Product Review

In this addition to the Essentials for Principals series, authors Richard DuFour and Rebecca DuFour continue to provide aspiring and experienced principals with useful strategies for creating high achieving professional learning communities in their schools. The School Leader's Guide to Professional Learning Communities at Work is based on the following assumptions:
1. The school s job is to ensure high levels of student learning.
2. The process of fulfilling that responsibility entails developing professional learning communities through staff.
3. It is the principal s job to lead the effort to create a professional learning community that fosters high levels of learning for students through processes that promote adult learning.

The School Leader's Guide does not list chronological steps principals must follow to achieve its PLC, but rather provides sound, research-based strategies and suggestions to help principals address specific challenges that inhibit PLCs in their schools. Chapter 1 helps principals initiate and lay the foundation for PLCs. Chapter 2 analyzes how principals lay the structure to support collaborative team processes, while chapter 3 distinguishes between teams and groups and what tools should be used to create teams. Chapter 4 emphasizes the point of being collaborative to promote high levels of student learning, and chapter 5 focuses on effective monitoring strategies for principals.

Chapter 6 explores how student progress should drive a continuous improvement process. How to implement intervention systems to aid struggling students is the focus of chapter 7. Chapter 8 helps principals reflect on their communication effectiveness, and chapters 9 and 10 focus on sustaining school improvement initiatives and informing principals of the important role they play in helping their team members believe in themselves.