During our Kern Grant, we facilitated five PLCs. The PLC functioned primarily as a community of practice for K -12 educators and leaders. Our goal was to create opportunities to learn more deeply about particular dimensions of formative leadership. Through the PLCs, we learned a great deal about bringing diverse educators into conversations about character education, and although we faced some challenges with attendance and attrition, we were proud of the deep formative learning that took place in these virtual spaces. One participant told us, “I found the PLC to be a rewarding professional and personal experience. The meetings provided a rare space for reflecting about my relationship to teaching and pedagogy, and I found the readings and resources discussed to be thought-provoking and useful. The weekly discussions in a supportive community of educators became a welcome part of my week.”

Though PLCs are paused for now. We thought to offer, for your consideration, some design principles that inspired our approach to formative professional learning.

As we created the syllabi for Radical Hope and Flourishing of the Teacher, we noticed that creating a professional learning community can seem deceptively simple: just call your group a “PLC” and voila!” But what if we really want the rare form of communal engagement that first inspired this label? Then we must work to create a space with particular qualities. We call your attention to five:

• Learning stance—The community assembles around common questions and concerns. Each of us knows all sorts of things, but what has brought us together is the desire for a space where we can leave behind the knowing attitude and avow ourselves as learners, where we can foreground our perplexities and explore our blind spots.
• Generosity—Closely linked to a learning stance is an attitude of care, openness and invitation. We seek to welcome ideas from one another and from the readings. Further, generosity encourages us to assume positive intent of one another in our interactions.
• Communal ethos—Learning is a sociocultural endeavor. It simultaneously requires and inspires trust and mutual concern. Participants in a community of inquiry are both tasked and rewarded with bearing witness to persons-in-process, distinctive individuals who are hitting roadblocks and turning corners.
• Practical wisdom—We seek to create a special sort of conversational space. On one hand, we strive to think with sophistication, honoring complexity, and avoiding recipes and slogans. At the same time, we want our reflexivity to be grounded in practice, not floating in abstractions.
• Distributed leadership—Leadership comes in many forms. As the conveners of this PLC, we have taken the lead in framing and organizing the work. However, we must all guide the work as it unfolds.

In the coming year, we anticipate returning to these principles as we begin to cultivate projects and spaces for professional renewal at writing retreats and the KPCEL convenings.