Dr. Anthony Muhammad reinspires through a passionate dialogue about why we need a reignited PLC at Work® movement in education. In this episode, Anthony Muhammad offers “tips to face the current challenges in education and ways to build a better tomorrow—all through the PLC at Work® process, a powerful disrupter in the world of education.”
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Dr. Anthony Muhammad reinspires through a passionate dialogue about why we need a reignited PLC at Work® movement in education. In this episode, Anthony Muhammad offers “tips to face the current challenges in education and ways to build a better tomorrow—all through the PLC at Work® process, a powerful disrupter in the world of education.”
Episode Mentions:
Connect and Learn with Dr. Anthony Muhammad:
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions®, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl, and I am humbled to welcome my guest today, Dr. Anthony Muhammad. Let me tell you a little bit about Anthony. Dr. Anthony Muhammad is a much sought-after educational speaker and presenter. As a practitioner for nearly twenty years, he has served as a middle school teacher, Assistant Principal, and a high school principal as well. Our conversation today, we'll be focusing on Dr. Muhammad's recently released book - it is phenomenal, and I have it right here: The Way Forward PLC at Work® and the Bright Future of Education. Dr. Muhammad, it is an honor to have you as a guest on Schoolutions®. Welcome.
[00:01:00] Anthony: Thank you, Olivia. And I appreciate you sharing your platform with me and your very enthusiastic endorsement of the book. So I'm excited to speak with you and your listeners. And hopefully we can, we can synergize and help move our profession forward.
[00:01:15] Olivia: Well, and I have to say, this is, um, the best book around the PLC at Work® framework that I have ever encountered. Um, and I shared this with you before we jumped on to record, I've read it twice now, and I'm sure I'll dip back into it over and over and over. Um, before we jump into parsing out, uh, my favorite parts of the book, I do ask every guest to share about an educator or another human in their life that's it inspired them to do this work. So would you share with listeners?
[00:01:51] Anthony: Yeah, that's really easy. Um, and you can, if you get a chance to read the book, uh, some of the listeners, you'll see that, uh, this book was inspired by my late mentor, the late Dr. Rick DuFour, who, um, It's one of the few people to enjoy a really decorated career as a practitioner, as well as a researcher and a consultant and a writer as well. Um, he really had the 360-degree touch. Um, Dr. DuFour became my mentor around 2001-2002, and nurtured me in ways that I didn't really realize he was molding me.
[00:02:28] Anthony: Uh, in the process, I just was so enamored with his work and his mind and his vision that he was really molding me in the process. And this book really is kind of my debt of gratitude for a man who not only was brilliant theoretically, but I think his genius was the ability to take a theoretical and make it practical and applicable. And I try to, um, in this book and in my, my, my work as an educator, honor the impact and the investment that he made in me and so many others, but I can only pay back my debt of gratitude. And I try to do that with this book.
[00:03:09] Olivia: Well, and I have shared with you as well, I so appreciate the book's structure, how accessible it is; your storytelling just wraps the reader, it brings the reader right in and you just want to keep going and going and going, um, and you know, I'm not going to say it's a beach read; but it is a joy because it's so inspiring and that idea of the way forward. And that's what I'm all about. Um, so I'd love for you to frame the structure of the book first for listeners. You know, you chose to have it grounded in the past, the present and the future, um, not only of education, but also of PLC as a term, a phrase. Why did you choose to structure the book that way?
[00:04:00] Anthony: Well, it all kind of, the stars just kind of aligned. Um, Rick DuFour passed away in 2017, and he asked me to do some things to advance the work that in the immediate aftermath of his death, I really didn't know how to process. Sometimes it takes you a while for some things to come to, to, to, just to, to codify for you, and then COVID hit and that was a very monumental period where it is a lot of confusion, and one of the things I kept hearing from people in the field, um, one of the benefits and I, I'm honored when people consider me a thought leader and turn to me for what next.
[00:04:39] Anthony: What kept coming via email and conversations with people that this was unprecedented and what next? And I started doing some research on pandemic and tragedy aftermaths. And I found something very interesting in the literature is that there's, there's a period of almost like a, uh, uh, uh, a neutrality period, uh, a vacuum as you transition from one reality to the next, where you get a chance to question things from the past. Um, I write in the book that after the Spanish Flu, there was some innovations in that small vacuum, like virology became a science, um, the rules of personal hygiene, and more importantly, it was the greatest period or the most robust period of women entering the workforce. People started to challenge the institution of sexism after the Spanish Flu.
