Learning Forward Conference

Measuring the quality, effectiveness, and impact of professional learning requires thoughtful planning and implementation of an evaluation process. Explore an eight-step process for evaluating professional learning. See how to assess the evaluability of a program, formulate evaluation questions, and construct an evaluation framework that includes data sources, data collection methods, and data analysis. Learn to apply the process to create a plan for evaluating your own professional learning programs. Participants will receive a copy of Assessing Impact: Evaluating Professional Learning (Corwin/Learning Forward, 2018, 3rd ed.).

Participants will

• Define the steps of the evaluation process;
• Assess the evaluability of an existing professional learning program (outcomes defined as KASAB, standards of success, indicators of success, theory of change);
• Revise professional learning core components to increase evaluability, if needed; and
• Construct an evaluation framework (data sources, data collection methods, data analysis techniques, timeline) for your own professional learning program or a simulated one to answer the evaluation questions.

Gain step-by-step guidance in using collaborative learning time for teachers to solve specific student learning challenges. Examine a process for using student data to craft student and educator learning goals leading to learning plans, implementation steps, and progress monitoring. Focus on the role of learning teams in implementing high-quality instructional materials and what that means for student and educator learning goals and agendas. Participants will receive a copy of Becoming a Learning Team (Learning Forward, 2018, 2nd ed.).

Participants will

• Understand the value and importance of collaborative learning to improve teaching and learning;
• Take steps to launch a learning team cycle with five key stages and examine how to implement each with specific strategies and supporting protocols;
• See how to support the meaningful implementation of high-quality instructional materials;
• Adapt the cycle to fit specific school and district calendars and initiatives; and 
• Leave with a road map to focus on the day-to-day actions in classrooms among students, educators, and instructional materials for maximum impact.

Leverage the science of learning through a culturally responsive lens. Identify instructional practices that accelerate students’ ability to complete unfinished learning. Examine the teacher moves to become a stronger cognitive mediator and support productive struggle that grows student brainpower. Connect equity goals to improving the instructional core, and understand the role of instructional coaches in ensuring instruction leads to more equitable outcomes.

Participants will

• Identify instructional practices that accelerate students' ability to complete unfinished learning;
• Go beyond diversifying the curriculum and focus on decolonizing instruction in ways that leverage diverse students' collectivist learning practices;
• Articulate the teacher moves to become a stronger cognitive mediator and support productive struggle that grows student brainpower;
• Connect equity goals to improving the instructional core; and
• Understand the different roles instructional coaches need to play to ensure instruction leads to more equitable outcomes.

Examine the essential characteristics of effective building-level instructional coaching programs, using a coaching framework to examine all aspects of the program. Explore ways to move coaching from a focus on teacher behaviors to a focus on student results. Leave with examples and practical tools from a variety of districts, including protocols for building relationships with teachers and principals, ways to assess the impact of coaching, sample documents defining the roles of coaches and the role of the coach champion, and more.

Participants will

• Build capacity (knowledge, skills, dispositions, and practices) to define and implement an effective coaching program that positively impacts student achievement;
• Use a coaching framework to examine all aspects of the coaching program;
• Analyze examples and structures as useful tools in carrying out the work of coaching; and
• Explore ways to move coaching from a focus on teacher behaviors to a focus on student results.

Dive into a framework for compassionate coaching that helps coaches avoid the distractions, obstacles, and detours that can take educators off course. Examine the components of the three-phase coaching cycle tailored to each individual and understand the conditions for implementing them. Identify barriers that educators face and explore techniques to address them. Get ready to reimagine instructional coaching with compassion, with strategies to adjust coaching moves to meet educator needs.

Participants will

• Identify the coaching pathways of autonomy, belonging, and competence;
• Examine the components of the three-phase coaching cycle tailored to each individual and understand the conditions for implementing them;
• Identify compassionate coaching cocus areas for several barriers that educators face; and
• Explore techniques to address each barrier with the compassionate coaching focus area.

Examine your beliefs and experiences about written feedback, and use an Innovation Configuration map to assess your own feedback skills. Learn how to create an evaluation process that helps teachers see their practice clearly and develop a personalized plan for growth.

Participants will

• Examine your own beliefs and experiences about written feedback;
• Write and receive feedback about your written feedback; and
• Assess your feedback using an Innovation Configuration map.

Learn how to shift from traditional professional learning to curriculum-based professional learning. Examine a set of research-based actions, approaches, and enabling conditions that effective schools and systems have put in place to reinforce and amplify the power of high-quality curriculum and skillful teaching. Consider strategies for applying them to your plans for professional learning.

Participants will

• Engage in core, structural, and functional design features and enabling conditions of curriculum-based professional learning and consider implications for your work;
• Examine the foundation for The Elements, a challenge paper from Carnegie Corporation of New York;
• Consider roles and responsibilities for putting into action the elements of curriculum-based professional learning; and
• Reflect on how the preconference experience aligns to The Elements and assess your approach to professional learning.

Learn about the antiracist professional learning series offered to principals in the Austin Independent School District at the height of the global health crisis and racial violence in the U.S. Engage with a community of learners to reflect on your personal influence as an educator. Create a plan of action to build personal and collective capacity to disrupt systemic inequity in your school and district.

Participants will

• Learn about the antiracist professional learning community created to support principals in crisis and uncertainty and consider your path toward critical love of your school and district;
• Use the essential elements of cultural proficiency for critical self-reflection on your personal bias, values, and beliefs, and the impacts on students in your care;
• Reflect on your personal influence as an educator and consider what co-creating identity-safe schools and classrooms for students might look, sound, and feel like; and
• Create a personal plan of action that includes a collective commitment with colleagues to change systems and practices that reproduce inequity in schools.

Explore the seven factors that lead to successful instructional coaching, based on 25 years of research. Learn coaching skills that can be used in professional practice immediately. Engage with other coaches to gain multiple perspectives and create an implementation plan to take back to your school or district. Leave with tools and forms you can use to ensure that coaching flourishes in your organization.

Participants will

• Learn research-based coaching skills that can be used in professional practice immediately;
• Discuss each strategy, principle, tool, or idea with other coaches to gain multiple perspectives on the learning that is shared; and
• Create an implementation plan to take back to your school or district.

Recommended book: https://instructional-coaching-group.myshopify.com/products/the-definitive-guide-to-instructional-coaching

Explore an approach to school improvement and innovation that works from the inside out, unleashing not only student curiosity, but teacher curiosity as well by creating a culture of collaborative inquiry. Discover the power of peer-to-peer coaching in triads for school improvement and identify next steps for implementing them in your school. Use evidence-based pathways to improvement to identify your school’s next step toward innovation and improvement and focus for your professional learning.

Participants will

• Understand and share with others the power of curiosity and how to cultivate it in teachers, leaders, and learners;
• Understand the differences between an inside-out, curiosity-driven approach to school improvement and an outside-in or top-down approach;
• Discover the power of peer-to-peer coaching in triads for school improvement, and identify next steps for implementing them in your school; and
• Use evidenced-based pathways to improvement to identify your own school's next step toward innovation and improvement and focus for your professional learning efforts.

Explore strategies for developing high-performing learning systems that build trusting relationships, raise expectations for students and staff, and engage all in a cycle of continuous improvement. Examine ways to design learning that best meets the needs of adults and deepens student learning. Learn how to remove barriers that often prevent students from having meaningful learning experiences. Leave with tools that will strengthen your leadership.

Participants will

• Understand and define a system of learning that results in changes in adult practices;
• Develop skill in building trusting relationships; and
• Exit with clear strategies and learning designs that facilitate teams moving through a cycle of continuous improvement.

Explore steps to improve teacher leadership in your school or district using A Systemic Approach to Elevating Teacher Leadership (Killion et al., 2016) as a guide. Learn how teacher leadership promotes collaborative cultures, equitable learning environments, teacher agency and credibility, improved decision-making, and a dynamic teaching force. Plan how to monitor and evaluate teacher leadership and apply what you’ve learned in your school or district.

Participants will

• Explore definitions of teacher leadership, equity, and excellence;
• Understand the purpose, benefits, and desired outcomes for advancing teacher leadership in schools and school systems;
• Integrate elements of Standards for Professional Learning into the daily work of teacher leaders;
• Plan how to monitor and evaluate teacher leadership;
• Identify the essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions of teacher leaders;
• Apply the new knowledge about teacher leadership in your school or district; and
• Learn with, from, and on behalf of one another.

Develop knowledge, insights, and skills related to the well-being needs of students, staff, and yourself in a volatile world. Reimagine how to engage with practical well-being strategies not usually considered in social and emotional learning practices, such as learning outdoors, developing ethical guidelines for technology use, and addressing controversial issues through the curriculum. Leave with an ability to lead deep educator reflection about issues such as how well-being is part of learning and how emotions like anger and disgust shouldn’t just be managed but reimagined in terms of their positive value for changing the world.

Participants will

• Deepen your knowledge of social and emotional learning and well-being;
• Reimagine how to engage with practical well-being strategies not usually considered in SEL practices, such as learning outdoors, developing ethical guidelines for technology use, and addressing controversial issues through the curriculum; and
• Leave with an ability to lead deep educator reflection about issues such as how well-being is part of learning, not an add-on to or offset for it; about how well-being is a sociological as well as a psychological responsibility; and about how so-called negative emotions like anger and disgust shouldn’t just be managed but should sometimes be reimagined in terms of their positive value for changing the world.

Reimagine a style of leadership designed to address resistance to change while simultaneously supporting staff members. Explore ways to assemble a collective leadership approach that addresses both logical and illogical forms of resistance to change. Learn to use transformational leadership approaches that support staff and hold them accountable to change.

Participants will

• Learn how to assemble a collective leadership approach designed to address both logical and illogical forms of resistance to change;
• Learn how to use transformational leadership approaches to support and professionally and ethically hold staff accountable to change;
• Explore how transformational leadership contributes to a healthy school culture; and
• See how coupling support and accountability is a necessary combination for promoting necessary changes.

Explore factors that contribute to the effectiveness of professional learning and the levels of evidence most crucial to planning, implementation, and evaluation. Learn how to design and implement more effective professional learning experiences using these levels, how to gather quantitative and qualitative evidence on effects, and how to present that evidence in meaningful ways.

Participants will

• Explore the criteria for determining the effectiveness of professional learning;
• Learn how to use levels of evidence to design and implement more effective professional learning; and
• Understand how to gather crucial evidence on effects and present that evaluation evidence in meaningful ways.

Gain an understanding of why it can be so difficult for adults to change their behavior. Explore techniques that result in sustained changes in adult behavior. Plan your next professional learning experience using an original template provided and incorporating some of the 20 brain-based strategies that take advantage of the ways all adult and student brains learn best.

Participants will

• Ascertain why it can be so difficult for adults to change their behavior and determine the order of that change when asking adults to implement new behaviors;
• Examine six principles of adult learning theory that should be considered when interacting with faculty and staff and implementing professional learning communities;
• Experience 10 characteristics of quality professional learning that should be applied when implementing professional learning;
• Acquire facts about the adult brain as it relates to working with faculty and staff and planning and implementing quality professional learning; and
• Plan your next professional learning experience using an original template provided and incorporating some of the 20 brain-based strategies that take advantage of the ways all adult and student brains learn best.

Dig deep into the 2022 edition of Standards for Professional Learning, focusing on how the standards support high-quality professional learning. Use tools and resources to examine standards concepts such as guiding assumptions, equity, curriculum, assessment, instruction, and professional expertise. Engage in collaborative learning to apply these concepts to your role, responsibilities, and professional context.

Participants will

• Gain a deep understanding of the content and structure of Standards for Professional Learning;
• Apply the concepts in the standards to your own roles, responsibilities, and contexts by engaging in interactive and collaborative activities; and
• Determine which strategies, resources, and tools can support your individual and collaborative professional learning growth and development.

Learn how to develop yourself as an educator and as a human being so that you can become a bigger and better version of yourself as a team member and a leader. Explore five ways to stretch at your learning edges to develop yourself to be an even more effective collaborative team member committed to educator effectiveness and continuous improvement. Leave with strategies and tools to bring back to your teams to develop your professional learning culture.

Participants will

• Know yourself and your identity;
• Suspend your certainty and think with greater complexity and openness;
• Take increased responsibility for your language and communications;
• Engage with reciprocity and live out loud your belief of mutual respect for all; 
• Build your resiliency and work on your emotional health; and
• Leave with strategies and tools to bring back to your teams to develop your professional learning culture.

Identify the components of teacher clarity, which requires that teachers understand what students need to learn, communicate learning intentions to students, develop with students an understanding of success criteria, deliver lessons in relevant and engaging ways, and ensure that assessment drives instruction. Examine methods for promoting teacher clarity, assessing student knowledge, and fostering ownership in learning. Understand how high expectations are infused in every instructional decision. 

Participants will

• Identify the components of teacher clarity;
• Describe meaningful learning experiences for students to reach high expectations; and
• Learn about the alignment of curricular expectations, instruction, and informative assessment.

Jessyca Mathews is a language arts teacher at Carman-Ainsworth High School in Flint, Michigan, and a racial, environmental justice, and institutional racism activist. In 2017, Mathews was a finalist for NEA’s Social Justice Activist of the Year for her work on the Flint water crisis. Mathews was named Michigan’s Region 5 Teacher of the Year in 2019-20. In 2018, she was named Secondary English Teacher of the Year by the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and received the Samford Award for Most Inspirational Teacher of Michigan. Mathews has a voice in multiple areas of needed change in education. She has been interviewed by USA Today, Time magazine, and MSNBC, participated in protests and community action to speak on behalf of those affected by the Flint water crisis, and written for McSweeney’s and The Washington Post.

Discover how to make your meetings meet explicit goals. Examine ways to construct a meeting agenda with clear outcomes, leading to a positive, productive culture in your school or district. Consider your own assumptions about meetings and their effectiveness, then focus on protocols that lead to effective and efficient meetings characterized by equity and excellence.

Participants will:

• Examine sample meeting agendas as well as your own;
• Consider your own assumptions about meetings and their effectiveness; and
• Revise/devise an agenda toward intentionality and engagement.

Explore processes to prepare candidates to step into school leadership roles. Learn the essential components of a sound principal pipeline. See a model for how a principal pipeline was built for an urban school district, and brainstorm with others to apply these ideas to your own school district.

Participants will

• Learn the components of a comprehensive principal pipeline;
• Gain an understanding of the steps implemented by the presenters in building a principal pipeline for an urban school district; and
• Have an opportunity to self-assess, brainstorm with others in the session, and apply the ideas presented to your own school district and create an action plan.

Gain an understanding of the contradictions leadership and instructional coaches face in their work. Analyze the root causes by identifying the coach's and system's goals, purpose, mission, and vision. Explore ways coaches and system leaders can gain clarity and increase the effectiveness of the coaching program.

Participants will

• Explain the conflict between coach identity and coach expectations;
• Analyze the root causes of the conflict between coach identity and coach expectations; and
• Examine strategies for surfacing and resolving the conflict between coach identity and coach expectations.

Discover how one literacy coach transformed instructional practices across the district, in all grade levels and content areas, to improve student achievement. Learn to build your coaching capacity to use data, facilitate teacher work, and lead literacy efforts in your school. Enhance your skillful use of protocols and data sources to lead teachers to greater understanding of students’ literacy needs.

