For the first year, Kennewick School District awarded Team Awards amongst our Staff Excellence Awards. The two winning teams showcase the value of professional learning communities (PLC) for educators in a public school setting.

We recognized the efforts of Park Middle School's 6th Grade Math PLC Team as well as Westgate Elementary School's 2nd Grade PLC Team. Please join us in congratulating these educators' efforts and accomplishments as recipients of the 2023 KSD Team Awards.

Park Middle School 6th Grade Math Team PLC

Gerardo Mendoza-Tovar, Amber Culhane, Anica West and Kylee Lete

This team of educators consolidated their efforts, resources and knowledge to provide the best, individualized academic support for each student taking 6^th grade math at Park Middle School.

As a team, they worked together to plan curriculum and rubrics, analyzed standards, took in feedback from students and one another and continuously improved, resulting in a remarkable 74% of students meeting their expected growth goals in math.

Westgate Elementary School 2nd Grade Team PLC

Nichole Schermerhorn, Dustie Jones, Aldijana Sakic and Leslie Kruzic

Westgate Elementary School Principal Dale Kern said that among his school’s PLCs, this one really dove in headfirst with a willingness to embrace this new way of collaborating on course planning and found tremendous success as a result.

Working together, the 2^nd Grade PLC team at Westgate Elementary combined their years of experience, expertise and passion for teaching in order to standardize their material so that greater analysis of student comprehension and mastery across their classes could take place, enabling these dedicated educators to tailor upcoming lessons to reteach or accelerate based on trends they found in student work.