[00:05:40] Anthony: So as people were in despair, what the literature said was, as you come out of that dark period, there's a period of innovation and it's limited. Then the words of Rick DuFour started to resonate with me again, around advancing the work. And I read a book, reread a book called The Alchemistand the journey of Santiago. And Santiago went on this journey to find that the treasure he was looking for was under his feet the whole time. Before he even started, but he had to go through the journey to be able to appreciate, um, what, what the treasure was. And it brought to mind something that Rick DuFour told me: It was that he felt that people had all of the literature at their fingertips on the PLC process, but he kept talking about this concept called PLC “lite.” You know better, but you only do what makes you comfortable.
[00:06:37] Olivia: Yes.
[00:06:38] Anthony: And what I found was the answer to moving forward has been in front of us since 1998. We've only played with it. So I wanted to structure the book as a journey of what's been the promise of the past, where are we at currently, and what's the best way forward for us to, to meet the, the challenge of the future. And, um, it was really the answer to what Rick DuFour challenged me with in 2017; it was a recommitment to solid principles that had been before us, but we had kicked the can down the road. We're in such a dilemma now that kicking a can down the road just isn't an option. We're losing teachers. People are losing confidence in our profession. Parents are; kids have big learning gaps. We have this really prevalent pessimism that is really prominent in our field. And I just wanted to re-inspire people about what inspired me about PLC way back in 2001 to reinvigorate it, that the solution has been in front of us the whole time.
[00:07:50] Olivia: Yeah, it's so well said. And, you know, I, page after page, I felt inspired as well, um, navigating the book. And the way you captured the past, and really gave a nod to all of the different humans that have been involved. And, um, you know, it opened up conversation for me with my family, um, with my own children. And, you know, people know that I am a teacher and a teacher's teacher now. Uh, yet giving that context really began - it set the tone for the entire book. You know, the other thing that just got me at my heart is the amount of research and references that the book is steeped with.
[00:08:41] Olivia: That's where I know I will continue to go back and back and back. And I just kept taking notes of different researchers' names that mean the world to me and that I lean on often to have my back. So, um, I, I, I just, I appreciate that because the book is, it, it is, it feels narrative. It's your journey. And yet you have so many researchers that have you, you're back and support you and this work and all of us. Um, I also love the cover. It's just stunning. I'm going to show it one more time. I'm going to zoom in a bit. And there's a heart there with a bee on it. So what's the significance with bees?
[00:09:24] Anthony: Okay. Well, the sunflower symbolizes rising. You know, the sunflower follows the sun. So we're in the dawn of a new day. Um, and PLC not only affects the mind, it also affects the heart. The connection of collaboration, you don't have to do it by yourself. This is a passion profession. We don't do this for money. And if you do, you know, something's wrong with you. Um, you're delusional. We do it because we want to impact kids. Kids are; they're our buried treasure. And part of what I wrote in the first chapter is I felt like we were losing our soul as a profession, and distracted. So the heart and the sunflower are symbolic of a new day and rising for, um, uh, the dawn of a new era and the sunflower follows the rise and the setting of the sun. The bee, um was about spreading the message. Bees are carriers of the pollen, of the goodness of the flowers and it creates this beautiful honey. So I wanted to encourage people to not just, uh, enjoy the book, but be like a bee and go spread it so that we can start to start this revolution. Because of it, I don’t know if folks are aware of, you know, we have a bee crisis in the developed world, we're killing all our bees.
[00:10:55] Anthony: And if we lose bees, like, we're, we're, we're goners. Um, they are, they spread vegetation, they spread life. Uh, we need bees. So, I want to encourage people, at the end of every chapter, there's, there are reflections for people, and I have the bees there, that's your, that's your bees, that's, that's the pollen you want to pull, and I want you to go spread it. Because the ultimate message of the book is, is that Rick DuFour put some things on my shoulders, but I'm just too inadequate. I need allies. And the more allies we have, we all do it together. It's an easy fight.