Participants will:

• Understand how to use research-based protocols to prioritize and inform the work of a literacy coach;
• Learn how to prepare and implement innovative systems to establish a culture of improvement; and
• Be able to create an actionable plan for establishing effective coaching processes.

Reimagine the integration of scaffolds in curriculum reading and writing strategies for English learner students through professional learning. Create assignments that meet the needs of all English learner students without compromising the rigor or the content knowledge necessary to achieve mastery of the class objectives and maintain high-quality instruction. Learn how to disseminate these strategies to colleagues using activities founded in professional learning principles. 

Participants will

• Identify scaffolds in a lesson and match them to the appropriate English learner level;
• Apply learned scaffolding strategies to create accessible grade-level content for English learner students;
• Assess the growth of a student and the appropriateness of scaffolds for the student; and
• Implement the professional learning practiced in the session to disseminate the content in your own context.

Explore what anti-bias/anti-racist education is and why it is essential. Learn why it is critical for all schools to engage in and support social justice work. Identify programs and practices you can put in place to support students and teachers, and determine how to take steps in engaging the community in becoming partners in this work.

Participants will:

• Gain a better understanding of what anti-bias/anti-racist education is and why it is critical for all schools;
• Develop strategies to use in your schools to develop anti-bias work;
• Identify first steps you can take to address privilege and intolerance in your schools;
• Acquire resources and strategies you can use to initiate this work in your school; and
• Learn how to engage the community in a dialogue about social justice issues.

Participants will

• Establish the connection between strong teacher induction with ongoing support and the impact on retention rates, professional growth, and student learning outcomes;
• Identify methods to design a districtwide framework of layers of support for teacher induction based on timely needs;
• Obtain resources for planning a comprehensive teacher induction program and tools for implementation and monitoring, including a new teacher induction manual, mentor training materials, and digital resources for planning a boot camp experience; and
• Develop a coherent vision for teacher induction in your district and create structures to align resources, including funding, staffing, digital communication, and professional learning, to support new teachers.

Explore innovative ways to captivate adults in the learning process and how to customize professional learning that supports best practices in a blended classroom. Learn how to curate resources that provide just-in-time, self-paced professional learning to an entire district in a few clicks.

Participants will

• Explore ways to curate and streamline access to professional learning around district-vetted digital tools used by teachers and central office staff when planning engaging and responsive lessons for students;
• Reflect on current district or school practices to provide and promote effective professional learning to all teachers and staff; and
• Plan next steps in creating a digital space to house relevant, meaningful, and timely professional learning resources that will support teachers and all staff in teaching and learning.

Explore how school communities can align on what liberated learning looks like for students while unlocking the collective leadership potential of administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Learn how school leaders in Fort Worth and Tulsa have locked arms with their communities using liberatory design to rally around inspiring visions for the student experience. Come away with practical schemas to cultivate empowered leaders and community-wide vision alignment.

Participants will

• Identify the ways liberatory design can be leveraged to galvanize a school community and empower diverse, distributed leadership around a common vision for liberated learning;
• Internalize recent lessons learned, including successes and challenges, from Fort Worth and Tulsa schools; and
• Develop an initial plan for how you might unleash the power of liberatory design to drive transformational change for students in your school or district.

Learn how Broward County Public Schools builds the capacity of teacher leaders to drive changes in instructional practice in its most academically fragile schools through professional learning that includes peer mentorship and components of a National Board Certified Teacher program. Leave with a sample plan for building the knowledge base of teacher leaders and leveraging their collective expertise to mentor teachers in urban turnaround schools.

Participants will

• Understand how lessons from the first two years of Broward County Public Schools' turnaround schools initiative helped the district develop and refine its teacher mentorship program;
• Learn how the teacher mentorship program successfully aligns with the NBCT program;
• Identify key components of a quality implementation plan for using teacher leaders as agents of change; and
• Create an action plan for how to implement this learning in your setting.

Explore and interact with an innovative approach to paraeducator professional learning that has a direct impact on student achievement through the effective engagement of a school’s instructional paraeducator team. Examine how your school or organization can maximize workforce engagement to benefit students within special populations. Develop a vision and action plan for your school.

Participants will

• Be able to use shared information to examine how your school or organization can maximize workforce engagement to benefit students within special populations; and
• Explore the platforms used and hear about our specific learning expeditions to assist in the development of a vision and action plan for your school.

Explore how leaders and teachers build and maintain trust and psychological safety and how sometimes these ideals are inadvertently destroyed. Gain an understanding of the impact of psychological safety on the learning environment for adults and students. Engage in rich discussion and reflection based on a large body of 21st-century evidence. Focus on resilience and the ability to bounce back from physical and emotional injury.

Participants will

• Understand the impact of psychological safety on the learning environment for adults and students;
• Evaluate alternative methods of security psychological safety; and
• Apply the lessons of fearless schools to your school and district.

Recommended reading for this session: Fearless Schools: Building Trust and Resilience for Learning, Teaching, and Leading. Available on Amazon.

Explore core competencies that are vital to the development of school improvement coaches as they work with educators in today’s complex school environment. Practice using tools that bring the core competencies to life, highlighting the importance of the soft skills of coaching. Compare your district’s approach to the core competencies framework and discover how to apply the framework, and tools associated with it, in your context.

Participants will

• Know how the elements of a framework that organizes the core competencies of school improvement coaches work together to facilitate coaches’ learning and development;
• Use the framework to examine your current approach to the learning and development of school improvement coaches and determine how the framework might inform your approach going forward; and
• Identify ways tools aligned with the framework might be used in your own context to guide the learning and development of school improvement coaches.

Explore the framework for a dynamic leadership development program. Discover and experience how Cypress-Fairbanks ISD’s series of seven leadership institutes invites, develops, and supports its leaders to take on the next job role in the leadership pipeline. Walk away with ideas for designing content, creating syllabi, and advancing leadership development.

Participants will

• Discover additional ways to invite, develop, and support leaders at all levels;
• Engage in reflective dialogue while considering innovative ways to build a pipeline to leadership; and
• Be compelled to take informed action to best meet the needs of your organization.

Explore ways to invest in the professional capital of teacher leaders, who do the work of moving learning teams to a place where the focus is on the success of students as well as ways to increase the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of the members of the team. Develop a deeper understanding of the importance of building the capacity of school-based learning team facilitators. Explore a variety of tools and protocols to help your facilitators plan and execute effective team meetings.

Participants will

• Explore a variety of tools and protocols to help your facilitators plan and execute effective team meetings;
• Develop a deeper understanding of the importance of building the capacity of school-based learning team facilitators; and
• Gather ideas to implement a plan to build and support facilitators regarding the criteria for developing strong facilitators through the guidance of a shared leadership guiding coalition.

Learn how engaged leaders create engaged schools by building powerful relationships that connect students, caregivers, and community in the collective responsibility of influencing a school’s success. Explore continuous improvement processes that help educators learn to adapt during challenges, disruptions, and rapid change. Gain an understanding of the ways schools can build powerful collective efficacy through improvement routines, collaborative opportunities, and listening.

Participants will

• Learn how leaders design effective teams, establish collective commitment, and develop the conditions for continuous improvement routines and evidence-based results;
• Analyze results over time and how improvers use data to build efficacy and persistence;
• Experience how teachers, leaders, and counselors led their own professional learning journey through continuous improvement;
• Understand critical leading measures recommended by research studies at Harvard and Johns Hopkins that helped a diverse 98% free and reduced lunch middle school in Birmingham, Alabama, monitor and track progress using short cycles of improvement; and
• Reflect and engage in discussions on how these practices helped vulnerable students re-engage and recover from chronic absenteeism and academic loss and make progress.

Learn how one large school district reinvented meetings by creating a culture of collaboration. Experience how the intentional use of communication protocols can transform conversations and break through stalemates in both in-person and virtual settings. Learn strategies to provide more equitable participation that can foster greater buy-in for critical initiatives.

Participants will

• Learn how to seamlessly build in the use of protocols to head off conflicts and encourage equitable participation and spur inquiry;
• Explore how an intentional use of communication routines can elevate professional conversation; and
• Discover how to align interactive protocols with the intended purpose of your meetings.

Learn about a coaching and professional learning process that increases teacher effectiveness through formative assessment aligned with research-based instructional practices and curriculum standards. Identify the understandings, skills, and mind frames teachers must have to see the impact of their teaching actions on student learning and consider ways of growing these critical teaching proficiencies. Plan for implementation of this lab approach to empower teachers and students as learners and mathematicians and improve mathematics achievement in your own setting.

Participants will

• Learn about a coaching and collaborative professional learning process that increases teacher effectiveness through ongoing formative assessment of student learning aligned with research-based instructional practices and mathematics curriculum standards and can be enacted in face-to-face settings and online;
• Identify the understandings, skills, and mind frames teachers must have to see the impact of their teaching actions on student learning and consider ways of growing these critical teaching proficiencies;
• Generate data collection tools and processes for use in your own context to empower teachers to measure the effectiveness of their mathematics instruction on student learning and improve mathematics achievement; and
• Consider how this flexible but targeted coaching and professional learning process can help teachers and leaders to take action toward equity at the classroom and school levels and address the unique challenges of an evolving education environment.

Explore how district and school leadership teams can provide enabling conditions to support implementation of high-quality instructional materials. Learn key steps, such as adopting an instructional framework, anchoring coaching and feedback in the curriculum, blending support for curriculum and instructional practices, and evaluating progress. Work in small groups to analyze how teachers and school leaders are supported to implement and effectively use curriculum in their school and districts. Develop next steps to strengthen the integration of curriculum and instructional support in your school and district.

Participants will

• Unpack how district and school leadership teams can provide enabling conditions to support high-quality instructional materials implementation;
• Learn key steps, such as adopting an instructional framework, anchoring coaching and feedback in the curriculum, blending support for curriculum and instructional practices, and evaluating progress;
• Work in small groups to analyze how teachers and school leaders are supported to implement and effectively use curriculum in their school and districts, and develop next steps to strengthen the integration of curriculum and instructional support in your school and district.

Learn about the development and outcomes of online professional learning designed to prepare pre-K-3 teachers to integrate computational thinking into their classrooms through inquiry. Examine tools, processes, and implications of online professional learning to create innovative STEM+C classrooms in a large urban district. Engage in hands-on STEM+C learning and collaborate on implications for your context.

Participants will

• Describe the design of an effective online professional learning opportunity to promote STEM+C learning in pre-K-3 classrooms;
• Explore computational thinking activities to gain an understanding of the impact of integrating computational thinking and STEM principles into pre-K-3 classrooms;
• Discuss the interplay of content experiences and practice-based inquiry in developing teacher capacity to integrate computational thinking and STEM principles; and
• Examine the findings and implications of data collected on the effectiveness of the online professional learning.

Examine the research, professional learning, and strategies one district used to transform the instructional materials adoption process, reimagine the possibilities for students with highly aligned curriculum, and structure curriculum-based professional learning. Develop knowledge and resources to implement a rigorous, equitable materials review and selection process. Analyze your current system regarding possible obstacles or catalysts toward high-quality curriculum. 

Participants will

• Develop knowledge and resources to implement a rigorous, equitable materials review and selection process;
• Analyze your current system regarding possible obstacles or catalysts toward high-quality curriculum; and
• Apply new professional learning structures reviewed in the session.

Learn how the fifth-largest public school district in Michigan shifted from a one-size-fits-all system of professional development to a more personalized professional learning model by leveraging lessons learned over the past two years. Discover ways they supported instructional staff to develop professional learning resources by providing the tools, support, and space to share with one another. Walk away with practical examples of how you might shift your building or district to a more collaborative, job-embedded, and customized professional learning system.

Participants will

• Gain practical examples of how to shift professional learning to a more intentional, personalized focus to support teaching and learning;
• Leave with free or low-cost tools and resources that support the development of professional learning; and
• Gather suggestions on how to discover the professional learning needs of instructional staff members and develop programming to meet those needs.

Learn how leaders in the Memphis-Shelby County Public Schools in Tennessee implemented a universal screening process to identify a more diverse student talent pool for the gifted and talented program. Examine the project, the outcomes, and best practices based on research. Consider how to implement a universal screening protocol in your district.

Participants will

• Know the importance of identifying gifted students early to mitigate academic underachievement;
• Learn how to examine best practices for identifying gifted and talented students at various grade levels; and
• Understand how to coordinate a universal screening protocol that could be implemented in your district.

Explore how Miami Dade County Public Schools elevates recruitment efforts to amplify and diversify the education profession through Project REDI: Project Recruiting, Empowering and Developing Inclusive Male Teachers and Leaders to increase and build the men of color educator talent pool. Learn how this innovative initiative is a pipeline to building teacher and leadership capacity with men of color educators.

Participants will

• Explore professional learning experiences in support of the Project REDI initiative by delving into the program’s strategies and tools in the recruitment of men of color as teachers and leaders to amplify and retain diverse educators in a large urban school district;
• Learn how the program is designed to recruit, engage, and provide male educators with diversity, equity, and inclusion professional learning, career guidance, and networking opportunities; 
• Review diverse, equitable, mentoring, and inclusion strategies within Project REDI that permeate a cultural-diverse environment to develop professional growth, teacher efficacy, and leadership skills in recruiting and retaining male educators;
• Study elements, resources, components, associated competencies, and standards essential to designing a program to build teacher capacity through the integration of diversity, equity, and inclusion professional learning; and
• Explore ideas in implementing job-shadowing opportunities, site-based field experiences, mentoring support, and professional growth tools in replicating the program.

Explore highlights of one division’s journey in moving K-8 schools from weak or nonexistent professional learning community (PLC) cultures to collaborative inquiry and reimagined practices. Learn about division goals and nonnegotiables that foster the systematic development of both leader and teacher collective efficacy for student benefit. Collaborate with others to assess your current PLC culture and determine an action plan for reigniting your schools to higher levels of teacher and student success.

Participants will

• Reflect on another division’s journey in redefining a PLC culture;
• Self-assess the current status of your school or division PLC model; and
• Develop next steps toward reimagining school structures designed to promote collective leader and teacher efficacy.

Explore how Hillsborough County Public Schools re-envisioned teacher induction in response to limited resources and the impact of COVID. Learn about the decisions we made and the lessons we learned in creating methods and tools for inducting and onboarding new and new-to-district teachers, providing innovative access to both in-person and virtual resources and support, and designing a program that provides general mentoring and high-quality professional learning.

Participants will

• Explore the decisions, methods, and tools involved in Hillsborough County Public Schools' teacher induction programs;
• Examine and discuss the ways in which new normals have impacted the induction and support of new teachers in your own district; and
• Self-assess and re-envision ways in which your induction programs might more effectively support new teachers in your own context.

Learn how educators can stretch student thinking, promote deep learning, and provide just the right amount of challenge for all learners. Examine evidence-based practices to support teachers in fostering inquiry, deep conceptual understanding, and disciplinary literacy. Deepen your approach to curriculum-based coaching and learn specific scaffolds for supporting students from diverse backgrounds to improve equitable access to rigorous learning experiences.

