Create or revitalize a data-driven professional learning community (PLC) that will drive schoolwide improvement in teaching and learning. Our year-long, research-based VITAL Collaboration is designed to optimize PLC effectiveness.
Using VITAL Collaboration, WestEd has helped clients achieve:
- Increased student learning
- Enhanced teaching practices
- Optimized professional collaboration
- Stronger leadership
- Improved school culture and climate
A Different Approach
VITAL Collaboration takes a different approach to foster professional learning communities and improve teaching and learning.
The VITAL approach:
- Is more structured and rigorous than traditional models – rigor is ensured through a suite of standards-driven protocols that are designed to foster deep conversations that propel effective feedback about teaching practice.
- Encourages teachers to use student data to set clear goals for enhancing their teaching that will improve student learning.
- Makes student and teacher growth visible by looking at artifacts of teacher and student learning, including teacher lessons, observations and videos of teaching, as well as student work and data.
A full year of professional learning for VITAL Collaboration (10–24 days of on-site support) typically includes a combination of onsite training and technical assistance, support paperwork (excerpts available below under “Relevant Resources”), end-of-year assessment and report to measure improvements in professional collaboration and its impact on teaching and learning.
Through VITAL Collaboration, WestEd has helped our district develop a system of proficiency-based teaching and learning. This work taught us to routinely use standards to drive our work and reinforced the importance of collaboration and professional learning in improving both teacher practice and student outcomes.
Heidi Early-Hersey, Director of Teaching and Learning
MSAD 35, Eliot and South Berwick, Maine
Related Resources
Contact Us
To learn more, contact Kevin Perks at [email protected] or 781.481.1110