[00:11:31] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:11:31] Anthony: The problem is it's only those who want a narrow definition of success who are doing the fighting. When people of good conscience collaborate and rise, it's an easy fight, but only one side is fighting. So the bee symbolizes spreading and being an ally. So that, that, that's all of my, um, kind of, uh, uh, uh, you know, subliminal message, subliminal messages is in the cover.
[00:12:02] Olivia: It's absolutely stunning. And it really is. It's striking. Who did the cover art for the book?
[00:12:08] Anthony: Solution Tree has a, um, has a graphics department, in the Solution Tree Press. And they sent several of them for me to choose from. And that one just connected; all of my covers. They send like eight or nine and it's what I gravitate towards. And I wrote the book, so I know what it's about. And that one just popped. So, it was a pretty easy choice.
[00:12:28] Olivia: Yeah, it's, it's just, it's absolutely stunning. And, and I love your description. So thank you for sharing what, you know, the symbolism behind the cover art. I think it's, if we are going to have this movement take hold in the way that I know both of us dream of. I think it's really important that all listeners understand what are the three big ideas that drive the PLC at Work® process? And beyond those three ideas, you know, there's some specificity that comes with them and we can't make assumptions. And so if you could illuminate those three big ideas, and then we will make sure to kind of tease them out to ensure everyone's clear on what they, uh, what they mean.
[00:13:13] Anthony: Absolutely. And I would like to give a little history lesson leading up to the three big ideas and say that Rick DuFour and Robert Eaker, who wrote the book, PLC at Work® in 1998, did not invent the concept of PLC. They add it to the literature. And I think it's important for your listeners to know that this is a body of research that has evolved over a period of time. And most people take the PLC philosophy and ideology back to Peter Senge and the publishing of The Fifth Discipline. And Peter Senge saw an organization like you'd see a human body. And our body is made of systems. And Senge called them disciplines. So if you think about the human body, we have a circulatory system and a muscular system and a skeletal system.
[00:13:58] Anthony: And Senge's argument was those systems in isolation mean nothing. What is a skeleton without muscles? What are muscles without a circulatory system? That they're all dependent on each other. And the fifth discipline is the collaboration or interconnectedness of all of those systems. Thomas J. Sergiovanni who was an education professor, uh, uh, researcher, he wasn't enamored with the term organization.
[00:14:26] Anthony: So Senge coined the phrase learning organizations. Sergiovanni felt that that was too corporate. And he said the better way to bridge it for utility among educators was to call them learning communities. It was more heartfelt. It was more altruistic. Well, Shirley Hord and Milbrey McLaughlin
felt that the purpose of having a learning or learning community was truly to improve professional practice. So they coined the phrase Professional Learning Communities. What Rick DuFour and Bob Eaker added was, if you're going to truly improve professional practice, why are you doing it? And what would, how would you go about it? And they coined the phrase Professional Learning Communities at Work®. And that's, that's, that's the ideology I'm a student of.
[00:15:19] Anthony: Well, they said philosophically, if you're going to improve professional practice, then what's the aim? The aim is the first big idea, which is to focus on student learning. I like to call what many people would consider good teaching the theater of teaching. And one of the things that really helped as a student of Rick DuFour and Bob Eaker is that their theory was good teaching is justified by the actual acquisition of knowledge. What good is it to follow Madeline Hunter - ITIP or to be a master of educational technology if students aren't benefiting more from that methodology? So the first big idea is that the focus of the professional collaboration is student learning.
[00:16:10] Anthony: The first big idea is a focus on learning. Big idea number two is that if our focus is to improve learning, we can't do that best individually. That is done best collectively. Some would call it collective intelligence. That our collective uh, focus on student learning blends together all of the individual gifts and talents, and we become our best professional development. So if you are really good at cooperative learning. I love technology. Our teammate is really good at constructivist methodology. By virtue of centering our collaboration around student learning, you can't improve student learning at scale without teachers working together collaboratively. I love what Rick DuFour said years ago, that no one teacher can be everything to every student by his or herself.
[00:17:03] Olivia: It’s so true.