Participants will

• Examine and practice multiple strategies to promote deep conceptual learning;
• Apply strategies to content-specific domains to promote disciplinary literacy;
• Modify strategies to support students from diverse backgrounds in acquiring, organizing, and integrating new learning with appropriate scaffolds and supports; and
• Identify ways to support other educators through coaching, collaborative teams, and professional learning communities to advance student achievement.

Learn to create a sustainable approach to schoolwide social and emotional learning (SEL) with clear goals and an aligned plan to measure and reflect on impact. Hear from practitioners who collect and reflect on SEL data in partnership with students and families. Experience a simulated SEL team meeting, shape an SEL goal and aligned evaluation plan, and leave with tools to facilitate discussions about SEL data.

Participants will

• Gain the strategies to improve an existing SEL goal and identify data sources that can be used to evaluate progress;
• Be able to list examples of commonly used sources of SEL data and access measures and tools that meet your community’s needs;
• Leave with tools you can use to prepare for and facilitate discussions about data with staff, students, parents, and caregivers; and
• Be able to describe ways to center equity in the data reflection process.

Learn how social and emotional learning (SEL) can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities. Examine one district's steps to build capacity districtwide through implementation of a comprehensive and scaffolded professional learning plan to strengthen adult SEL. Follow the district's implementation of CASEL's focus area 2 (strengthen adult SEL competencies and capacity), which includes central office expertise, professional learning for all staff, adult SEL and cultural competence and alignment of initiatives, and staff trust, community, and efficacy.

Participants will

• Establish a compelling vision for adult SEL professional learning;
• Sustain a coherent system of support for adult SEL; and
• Use results-oriented, evidence-based professional learning for adult SEL.

Explore how white-majority settings present unique challenges to professional learning on diversity, equity, and inclusion and how to mitigate limitations that exist in these settings. Determine how to use constructivist learning theory to support deeper understanding about race and racism. Examine how emotive and narrative experiences build racial literacy.

Participants will

• Share experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion professional learning;
• Learn about challenges white-majority settings face;
• Determine elements of training structures that support adult learning; and
• Explore modes of learning that build racial literacy.

Reimagine professional development with students at the center by designing collaborative adult learning that ignites curiosity and shared responsibility and accelerates student achievement. Experience a new approach to professional learning using Lead by Learning’s playbook. Reflect on your current vision for adult learning and walk away with concrete practices to implement tomorrow.

Participants will

• Gain a conceptual understanding of the science of learning principles behind designing professional learning that centers inquiry over compliance;
• Experience anchor practices to support the design of professional learning that include support in setting adult learning goals, collaborative routines for analyzing data and identifying implicit biases, and centering student and adult learning data; and
• Leave with next steps and a playbook to implement a new approach to professional learning at your site.

Explore equity coaching, a leadership stance that supports the idea that practice is what changes behaviors and behaviors are what change systems. Consider how improving educators’ coaching skills can help them lead others to embrace change and replace current reproductive practices with new relational approaches. Learn about listening as the central skill in coaching and creating culturally responsive communities. Delve into the topics of race, culture, and schema to contextualize cultural responsiveness and imagine new ways for adults and students to be in community with one another.

Participants will

• Engage in discussion about oppression and education and examine assumptions about bias, privilege, change, and learning;
• Consider listening as a culturally responsive leadership and teaching skill to increase cultural proficiency and better diagnose challenges and support students to grow and learn;
• Develop educators’ ability to create culturally responsive spaces focused on strong instruction and collaboration with their peers; and
• Develop skills for coaching change in challenging contexts, including social-emotional intelligence and building trust and relationships.

Learn how to meet the physical, social, and emotional needs of your students while also maintaining a quality personal life. Identify the factors that contribute to teacher burnout. Explore how to determine purpose and restore your passion for teaching. Consider 12 specific ways to support your physical and mental well-being.

Participants will

• Identify the factors that contribute to teacher burnout and learn how to determine purpose and restore the passion inherent in the profession;
• Discover the correlation between humor, optimism, games, and increased immunity; and
• Value the importance of quality nutrition, exercise, and sleep to support physical well-being. 

Explore how principals are redesigning their leadership based on the new Standards for Professional Learning and the roles they play in leading learning of adults and students. Examine the new standards from the role of the principal and leave with a plan of action to move forward with authentic implementation in our schools.

Participants will

• Engage in understanding and using Standards for Professional Learning to increase your effectiveness;
• Explore the new standards with a focus on equity, learning designs, assessing progress, and leadership; and
• Develop a plan of action for implementing the standards with intentionality.

Participants will
• Gain knowledge about the advantages and shortcomings of different grading methods and their implications for classroom policy and practice;
• Explore strategies for reforming grading and reporting that are fair, accurate, meaningful, educationally sound, and supported by all stakeholders; and
• Develop guidelines for implementing effective standards-based and competency-based grading policies and practices at all grade levels.

Explore ways to integrate knowledge and skills into any evaluation system to bring a growth-producing dimension often missing from traditional evaluation. Enhance your listening skills as well as your knowledge of how to support thinking during the evaluation process. Learn how to support growth in others through an evaluation conversation. Identify and practice the skills of authentic paraphrasing and posing thoughtful questions.

Participants will:

• Gain enhanced skills as a listener;
• Learn how to support thinking during the evaluation process; and
• Become confident in using evaluation as an opportunity to support growth.

Unleash the power of teacher teams to maximize the impact of formative assessment on student achievement, engagement, and equity.  Apply a four-step Formative Assessment for Results cycle, where teachers: clarify learning targets and success criteria; infuse formative assessment throughout instruction; analyze student work frequently and in-depth; and provide timely, targeted feedback, reteaching, and extension. Travel around the FAR cycle and experience activities that build teachers' expertise in these high-impact steps.

Participants will

• Apply a framework and tools for implementing a four-step formative assessment cycle with teacher teams;
• Facilitate teams in learning about success criteria and communicating them effectively to students;
• Engage teams in protocols for data-driven dialogue and criteria analysis of student work; and
• Guide teams in learning about and responding to student data with well-matched FIRME action (feedback, investigation, reteaching/regrouping/re-engagiong, moving on, extension).

Discuss with Jason Grissom, professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, a major review from The Wallace Foundation of 20 years of research, which confirms that principals are even more important for student achievement than previously believed. Find out which skills and practices among principals are linked to positive outcomes for students and why diversifying the leadership pipeline is vital to achieving equity goals.

Explore how being a coach can allow today's leader to combine evaluation, management, and being an instructional leader. Gain an understanding of higher levels of effectiveness and the principles of instructional coaching to support school improvement. Develop a foundational understanding of student-centered coaching and the critical role it plays in instructional leadership. Learn how to lead with a coach's hat and use data to drive instruction. Engage in self-assessment that can drive changes in leadership practice.

Participants will

• Develop a foundational understanding of student-centered coaching and the critical role it plays in instructional leadership;
• Learn how to lead with a coach's hat;
• Use data to drive instruction; and
• Engage in self-assessment that can drive changes in leadership practice.

Engage in a collaborative session to explore the process of a full curriculum audit to examine resources through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of a robust continuous improvement cycle. Connect with global colleagues to synthesize new learning and refresh current practices. Walk away with a toolbox of look-fors and processes to examine your own curriculum resources.

Participants will

• Explore a research-based curriculum audit process to examine resources through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion;
• Connect with global colleagues to synthesize new learning and refresh current practices;
• Leave prepared to analyze existing resources and design an action plan to address equity gaps in the current curriculum and associated resources.

Learn about research-based systems and structures to implement in a school or district to drive continuous improvement cycles through learning acceleration strategies. Explore how strategic implementation of learning acceleration leads to long-term impactful results. Curate a unique, tailored checklist for yourself that will guide assessing readiness and ability to address and successfully implement learning acceleration strategies in your home school or district. 

Participants will

• Learn from emerging data in Texas that supports successful implementation of learning acceleration and research-based instructional practices in Math and ELAR (specifically, high-quality differentiation and scaffolding, and key components of effective instruction).
• Understand that strategic implementation of learning acceleration practices will lead to long-term impactful results vs. relying on remediation strategies alone to close academic gaps.
• Curate a unique, tailored checklist for yourself during the session that will guide assessing readiness and ability to address and successfully implement learning acceleration strategies in your home school or district.

Deep dive into practical strategies that stimulate dopamine release and win back students. Explore the research and brain science behind distracted students. Investigate different strategies you can use in numerous learning settings to increase engagement. Plan action steps to implement these strategies.

Participants will

• Explore the research and brain science behind distracted students;
• Discuss what you are seeing in your own setting and how that is affecting your students;
• Explore different strategies you can use in numerous learning settings to increase engagement; and
• Debrief and apply what you have learned to your own setting and start to take action steps toward implementing these strategies.

Participants will

• Examine current barriers to educator wellness and resilience;
• Discover strategies to coach for educator wellness and resilience;
• Collaborate with peers to develop a resilience coaching plan; and
• Reflect for implementation of new learning.

Learn how district and school-based administrators partner to implement a successful student-centered instructional coaching program. Understand how using varied lenses provides support to instructional coaches. Develop a plan of action to bolster a culture that thrives on coaching.

Participants will

• Explore the role of a coach: What coaches are, and what they are not;
• Understand the components needed to build a positive coaching culture;
• Understand the roles of district and building administrators in supporting a successful instructional coaching program; and
• Create an action plan to build a culture of coaching throughout a district and school partnership.

Imagine students reading, writing, and speaking in all contents with deep understanding in discipline-specific ways. Learn how to meld literacy and content to help students become apprentices in all disciplines while impacting and increasing student engagement. Partake in high expectations and structured routines that support students in taking charge of their own learning. Leave with equitable, research-based instructional practices, connections with colleagues, and an action plan to grow your disciplinary literacy communities.

Participants will

• Strengthen understanding of the relationship between disciplinary literacy and core content to foster excellence in learning;
• Leverage and engage with equitable literacy instructional practices within content areas that build student proficiency; and
• Create an action plan for implementation of the learning.

Learn how a collective, unified approach to instructional coaching leads to high levels of teaching and learning. Explore how Virginia Beach Schools developed a comprehensive instructional coaching model to build teacher capacity for high-impact instructional practice. Practice coaching conversations using tools that build a common language and leave with a sample coaching model that focuses on research-based competencies instructional coaches may use to yield teacher growth and student achievement.

Participants will

• Identify high-impact coaching competencies;
• Examine a process and implementation plan for unifying coaching practices across a variety of positions that have influence over teaching and learning;
• Analyze the use of instructional coaching in your own school or district; and
• Create an action plan for how to implement a comprehensive coaching model in your school or district.

Develop an actionable understanding of how to design professional learning to foster equitable instruction and drive continuous improvement in learning. View professional learning and system design through three lenses: a review of the common components of the world’s highest-performing education systems; a real-world discussion with a district actively implementing professional learning lessons gleaned from this research; and a self-analysis of a district as it relates to these principles.

Participants will

• Explore and learn to apply research on high-performing education systems to your own district and understand how professional learning functions within these systems to drive equity. This research will include the National Center on Education and the Economy’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System, which distills common elements of the top-performing, most equitable education systems around the world;
• Better understand how to think deeply about the incentives, structures, and supports that are needed to establish regular collaborative professional learning;
• Gain insight into the real-world application of these concepts as you discuss the steps McComb School District took to design and implement an educator career ladder to deliver equitable, excellent instruction in every classroom, as well as how the district addressed roadblocks and built momentum for sustainable change and continuous improvement throughout the process; and
• Better understand your current system’s context and leave the session with a better sense of how to begin redesigning your professional learning to ensure equitable opportunities for students in every classroom.

Learn about the latest & greatest digital tools that can be used to enhance participants' Professional Learning experience. We will share tools to use for engagement during presentations, organization of PD sessions, conferences, newsletters, curating of professional learning resources for educators, and more! Engage in and discuss how these tools can positively impact professional learning opportunities.  Apply new digital tool knowledge to an upcoming professional learning you are planning for your own setting.  

Participants will

• Gain a deeper understanding of digital tools and the ways they can enhance professional learning experiences;
• Actively engage in an experience that utilizes examples of digital tools; and
• Practice components of the digital tools & discuss how to incorporate them into upcoming professional learning.

Explore why teachers of color leave schools based on evidence collected by a team of researchers and teacher leaders. Consider school- and district-focused solutions for better supporting and retaining teachers of color, and learn how a cohort of district teams are taking a learning sciences approach to addressing teacher diversity. Engage in small-group discussions with other participants on what their schools and districts are doing and could be doing to better support teachers of color. Develop action plans for better recruiting, supporting, growing, and retaining teachers of color.

Participants will

• Better understand why teachers of color leave schools based on evidence collected by a team of researchers and teacher leaders;
• Consider school- and district-focused solutions for better supporting and retaining teachers of color, and learn how a cohort of district teams are taking a learning sciences approach to addressing teacher diversity;
• Hear from a superintendent on how she has led her district towards improving teacher diversity;
• Engage in small-group discussions with other participants on what their schools and districts are doing and could be doing to better support teachers of color; and
• Develop action plans for better recruiting, supporting, growing, and retaining teachers of color.

Learn about the equity-driven social-emotional learning competencies of the My Brother’s Keeper Scholars Program in central Texas. Review the student self-report and observation tool to understand how each can provide information to students, staff, and teachers to nurture student growth. Explore identity, thinking, and action themes to begin a personal understanding of the competencies and what use might look, sound, and feel like in your local context.

Participants will

• Learn about the conceptual model of the equity-driven social-emotional learning competencies;
• Understand the research base and sociopolitical context that framed the development of the competencies;
• Interact with a high school principal to understand how the competencies are used to support students;
• Reflect on your personal influence as an educator and consider what co-creating identity-safe schools and classrooms for students might look, sound, and feel like.

Explore how collaborative teacher teams, when leading student-focused inquiry cycles, have the potential to reimagine and improve student experience. Engage with the story of teacher leaders who integrate student voice as they guide grade-level teams to determine an instructional problem to solve and how to solve it, then analyze its impact. Analyze your own inquiry-based teamwork in light of artifacts from the field, student interview protocols, and a research-based inquiry tool.

Participants will

• Understand the importance and role of listening to the voices of students furthest from justice when engaging in collaborative inquiry cycles;
• Use a research-based professional learning framework and inquiry tool to evaluate the current state of your inquiry processes;
• Examine the key practices of instructional leadership teams and grade-level and content teams that center student experience throughout an inquiry process; and
• Engage with tools and protocols for gathering student experience data and consider how teacher leaders could use such tools to sustain inquiry cycles with a focus on students furthest from justice.

Evaluate what research says about the importance of using high-quality instructional resources and understand where teacher choice exists in teaching and learning. Understand the impact of using high-quality instructional resources on student achievement and equity. Prepare a plan to be able to implement and lead a high-quality materials focus in your own district or campus.

Participants will

• Be able to communicate what research says about the importance of using high-quality instructional resources;
• Understand where teacher choice exists in teaching and learning;
• Understand the impact of using high-quality instructional resources on student achievement and equity; and
• Be equipped to lead a high-quality materials focus in your own district or campus.

