Josslyn arrived as a new student in our second grade, ready to learn, and sporting a pink streak in her dark brown hair. The file showed her previous school had given her extra support as she struggled through kindergarten and first grade, but when she made little progress, they started the evaluation process to determine if she had a learning disability. Josslyn is a language learner, her family qualifies for free lunch, and her mother and father have a third- and fifth-grade education in their native country. Does that make her high risk? Probably. Does that make her learning disabled? Not likely. Does that make her in need of a professional learning community where teams of teachers collaborate to meet her numerous needs so she can learn at high levels? Definitely. Josslyn’s story tells why we do the hard work it takes to be a high-functioning PLC—so a girl with a pink streak in her hair doesn’t fall through the cracks and end up a code blue.

I shed a lot of tears over Josslyn’s story last year and didn’t feel much success, but this truly is a success story. I’d like to tell you this story is going to have a happy ending with her making two years’ worth of growth and closing that achievement gap, but it doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. Our data shows we do have plenty of those stories to celebrate, but this story celebrates the structures we’ve put in place that allow teachers to focus on data to improve Josslyn’s learning. This story celebrates the culture of collaboration that ensures every teacher in the school truly believes each student is “our kid.” This story celebrates the success that comes from honoring our collective commitments to each other as a PLC.

Our PLC began two years ago when Principal Brian Butler was tapped to open Fairfax County’s newest school, Mason Crest Elementary in Annandale, Virginia, Josslyn’s new home. I am the literacy resource teacher, so in the first week of school, Josslyn’s second grade classroom teacher (player 1) and I cotaught a reading lesson. We were both aware that Josslyn needed support, so after we had given the developmental reading assessment, we shared Josslyn’s data with the grade-level team, which includes all classroom, ESOL, and special education teachers who work with that grade level. Together we analyzed the assessment data, set individual goals for students, and made guided reading groups, combining students across classes when it made sense. Josslyn was grouped with a student from another second-grade class and received guided reading instruction from that teacher (player 2) in addition to sight word support from the special education teacher (player 3), even though she did not have an individualized education plan.

Six weeks later, Josslyn still had a pink streak in her hair and she was still at the same reading level, DRA 3. Her sight word goal (to increase from 8 to 20 known words) fell short at 12 known words. After our team progress monitoring meeting, we moved her from guided reading to the more intense leveled literacy intervention with me (player 4). We also asked a special education teacher working with a different grade level (player 5) to add Josslyn to a reading program that is not often used with general education students. By midyear, Josslyn had not met the learning goals we set and despite our efforts, her achievement gap was widening. I am a reading teacher with a strong track record of reaching our most struggling readers, so it felt like admitting defeat. But by spring, we had enough data to agree with Josslyn’s previous school and carry on the evaluation for learning disabilities.

It was terribly hard to hear that Josslyn scored in the below or far below range across the board on her testing but did not qualify for any special services because she did not show a processing difficulty; she simply had an IQ in the low 80s. We were told we just had to adjust our expectations and accept that learning was going to be hard and slow for her.

No.

The mission of our PLC is to ensure high levels of learning for all—students and adults—so maybe we were the ones who had to learn more in order to meet her needs. We asked the school psychologist (player 6) to work with us on strategies that would build her working memory and capacity to learn. The team came up with a plan for the ESOL teacher (player 7) to build her oral language and background knowledge while a resource teacher (player 8) worked with Josslyn before school on sequencing and memory games. Our school counselor (player 9) consulted in the planning for this time to incorporate decompression activities and manage the effect of Josslyn’s stress on her learning.

As we gathered for the final progress monitoring meeting of the year, we celebrated small successes and thought about how to best prepare for the next chapter in Josslyn’s story. We asked central office personnel to advise us and when they came to share their recommendations, two third-grade teachers (players 10 and 11) joined that meeting so they’d understand how best to support Josslyn the following year (even though they didn’t know if she’d be in their class). The reading teacher who works with upper grades (player 12) and an upper-grade classroom teacher (player 13) went to the word study training over the summer that was recommended by the central office, and they recently started supporting Josslyn within her first week in third grade.

Some say 13 is an unlucky number, but I consider myself lucky to work in a PLC where I can trust that 13 other colleagues will invest themselves enough in “our kid” to be the ones shedding tears if we don’t make expected progress with Josslyn this quarter. Her hair is different this year, with the pink streak gone now that she has started third grade. Many of the players in her story will be different this year too, but those 13 teachers are part of an entire staff that defines success as meeting each child where they are and working together to move them forward. When the mission of your PLC is to achieve high levels of learning for all—students and adults, then you never give up and declare code blue on a child because you are never left in isolation to figure it out on your own. You can believe the answer truly is in the room when the room is filled with teammates who have common knowledge, common language, and common expectations that help them meet the needs of an uncommon little girl who deserves a success story.