[00:17:04] Anthony: So, so the first big idea is, is around a focus on learning. But the second big idea is we, we have to do that together because we have limitations. And the third is the use of evidence to improve our practice, a focus on evidence. And that, that really differentiates the PLC at Work® process from other collaborative models like Professional Learning Teams, which are very popular in Asia,
[00:17:33] Anthony: Where the focus is on those teams; we pick a common topic, like we want to get better at educational technology or SMART boards. And we study together with the focus on our practice, but the focus really isn't on the evidence of the impact on students. That creates the vulnerability. So you test that theory of improving your practice and really using that evidence to ask, did our collaborative behaviors improve learning, yes or no, and we make adjustments because of it. So that, that third big idea, focus on results, really, the rubber hits the road. Is our practice moving the needle on student learning, or isn't it? And then we make decisions based upon evidence. And those are the three big ideas of the PLC at Work® process.
[00:18:26] Olivia: And so I appreciate, I mean, you're so articulate and going through that idea of student, of learning, and it has to be student learning. I know as a principal, you also created some synonymous questions to help your staff apply that first big idea. What were those questions again?
[00:18:48] Anthony: Well, the questions around at least my staff, um, were, I mean, part of addressing the big ideas is that it has to be relevant for your students. You have to know your students and through looking at evidence. On our students, it helped us pinpoint where our faculty's biggest needs were. My students in, on the west side of Detroit were nontraditional English Learners. Ebonics, or Black English, was their first language. Well, how can we improve, their ELA? in reading outcomes without an understanding of Black English as it relates to standard American English, which is what is our universal language as American citizens.
[00:19:36] Anthony: And if those who are confused by that, go do some research on British English versus Australian English. American English is its own distinct English. There's many different iterations of English. So we use evidence in a reverse. Around our students to really pinpoint collectively, what are our biggest staff learning needs as it relates to our student learning needs? So having a staff who was very sincere, but often lacked some capacity, we were a little bit more strategic about our staff learning to improve their capacity to meet our student learning needs. And the Black English or Ebonics was just one of those areas. We had a lot of trauma, so we got to get some to some trauma-informed practice.
[00:20:22] Anthony: We had a lot of transiency, so we got to get into mobile students. So we just kind of took it a step further and made it very specific. And as a leader, my goal was how do I help my staff improve their learning so they can collaborate better and they can be more focused on the specific needs of our students. It was really, it's what makes being a leader fun. And when we really focused on learning, we spent less time on discipline, and disruptions, and attendance, and parent issues. It really is the way forward. And the things we say we don't have, we don't have the time for learning. The question I ask for leaders and teachers is, then what do you have time for?
[00:21:05] Olivia: Yes. Yeah, I feel that so strongly. And also that idea of parallel practice that I hear you alluding to, you know, you are tending to your teachers in the way you want them tending to the children.
[00:21:20] Anthony: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:21:21] Olivia: And, and we have to set that tone. Something that resonated so strongly with me as I was reading, and it comes up quite often in the book, is the idea of collaboration, yet all collaboration is not equal or good. And so, you know, we have to ensure that there's not that toxicity of complaint or complacency. And, um, you know, you really hit home for me, how toxic, uh, negative complaining can be, and, and there's a lot of research in the book, you know, we have to flip the script. So, I'm wondering if you can speak to some of that research around, you know, collaboration is only effective or productive if it's not this…
[00:22:08] Anthony: Absolutely. It's actually counterproductive if it's not rooted in the right things. Um, most of my work as an author. It's been an area of school culture, and I wrote the first edition of Transforming School Culture in 2009, and the second edition came out in 2018, because I really became curious. Um, one thing I want to shout out my staff, my former staff about is that we got all kind of external condemnation; failing school, drop-out factory. But my staff was never under any illusion that we didn’t need to improve, and they were open to change. You can call it luck, whatever. That's the kind of staff that I inherited. And we just got busy. We didn't spend a lot of idle time on admiring the problem. We got engaged in experiments. I didn't realize how big of a blessing I was.