Learn how the body of research called the science of learning impacts how we design and facilitate professional learning. Engage with the latest research on how adults learn and what we know from professional learning to consider attributes and mechanisms for deeply engaging educators in making instructional shifts. Consider your own context and leave with a research-based outline for enacting the science of learning with your team.

Participants will

• Understand how the body of work known as the science of learning impacts adults and how that knowledge is essential when planning and facilitating professional learning;
• Learn facilitation techniques that support powerful professional learning for teachers and mirror the techniques teachers will use with students;
• Use tools that support planning for active professional learning to lead these shifts in instruction; and
• Create a plan for shifting professional learning that leads to shifts in instruction.

Explore how building administrators and instructional coaches can build teacher capacity and raise student achievement through a comprehensive, collaborative approach to professional learning. Examine a district’s grassroots efforts to positively impact professional learning by starting with building-level leadership and instructional coaches at the elementary level. Learn about the Learning Forward Academy and how it has changed the way this Midwest district approaches professional learning for all at the elementary level.

Participants will

• Develop an awareness of the Learning Forward Academy and the Standards for Professional Learning and their impact on a large-scale Midwest district;
• Hear how the Learning Forward Academy work has helped to provide purpose and structure to the administrator and instructional coach partnership;
• Become familiar with the theory of change and other tools that will assist in planning for your school or district;
• Begin planning for change in your district; and
• Leave with a sense of urgency to make a positive difference in your district as it relates to professional learning for all.

Learn how complex, urban districts with multiple departments and instructional coaches come together to norm around research-based coaching practices that lead to improved teacher pedagogy and student achievement. Explore how Metro Nashville Public Schools, serving 82,000+ students and 159 schools, tackled differences in coaching practices by co-constructing a coaching handbook, professional learning, and data collection systems. Leave with practical ideas for how to refocus efforts on productive coaching activities and bringing together different stakeholders.

Participants will

• Identify potentially productive coaching activities rooted in the coaching cycle;
• Identify key components of a coaching handbook and data collection system; and
• Explore ideas for cross-departmental collaboration.

Explore strategies for principal leadership in pre-K to 3rd grade. Gain an understanding of developmentally appropriate practice and identify ways to enhance instructional leadership capacity to align pre-K programs or early childhood education with K-3 learning.

Participants will

• Learn about quality early childhood content to intentionally support a school leader’s knowledge, skills, planning, and leadership in pre-K–3rd grade learning;
• Advance your knowledge of research-based, turnkey practices that principals and teachers leading early childhood work can implement;
• Gather information on joining a strong network of principal influencers who feel empowered to amplify their individual voices in the early childhood space to better support young children and their families.

Participants will

• Explore the key capacities needed in teacher and PLC leaders and strategies to support their development;
• Engage in tools that foster intentional professional learning and initiative design and apply them to your context; and
• Gain a greater understanding of the Learning Forward Academy and how it supports improving professional learning design in a variety of contexts.

Learn how districts can overcome the challenge of providing just-in-time support for students who have fallen behind mathematically. Experience how Lenoir City Schools is capturing additional opportunities during the school day to provide support by highly effective teachers, well-trained tutors, and the use of high-quality materials. Leave with a sample of a clearly defined program structure, including a protocol for the selection of students, tutors, and materials.

Participants will

• Review and examine the latest design principles for effective tutoring;
• Identify key components of implementing a high-dosage math tutoring program; and
• Examine the critical components of the process and protocols necessary to lift high-dosage mathematics tutoring in your own setting.

Learn how one district provides teachers with embedded professional learning and equitable practice during the teacher workday. Explore how Washoe County School District’s implementation of district common assessments impacts classroom, school, and district learning communities. Discover the learning committee’s use of common assessments to study instructional practice, evaluate program efficacy, deepen understanding of content standards, gain exposure to assessment literacy, and, above all, identify professional learning needs.

Participants will

• Experience collaborative analysis and decision-making in a learning community with student data, work samples, and student self-assessments;
• Identify embedded and potential professional learning that arises from participating in learning communities’ analysis of student data;
• Determine equitable access points for students who have and have not independently learned to apply grade-level content standards; and
• Generate new ways to teach content standards to move students toward proficiency.

Learn how to design a system of professional learning that supports an entire district or state. Examine ways to identify and frame state or district needs and leverage a theory of change to arrive at a strong program design. Explore implementation science and design principles of program evaluation to successfully implement and determine the effectiveness of programs at a large scale.

Participants will

• Explore essential components of designing and undertaking large-scale professional learning initiatives;
• Understand the importance of a theory of change and the connections outlined between activities, outcomes, and impacts;
• Discover the necessary elements of implementation planning that summarize timelines, implementer responsibilities, indicators of implementation fidelity, action steps, and evaluation plans; and
• Determine success measures of evaluation planning to collect and analyze data to monitor progress towards outcomes and make ongoing and continuous adjustments.

Surface the nonverbal and verbal patterns you might consider using to open a meeting or professional learning when you know resistance is in the way. Explore a series of moves intended to surface the emotions, the values driving the emotions, and then decrease their intensity so that oxygen returns to participants' brains and they can think and be present.

Participants will

• Practice matching the energy of emotions;
• Explain the what and why for skills such as 4th point, location change, credible voice, and pausing;
• Practice demonstrating 4th point, location change, credible voice, and pausing;
• Create and practice an opening to a meeting or professional learning of your choice where you know resistance will be present; and
• Practice ways of responding to resistance using both verbal and nonverbal skills.

Learn how leaders and educators shift power and participation to students through maximizing their voices in their classrooms, schools, and broader communities. Understand how to center student voices in service of creating learning environments that are inclusive of and responsive to students’ needs. Leave equipped to take action steps to strengthen student voices in their learning, about their learning, and for change.

Participants will

• Practice articulating the integration of academics, social-emotional learning, and identity development through a whole-child approach;
• Reflect on aspects of our personal identities and explore how they impact students in our classrooms; and
• Understand student voice strategies that intersect SEL practices and academic goals and shifts participation and power for diverse learners.

Learn about the transformative professional learning practices taking place in Lexington School District One, which is taking a "show, don't tell" approach and leveraging model classrooms, lab sites, learning walks, and professional learning clinics. Leave with ideas of how to revitalize professional learning in your district so the professional learning results in shifts in instructional practice.

Participants will

• Learn about the transformative professional learning practices taking place in Lexington County School District One;
• Leave the session with knowledge of “show, don’t tell” transformative professional learning structures such as model classrooms, lab sites, learning walks, and professional learning clinics;
• Share a variety of perspectives including that of the instructional coach and administrator on everything from the implementation to the impact on teacher practice and student outcomes;
• Gain knowledge on how to revitalize professional learning in your district so the professional learning results in shifts in instructional practice; and
• Consider ideas for planning, funding, implementing, and evaluating these new professional learning practices.

Participants will

• Understand how to recruit, grow, and retain a diverse teaching force;
• Learn how to develop community partnerships including education preparation providers and workforce essentials to grow a diverse teaching force following an apprenticeship model; and
• Understand how to increase post-secondary opportunities for underserved student populations.

Dive into the resources that support implementation of Standards for Professional Learning. Learn how to translate the standards -- which describe the content, processes, and conditions for professional learning that lead to high-quality leading, teaching, and learning -- into the daily work of educators in various roles and with varying responsibilities, from state education leaders to classroom teachers.

Participants will

• Gain a basic understanding of Standards for Professional Learning;
• Gain a clear understanding of the resources available to support implementation of Standards for Professional Learning; and
• Engage the implementation resources to identify specific actions for applying Standards to their daily work.

Explore the user-centered design component of Dr. Bryk's improvement science. Experience open-source tools to analyze curriculum for vertical and horizontal standards coherence and alignment. Identify effective formative data measurement. Apply improvement science concepts and resources to your own problem of practice. Leave with practical open education resources tools that integrate professional learning, curriculum, and assessment.

Participants will

• Experience and practice the user-centered design component of Dr. Bryk’s improvement science, taking from the session practical open education resource tools and resources that coherently integrate the core instructional systems of professional learning, curriculum, and assessment;
• Practice mock, short-cycle plan-do-study-act on your own problem of practice;
• Explore effective formative data measurement;
• Apply improvement science concepts and resources to your problem of practice; and
• Experience open-source tools to analyze curriculum for vertical and horizontal standards coherence and alignment.

Create a culture that can transform your school. Learn about and analyze key elements of schools that honor the worth of each person and experience high levels of student learning and success. Explore strategies that have made school transformation possible at the deepest levels through the development of school leaders and professional learning. Develop an action plan to address both culture and promising initiatives.

Participants will

• Learn about and analyze key elements of schools in all kinds of settings that honor the worth of each person and that experience high levels of student learning and success;
• Examine examples of crucial strategies that have made possible the transformation of schools at the deepest (culture) levels through the development of school leaders and professional learning;
• Develop potential plans of action to address both culture and promising initiatives. Identify powerful leverage points for change and key constituencies to engage in the planning and implementation processes. Track progress with meaningful measures of success.
• Connect with colleagues to continue discussions and support beyond the conclusion of the session.

Learn how Hayward Unified School District and WestEd co-designed and facilitated the work of an equity oversight committee tasked with providing feedback and policy recommendations to the school board. Explore the core processes and tools that guided the work as well as the core tools and strategies used to build the capacity of the equity oversight committee. Experience activities and gain insights to set the stage for leading equity-centered work.

Participants will

• Unpack the multistep process that one district took to ensure an equity-centered approach that informs new policies and makes critical updates to existing ones;
• Learn about the equity oversight committee work and the efforts taken to ensure alignment and coherence to other district programming and anti-bias and anti-racist work.
• Engage in facilitated discussions and have access to core tools, language, and strategies employed to build and guide the work of the equity oversight committee; and
• Experience activities and gain insights to set the stage for leading equity-centered work.

Engage in a myth-busting conversation with Nathaniel Schwartz, professor of practice at Annenberg Institute for School Reform, about what the field does and doesn't know about teacher professional learning, with insights from A Learning Agenda for Improving Teacher Professional Learning at Scale from the Research Partnership for Professional Learning. Participate in role-alike small-group discussions and plan how to bring this knowledge into your work and incorporate it into your professional learning system.

Explore how teachers can create coherent, phenomenon-based inquiry. Learn how the Institute for Quality Science Teaching at the Museum of Science and Industry develops and facilitates teacher professional learning that models the coherent teaching of science content based on the Next Generation Science Standards. Examine the structures the museum uses to support teachers’ understanding of coherence, as well as observations from teachers who experienced the courses. Identify opportunities to apply this model in your own context.

Participants will

• Understand how coherence in a classroom supports the learning of scientific ideas;
• Examine the ways in which storylines can be used to create coherence within a unit;
• Reflect on your current practice to look for barriers to coherent learning that currently exist; and
• Identify opportunities to apply this model in your own context.

Learn about a model for school-university partnerships that can lead to school improvement and change. Hear how a K-8 district reached out to the local university to partner on an ambitious project to transform learning for students and teachers through professional learning communities (PLCs) and coaching. Apply the strategies as you develop a plan for your own school or district.

Participants will

• Learn about a model for school-university partnerships that can lead to school improvement and change;
• Understand the how PLCs can be implemented and supported as the main form of professional learning in a school or district;
• Consider the importance of coaching at multiple levels in a school, including staff, teachers, administrators, and teams; and
• Begin to design or redesign a school or district change process leveraging PLCs and university partnerships.

Confront and challenge the assumption that the randomized control trial is the gold standard in large-scale quantitative studies by examining the strengths and limitations of these methods. Come away with a framework for evaluating what forms of evidence are right for your own work.

Participants will

• Review major arguments for and against reliance on randomized control trials in educational evaluation;
• Apply these arguments to popular frameworks on impact that center large-scale quantitative evidence (e.g. Hattie's Visible Learning framework, ESSA tiers of evidence); and
• Understand how to consider randomized control trials alongside other forms of evidence in selecting professional learning or prioritizing professional learning areas of focus.

Examine how equity work faces resistance in politically conservative communities. Consider your local experience as you strategize with colleagues about how to increase the positive impact of equitable learning environments in the context of the political climate. Identify ways to navigate difficult conversations and actions to plan for and respond to pushback.

Participants will

• Establish that the principles of equity are beneficial for students who live in and attend school in any community;
• Strategize with interested colleagues about how to increase the positive impact of equitable learning environments with specific thought about the political climate; and
• Engage in dialogue with educators across the country about the most effective means of ensuring equity.

Learn about your implicit bias as we discuss how to assist your school in providing equity and social justice for LGBTQ students. Examine the research behind the important five areas that create a welcoming climate, and use rubrics to help you determine your school's scores for ensuring a safe climate for LGBTQ students.

Participants will

• Identify and address social justice issues related to LGBTQ students;
• Learn about legal issues to ensure protection for LGBTQ students;
• Analyze and discuss strategies to decrease implicit bias in your school; and
• Use rubrics to analyze where your school scores on the big five that address equity for LGTBQ students.

Engage with three regional professional learning providers in Alabama to discuss lessons learned from past and present practices and how regional support can be reimagined for the future. Explore the role data collection plays in the development of professional learning that meets teachers' needs. Identify ways to assess the impact of high-quality professional learning in a regional support network.

Participants will

• Understand how the 2020 pandemic precipitated a need for change in teacher professional learning;
• Explore the role data collection plays in the development of professional learning that meets teachers' needs;
• Identify ways to assess the impact of high-quality professional learning in a regional support network; and
• Share, compare, and discuss strategies for reimagining the changing landscape of professional learning.

Explore professional learning funded by the state of Tennessee to help educators understand high-quality instructional materials, attend to standards and goals, foster effortful thinking, and support all learners in the elementary math classroom. Reflect on the impact that high-quality instructional materials have in providing equitable learning outcomes for elementary mathematics students. Engage in activities designed to identify and implement high-quality instructional materials.

Participants will

• Describe criteria of high-quality instructional materials;
• Reflect on the relationship between lesson internalization and equitable outcomes for students;
• Describe how teachers can use elaborative interrogation to prompt effortful thinking (and enduring learning) in their students; and
• Explain how effective modeling and explanation can support equitable learning for all students.

Explore ways that each individual within a learning organization can build individual and organizational resilience in the wake of trauma. Identify ideas, insights, and experiences that have ensured that members of our school communities feel safe, calm, empowered, connected, and instilled with hope. Share your expertise and leave with tools and tactics to try at home.

Participants will

• Review psychological impacts of the pandemic;
• Recognize and apply strategies to increase individual and organizational resilience; and
• Leave with researched resource links to continue learning about and practicing organizational resilience at home.

Learn how to develop effective professional learning that gives teachers time to enhance their roles and responsibilities without making them feel their to-do list is growing. Explore ways to give flexibility, encourage curiosity, and offer meaningful learning through choice boards, coaching menus, and goal setting. Leave with resources you can implement immediately.

Participants will

• Reflect on your current professional learning model and evaluate what is and what is not working;
• Learn tools to develop professional learning options that are personalized to your teachers and school;
• Walk away with resources that can be implemented right away while you continue to evaluate your professional learning; and
• Be supported in professional learning options that promote advocacy, empathy, integrity, curiosity, and resiliency.

