Singletons in a PLC at Work®: Navigating On-Ramps to Meaningful Collaboration (Practical strategies for eliminating teacher isolation to improve collaborative teams)

In a professional learning community, isolation is the enemy of school improvement. But what does collaboration among teachers look like when you can’t easily identify with a team? This book will help singleton teachers first develop clarity on learning essentials, then find creative entry points to form collaborative teams. Drawing from their own experiences, the authors offer practical solutions for eliminating the practice of isolation for all educators.

Collaborative teams will:

• Understand what meaningful collaboration is and how singletons can utilize the PLC process
• Build the groundwork for meaningful collaboration using strategies for your specific situation
• Implement meaningful collaboration as a singleton across separate schools or within the same school
• Align disparate singletons under the same unifying PLC process

Contents:
Chapter 1: Meaningful Collaboration
Chapter 2: Singleton On-Ramps for Collaboration
Chapter 3: Preparation for Meaningful Collaboration
Chapter 4: Course-Alike Entry Point―The Virtual Team
Chapter 5: Common-Content Entry Point
Chapter 6: Critical-Friend Entry Point
Chapter 7: Putting It All Together
Afterword: Final Thoughts
References and Resources

Jon Yost is the recently retired associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction for Sanger Unified School District in California. He also teaches advanced leadership as an adjunct faculty member for the Educational Leadership Master’s Program at California State University, Fresno. Jon has worked in public education at the elementary, secondary, and district levels.
Jon has led and fostered the deep implementation of professional learning communities at both the site and district levels. He helped Sanger become one of the highest-performing districts in California’s Central Valley. As an elementary and a secondary principal, his schools averaged over 500% of the required stated academic achievement gains as measured by the state Academic Performance Index.
Under his leadership, Sanger schools won multiple local, state, and national awards including 3 National Blue Ribbon, 15 California Distinguished School, 11 Title I Academic Achievement, and 4 National Schools to Watch. He was the district’s nominee for 2005 Administrator of the Year, and Sanger schools continue to receive visitors from across the state to see firsthand its collaborative culture and implementation of PLCs. Jon has presented to multiple districts throughout the United States, supporting them in their implementation of PLCs by sharing his expertise and practical experiences.
Jon earned a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Fresno, and a master’s degree from National University.

Brig Leane, former principal of Fruita Middle School in Colorado, has nearly 20 years of experience in education. He has been an assistant principal and has taught at the middle and high school levels in inner-city, suburban, and rural schools. He is also an adjunct professor at Colorado Christian University.
Under Brig’s leadership as principal, Fruita Middle School’s organizational health index grew from the lowest to the highest levels. This collaborative transformation propelled a school previously known for teacher independence to national model PLC status, one of only three schools in the state to receive this designation. During the transformation, Fruita Middle School was the only middle school in the district recognized for achieving student growth above the state median in every tested subject, in all grades, and with every demographic subgroup of students measured by the State of Colorado. His school was recognized on GettingSmart.com’s annual list as one of 85 schools in the nation that educators should visit.
As a teacher, Brig learned the power of the PLC process firsthand, as his math team grew students more than any other team, in any grade, in any tested subject in his 22,000-student school district.
Brig has presented to large and small groups of educators, and his work has been published in the Phi Delta Kappan magazine, Principal Leadership, and in ASCD’s online learning platform.
Education is Brig’s second career, following his successful service as an officer in the US Coast Guard, having attained the rank of lieutenant commander. He graduated with honors from the United States Coast Guard Academy with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and served as an officer for many years on humanitarian missions around the nation. He was selected as a Troops-to-Teachers recipient and has a master’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Colorado Mesa University.