I love urban neighborhoods. I grew up in an urban neighborhood and spent years working in urban communities. I always wanted to make an impact, so I wrote a guide for teachers in urban schools titled Brilliance in the Building. Part 1 is the review of the first article.

Part 1: Culture of Care

It all starts with a culture of care. Teams must care enough about students to take action on every practice and policy that has an impact on student learning and equity. Here are six action steps schools can take immediately:

1. Start with the staff—the brilliance in the building
2. Have collaborative conversations on race and equity
3. Be mission-driven
4. Strengthen individual mindsets
5. Conduct home and community visits
6. Create a behavior system focused on relationships

Part 2: Culture of Collaboration

A major change in schools undergoing PLC transformation is shifting from a culture of isolation to a culture of collaboration. This work is not optional; every member of the organization must be on a collaborative team. Schools can take three immediate actions:

1. Maximize time
   • Adjust the master schedule
   • Use time wisely
   • Think outside the box
2. Ensure the success of the teams
   • Define and create meaningful teams
   • Clarify the right work
   • Create collective commitments
   • Plan team time
3. Plan team time
   • Collect evidence, give feedback and focus on strengths
   • Have teams present on action research
   • Celebrate and encourage teams

Part 3: Culture of Learning

Schools undergoing PLC transformation must also shift from a culture focused on teaching to a culture focused on learning. Creating a learning-focused culture driven by results is important in urban schools. Learning blocks are cycles of planning, teaching and assessing, using the results to take action. They are blocks of time in which teachers collaborate to discuss and select priority standards, unwrap the priority standards into learning targets, create learning scales, discuss and create success criteria, create and administer common formative assessments, and analyze data to take action. Here are the actions steps for creating prior-to-learning block plans:

1. Greeting, outcome and review of the norms
2. Priority standards for the learning block
3. Learning targets
4. Learning scales
5. Pacing
6. Grade-level assignments

Common formative assessments are assessments that collaborative team members administer on the same day or around the same time, score based on team-developed criteria and analyze results to take action about student learning and instruction. Here are the action steps teams take after administering common formative assessments called the end-of-block data team:

1. Greeting, outcome and review of the norms
2. Priority standards review
3. Chart the overall data
4. Chart the learning target data
5. Indicate learning target strengths and needs
6. Create an action plan for students who are not learning
7. Create an action plan for students to enrich and extend learning

Part 4: Culture of High-Quality Instruction

All of the action steps for creating a culture of high-quality instruction start with collaborative teams. All teams must commit to creating a culture that ensures effective instruction in every classroom. I cannot overemphasize the sense of urgency urban schools must have to create powerful, high-quality instruction with more time and support for students who struggle. This can be done by following these steps:

1. Ensure access to grade-level priority standards for all students
2. Use the standards wall as an instructional tool
3. Use the teacher framework for a common language of instruction
4. Have a collective focus on literacy
5. Create a school-wide plan to give all students more time and support as needed

Teachers must understand that the purpose of collaboration is to help teachers improve by discussing, reflecting, sharing, accepting coaching and creating products as a team to support classroom instruction. Teachers will ensure effective instruction in every classroom by using the standards wall as the tool that connects the team meeting to the classroom, ensures the use of high-leverage strategies and connects to the teacher framework.

Part 5: Culture of Continuous Learning

A culture of improvement must be continuous and collaborative in a PLC. Urban educators may not have the time or financial ability to regularly leave their buildings for professional learning. (The prevalence of teacher and substitute shortages is one reason for this, as are funding issues.) It is important to create a culture of continuous improvement in urban schools so cost-effectively that adult learning occurs during the day, in the building. Because schools cannot help students learn at high levels if the adults in the building are not learning at high levels, the following actions can be taken immediately in all schools:

1. Learning blocks
2. Instructional rounds
3. Book studies
4. Reflective practices
5. Staff as coaches

These powerful actions align in-house professional learning with student learning.