[00:23:02] Anthony: So when I started doing consulting, I packed my bag of tools and some schools were receptive and some were just very not even like resistant but hostile and that's what led to the study of school culture and the publishing of Transforming School Culture. That every school has a culture. The question is, is the culture healthy or is the culture toxic? And I use an analogy in Transforming School Culture that consider culture like an organization's soil, if you think about agriculture. And the technical practice, like the seed. So, there's a reliance on the seed, whether it's PLC or MTSS. Or Marzano High Reliability Schools; it needs to be nurtured in an environment that can bring out the potential of that seed.
[00:23:59] Anthony: So every school has a culture and you, if you are an agriculture, you can study this, the, the specific chemical makeup of a healthy culture or healthy soil versus toxic soil. They're very specific differences. And as we come, as it comes to schools and organizations, there are very specific characteristics. And one of the specific characteristics of a healthy culture is that they become very cerebral and reflective and experimental when it comes to challenges. And what that produces is action research, it produces a sense of collaboration, efficacy, all the things that the research will tell us improve student learning.
[00:24:44] Anthony: A school culture that is toxic when facing the similar challenge will lean on pseudo self-therapy. Harvard called it, and I refer to it in the book, as a confirmation expedition. So people who are in despair or challenge who feel discomfort, who don't, who aren't nurtured in a healthy culture, will seek other people to validate their despair.
[00:25:09] Olivia: Yes.
[00:25:10] Anthony: And by sharing that with one another, it triggers the amygdala, which then, in our brain, which then triggers the pituitary gland to release cortisol. and other harmful chemicals into the body. It'll make you tired. It'll make you pessimistic. It'll increase your heart rate. It can cause a stroke. People who are, who wallow are really miserable and because they're processing their despair emotionally, logic doesn't resonate because logic has to be processed in the frontal lobe. Well, if you fire up your amygdala and you're processing logic emotionally, it actually makes it worse. So what I wanted to do in the book was to show people how we're digging our graves with our tongue. Stop being; stop admiring the problem. It doesn't make it go (away), it makes it worse. It's like people develop this ideology that I have the right to be miserable and toxic and vitriolic, but in the same breath, say they love kids.
[00:26:19] Anthony: And they'll do any---Well, if you love them so much, bridle your tongue. Stop talking about them. Stop talking about their parents. Stop reframing the same negative narrative over and over and over. Sit down with your colleagues. Look at problems of practice. Look for solutions through literature. Or go to visit a campus. Or watch a video of a proposed resolution. Try a, try a new practice, assess it, share good things among each other, and what it'll do is it'll increase the efficacy of your team, your department, your grade level, your school.
[00:27:02] Anthony: There is so much that is within our control. I'm not letting the government off the hook. I'm not letting parents off the hook. But heck, if all we do is just describe everything that's wrong, we're punishing ourselves because of the, the flaws of others. Why would I hurt myself over somebody else's flaw? And then in the same breath I said earlier, say we love kids. It just is one of the most baffling things that I run into. And I encourage people to read that chapter in the book. And not, not get emotional about it. I'm running into so many people who are angry about the truth.
[00:27:46] Olivia: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:49] Anthony: If you want to be miserable, then I don't want you being miserable and nurturing my kid.
[00:27:54] Olivia: No…
[00:27:55] Anthony: Go be miserable and, and serve ice cream or, you know, work with computers. Work with an inanimate object.
[00:28:03] Olivia: It’s so true. Yeah.
[00:28:03] Anthony: But you're not going to you're not going to puke your despair on my child and my child's teachers because you have a bone to pick with everybody do something about it or be quiet.
[00:28:18] Olivia: And that's, you know, that's the way forward. I'm going to keep going back to that phraseology, because the book is so authentic. Your voice is so authentic in this world. And, and that's what I appreciate. You know, there, there is a reality that we are; we have such power, good and bad, uh, with children and, you know, they, they know what's going on around them. They know if a grownup believes in them. They know if a grownup believes and sees them, hears them, uh, knows their strengths and what they have to contribute as the community member. That whole idea of toxicity, I so I so appreciate that there's a lot of research that can help us shift and know how we need to ground ourselves as a , as a school, even as a grade-level team or as a department.
[00:29:19] Olivia: And that's where just to wrap this, this segue, I guess, that idea of grounding in student work. That is where we can pour over the evidence of student learning and say, look at all the phenomenal things our children are doing and what do we need to support them next so they can reach even greater heights?
[00:29:43] Anthony: Absolutely.
