The Wildflower Within

BONUS PLC POST | WHAT REHEARSAL IS TEACHING US ABOUT INTERNALIZATION

When I started writing this PLC series, I said there would be five posts. Apparently, I wasn’t quite finished.

Last week, I shared what we learned from our first Rehearsal PLC, which I unfortunately missed because I was pulled into a last-minute training. This week, we did it again, and this time I actually got to be in the room.

I went in expecting to focus mostly on the rehearsal itself—how prepared teachers were, how the student roles worked, how our ILT coached, and whether we could begin making the process shorter and more focused. I saw all of that, but I also noticed something I hadn’t fully anticipated: rehearsal is giving me another way to see the quality of the internalization happening before PLC.

And I think that may end up being one of the most valuable parts of this process.

What Teachers Choose to Rehearse Matters

Some teachers walked into PLC completely ready. They knew exactly what they wanted to rehearse and why that particular moment mattered. Others needed more questioning before we got there.

I found myself asking things like: Why did you choose this standard? What does our data tell us about it? Is it highly tested? Is it historically low performing? Of everything you’re teaching this week, is this really where we need to spend our rehearsal time?

In one case, that conversation revealed that the teacher had selected a standard based more on what they preferred to teach than what our students most needed us to teach well.

That was important for me to see.

At the end of last school year, we disaggregated our third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade STAAR data and identified the standards where students struggled most. We did that work so it could inform our instruction this year. When teachers look at the upcoming week, they should be connecting what they’re about to teach with what we already know about our students.

Our K–2 teachers are part of that conversation too. They may not have STAAR data for their own grade levels, but they can look vertically at the foundational standards that support the areas where our older students continue to struggle. Student learning builds over time, and if we see a persistent gap in the upper grades, we need to understand where that learning begins.

So choosing a high-leverage moment isn’t simply picking something to practice. The choice itself tells me something about the internalization that happened beforehand. If a teacher has studied the standard, understood its rigor, considered the data, and anticipated where students may struggle, they should be able to explain why that particular moment deserves our rehearsal time.

Rehearsal Is Making the Thinking Visible

One of our biggest shifts this year has been moving internalization outside of PLC. Our teachers have had significant time with our HQIM, and I don’t want collaborative time spent figuring out the lesson for the first time. Teachers should come prepared so we can use PLC for something that’s much harder to do alone: practice the teaching.

What I’m learning, though, is that internalization and rehearsal aren’t as separate as I initially imagined.

When a teacher can’t explain why a standard or lesson moment deserves rehearsal, when the selection doesn’t connect to our data, or when questions about rigor reveal that we aren’t quite clear on what students need to know and do, rehearsal exposes that. It makes the thinking visible, and sometimes that means we have to go back to internalization before we’re ready to rehearse.

That’s okay while we’re learning the process, but we can’t start over every Wednesday.

After this week’s PLC, I included the questions I had been asking in my weekly teacher newsletter because I want teachers considering them before they arrive. Why this standard? What does the data tell me? What do students need to know and do? Where are they likely to struggle? What high-leverage moment deserves our rehearsal time?

I’m not sharing those questions because I plan to walk everyone through them every week. I’ve always believed that once we know better, we do better. Once we’ve learned and practiced the process, there’s accountability for carrying that thinking forward.

I’ll continue to coach and support teachers because some will need more support than others. But there’s a difference between needing coaching to deepen your thinking and repeatedly arriving without having done the thinking we’ve already learned how to do. At some point, that becomes a conversation about preparation and professional accountability.

We Still Need to Get Faster

Rehearsal is still taking longer than I want it to. Right now, it’s consuming the majority of our PLC time because we’re sometimes doing pieces of internalization during the rehearsal itself—going back to the standard, looking at data, clarifying rigor, or reconsidering what we should be practicing.

My goal is much tighter. We identify the high-leverage moment, rehearse it, listen to the student response, give focused feedback, make the adjustment, and rehearse it again.

For now, I’m okay slowing down when the learning is necessary. But as teachers become stronger at internalization and more intentional about what they bring to PLC, I expect the rehearsal itself to become much more efficient.