Learn how one district improved student learning by creating the essential conditions for effective family engagement, using online tools to develop a needs assessment and monitor progress. Examine how district and school family engagement teams implemented processes, strategies, and aligned practices that promote improved focus on learning, communication, relationships, and advocacy. Analyze your own school or district using a self-assessment tool.

Participants will

• Gain access to family engagement self-assessments, professional learning resources, family engagement strategies, and online modules and tool kit;
• Analyze your own school or district against the family engagement school continuum using a self-assessment tool; and
• Reflect on the professional learning necessary to support ongoing growth in your own school and district.

Explore professional learning designed to take a human-centered approach that blends the science and art of teaching to advance equity and accelerate educator effectiveness. Identify the components that make up a strong professional learning program and apply them to your own context.

Participants will

• Gain an understanding of the critical components that make up a strong professional learning program and apply them into your own context;
• Discuss the challenges that educators grapple with today and how professional learning can be constructed to meet those challenges;
• Identify the necessary components to build a strong professional learning program that centers students and teachers;
• Examine these components through an example of content from New Teacher Center’s professional learning; and
• Strategize with others how these components can be applied to your own unique context.

How might leaders, staff and stakeholders work together to drive implementation efforts through a statewide Virtual Professional Collaborative? Utilizing the foundations of communication, collaboration, data-driven decision making and leadership – this collaborative is addressing the unique challenges of virtual schools through coaching, professional development and data collection. Attend to gain awareness and experience how the Kansas Learning Network partnered with virtual schools and state department leaders across Kansas developing a collaborative.

Participants will

• Be introduced to the “story” of how the Kansas Learning Network developed a statewide professional virtual collaborative by utilizing the foundational structures of leadership, communication, collaboration and data based decision making;

• Ensure students’ needs are being met and challenges/barriers are being addressed through the use of statewide data, small group data, dialogue and best practices during a common “set aside” collaborative time; and

• Explore the benefits of providing content through professional development from outside experts and utilizing coaching practices to push thinking for participants virtually so educational professionals can come together to share, teach and learn from one another eliminating the barrier of distance!

Engage with leaders of two neighboring districts as they share ways they leveraged opportunities for building a culture of professional learning through the challenges of COVID. Learn how these two districts used this disrupted environment to strengthen a districtwide culture of ongoing learning and continual improvement in key areas. Interact with fellow conference participants to share effective strategies for moving important work in times of crisis.

Participants will

• Understand the factors that influence leaders of districtwide systems of professional learning;
• Learn how two districts used the disruption of the pandemic to further their work in creating and sustaining cultures of continual learning and improvement in key areas;
• Exchange ideas and experiences with fellow participants; and
• Reflect on your own district’s practices and set goals for enhancing your district’s professional learning.

Explore the TIC TAC (Technology Integration Cycle: Transforming Academic Curriculum) model of personalized professional learning that includes a five-phase cycle to engage teachers in goal setting, lesson planning, and reflection activities. Learn how to select the best technology tool to create meaningful and engaging learning opportunities for students. Bring your device and join us for this interactive session as we share our resources and experiences with this model.

Participants will

• Learn about each phase of the TIC TAC model and how it was implemented at a K-12 school district;
• Engage in all five phases of the Technology Integration Cycle as an active participant with several shared resources;
• Collaborate with other educators and share concepts around technology integration and professional learning; and
• Apply the knowledge from the session to begin adapting the model to fit your school's needs.

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa teaches Neuroscience of Learning: An Introduction to Mind, Brain, Health and Education at the Harvard University Extension School and is an associate editor of npj Science of Learning. She is the co-founder of Connections: The Learning Sciences Platform (www.thelearningsciences.com), which provides evidence-based support for teachers in over 40 countries. Her most recent books are Bringing the Neuroscience of Learning to Online Teaching: An Educator’s Handbook (2021); Neuromyths: Debunking False Ideas About the Brain (2019); and The Five Pillars of the Mind: Redesigning Education to Suit the Brain (2019). She has authored articles for UNESCO and was a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development expert panel to redefine teachers’ new pedagogical knowledge.

Build belonging in your professional learning. Explore the importance of belonging and the connection to Standards for Professional Learning. Learn to design the moments of belonging and the kinds of experiences that offer opportunities for people to contribute in the learning community. Bring a current professional learning opportunity you want to reimagine with and not for participants. This session leverages the Design for Belonging Framework and tool kit from the Stanford d.school.

Participants will

• Explore the importance of belonging and the connection to Standards for Professional Learning;
• Describe the conditions that hinder belonging;
• Learn to design the moments of belonging and the kinds of experiences that offer opportunities for people to contribute to the learning community;
• Explain how you design professional learning with and not for; and
• Examine the impact of space, roles, rituals, and group communication on belonging.

Learn how to use student interviews to assess the other components of fluency: flexibility and efficiency. Explore the impact this shift has on student proficiency and mathematical disposition. Engage with tools for creating and conducting these assessments as well as data-tracking tools to target specific needs and provide prescriptive instruction.

Participants will

• Understand components of math fluency and the need for assessment reform;
• Use and create fluency assessment interviews for flexibility and efficiency;
• Develop an understanding of the components of fluency instruction and the need for assessment reform; and
• Be empowered to create your own fluency assessment interviews and inspired to change the way you teach math fluency forever.

Learn how Fairfax County Public Schools developed a vision for instructional coaching and established systems to support the growth and development of the program over the past 17 years. Examine how a large school system reimagined the pipeline for future instructional coaches  to continue to expand the program with highly qualified candidates. Explore ways to provide differentiated professional learning for new and experienced coaches and measure the impact of a coach's work.

Participants will

• Learn about the FCPS instructional coaching program and the conditions in place in the division that support the program and the coach’s work;
• Examine the ways that FCPS reimagined the pipeline for future instructional coaches to include a learning cohort model with embedded leadership experiences, observations, and feedback;
• Learn about the knowledge and skills explored in the cohort to better prepare candidates to step into the role of an instructional coach the following school year;
• Explore ideas on ways to offer differentiated professional learning for coaches, including video observations, and measure the impact of a coach's work in your building and the strategic supports put in place for first-year instructional coaches; and
• Consider potential next steps in your district, based on your learning. 

Learn how Hoffman Estates High School, based on research and educator self-reflection, facilitates leadership development during the first four years of a new educator’s tenure at the school. Leave with an action plan to implement this program, feeling confident in expressing the importance in building this capacity in all new educators.

Participants will

• Learn how to support new educators in strengthening their self-examination practices to increase educator performance;
• Communicate the importance of collective responsibility of all educators in the system;
• Create an action plan in your own system for building new educators’ capacity for leading; and
• Identify leadership opportunities and attributes for new educators that will improve student learning, foster collegiality, or advance school improvement.

Explore how Orange County Public Schools designed a three-tiered, differentiated professional learning collection centered around coaching to meet the needs of over 13,000 instructional and administrative personnel. Identify how adult learning theories are integrated and leveraged within differentiated professional learning. Leave with a deeper understanding of current professional learning with potential for differentiation and expansion, and create an action plan outlining implementation steps and key stakeholders integral to the process of implementing learning equitably.

Participants will

• Identify how adult learning theories are integrated and leveraged within differentiated professional learning;
• Understand the components of three-tiered, differentiated professional learning, with respect to relevant research;
• Analyze current professional learning to determine opportunities for differentiation to expand the scope of learning and audience;
• Understand the tenets of social and emotional learning to identify opportunities to leverage those competencies within the distribution of learning and implementation; and
• Create an action plan outlining the next steps and key stakeholders integral to the process of implementing this learning equitably.

Explore ways an early childhood program can build a more integrated and cohesive approach to supporting a district's pre-K-12 graduation plan. Learn how to connect an engaging and culturally relevant early childhood program to your K-12 pathway using research-based methods. Prepare to address the professional needs of early childhood educators and build an academic foundation for young children and their families to raise performance in later grades.

Participants will

• Be able to integrate early childhood programming into a K-12 pathway;
• Learn to implement an instructional framework and developmentally appropriate pedagogical approach (continuum of curriculum);
• Be able to leverage professional coaching and professional learning for early childhood educators; and
• Gain strategies to build partnerships with families to support an early academic foundation.

Follow one district's journey to establish routines and processes that empowered learning leaders and staff and grew efficacy and a collective commitment around its priorities for employees, students, and families. Learn how you can empower everyone as learning leaders throughout the district to share their collective expertise and experiences as difference makers and leaders of improvement.

Participants will

• Learn and engage critical fundamental routines and processes that engage all levels across the system in improvement that engage all voices;
• Understand that developing people and a culture of improvement impacts results and sustainability despite disruptions and change;
• Learn how you can empower everyone as learning leaders throughout the district to share their collective expertise and experiences as difference makers and leaders of improvement;
• Analyze the longitudinal changes to have a clearer understanding that illustrates learning through short cycles of improvement as you hear directly from the superintendent, director of teaching and learning, principal, and an instructional coach.

Learn to craft compelling messages, articulate needs, and develop simple strategies to keep educators informed during the launch of a new curriculum. Develop your verbal and written communication skills and your understanding of high-quality instructional materials and professional learning. Examine communication biases and learn how to calibrate strategic messages to account for them.

Participants will

• Be able to effectively communicate the need for high-quality instructional materials and aligned professional learning to educators;
• Recognize communication biases and calibrate strategic messages to account for them;
• Cultivate productive and rewarding dialogue and relationships with teachers, professional learning providers, and other stakeholders; and
• Craft and deliver compelling presentations, communications plans, and persuasive messages.

Investigate accessible strategies for your own well-being in eight key areas, including emotional, occupational, social, environmental, intellectual, financial, spiritual, and physical wellness, through a personal self-assessment, educator video vignettes, and discussion with fellow learners. Develop a personal wellness plan that supports your own self-care, and share strategies that transfer to your school, team, and community.

Participants will

• Self-assess how well the dimensions of wellness inform your own well-being;
• Explore the core components of the eight dimensions of wellness;
• Set actionable goals for your own well-being that transfer to others, including colleagues and students; and. 
• Return to your professional role with shared examples and wellness strategies from other educators to apply with yourself, colleagues, staff, families, and students.

Learn how one organization created collaborative and sustained professional learning to provide leadership teams with the knowledge, skills, and resources to systemically respond to and take action on issues of equity through the exploration of a unique problem of practice. Develop socio-political awareness and critical consciousness by acknowledging and exploring the current reality within your educational environment. Identify a reasonable problem of practice and receive critical peer feedback on possible solutions to create a theory of change and an action plan to resolve issues.

Participants will

• Deepen knowledge and skills to use and adapt social justice practices to increase systemwide equitable outcomes for all learners;
• Develop socio-political awareness and critical consciousness by acknowledging and exploring the current reality within your educational environment;
• Investigate systemic barriers that we knowingly or unknowingly reinforce and that may ultimately lead to further propagation of access and opportunity gaps;
• Identify a reasonable problem of practice and receive critical peer feedback on possible solutions to create a theory of change and an action plan to resolve issues; and
• Review possible data sources to support evidence of impact to assess implementation measures of the problem of practice.

Examine how schools and systems can learn from teachers’, students’, and families’ experiences with high-quality curriculum and curriculum-based professional learning to strengthen implementation. Preview a framework and tool kit based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model that helps practitioners understand the effectiveness of high-quality instructional materials and professional learning implementation, uncover disconnects between intended and actual implementation, and design tailored supports. Join a data-based strategic planning simulation, and identify steps to harness your stakeholders’ experiences to improve implementation.

Participants will

• Explore a change management framework and tools based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model that leverages individual users’ experiences with high-quality instructional materials and professional learning to strengthen implementation in your context;
• Apply the framework and tools to a data-based strategic support planning simulation to examine data about teachers’, students’, and families’ experiences with high-quality instructional materials and professional learning implementation and identify data-based support that a change leader could provide to strengthen implementation, including tailored professional learning;
• Identify the big and small ways in which the framework and tools could be leveraged to strengthen implementation in your own school or system and commit to one action step to be taken within the coming month.

Explore how teacher teams and departments can create shared expectations that capture the unique features of practice within their content areas. Create or adapt instructional frameworks with the specific needs of your subjects at the forefront. Practice using your draft framework by role-playing peer feedback conversations.

Participants will

• Select a practice of current emphasis in your organization that would be more useful with subject-specific clarifications;
• Identify the key components of professional judgment involved in enacting this practice in your discipline;
• Articulate a growth pathway for each component by delineating levels of fluency (beginning, developing, fluent, exemplary) to make a concise instructional framework; and
• Practice using your draft framework by role-playing peer feedback conversations.

Reimagine professional learning for equitable outcomes within your district. Engage in mini-sessions on how language matters, coaching for equity, and analyzing the work through equity instructional rounds. Leave with practical strategies to implement professional learning aligned with a vision of equity for sustainable impact in your district.

Participants will

• Explore the importance of interpersonal work as the foundation for equitable practices. Participants will understand how strategies and structures work together to execute a sustainable vision for equity.
• Investigate emerging data resulting from the professional learning established in the school district and determine implications for their own work.
• Leave the session with a differentiated, multi-tiered approach, towards equity that includes district, building, and classroom level structures and strategies.
• Collaborate and reflect with colleagues on new learning and next steps.

Participants will

• Examine high-quality professional learning models and a framework for professional learning;
• Discuss team, school, or district opportunities to leverage change;
• Explore implementation planning tools using evidence-based strategies; and
• Exit with a plan to shift learning culture to high quality.

Learn how a medium-sized urban district has reimagined what professional learning can look and feel like for educators by focusing on just-in-time learning aligned to their individual needs. Identify ways to move your learning organization's culture from a compliance mindset to a learning mindset. Leave with timelines, templates, and resources for communicating to various audiences about the shift to just-in-time learning.

Participants will

• Learn how our medium-sized urban district phased into a subtle first-order change within the first couple of years;
• Be able to see and identify which key colleagues to share in the thinking, collective research, standards learning, and action work; and
• Walk away with proposal timelines, proposal templates, email templates, and resources used to communicate to various audiences about the shift and focus on just-in-time learning.

Learn how human-centered improvement processes engage community to design impactful professional learning toward more equitable education. Explore how Dallas ISD used this approach to address problems of race and racism. Identify tools and practices of human-centered improvement that you can apply to your own problems of practice.

Participants will

• Understand the mindsets and principles of human-centered improvement and how they support the implementation of district, school, and personal improvement and equity goals;
• Reflect on improvement journeys from your own context and identify places where you can be more human-centered;
• Gain an understanding of empathy interviews, which are designed to help you see your systems’ strengths and opportunities from the user’s perspective, through a case study discussion of Dallas ISD’s “Teacher and Student Collaborative on Race and Racism,” and then be immersed in an empathy interview experience; and
• Review and revise a protocol to bring back to your district that will help you engage your community in the design of improvements.

Acknowledge the trauma of the pandemic and begin the process of healing by engaging in activities that support deep rest. Explore integrative leadership development, which empowers educational leaders to thrive and centers wellness for teachers and students. Learn how this professional learning increases the effectiveness of educators and demonstrates the connection between social-emotional wellness and Standards for Professional Learning.