[00:29:44] Olivia: Um, you know, I also was struck by PLC Right? And you've already said PLC Lite, because a lot of what I see, I've always hated the word dabble in school districts. Dabble to me means, you know, you can dip your toe in, you can pull it, dip it, take your foot out, you can try, you can play. You know, there's a sense of urgency here. We're not dabbling. We need to go PLC Right? So I'd love for you to articulate, um, you know, PLC Lite is happening in a lot of districts. How do we go PLC Right? And what are the tight, you like my alliteration here? I'm trying….What are the tight elements of the PLC at Work® framework that we need to be aware of?
[00:30:30] Anthony: Yes. And the beauty of the at Work® designation added after. The evolution of it is that Rick DuFour and Bob Eaker identified, if you're going to be an effective Professional Learning Community, this is what, this is the work you would do, and this is what it would look like. And it just made it so, it took it from, from kind of theoretical to concrete. And I really appreciate that. But PLC, Rick DuFour's dying, kind of unfinished business, and I don't know if you folks know, there are over 160 PLC books, from four editions of Learning by Doing, to books on collaborative teams, to Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum, to Assessment, to Intervention, to Singletons, to Small Schools, I mean, just a lot.
[00:31:22] Anthony: Almost 100, over 160 books. And despite working to produce that clarity, people would look at the, the, all the tights, and pick and choose what they were comfortable with. So, consider PLC Lite partial commitment. Consider that like, I want to get in shape but I only want to do it on my terms. I don't want to do anything that makes me uncomfortable. I want a relationship, but I only want like the parts of the relationship that make me comfortable. Well, name something that you dabble in that you do really well. You might as well not even do it at all. Because, like, partial exercise is almost like no exercise at all. Partial commitment to a relationship is like almost no commitment at all.
[00:32:14] Anthony: So, it really came down to, and I like to phrase it this way, how dissatisfied is a school with students not learning? What's your appetite for failure? That will determine, in my eyes, how much you're willing to do the work to ensure the students are learning. So, when there's an acceptable amount of casualties, then full commitment just doesn't seem appealing because change is inconvenient and it's uncomfortable. So, when people look at the full commitment, the PLC Tight or the PLC Right, they look at that and see, they make a business decision. Is the discomfort of committing to that worth more kids learning or is it hopeless because our kids, you don't know our kids or enough of our kids do well enough that that's just not interesting enough to me to go through that.
[00:33:17] Anthony: So, that's why I try in the book to get people to really ask yourself, do all kids matter or do some kids matter? If the answer is not all, then you're not going to commit to PLC Right? Because that means that there are no acceptable casualties, but if all matter, here are the tights: Number one: We would focus our institution on learning. Teaching is a process. Schedules are systems are grading, all that secondary. The actual acquisition of knowledge is our primary focus and we agree to do it together. So the first tight is more of a cultural commitment. Tight number two: if student learning is our fixation and we're going to do it together, everyone needs to be a part of a strong and functional collaborative team.
[00:34:13] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:34:14] Anthony: The team becomes the platform of our work for student learning. Tight number three: if we're on a team, our focus is learning. What is the work of the team? The first thing that a team would do is if learning is our focus, they would clarify, learn what? They'd separate the must know from the nice to know, because we're going to guarantee that kids learn the must know.
[00:34:39] Anthony: What's tight number four? If we've identified the must know, and we engage in the process of teaching, and I like to describe teaching in PLC like action research. We don't prescribe for teachers, their pedagogy. That's a part of the art of what they do. At tight number four, when you assess your gathering evidence on the impact of your theory of instruction, and that's where you do common formative assessments. You know what the target is. We give teachers the flexibility to teach it the way they see fit. Now we come back with the common tool to assess the impact of our practice.
[00:35:19] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:35:20] Anthony: Tight number five: after analyzing the evidence of who hit the target and who didn't, how are we going to organize kids in a Multi-Tiered System of Support that gives them targeted intervention or extend them if they're ready to go deeper into enrichment? And Tight number six is we all agree that the evidence we gather on student learning will guide individual and collective practice. We're going to use data and evidence to guide the evolution of our practice.
[00:35:49] Olivia: Yes.
