond a satisfaction survey: look at what changed in practice and in pupils' learning.
A PLC year
Repairing after a hard meeting
Even a well-handled disagreement leaves a mark. The next meeting is the moment to repair: the facilitator opens with one sentence about the last meeting ('Last time we disagreed about homework; I would like us to look at what we found in the pupils' work') and returns to the shared goal. If one person was upset, a short private word the same day, 'I noticed you were quiet; is there anything I should know?', does more than any group exercise.
Watch for a leader doing everything. If one member prepares, writes the notes and also resolves every dispute, the PLC depends on that person's energy. Rotate roles, name a co-leader and agree that the leader may say 'not this month'. A PLC that stops when its leader is tired was never really shared.
Evidence that is honest and light
Impact evidence should be small enough to collect and honest enough to trust. Take a baseline before the change: five answers from each teacher on the task. After the cycle, take the same again. Count something simple, such as answers with a stated reason, and write the numbers next to each other. Add one line from each member on what they tried. Guskey argues that evaluation should look beyond how satisfied participants felt, to practice and pupils' learning.
Write for the head teacher in half a page: what we looked at, what we tried, what we saw, what we will do next. Use the words 'in our sample' and 'we saw', not 'proved'. Keep names of pupils and colleagues out. The aim is not to defend the PLC, but to give the school a reason to protect its time.
Examples from the classroom
Repair before moving on
Scene. After a sharp argument about homework in a Bukhara PLC, two teachers avoided each other for a week. At the next meeting the facilitator, Malika, opened: 'Last time we argued; I want us to use that. Each of you will try your approach in one class for four weeks, and we will look at the work.' Afterwards she spoke to each teacher separately for five minutes. The cycle gave them a shared task, and the argument became a question.
Insight. Repair means naming what happened briefly and turning it into a shared, testable task.
The 20-minute exam week
Scene. In a Tashkent school, a Grade 9 PLC had always cancelled meetings in the exam week. This year the team agreed: in exam weeks the meeting is 20 minutes, only the focus question, with no reports. They met on the Thursday of the exam week, looked at six answers in 20 minutes, and left with one action each. The meeting was short, but the habit did not break.
Insight. A lighter version of the routine keeps the habit alive in the weeks when full meetings are impossible.
Half a page for the head
Scene. A Samarkand maths PLC wrote to the head teacher: 'We looked at 15 answers to a word problem. We tried a sentence frame for four weeks. In our sample, 9 of 15 answers gave a reason, against 4 of 15 before. We do not claim it proves the frame works; we will repeat it with 30 answers in the next cycle.' The head read it in two minutes and confirmed the Thursday slot for the second term.
Insight. Modest, specific claims are more believable than large ones and earn the support the PLC needs.
Common pitfalls
- Ignoring the tension after a disagreement and hoping it will go away on its own.
- Letting the leader carry all the roles until they are exhausted.
- Claiming that a method 'works' from a small sample, or that the PLC alone caused the change.
- Cancelling the meeting in exam weeks instead of making it lighter.
Hard Moments and the Year Plan
- Open the Activity Kit: four SAMPLE scenarios, the script card, the year calendar and the one-page impact record. In your own school, add a real hard moment (without names). (5 min)
- Alone (5 min): read the four scenarios and choose two. For each, write what might lie behind the behaviour before deciding what to do.
- Trios (20 min): role-play both scenarios. One is the facilitator, one the colleague, one observes. Use the script card. Change roles after 5 minutes; the observer says what helped and what escalated.
- Second short activity, Fix the room (10 min): in the same trio, choose one structure from the participation list for each of the four scenarios and say why.
- Pairs (15 min): fill the year calendar for your PLC with two cycles, two reviews and an exam-week plan. Then draft the one-page impact record for cycle 1.
- Alone (10 min): write your school-based task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which script phrase felt most natural to say, and which felt forced?
- What did the observer see that escalated or calmed the scene?
- Which month of your year plan is most at risk, and what will protect it?
Reflect
- Which hard moment in a meeting have you avoided talking about? What stopped you?
- Whose voice is missing in your group, and what structure would make it easier to hear?
- What one piece of evidence would convince your head teacher that the PLC is worth its time?
Try it tomorrow
- Plan the first meeting after a disagreement: one sentence of repair and a return to the shared goal.
- Write a one-line exam-week plan: 20 minutes, one question, one action each.
- Draft half a page for your head teacher on your last cycle with the words 'in our sample' and 'we saw'.
Further reading and links
Use structure and short scripts for hard moments, plan the whole year in blocks with lighter exam weeks, and show impact with pupils' work and honest modest claims.