Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 4The Professional Ethical Learning Community (PELC):Faculty and Staff Collaboratingto Integrate Excellence and EthicsFaculty need to meet and talk about what’s going well intheir classes, what’s not, who’s excelling, who needs help,and how students can help each other. If teachers startmaking an investment in how the school and classroomsrun, then students would be more motivated because theyare being shown what motivation, investment, and goal-settinglook like. But it must start with faculty seeking to fulfilltheir vision.—A HIGH SCHOOL GIRLA good school is not one that is merely “effective” in raisingtest scores. There is a concern [on the part of all staff]for rigorous academic education but also for the qualities ofendurance, resilience, responsibility, resourcefulness, andsocial concern . . . Intellectual and moral virtue are seen asinseparable. 1—GERALD GRANTAll of us—Board members, administrators, faculty, supportstaff, and students—are asked to be role models. When Iwalk through the school building, I always look for opportunitiesto pick up trash. I don’t find any. That’s because5,000 people here pick up trash. Collective commitmentsare very important.—A SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERWhat makes it possible to create a Smart &Good High School dedicated to a missionof excellence and ethics? Where does theleadership come from to develop an ethicallearning community in which faculty and staff, students,parents, and the wider community support and challengeeach other to do their best work (performance character)and be their best ethical self (moral character)?The essential leadership for this effort comes from theProfessional Ethical Learning Community (PELC). Wedefine this professional community to include schoolleaders and all instructional and support staff—not onlyadministrators, teachers, and counselors but also secretaries,coaches, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers,and all others whose work and example affect excellenceand ethics in ways large and small. Every adult makes adifference; everyone contributes, positively or negatively,to the character of the school and the character of students.Our vision of PELC builds on the seminal work ofRichard Dufour and Robert Eaker in their book ProfessionalLearning Communities at Work. 2 Dufour and Eakerhave helped to transform education from a professionwhere teachers and other staff worked largely in isolationand were guided by intuition, to one of data-driven collaboration.The Professional Ethical LearningCommunity includes all school staff.Our concept of the PELC, however, expands Dufour’sand Eaker’s professional learning community to includean explicit and integrated focus on both excellence andethics. The mission of a Smart & Good High School isn’tto be just a “learning community”; it’s to be an ethicallearning community, one that is committed to the integrationof excellence and ethics—performance characterand moral character. Similarly, the collegial mission offaculty and staff is not simply to be a professional learningcommunity; it’s to be a professional and ethical learningcommunity. All members of the PELC have two definingcommitments: (1) to strive to be excellent in their workand ethical in their behavior; and (2) to help and challengeeach other in their shared task of fostering excellenceand ethics in students.Academic excellence itself presupposes universalethical values: honesty, compassion,empathy, integrity, commitment, andcourage. Who wants students who cheat, failto enter empathically into the inner word ofa book’s characters, perform their chemistryexperiments perfunctorily without commitment,and slant their judgments to pleasetheir teachers? We must reveal to our studentsthe intrinsically ethical nature of thepursuit of truth.—DOUGLAS HEATH61Smart & Good High Schools