[00:35:50] Anthony: And those are the six tights. They're clear. They're not ambiguous. They're not rocket science. But it will require a significant shift in tradition for the benefit of helping every kid reach the finish line. So I want to ask your listeners, if that sounds reasonable, then why would you dabble in it?
[00:36:13] Olivia: And you wouldn't. And there it is. And, you know, I want to wrap our conversation because people have to get the book. That goes without saying. And a quote, I post-ited it a few pages, but I already showed you I take all my notes in the cover. Um,and I think it's critical that the issue that we've named over and over in this conversation; I usually start the episode by naming this, but we jumped right in. And you've said this, “I am concerned that our profession of education and our society in general is losing its soul. The journey of public school education is far from complete.”
[00:37:24] Olivia: So, when I read that, you know, I paused, I wrote it down, I highlighted it. And then your solution that we've talked about this whole conversation that I believe with my whole heart, because I've seen the possibility in schools and the impact it has on children: “Perhaps the PLC at Work® process can reinvigorate our professional soul and help us meet the standard of activism modeled in generations past.”
[00:37:40] Olivia: You know, I truly believe that it will, and that is the way to move forward. And this is the quote I want to end because, um, it actually, it made me tear up a bit and it made me just want to jump out of my seat and get going. Um, “If we are truly going to make a substantive improvement to student learning in the field of education, we need a movement.”
[00:39:49] Olivia: Yes, we do. And you go on to say, “I cannot think of anything nobler than securing a bright future for a child. I cannot think of a nobler profession than the field of education. We can no longer wait for people on the outside to guide our change. A revolution of concern has to develop from within. The PLC at Work® model provides us with a roadmap to that revolution. When the revolution takes place, our community, our nation, and our world become better places. I believe that when properly implemented, the PLC at Work® process can be the most powerful and sustainable educational movement in the history of public education.”
[00:38:37] Olivia: Yes. Yes. Yes. I thank you for your commitment to children; for your commitment to this work. And I also will ask, outside of getting the book, outside of reading it, outside of sharing this and pollinating and spreading the word, you know, what is our best step as educators to get this going in our buildings?
[00:39:06] Anthony: It’s to be a critical friend and speak life into your colleagues, speak life into your team, speak life into your department, speak life into your district, and start where you are. And if you have a lot of small little fires everywhere before you know it, we're all on fire. So, um, that's the beauty of having allies - is that just be an ally in your circle of influence. Start with your teammate. Start with your principal. Start with your Superintendent. And before we know it, we'll turn around and we'll see this thing evolving. One of the things I hope your listeners can appreciate is that we have, uh, almost 93,000 K-12 public schools in this country and almost 8,000 public charters. So, over 100,000 K-12 publicly 100,000 funded schools.
[00:40:04] Anthony: And most of those were developed within a 20-30 year window. That is, that is like a miracle. It’s incredible. And if we've done it before, how come we can't do it again? It’s only when we become privileged; when we become complacent and think that the journey is over. There are a lot of kids who still don't have what they need. The promise of public education is not finished We built an infrastructure. We've come a long way, but we haven't reached the goal. Whenever you think you've reached a mountaintop, you’ve reached a zenith and your journey's over, the best you can get is complacency. The most likely result is that you regress.
[00:40:51] Olivia: Yeah. Well, you know, you've offered us a vision. You've given us a very clear pathway, um, to continue to strive and thrive for our children. And I'm grateful for you. I will make sure to tuck all of your information and contact details into the show notes. Dr Muhammad. for this really important conversation and your work in the field.
[00:41:15] Anthony: Thank you for having me. And I thank your listeners for taking some time out of thier life to listen to a few thoughts I had to contribute.
[00:41:23] Olivia: Yeah, absolutely. Take care. Schoolutions® is a podcast created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Special thanks to my guest, Dr. Anthony Muhammed. Also, a big thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. I would love for you to share the podcast far and wide. Leave a review, subscribe on YouTube, and follow us on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Facebook @schoolutionspodcast. If you'd like to become a Schoolutions®sponsor or share episode ideas, leave me a SpeakPipe voice memo at my website, www.oliviawahl.com/podcast, or connect via email at @schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Please keep listening. Let's continue finding inspiration together.