Brittany Neal

Brittany served as a public special education teacher and coach for eight years before joining Heuser in 2023. She began her career as a Special Education Instructional Assistant, then later obtained her master’s degree in Learning and Behavior Disabilities (Kindergarten-12th grade). Brittany currently serves as the Special Education Teacher for Heuser Hearing Language Academy.

Take a look at how Brittany helped to start a formal PLC-Professional Learning Community to better serve our HHLA students as team through reviewing our curriculum, instructional practices and support services:

“My culminating project resulted from a needs assessment highlighting the major areas of our
overall school improvement. During the needs assessment portion of my project, I reviewed and
analyzed academic and non-academic data pieces; ALL STARS rating, HHLA Parent Survey,
HHLA Staff Survey, student incident reports, and 2023-2024 Attendance data. After I analyzed
the data components, I found that as a school we are strong in curriculum and instruction, but
could improve in consistent communication with families. Also, staff members expressed a
strong need for a Professional Learning Community to build consistency among the teachers in
communication with parents and as a team.

As I compiled data and reflected upon our current school practices and policies centered around
student achievement I created objective goals (measurable goals that can be accomplished
through evidence.) The goals consisted of (1) HHLA teams meeting monthly and 80% of the
meeting time will be utilized to discuss curriculum, instructional strategies, common
assessments, and special support. Originally, the goal was written to meet weekly as a
professional learning community (PLC) but was adjusted to meet the needs of our unique staff.
(2) HHLA parents will receive an anonymous parent survey in the fall of the 24-25 school year.
Also, parents will be able to provide input regarding the optimal functioning of the school by
submitting comments, concerns, or issues via Google survey. The parent survey will be shared
with parents by October 2024 and feedback will be shared with staff. (3) HHLA teachers will
attend monthly PLCs to discuss student data-academic and behavior, and standardized
assessments. (Ideally, I would have liked for the assistants to attend monthly PLCs, but we
decided as a group to share the information with our teacher assistants as needed.) Initially, I
wanted to approach all goals at once, however, I decided to address one area of
improvement-HHLA teachers will meet monthly as a professional learning community. As we
began the PLC process, I realized that we need to focus primarily on meeting for PLC monthly
and reviewing our current practices, policies, and procedures.

My team helped me accomplish my project goal(s). As a result of this project, PLCs are
established and reviewed and revised our student educational plans. We will still make strides
towards the two additional goals, but our primary focus is to be consistent in communication,
practices, and instructional practices. Our PLCs are now an embedded practice and will be an
ongoing practice that will support the overall school improvement.

My culminating project will be shared in my teacher’s “Growth Chat” via Microsoft Teams,
Heuser’s website and Facebook page. In addition to HHLA, Heuser has an audiology clinic that serves our
students as patients and collaborates with classroom teachers. The information being shared
would give the clinical team the educational needs of a child with a hearing loss or speech
impairment.

This year my professional growth goal was centered around improving instruction and
curriculum through professional development. After reflecting upon my culminating project, I
believe that I did accomplish my goal of establishing a professional learning community. During
this experience, I have grown beyond delivering the traditional professional development model.
The more I learned about PLCs, the more I shared with my team, which made the growth visible
for everyone. As the facilitator, I worked with my team to implement a model of collaborative
professional development. At this time, the primary goals of our professional learning
community are to improve our instructional practices, increase student achievement and to
collaborate as teachers in hopes of overall school improvement. I believe as we continue to
implement PLCs, HHLA will lead to a special school improvement.”