Participants will

• Acknowledge the trauma of the pandemic and begin the process of healing by engaging in activities that support deep rest;
• Understand the integrative leadership development model and its potential to help educational leaders plan, respond, and act with wisdom and clarity; and
• Align the model with Standards for Professional Learning, especially the Leadership, Implementation, and Equity Practices standards, prioritize self-care, and set goals to engage in practices that promote deep rest, including breathing, stretching, and grounding exercises such as meditation.

Learn how districts support the changing demands and decreasing prior experience levels of new administrators. Examine how Frederick County Public Schools created a bidirectional leadership coaching program to address the district’s needs for onboarding new leaders. Leave with a road map that will help you develop your own leadership coaching program using your current human capital.

Participants will

• Distinguish between mentoring, consulting, and coaching to identify why coaching is a potential solution to support new administrators;
• Identify what problems exist for new school administrators within your district and how coaching supports growth and building capacity of the new administrators;
• Analyze identified components of a leadership coaching program and select components that would best fit your school system’s needs; and
• Develop an action plan for creating a bidirectional coaching program that effectively uses your current human capital.

See how Haywood County Schools approached improving literacy and long-term outcomes of young learners by grounding instruction in what we know works for all students. Engage with field-tested practices for early literacy that move the needle on student outcomes. Understand how these practices are rooted in a systematic and explicit foundational skills program as well as content-rich knowledge building and are responsive to challenges resulting from unprecedented schooling disruptions.

Participants will

• Reimagine how they center early literacy instruction to accelerate students’ development of reading skills — in the short term by providing creative solutions to address COVID-related unfinished learning and in the long term by codifying practices that help leaders build a system in which all students can read proficiently by 3rd grade;
• Leave with a deeper understanding of how the essential practices look in action as well as ready-to-implement strategies and tools for observing, coaching, and reflecting on the current state of K-2 literacy instruction that they can use to chart a road map for action planning.

Examine how a large, urban school district reimagined its approach to new teacher induction to provide a more equitable onboarding experience for all new hires regardless of their entry point into the district or profession. Learn concrete, practical strategies to lead to deeper new teacher engagement and investment in key district priorities. Apply research-based techniques to assess and refine current induction practices in your school or district.

Participants will

• Learn how a large, urban school district developed a New Teacher Academy to offer professional learning to all instructional, student-facing new employees;
• Understand concrete, practical strategies that lead to deeper new teacher engagement and investment in key district priorities; and
• Be able to prioritize and sequence skills and competencies necessary for a successful first year of teaching and develop a multilayered induction program for new teachers that leads to increased job satisfaction and retention.

Join two districts that created multiyear embedded professional learning using a collaborative process, designing and implementing new instructional frameworks in alignment with their vision for all learners. Learn strategies to ensure every touchpoint – classroom visit, feedback conversation, meeting – becomes a learning opportunity focused on district goals and impact on learners.

Participants will

• Develop strategies to design learning experiences that leverage expectations for teaching and learning aligned to district priorities (such as SEL integration and vision of a graduate attributes); and
• Make connections among professional learning, PLCs, and observation and feedback, recognizing the role of the instructional framework to increase the impact of each.

Experience grade-level text from the perspective of an English learner. Discover ways to leverage technology to provide students with meaningful activities that enhance comprehension. Learn how to equip general education teachers with the confidence to teach every learner in their in-person and digital classrooms.

Participants will

• Understand the professional learning necessary for general education teachers to effectively teach linguistically diverse learners;
• Discover high-impact strategies that leverage technology to enhance learning for all students; and
• Learn strategies that incorporate meaningful activities and grade-level content.

Learn how to develop and ultimately enable a budget that will provide funding and support in an equitable manner by optimizing internal and external stakeholder collaboration. Identify areas of inequity within a school or district. Explore ways to manage multiple stakeholder groups with diverse interests. Determine how to measure success.

Participants will

• Identify areas of inequity within a school or district;
• Explore how to manage multiple stakeholder groups with diverse interests;
• Determine how to measure success; and
• Optimize internal and external stakeholder collaboration.

 Experience how the School District of Clayton has redefined bias training to equity professional learning with an emphasis on humanization and expanding one’s moral community. Leave with a new equity vocabulary and language that entices buy-in from even the most stubborn resistors to equity professional learning.

Participants will

• Gain a humanized, rather than academic, understanding of what equity means;
• Understand the process of humanizing students and their experiences;
• Examine your own culture and experiences and how it may differ from your students; and
• Take an individualized, strategic approach toward achieving equity for each student.

Develop an understanding of the 10 elements for building a collaborative environment for teachers that results in improved teacher effectiveness and results for students. Gain skills for building relationships and engaging in productive conflict. Leave with an expanded repertoire of practical tools for engaging with individuals and groups.

Participants will

• Develop an understanding of the 10 elements for building a collaborative environment for teachers that results in improved teacher effectiveness and results for students;
• Gain skills for building relationships and engaging in productive conflict; and
• Leave with an expanded repertoire of practical tools for engaging with individuals and groups.

Hear how Alaskan educators have collaborated to bring professional learning to a new level. See our responsive and coherent statewide system of professional learning for all educators. Explore how a variety of organizations can develop a statewide professional learning calendar, quarterly professional learning roundtables, and statewide inservice days. Learn how diversity and broad partnerships in this project have created synergy, strength, and different perspectives to this work.

Participants will

• Learn how to create a unique professional learning lens and synergy by engaging diverse stakeholders;
• Understand how designing professional learning virtually is a catalyst for connecting our vision for professional learning to ongoing initiatives;
• Replicate professional learning roundtables, a statewide professional learning calendar, and statewide inservice days presented in the project;
• Learn how to inform ongoing planning using input from districts and professional learning providers; and
• Learn how to adapt Alaska's approach to collaborative professional learning in your organization.

Explore how districts and schools can leverage the use of research-based guiding principles to establish and sustain effective professional learning routines and practices. Examine the impact of learning design on instructional effectiveness, student achievement, and district and school improvement. Evaluate the extent to which local learning models align with research-based design principles and consider what tweaks could serve as catalysts for improved professional learning and educator effectiveness in the local context.

Participants will

• Articulate how organizations can leverage the use of research-based guiding principles to establish and sustain highly effective professional learning routines and practices that promote the necessary conditions to facilitate change in both organizational systems and outcomes for students;
• Explore the impact of learning design on one regional learning community’s curriculum implementation process and how members leveraged vision-setting, collaborative learning and reflection, and continuous improvement practices to support change in their local contexts;
• Evaluate the extent to which local learning models align with research-based design principles and consider what tweaks could serve as catalysts for improved professional learning and educator effectiveness; and
• Examine how professional learning design can address and help overcome factors that make professional learning more challenging in rural settings.

Consider the significant changes for educators when they are surrounded by a cohesive and coherent system of professional learning support. Learn how to align initiatives with educators’ daily practices, leverage the existing mechanisms in your context, and consider asynchronous and personalized learning to develop and sustain learning for educators. Leave with actionable next steps and templates for supporting shifts in instruction needed to maximize student learning.

Participants will

• Understand the research-based elements of professional learning and unpack a conceptual framework for a system of professional learning;
• Explore how curricular initiatives, existing mechanisms for professional learning such as PLC, coaching, collaborative inquiry, and asynchronous learning opportunities can be woven together to create a job-embedded system of support for educators; and
• Consider the impact on educators' job satisfaction and social-emotional well-being as a system of support is enacted.

Learn how two large school districts in Texas are rebuilding teachers' confidence, respect, creativity, passion, and hope as a means to address teacher morale, teacher retention, and the post-pandemic teacher shortage. Explore responsive strategies to address teacher needs that provide a stable foundation for improved job satisfaction, effectiveness, healing, and hope among teachers and teacher leaders.

Participants will

• Apply Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and theory of motivation to the post-pandemic teacher;
• Analyze current nationwide teacher hiring and retention data and assess the impact on school systems;
• Explore responsive strategies to address teacher needs that provide a stable foundation for improved job satisfaction, effectiveness, healing, and hope among teachers and teacher leaders.

Learn tips and strategies for how to wrangle assessment data, ask questions from it, and derive meaning from it for effective change for teachers and students. Gain frameworks and tools to apply to your classroom, team, department, school, or district to make data fun and informative. Identify next steps to better use and leverage your assessment data to help you measure students’ learning and know what steps to consider next. 

Participants will

• Explore new ways to approach data collection and organize raw data to aid in exploring the assessment data for stories of student learning and next steps for teaching practices after the data are collected;
• Acquire skills in tying questions, data types, and graph choice together to enhance your ability to make sense of formative and summative assessment data; and
• Identify next steps to better use and leverage your assessment data to help you measure students’ learning and know what steps to consider next. 

Explore guidelines for using data as a clear measure for goal setting or as a method for measuring progress. Learn how to partner with teachers to set powerful, emotionally compelling, clear goals that will have an unmistakably positive impact on student engagement or achievement. Identify ways to foster teacher agency by partnering with teachers to document and communicate meaningful progress.

Participants will

• Learn how to gather achievement data related to knowledge, skill, engagement, and conceptional understanding;
• Explore the impact cycle and learn how data functions at the heart of instructional coaching; and
• Leave with a digital workbook of tools you can use to measure achievement and engagement.

Examine the attributes of effective feedback as well as the various types, purposes, and sources of feedback. Gain a deeper understanding of the feedback process and how to apply it to promote increased educator effectiveness. Learn how to create a culture in which educators routinely engage in the feedback process. Participants will receive a copy of The Feedback Process: Transforming Feedback for Professional Learning (Learning Forward, 2019, 2nd ed.) by Joellen Killion.

Participants will

• Identify the attributes of effective feedback for adults;
• Understand the types and purposes of feedback for professional learning;
• Apply the feedback process to promote continuous improvement; and
• Explore how to create a culture that supports the implementation of the feedback process in professional learning.

Learn how aligning a district vision of instruction and success for all students begins at the top and permeates throughout the district. Engage with the research, process, and professional learning used to move one district toward excellence for all schools and students with a common vision of instruction. Collaborate with your fellow participants to develop a path toward a singular united focus centered around districtwide collective efficacy.

Participants will

• Understand how to create a community of schools with a singular focus while relating to the context of your own situation;
• Examine how to build collective responsibility within all levels of your organization using embedded professional learning; 
• Understand how each level of the organization’s leadership can work together to create a community of learners; and
• Identify how you can begin to eliminate the distractions in your organization, working toward a singular focus.

Learn how collaborative and reflective structures impact the outcome of any districtwide initiative. Build your knowledge around the journey of one district and access processes and tools that allow innovative change management to happen effectively. Explore inclusive environments and discover ways to build stronger communities and create learning cycles that impact the implementation of a strategic plan.

Participants will

• Build knowledge around how district leaders are establishing the environments and relationships for stakeholders to feel invested in the newly adopted strategic plan;
• Reflect on how the district is creating collaborative professional learning structures for project managing the implementation of the initiatives; and
• Create a system of ongoing learning and development that provides district-level support in enabling school and community leaders to take ownership of your district’s strategic plan.

Accelerate learning in your district by creating systems for connected professional learning communities with a focus on instructional coaching and district leadership. Learn how Santa Fe ISD used a systems approach using long-range vision, instructional coaching model, and learner model that developed common language, and instruments for impacting the system resulting in dynamic growth in teachers and students. Leave with a plan for implementing a system for growth.

Participants will

• Examine systems, tools, research, and testimonies of instructional coaching models, coaching mentors, PLCs, teacher growth, and student learning;
• Identify the structures needed for learning collaboratively through the cycle of continuous improvement with different types of PLCs within a systems approach supported by instructional coaching;
• Determine what data collection tools will support your learning and processing for change; and
• Create an action plan to use for implementing a systematic approach within your system.

Rebuild, reinvest, and reimagine coaching and leading. Learn about the human-centered design model in conjunction with structural tension to strengthen your repertoire of strategies as leaders. Create a plan of action and receive feedback to actively work through current and relevant constraints in your work. Use the principles of structural tension and human-centered design, along with the expertise of your fellow participants, to connect, inspire, create, and learn from one another through empathetic interviews, peer review, and other interactive networking opportunities.

Participants will

• Use the themes of rebuild, reinvest, and reimagine to gain inspiration and hope from a network of colleagues;
• Learn about the human-centered design model in conjunction with structural tension to strengthen your repertoire of strategies as leaders; 
• Have a strong foundation in how to apply these models within your current role;
• Create a plan of action and receive feedback to actively work through current and relevant constraints in your work; and
• Be able to identify your assets and leverage the assets of other participants in a learning community through empathetic interviews, peer review, and other interactive networking opportunities embedded into the format of this experience.

Examine the research that informed the recent revision of Standards for Professional Learning. Learn about the findings of a literature review and a meta-analysis of studies focused on the impact of professional learning on educator and student outcomes conducted by American Institutes of Research. Engage in conversation with Elizabeth Foster, vice president, standards & research at Learning Forward, and Rachel Garrett, principal researcher at American Institutes of Research, about the studies cited, emerging areas of scholarship such as social and emotional learning and equity, and what is on Learning Forward's agenda for future research related to professional learning.

Learn how Rockdale County Public Schools' leadership team collaboratively built a culturally relevant leadership framework aligned to its leadership evaluation tool. Identify your school's or district's readiness to begin the process and determine a timeline. Develop an action plan to create and then systematically and systemically implement culturally relevant leadership in your school or district.

Participants will

• Identify and own the why of a culturally relevant leadership framework;
• Become aware of different models of culturally relevant leadership;
• Compare and contrast the national Professional Standards for Educational Leaders with the concepts of culturally relevant leadership;
• Determine the readiness of your school or district to begin the process; and
• Create a timeline and an action plan to implement culturally relevant leadership in your school or district.

Explore the topic of continuous improvement through small-group discussions, video demonstrations, and application activities designed to grow structures for continuous improvement in your home district. Identify important considerations when establishing a continuous improvement team, how to create a sense of urgency around continuous improvement, and the benefits of embracing high levels of collective efficacy among team members. Examine specific examples of continuous improvement structures and apply them to your own setting.

Participants will

• Identify key stakeholders who demonstrate characteristics of capable and collaborative teammates for continuous improvement;
• Identify structures that foster success in continuous improvement;
• Identify strategies for communicating expectations for collaborative teams; and
• Establish a personalized action plan for continuous improvement.

Engage in a slice of the Project I4 micro-credential experience for school leaders in which we cultivated relational trust with engaging protocols, used common tools for observation and having post-observation conversations, and supported leaders through coaching and peer networks. Leave with tools, protocols, and an understanding of the Project I4 coaching model and data on leader and teacher impact.

Participants will

• Engage in protocols to build relational trust;
• Experience protocols and processes of the micro-credential;
• Engage with common tools for evidenced-based observations and post-observation conversations.

Experience DataLAB, a framework for professional learning communities, in which we will identify “warm” and “cool” data to leverage and make actionable. Incorporate the collection of warm data to design responsive strategies for your school and district based on qualitative trends over time.  Highlight how social-emotional learning can provide fruitful streams of qualitative data and support instruction, engagement, and retention.

Participants will:

• Define and prioritize warm data and social-emotional intelligence in school-based decision-making processes;

• Identify and capture social-emotional information as qualitative data;

• Synthesize and visually present live warm quantitative data; and

• Engage in DataLAB to form constructive and collaborative conversations and develop responsive and strategic decisions.

