PLC Series | 3 of 5
If you’ve been following this series, you already know our PLCs didn’t get here overnight. We spent years building the foundation—learning to understand standards, look honestly at data, plan intentionally, and develop the collective responsibility that simply wasn’t there when this work began. I told that story in Post 2 because I think the history matters, and honestly, I don’t think I could explain where we’re going without first explaining why it took us so long to get here.
But now I want to move forward, because after six years of building PLCs, I’ve started asking myself a different question: What work actually needs to happen in PLC, and what work should already be done before teachers ever walk through the door?
That question is changing quite a bit for us.
HQIM Changed What Preparation Should Look Like
About two years ago, we adopted High-Quality Instructional Materials, and that changed the work for our teachers. They were no longer being asked to create lessons from scratch because the curriculum was already aligned to the Texas standards, sequenced, and built for them.
So technically, the work wasn’t really lesson planning anymore. It was internalization.
But here’s something I understand much better now than I did when we first adopted HQIM: having a high-quality curriculum and knowing how to use a high-quality curriculum are two very different things.
When we first adopted it, our teachers were trying to learn the curriculum while simultaneously teaching it. They were learning the scope and sequence, figuring out the routines and resources, and trying to understand how one lesson connected to the next. We talked about internalization then, and teachers absolutely tried to do it, but when I think back on it now, a lot of the thinking was still, Okay, what am I teaching tomorrow? What comes next? Where is that resource?
And honestly, that makes complete sense to me now. You can’t deeply internalize something you barely know yet.
That’s also one of the reasons I’ve intentionally tried not to move teachers between grade levels over these last two years unless I absolutely needed to. I wanted them to have time to learn their standards and their curriculum. I wanted them to experience the entire sequence, see where students struggled, learn which lessons were more difficult than they expected, and then have the opportunity to come back the following year knowing more.
Now, two years later, I think we’re finally ready to move beyond simply navigating the curriculum and really start thinking through it.
So What Does Internalization Mean Now?
This is where I’ve had to get much clearer about what I mean when I tell teachers to internalize a lesson, because saying, “Make sure you’ve internalized before PLC,” sounds great, but what exactly am I asking them to do?
For us, I’m organizing that thinking around five moves: Know it, Do it, Anticipate it, Plan it, and Mark it.
Teachers need to know the learning—the standards, objectives, success criteria, learning progression, and what students ultimately need to know and be able to do. Then they need to actually do the work themselves. Read the text. Work the problems. Complete the task. Experience the lesson from the student’s side of the table.
From there, they need to anticipate. What are students likely to say? Where might they struggle? What misconceptions are likely to surface? What prerequisite gaps might get in the way?
Then they plan for those things. What questions will matter? Where are the CFUs? What language supports or differentiation might students need? How will students engage with one another? What evidence will tell the teacher whether students actually understand?
And finally, they mark the two or three places where teacher execution is likely to matter most.
That last part is especially important because we can’t rehearse an entire lesson, and I don’t think we should try. We need to know where practice will have the greatest impact.
Internalization Isn’t Less Work. It’s Different Work.
This is something that became even clearer to me as we introduced the process this week. HQIM doesn’t mean teachers suddenly have less professional work to do. Yes, the lesson planning has been done for them, but now they have to understand someone else’s thoughtfully designed lesson deeply enough to execute it well with the actual students sitting in front of them.
That’s still work, and we’re still developing that muscle.
Really, the thinking has shifted from What am I going to teach? to something much deeper: Why is this lesson designed this way? What are students supposed to be thinking? Where are they likely to struggle? What am I going to do when they do?
That’s the internalization I’m looking for now.
And that realization is also what led me to one of the biggest structural changes we’re making this year: internalization is moving outside of PLC.
Not because it matters less. Actually, quite the opposite. We need teachers to arrive having already done that thinking so that we can protect our limited collaborative time for something else.
But Then Comes the Obvious Question: When Do We Do It?
This came up as we introduced the process this week, and I think it’s a completely fair question. If we’re saying internalization isn’t going to be the primary work of PLC anymore, then when are teachers supposed to do all of this?
There is understandably still a desire to use collaborative planning time or PLC time to work through some of it together because that’s how we’ve operated for years. And I’m not going to pretend that I have every part of that transition perfectly figured out yet. This is something I’m going to have to continue working through with my teams because moving the work doesn’t make the work disappear.
At the same time, there is one thing I’m pretty firm about.
I ended Post 2 with a realization that has continued to bother me: Students don’t experience our lesson plans. They experience our teaching.
We’ve spent years getting better at understanding instruction and preparing instruction. We’ve trained, we’ve discussed, we’ve modeled, and we’ve talked through what strong instruction should look like. And when I walk classrooms, sometimes I see those practices implemented beautifully. Sometimes I see pieces of them. Other times, they’re not there at all.
That’s the disconnect I’m trying to address.
If we can explain an instructional practice while we’re sitting around a PLC table but can’t consistently execute it once students are sitting in front of us, I’m not convinced that more explaining is going to solve the problem. At some point, we have to actually practice doing it.
And that’s what I want PLC to become.
What Rehearsal Will Look Like
We’re not planning to rehearse an entire lesson from beginning to end. Instead, the internalization work should help us identify the two or three highest-leverage moments that need practice.
Maybe that’s the launch or the model. Maybe it’s a strategic question or responding to a misconception. Maybe it’s student discourse, aggressive monitoring, a CFU, differentiation, or the close. It’s going to depend on the lesson and on what the teacher needs.