What Teachers Are Telling Us

I also wanted to know how teachers were experiencing the process, so I sent a very short survey after PLC. I intentionally kept it simple because teachers already have enough on their plates. I didn’t need a long survey. I needed a few pieces of information that my ILT and I could actually use.

All 17 teachers who participated responded. Sixteen of the 17 rated rehearsal a 4 or 5 for helping them prepare to teach the upcoming lesson or standard. The exact same number rated themselves a 4 or 5 for clarity around what students needed to know and do and which high-leverage moments needed their attention.

What interested me even more was what teachers identified as most helpful. Seven selected understanding the TEKS and rigor, four selected feedback and coaching, four selected learning from teammates, one selected identifying misconceptions, and one selected identifying high-leverage moments.

That first number caught my attention. We started rehearsal because I wanted teachers to practice the teaching, but the process is also helping deepen their understanding of what they’re teaching. That connects directly to what I was noticing in the room.

Teachers also asked for additional support with Emergent Bilingual strategies, SPED differentiation, and co-teaching. That’s exactly the kind of feedback I wanted because now we can do something with it.

Same Process. Different Support.

I asked my ILT to separate the survey feedback by grade level so we can use it to differentiate our support during upcoming PLCs.

Not every team is in the same place. Some teachers are moving quickly with internalization and rehearsal, while others need more support. One team may need us to spend more time on Emergent Bilingual strategies while another needs coaching around SPED differentiation or co-teaching.

That doesn’t mean the overall process has to change. The structure can remain consistent while the coaching inside of it is differentiated. If we’re asking teachers to differentiate for students, we should probably be willing to differentiate our support for teachers too.

Now I Want to See the Impact

This is the part I’m most interested in next.

We’ve looked at the data. Teachers are internalizing the learning. We’re identifying high-leverage moments, rehearsing them, coaching them, and rehearsing them again. Now I need to know whether any of that changes what students actually experience.

I’ll be looking for the moves we rehearsed during walkthroughs, but I also want to look more intentionally at student work, particularly the work in our Interactive Student Notebooks. If we identified a high-leverage moment because students have historically struggled with a standard, and then we practiced how we’re going to teach it, eventually I should be able to look at student work and see whether students are demonstrating stronger understanding.

That’s where this whole process starts to connect for me. Data helps us decide where to focus. Internalization helps us understand the learning. Rehearsal allows us to practice the teaching. Coaching helps us refine it. Walkthroughs and student work tell us whether it made a difference. Then we respond to what we find.

Apparently Five Posts Weren’t Enough

When I started this series, we were preparing to implement something. Six posts later, we’re actually doing it, and the process looks different because implementation has a way of showing you what a planning document can’t.

We’ve clarified that teachers rehearse a high-leverage moment, not an entire lesson. We’ve added student response roles, practiced coaching with our ILT, connected rehearsal more intentionally to data, and learned that rehearsal can reveal where internalization still needs to deepen. Teacher feedback is also helping us differentiate our support, and now we’re moving into classrooms and student work to see whether what we’re practicing is actually making a difference.

I think that’s probably the biggest lesson for me in all of this. We didn’t need to have the perfect system before we started. We needed to know what we were trying to accomplish, teach the process, pay attention to what happened when people actually used it, and then keep refining from there. That’s still what we’re doing.

Now I’m taking everything we’ve built, used, and refined and bringing it together into a complete PLC Internalization & Rehearsal Toolkit. It will include tools that support the entire cycle—from data and internalization to selecting high-leverage moments, rehearsal, coaching, classroom implementation, student work, and reflection. Once it’s complete, I’ll make the full resource packet available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for anyone who wants to use the process with their own team.

Apparently my five-part series needed a bonus post, and I’m glad it did. The point of sharing this work was never to show a perfect system. It was to share what it looks like to build one, use it, learn from it, and keep making it better.

If you’ve been following the series and want to see the tools, refinements, and finished toolkit when it’s ready, follow me on Instagram @thewildflowerwithin_.

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Julie | The Wildflower Within 🖤