Learn how depth of knowledge clarifies what exactly and how deeply academic standards, curricular activities, and test items demand that students understand and use their learning. Explore how to use depth of knowledge levels as a method and model for planning and providing teaching and learning experiences that are standards-based, socially and emotionally supportive, and student responsive.

Participants will:

• Understand how depth of knowledge is a different, deeper way of approaching teaching and learning;
• Explore the different depth of knowledge levels and how they relate to instruction;
• Deconstruct the learning intention of academic standards to determine their depth of knowledge level and reconstruct performance objectives into learning targets; and
• Acquire strategies that will engage and encourage students to understand and use their depth of knowledge at different and deeper levels.

Learn how one district increased student outcomes by leveraging hands-on practice and rapid cycles of improvement to solidify deep understanding of math. Explore an innovative iteration of traditional lesson study that emphasizes collaborative planning, high-quality instructional materials, and rapid cycles of improvement grounded in student outputs. Become familiar with high-leverage language instructional routines for mathematics and how to use them well, and identify how to replicate components of the model in your own system.

Participants will

• Articulate the critical impact of teacher expectations on student outcomes;
• Explore an innovative iteration of traditional lesson study that emphasizes collaborative planning, high-quality instructional materials, and rapid cycles of improvement grounded in student outputs;
• Become familiar with high-leverage language instructional routines for mathematics and how to use them well; and
• Identify how to replicate components of the model in your own system.

Learn how one school district created flexible, innovative learning opportunities that teachers can engage with on-demand. Identify the attributes of quality teaching and learning you want to see in your context. Engage with a framework for designing or adapting innovative "micro" professional learning. Leave with a plan to implement at your site.

Participants will

• Identify the attributes of quality teaching and learning you want to see in your context;
• Describe the instructional outcomes you want to facilitate for teachers by analyzing examples from a district focused on project-based learning;
• Engage with a framework for designing or adapting innovative "micro" professional learning; and
• Apply learning to your local school or district context as you reimagine teacher professional learning.

Unpack the relationship between equity and educator learning using Standards for Professional Learning. Examine how Standards for Professional Learning support equity in teaching and learning. Engage in collaborative activities to explore what it means to have equity in professional learning, and discover how the standards support leading, teaching, and learning to achieve equitable outcomes for students. Apply the concepts of equity to your context by engaging in an informal assessment of the current system.

Participants will

• Gain a clear understanding of how Standards for Professional Learning support equity in teaching and learning;
• Gain a clear understanding of how Standards for Professional Learning support equity in professional learning; and
• Apply the concepts of equity to your own role, responsibilities, and context by engaging in an informal assessment of the current system.

Use equity-centered professional learning planning tools to reflect on your own beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and expectations around professional learning. Learn how to design welcoming and affirming professional learning spaces that sustain a culture supporting development of all staff. Explore methods for embedding culturally responsive practices in professional learning. Apply tools to a professional learning experience of your choosing.

Participants will

• Reflect on beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and expectations around professional learning;
• Build understanding of potential applications for equity-centered professional learning planning tools;
• Apply equity-centered professional learning planning tools to a professional learning experience; and
• Connect equitable professional learning experiences to application of learning in a classroom setting.

Explore the latest neuroscience research on executive functioning, which impacts goal-oriented behaviors that are the foundation of learning and success in life. Identify the cognitive and emotional components of executive functioning skills, and gain insight into how they impact learning and development. Learn practical and effective strategies to develop every student’s executive functioning skills.

Participants will

• Identify the cognitive and emotional components of executive functioning skills;
• Understand how executive functioning skills impact learning and development; and
• Develop practical and effective strategies to improve executive functioning skills in the areas of attention, self-regulation, working memory, planning, and organization.

Explore childhood trauma, an urgent and growing issue in schools, and its profound impact on learning and teaching. Learn practical techniques grounded in research-based practices to help you cultivate a trauma-sensitive learning environment that fosters resiliency for students across all content areas, grade levels, and educational settings. Head off frustration and burnout with essential self-care techniques that will help you and your students flourish during challenging times.

Participants will

• Discover how to create a classroom or school offering a safe environment;
• Understand the impact of trauma on the brain and behavior;
• Learn how to reach relationship-resistant children to increase cooperation;
• Create a culture of compassion, embracing marginalized children;
• Implement practical interventions that help traumatized children learn in school; and
• Help lay the groundwork for a lifetime of resilience.

Participants will

• Learn the leadership opportunities for administrators and teachers to embrace and pitfalls to avoid. The emphasis is on specific instructional leadership moves that nurture and sustain teacher learning;
• Be able to access theory and research critical to understanding how instructional leadership works, how it may be applied to teachers’ affective and cognitive development, and how analysis of classroom evidence, feedback, and support reinforce actions that enrich students’ experiences in school;
• Create a design for leadership in your school or district that clearly articulates what instructional leadership looks like and means at multiple levels of the system -- for central office leaders, principals and assistant principals, teacher leaders, and colleagues generally; and
• Draft an objective-based action plan for your school or district that breathes life into your designs.

Explore how central administrators, principals, and instructional coaches work together to establish and sustain highly effective professional learning. Examine findings from a 2021 study that explored partnership agreements regarding roles and responsibilities, shared understandings of coaching work, and structures and conditions that support equitable access to professional learning. Learn how one district is leveraging the partnership to impact educator practices and promote a culture of learning. Identify ways to strengthen the principal-coach partnership and professional learning in schools, districts, or agencies. 

Participants will

• Learn about effective partnerships that lead the work of school improvement and support a collaborative culture of continuous improvement;
• Reflect on new research findings and implications to instructional coaching programs;
• Gain understanding of how one district is leveraging the partnerships to impact educator practices and promote a culture of learning;
• Investigate conditions and support structures for a successful coaching program that leads to highly effective professional learning;
• Examine tools to clarify the coaching program, narrow the focus, improve levels of communication, and create a common language among all stakeholders; and
• Develop a plan for leveraging the information and resources to strengthen the partnerships and instructional coaching in your system.

Learn how a district has optimized its process to collect formative data and align professional learning supports across English language arts, math, and foundational literacy. Explore strategies to close the loop between what observers see and the support provided to educators from multiple teams. Leave with practical tips for building progress monitoring into your professional learning plans.

Participants will

• Dive into the "why" and "how" of a district’s plan and process to monitor its professional learning programs;
• Explore strategies to close the loop between what observers see and the support provided to educators from multiple teams (coaching, curriculum, school admin, etc.);
• Examine a district’s approach to data-based conversations to guide implementation decisions; and
• Leave with practical tips for building progress monitoring into your professional learning plans.

Experience how a suburban school district used systems thinking and gap analysis to increase personalized professional learning within the district’s comprehensive plan. Identify key guiding principles of your local organization that guide your professional learning. Construct and clarify your vision to build structures of support that increase personalized professional learning within your local organization. Leave with a self-created plan that increases personalized professional learning for the staff within your organization.

Participants will

• Reflect on current organizational practices as well as aspiring plans to improve the professional learning of your staff;
• Identify key guiding principles of your local organization that guide your professional learning;
• Construct and clarify your vision to build structures of support that increase personalized professional learning within your local organization; and
• Apply principles of a gap analysis to identify existing needs and steps toward increasing personalized learning for teachers.

Investigate the high-impact professional learning approaches that the Broome-Tioga BOCES Professional Learning and Innovation Center team researched and implemented during the pandemic and beyond. Examine the impact of coaching on the transfer of knowledge into practice during professional learning. Apply lessons learned to reimagine the design of professional learning to enhance teacher growth and student success.

Participants will

• Examine the results of the action research project conducted by Broome-Tioga BOCES Professional Learning and Innovation Center;
• Understand the impact of coaching on the transfer of knowledge into practice during professional learning; and
• Use the lens of the action research to design highly effective professional learning that meets the needs of your region or school district.

Learn how Louisiana is reimagining and transforming literacy outcomes through its efforts to increase literacy outcomes and behaviors through implementation of high-quality instructional practices and interactions facilitated by effective teachers who are supported by leaders and families, improve literacy instruction through a collaborative coaching model that supports teachers and leaders at the school level with regional and state-level support systems, and promote ongoing professional learning, which is an essential component of effective teaching and literacy development.

Participants will

• Be prepared to support teachers and leaders by customizing professional growth opportunities and providing timely, constructive feedback;
• Learn to facilitate common planning time focused on reading foundations and language and literacy;
• Be able to equip families from all backgrounds with resources and tools to support their children by increasing families’ knowledge about literacy at all ages and stages; and
• Know how to implement a successful coaching model that provides support at all levels of teaching, leading, and learning.

Explore how an urban school district implements an innovative approach to address the problem of one-size-fits-all professional learning by focusing on teacher agency. Learn the processes needed to implement and test a high-quality, teacher-directed professional learning program that empowers and retains a diverse teacher workforce while enhancing instructional practice and increasing student outcomes.

Participants will

• Learn how to provide teachers increased flexibility and autonomy regarding their professional learning;
• Explore how these innovative programs are instrumental in the development of site-based teacher leaders that support and address all teachers’ needs from preservice to teacher leadership;
• Explore the model’s theoretical constructs, elements, and components, associated competencies and standards, inherent learning, and activities that support professional growth and teacher engagement; and
• Identify next steps for integrating a teacher-directed model that will support and transform teachers into active agents of their own professional learning focused on strengthening and impacting teaching, learning, and achievement in your school or district.

Learn how teachers and leaders use a design-thinking approach to create a professional learning community for curricular continuous improvement that advances teacher practices and deepens student learning. Use discovery, design, and delivery methods that amplify student voice and encourage innovative thinking. Engage curriculum design teams in processes and protocols that create collective leadership and result in deep implementation.

Participants will

• Understand and apply human-centered design principles and methodology to the curricular review and improvement process; and
• Develop action steps for implementation of discovery, design, and delivery stages of the 3D design process for an upcoming curricular review process.

Discover ways to ensure that high-quality instruction is occurring in all the classrooms in your district. Take a walk with Memphis-Shelby County leaders as they share their process for building teacher and leader capacity through collaborative classroom walk-throughs focused on high-quality instructional practices to improve student academic achievement. Leave with a model and resources to support implementation of a classroom walk-through process in your district.

Participants will

• Learn a process for conducting districtwide collaborative classroom walk-throughs;
• Understand the importance of tracking observation data to identify teacher strengths and opportunities for growth;
• Engage in the process of analyzing teacher observation data to identify trends and area(s) to strengthen and prescribe strategic teacher supports; and
• Use a graphic organizer to brainstorm and outline the next steps for implementing the collaborative classroom walk-through process in your school or district.

Explore how to use learner variability to rethink the design of professional learning. Learn how to create rigorous goals for learning, reduce barriers to create opportunities, and leverage the assets that jagged learner profiles offer in design choices through the foundational concepts of Universal Design for Learning. Engage in discussions, practice with vignettes, and leave with tools to design professional learning for variable learners.

Participants will

• Know that Universal Design for Learning is founded on the premises of developing expert learners, variability is predictable and can be planned for, barriers are in the design and not the learner, and that context matters for how variability is addressed;
• Know how Universal Design for Learning can be applied to professional learning design to support all learners through creating rigorous goals, anticipating barriers, and proactively planning to minimize barriers;
• Be able to identify barriers to learning and use the five whys protocol to move from deficit thinking and labeling to the root cause of the barrier; and
• Create a professional learning design using Universal Design for Learning, setting clear goals, anticipating barriers, and planning to create opportunities to minimize barriers based on Universal Design for Learning guidelines.

Explore one district's efforts to move from traditional grading practices and beliefs to standards-based instruction, grading, and reporting. Dive into Monroe One BOCES’ standards-based road map, where we will take you on our transformative journey toward being fully standards-based, kindergarten through high school. Explore examples of standards-based assessments and proficiency scales across content and special areas, and walk through the collaboration and development of these resources. Leave with a road map outlining steps taken toward being fully standards-based, including strategies and tools that can be used with your own staff.

Participants will

• Engage in turnkey activities used to develop districtwide grading beliefs and practices;
• Learn how school building leaders and teachers need to be supported through the journey from traditional grading practices to standards-based grading, kindergarten to 12th grade;
• Explore examples of standards-based assessments and proficiency scales across content and special areas, and walk through the collaboration and development of these resources; and
• Leave with a road map outlining steps taken toward being fully standards-based, including strategies and tools that can be used with your own staff.

Experience the power of using English learner student shadowing data as a source for making decisions for instructional changes that lead to equity and excellence for language learners. Practice coding students’ engagement using a student shadowing tool designed to track students’ academic language use. Engage in a small-group protocol for analyzing the shadowing data to determine next steps for instruction and professional learning.

Participants will

• Be able to code English learners' use of academic language and compile data for analysis;
• Use a protocol to analyze the data gathered during the student shadowing sessions to determine the next steps for instruction and professional learning needs; and
• Adapt the shadowing tool and data analysis protocol for your own context and professional learning needs.

Experience a  protocol for looking at student work that has transformed teaching and learning of teachers, administrators, and students in one district through deep reflection on student mathematical thinking. Connect student thinking to classroom practice. Acquire tools to implement a collaborative protocol in your setting that affords student and teacher learning.

Participants will

• Develop a professional vision of collaboration around the details of student work;
• Understand the affordances of the protocol to develop teacher content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of student thinking, and beliefs; and
• Acquire tools to implement a collaborative protocol in your setting that affords student and teacher learning.

Explore the Students' Six process, which engages groups of high school students in a process designed to provide high-quality professional learning to their teachers. Interact with a panel of students who have benefited from this process. Learn how to encourage collaboration between students and educators and discuss ways to implement the Students' Six process in your district.

Participants will

• Gain strategies for using a platform and process to elevate student voice;
• Learn how to encourage collaboration between students and educators; and
• Develop practical experiences that use decades of research around culturally relevant pedagogy.

Experience how Anne Arundel County Public Schools is using new teacher coaches to create a professional learning community that embraces identity-affirming partnerships with teachers in their second and third years in the profession. Discover how engaging teachers in coaching with a lens of social justice and equitable practices aims to impact teacher retention and inclusive student learning environments.

Participants will

• Discover the impact of a professional learning community that centers the work of social justice and equicentric education for new teachers;
• Engage in reflective and instructional activities that showcase how new teachers can shape their classrooms and influence their schools through the lens of identity, diversity, justice, and action; and
• Gain information about the impact of an effective new teacher support program on new teacher retention and inclusive student learning environments.

Learn how the Anchorage School District in Anchorage, Alaska, has transformed professional learning for paraprofessionals from individual learning experiences into cohesive and themed professional learning that supports growth in an identified focus area throughout the year. Gain insight into how organizing professional learning for paraprofessionals around a central theme each year has provided clarity and a common goal in supporting students with special needs. Explore how this approach can strengthen your mission and provide continuity and commitment to professional learning for groups of adult learners.

Participants will

• Compare and contrast random professional learning for paraprofessionals versus professional learning around a common theme for the year;
• View one district's model for creating professional learning for special education paraprofessionals and view examples of sessions and topics; and
• Explore ideas for replicating or expanding the model with themes for your own group of professionals.