During rehearsal, one teacher teaches and the rest of us become the students. Sometimes we’ll give the right answer. Sometimes we’ll be almost there. Sometimes we’ll intentionally give the misconception the teacher has anticipated, and sometimes the response may simply be, “I don’t know.”
That’s the moment I’m really interested in, because now the teacher has to decide what to do next.
That’s very different from sitting around a table talking about what we would do. We’re asking teachers to actually make the instructional move, receive feedback, and then try it again.
And My ILT Is Learning Alongside Them
This isn’t simply a new expectation I’m placing on teachers. My instructional leadership team has work to do too, because facilitating a rehearsal requires a different kind of coaching.
They have to become better at recognizing strong internalization, identifying the highest-leverage moment to rehearse, deciding when to pause, asking the right coaching question, and giving feedback that is precise enough for the teacher to immediately use.
And sometimes, instead of giving a long explanation, the best coaching may simply be, “Okay, try that again.”
We’re going to have to practice coaching while our teachers practice teaching, and I actually think that’s exactly how it should be. If I’m asking my teachers to continue becoming better at their craft, then the people responsible for developing them have to continue becoming better at ours too.
None of this came from one place, either. What we’re building pulls from ideas I’ve learned through Get Better Faster and Leverage Leadership, direction from my district around PLCs and internalization, years of professional learning, and, probably most importantly, what six years of leading this school has taught me about what my teachers need. I’ve taken those pieces and tried to build something that makes sense for where we are now.
So, How Did the Introduction Actually Go?
This week, we introduced the new internalization process and the Rehearsal PLC structure to our teachers, and I could definitely feel that this is going to be a shift.
Some teams seemed genuinely excited about where we’re going. With others, I could see some apprehension, and I’ve thought quite a bit about that because I want to be careful about how I interpret it.
I don’t think apprehension is the same thing as resistance.
It’s one thing to sit with your colleagues and talk about teaching. It’s something entirely different to stand up in front of them and actually teach, knowing they’re watching, knowing you’re going to receive feedback, and knowing you may be asked to try it again.
Of course that’s uncomfortable.
Teaching is personal. Teachers put an incredible amount of themselves into what they do, and I think because of that, feedback can sometimes feel like criticism even when that isn’t the intention behind it.
But when I looked around at my teams, I didn’t think, They’re not ready for this.
I actually thought the opposite.
I think they’re all ready.
I’ve watched this staff grow. I’ve watched them become more reflective. I’ve watched them receive feedback and apply it. I’ve watched their instruction improve, and I see greatness in my teachers. I genuinely believe every one of them is capable of becoming the teacher I know they can be.
The next step, though, is going to require some vulnerability.
We’re going to have to get comfortable being a little uncomfortable in front of one another, and my ILT and I have a responsibility in that too. We have to create a culture where feedback doesn’t feel like I caught you doing something wrong. It needs to feel like I’m investing in helping you get better.
That’s not going to happen because I put Rehearsal PLC at the top of an agenda. It’s going to take trust, modeling, good coaching, and time. I expect there will be some nervousness along the way, and that’s okay.
What can’t become the answer is avoiding the practice altogether because it feels uncomfortable.
I believe too strongly in what my teachers are capable of becoming to let discomfort be the thing that keeps us from getting there.
Now We Actually Rehearse
This week was really the introduction. We reviewed internalization, looked at the work teachers are already doing and where we need to go deeper, and introduced what our PLC time is going to become.
Now we actually have to do it.
And I’m genuinely curious about what I’m going to learn.
What happens once teachers begin rehearsing regularly? Does the nervousness start to fade? Does feedback become more natural? Does the second attempt get stronger? Does my ILT become more precise in its coaching? What will we discover that I haven’t even thought about yet?
And ultimately, the question underneath all of this is the same one that started me down this road in the first place:
Does what we practice in PLC actually show up when we walk into the classroom?
I don’t know yet.
And I’m okay with that.
I’m not writing this series six months later with a perfectly packaged system and a neat little success story. I’m writing it while we’re actually doing the work, which means you’re going to get to see the parts that work beautifully and probably some parts that make me think, Well…that did not go exactly how I pictured it. 😂
I’ll tell you about those too.
That’s what Post 4 will be about. By then, I won’t just be able to tell you what we plan to do during rehearsal. I’ll be able to tell you what actually happened when we did it.
Want to Walk Through This With Me?
Since I’m sharing this series while we’re actually implementing the process, I thought it would be fun to share some of the tools while we’re building too.
For Post 3, I’m sharing two of the actual resources we’re beginning with: Weekly Internalization: Know the Learning and our Rehearsal PLC Agenda.
The Weekly Internalization document represents the work we’re deepening right now. The Rehearsal PLC Agenda is a little different because I’m giving you a look at where we’re headed before I can tell you exactly how it went.
This is the version we’re starting with. We’ll use it, we’ll learn from it, and there’s a very good chance I’ll change something along the way. 😂 That’s really the whole point of sharing this series in real time.
Want both resources? 🖤
Click on the Instagram post below to head over to @thewildflowerwithin_, then comment PLC on the Post 3 post. I’ll send both resources straight to you!
Internalize before PLC. Rehearse during PLC. Practice the teaching. 🖤
Then hang onto them, because when I come back for Post 4, I’ll tell you what happened when we actually put that Rehearsal PLC Agenda to work—what worked, what felt awkward, what we changed, and what we’re learning about practicing the teaching.
You’re getting to walk the implementation with us, and I think that’s going to be the most interesting part of this whole series.
Julie | The Wildflower Within 🖤
Keep Becoming.
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