Learn strategies, protocols, and tools for supporting educators at a distance. Explore field-tested virtual coaching strategies for building trust, designing data-driven goals, modeling best practices, implementing intervention, and tracking progress toward implementation of evidence-based practices. Discover the professional learning that fits faculty needs by tapping into the collective capacity of a larger coaching community.

Participants will

• Discover innovative, field-tested virtual coaching strategies that you can bring back and implement in your own context;
• Explore protocols, guides, and technology tools that facilitate virtual coaching and improve any existing coaching model; and
• Collaborate with fellow instructional coaches, administrators, and educators sharing resources, strategies, and best practice.

Learn how high-quality instructional materials and personalized teaching and learning can intersect to improve student outcomes. Examine promising data from districts across the region that shows teachers are using high-quality instructional materials with integrity, having positive effects on student achievement, educator performance, and school or district improvement. Walk away with practical strategies and practices for those who coach and support teachers.

Participants will

• Understand how high-quality instructional materials and personalized teaching and learning can intersect to improve student outcomes;
• Recognize and articulate elements of high-quality adult learning design;
• Design professional learning that supports teachers in recognizing or embedding elements of personalized learning into their high-quality instructional materials; and
• Leave prepared to develop and implement professional learning and ongoing coaching support to help teachers more intentionally implement personalized learning practices while simultaneously implementing high-quality instructional materials with integrity.

Learn ways Moberly School District has implemented its Supporting, Helping, & Inspiring New Educators (S.H.I.N.E) program and tips for helping our newest professionals find support during the challenges of launching their career. Explore induction, orientation, and onboarding strategies for new hires in a smaller district. Collaborate to share successes and challenges of supporting beginning teachers. 

Participants will

• Leave with district and building strategies to support beginning teachers;
• Learn induction, orientation, and onboarding strategies for new hires in a smaller district; and
• Collaborate to share successes and challenges of supporting beginning teachers.

Discover how to align the efforts of schools and out-of-school-time providers to support social and emotional learning (SEL) as a foundation of success for all youth. Learn with Karen Pittman, partner at KP Catalysts, how an aligned approach to SEL can reduce inequity and optimize learning. Explore how to leverage the unique strengths of these two systems and how to overcome the challenges of bringing them together.

Participants will

• Learn research-informed practices for analysis of classroom evidence and teacher learning that grows from it with special emphasis on improving PLC effectiveness;
• Understand the role of instructional leadership in fostering teacher growth;
• Engage in facilitated discussion to compare your own school or district progress in using classroom evidence to that of the three secondary schools represented by presenters, and assess critical next steps; and
• Take away a new perspective on opportunities for understanding classroom dynamics, providing feedback to teachers, and investigating student engagement.

Learn about a mixed-methods study that investigated the efficacy of blended professional learning (combination of in-person and online coaching). Examine qualitative and quantitative results that demonstrate the efficacy of blended professional learning and the value of additional online coaching. Discuss effective implementation and content of online coaching and characteristics of effective online coaches.

Participants will

• Learn about the implementation of a blended professional learning program to support reading intervention teachers;
• Learn how online coaching impacted the attitudes, beliefs, and practices of teachers and how teachers rated the advantages and challenges of online coaching;
• Learn which instructional topics teachers rated as most effectively implemented with online coaching and topics participants rated as more effectively implemented with in-person coaching;
• Discuss some of the characteristics of an effective online coach and how those characteristics might differ from an effective in-person coach.

Explore how to change your school community's culture around digital citizenship. Hear on-the-ground experiences from statewide digital citizenship education work in Utah and the lessons learned from bringing together stakeholders of different backgrounds, perceptions, and thoughts on digital citizenship. Identify ways to shift perceptions on technology and create common ground.

Participants will

• Learn change management principles for finding common ground in conversations;
• Learn logistical strategies for implementing education on a large scale; and
• Discuss mistakes and lessons learned from working with many different stakeholders.

Recommended book: Advocating Digital Citizenship

Join colleagues and leaders in an interactive and facilitated discussion on the intersectionality of the key elements to promote collective leadership efficacy through collaborative principal inquiry. Listen to effective research-based practices that will help build coherence across schools to promote equitable and sustainable student outcomes. Engage in conversations to formulate your own bridge-to-practice to implement strategic goals and tiered action plans to support principal leadership development.

Participants will

• Leave with the inquiry blueprint that was co-developed with the Core Collaborative to document and evidence our work with principal inquiry;
• Develop your own bridge-to-practice action planning template to help you get started with principal-led professional learning targets and goals (framed in equity); and
• Gain a deeper understanding of the intersectionality of social and emotional learning, culturally responsive-sustaining education, leadership components, and the use of innovative qualitative data, including student focus group feedback to improve outcomes.

Examine the cognitive and affective characteristics of teacher leaders and how to nurture these in job-embedded professional learning. Discover opportunities to expand and deepen pedagogical content knowledge through teacher leadership and teacher collaboration. Investigate the pitfalls and hurdles in efforts to improve teacher expertise, teacher collaboration, and pedagogical content knowledge in the most challenging educational settings.

Participants will

• Explore what it takes to be an effective teacher leader and why teacher leadership that fosters collaboration among peers is fraught with limitations and suffused with opportunities;
• Discover ways to activate and nurture a team of teacher leaders that empower them to be effective facilitators of teacher learning and improvement with PLC-type structures;
• Engage in facilitated discussion to understand the principal’s theory of action regarding teacher leadership and collaboration, question his choices, and understand results in his school, and compare these experiences to your own school or district to improve teacher practice through teacher leadership and collaborative structures such as PLCs; and
• Take away a model of teacher leadership that focuses on collaborative analysis of classroom evidence for the purpose of improving teacher practice.

Educators and students alike struggled through 2020 and 2021 - and 2022 is proving our work is far from finished. As we navigate myriad educational crises, the nagging question remains: How do we lead our schools through grief? Participants will leave with actionable next steps for leaders, based on research  and rooted in best educational practices to properly support their students, their colleagues, and themselves, in new, and meaningful, ways.

Participants will

• Understand the mental health and emotional crises facing educators and students today;
• Appreciate the parallels with other sectors of industry that can guide our recovery;
• Determine action steps you can take to improve and enhance school culture; and
• Decode how expectations on academic growth and learning are tied to a school's recovery efforts.

Explore ways learning organizations can create a cohesive framework to sustain collaborative learning, collective responsibility, and shared accountability. Learn how Bay City Schools, supported by the Institute for Excellence in Education, used team-based leadership and organization frameworks to create aligned and sustainable improvement goals. Gain insights into how increased collaborative learning between leaders and educators improved adult learning and student outcomes in the frame of organizational change.

Participants will

• Learn about implementing structures and processes to provide an ongoing system of support for collaborative learning and continuous improvement cycles;
• Build collaboration skills and capacity; and
• Identify shared common goals.

Learn to leverage podcasting to meet your professional learning purposes. Engage in discussion around a podcast designed with Universal Design for Learning to support the variability of learners and overcome the barriers of professional learning.

Participants will

• Learn how Universal Design for Learning informed the design of a podcast;
• Identify the intentional design features of a podcast that is used for asynchronous professional learning;
• Examine how podcasting can overcome barriers and create opportunities; and
• Explore how to create learning opportunities that meet the variable needs of learners.

Explore methods to determine whether your professional learning is contributing to school improvement and student achievement. Gather tips and takeaways from the evaluation of a professional learning experience in which teachers conducted action research in classrooms and presented findings to colleagues. Learn about a framework you can use to gather actionable feedback from any professional learning initiative.

Participants will

• Examine how to gather and process faculty experiences with professional learning;
• Understand how to implement Guskey and Sparks’ framework to evaluate the effectiveness of professional learning;
• Learn Mills’ action research framework and how it can be used as a guidepost for teacher-led professional learning.

Explore the GATE Program, a district-based, job-embedded alternative certification program, as an innovative solution designed to address teacher recruitment and retention needs. Learn how and why this program has proven effective as an alternative pathway for successful entry into the teaching profession. Examine a model that leverages the community’s support to attract career-changers to teaching and provides the unique support needed for these teachers to thrive in the profession for years to come.

Participants will

• Gain examples of how internal and external support can be customized to meet the needs of teachers in alternative certification programs;
• Learn about a model that fully integrates content, best teaching practices, and professional knowledge within a multiyear cohort experience;
• Identify ways to leverage community partners as resources to elevate and sustain a district-based alternative certification program; and
• Explore ways to build a culture of support and collaboration within schools for teachers entering through alternative pathways.

Learn how innovative school leaders are reimagining social-emotional learning (SEL) in a post-COVID-19 world. Explore actionable strategies for building a systematic approach to modern SEL that also address one of the biggest influences on students: social media.

Participants will

• Learn five best practices to modernize your approach to social-emotional learning, engage 100% of your students, and address the impacts of COVID-19;
• Examine the latest research behind why schools are adopting a positive approach to social media that empowers and equips students, rather than scares and restricts;
• Understand how to implement systematic, evidence-based SEL that supports the well-being of the entire school community.

Ignite your understanding of how social media can be implemented within an educational setting to build an online community. Break into differentiated roundtable discussions to create or elevate your current model, whether your social media platform is just starting out or is well-established. Walk away with tools and resources for bite-sized professional learning, spotlights, and events, and connect with others who are interested in reimagining professional learning.

Participants will

• Learn how to use social media to support new teachers during the onboarding process, share district information, and establish a community;
• Experience focused professional growth through relevant research-based systems via social media; and
• Provide networking opportunities for district employees to obtain common goals.

Improve student data privacy practices in your school or district. Learn how the Franklin Special School District in Tennessee ensures student data privacy while removing the burden from teachers, administrators, and families. Become familiar with privacy legislation and how it affects educators, as well as online terms of service and privacy policies. Consider how you can apply this to your context.

Participants will

• Be able to develop or improve your privacy practices;
• Become knowledgeable about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), as well as the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and how it affects us as educators;
• Obtain practical information about COPPA requirements for websites/apps/online platforms that may be used in schools;
• Improve your comprehension of terms of service and privacy policies; 
• Learn how the Franklin Special School District has implemented a protocol to protect student privacy; and
• Reflect on how these practices could be applied to your own school or district.

Participants will

• Learn how to foster relationships with students, families, and communities;
• Learn how to use your experiences to build relationships with peers; and
• Develop your own story to build stronger teaching capacity.

Avanti, a Solution Tree education technology product, is the first of its kind: a teacher-first, self-paced, subscription-based professional learning platform that helps teachers at the elementary, middle, and high school levels gain ideas and actionable strategies for teaching and honing their craft. Content includes short inspirational videos made by teachers, for teachers, on a variety of relevant, timely topics.

Participants will:

• See the benefits for staff and, in turn, students of professional learning platforms focused on teachers and teams;
• Understand what it takes to become a master educator and how these two platforms can accelerate that journey; and 
• Understand the key features of Avanti and Global PD Teams and why they are important to team and teacher growth.

Learning Forward’s vision is: Every educator engages in exemplary professional learning so every student excels. In most education settings, this professional learning begins with a book. Join a panel of authors who will share their writing experiences and the impact their books are making on educators and, ultimately, student success. Ask questions of the panel and pitch your own book ideas.

Participants will:

• Discover the process to move research and evidence-based practices into a published book;
• Gain insights into topics needed by educators; and
• Acquire strategies that first-time writers need to ensure their book is practical, focused, and user-friendly for educators.

Review the big ideas of mastery learning and gain practical guidance on its implementation across the range of grade levels or subject areas. Develop a working knowledge of the principles of mastery learning, including responding to learner differences and frequent use of feedback on learner progress. Apply this working knowledge to implementing mastery learning in both in-person and online settings. Harness mastery learning principles to the work of helping nearly all students become successful learners and gain the many positive benefits of that success.

Participants will:

• Develop a working knowledge of the principles of mastery learning, including responding to learner differences and frequent use of feedback on learner progress;
• Apply this working knowledge to implementing mastery learning in both in-person and online settings; and
• Harness mastery learning principles to the work of helping nearly all students become successful learners and gain the many positive benefits of that success.

Learn ways to create learning communities that work together through a collectivist lens of shared accountability with a focus on equity, and discover how these learning communities are empowered to explore how their collaborative actions and decisions propel learning forward. Explore the Visible Learning research that supports the identified pathways and pavers for designing fortifying learning communities.

Participants will:

• Understand the stumbling blocks that negatively impact the design of equitable learning environments;
• Engage in shared experiences for honoring and celebrating dimensions of identities, intersectionality, and the 3 Levels of Culture;
• Identify instructional practices that fortify students so they can show up in the fullness of who they are behaviorally, cognitively, academically, emotionally, and socially.

Take the Leadership Compass assessment to identify which of four leadership styles you embody. Examine any weaknesses in your leadership style that you could supplement through cooperation with leaders who have complementary strengths. Hear examples of advocacy experiences from a team of NEA teaching fellows and identify ways to enhance that work by drawing on the different strengths of other leaders.

Participants will:

• Identify and understand your personal work/leadership styles so you can build more effective teams with colleagues who have complementary strengths;
• Be introduced to authentic advocacy work going on in states and analyze that work to identify ways in which it could be improved through an awareness of work and leadership styles; and
• Identify one issue in your current professional environment that you can address through advocacy and in collaboration with other professionals.

Explore what it looks like to use professional learning, coaching, educator perception, and walk-through data to ensure that professional learning leads to impact. Learn how Fargo Public Schools designed a cohesive set of tools that would capture the instructional needs of educators and the areas in which coaching and professional learning time are being spent, adopted protocols and processes to set data-informed coaching goals, and examined data to determine the impact of professional learning on classroom instruction.

Participants will:

• Identify how data-capture instruments can be used to monitor the end-to-end educator support process; and
• Examine systemwide data for the purposes of designing professional learning and demonstrating its impact.

Wilson Language Training's fully virtual professional learning, launched in 2009, is designed to certify teachers to teach students with dyslexia in a Tier 3 instructional setting. Wilson has since expanded the program to include a virtual implementation support program that helps teachers improve their literacy teaching practice for students in Tier 1 and 2 settings. Learn how these programs support an engaged community of educators, provide easy access to instructional resources, and offer ways to connect teachers to expert literacy specialists and coaches for individual support.

Participants will:

• Understand how a high-quality curriculum can be paired with high-quality professional learning to positively impact teacher performance and student outcomes;
• Learn about the Wilson virtual platforms and dashboards that encourage teacher engagement and growth through a personalized and organized approach; and
• Be able to discuss and explain the features of these platforms and dashboards, such as just-in-time resources, scheduling tools, and streamlined access to online meetings, both live and recorded.

Learn how to help educators face the world we live in and respond to it. Explore professional learning developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education to address this challenge, including Schooling for Critical Consciousness of Racism and Racial Injustice, which draws on the research of Harvard Professor Daren Graves' work in applying Paolo Freire's concept of critical consciousness to work with high school students, and Moral Leadership in a Troubled Time, which uses foundational work in moral development done at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Participants will:

• Come to know useful definitions of critical consciousness and moral leadership;
• Be able to apply both definitions as scrutinizing lenses for your own classroom pedagogy; and
• Learn how to apply both concepts to create meaningful and action-based curriculum for Black and LatinX students in particular.

Examine the current research around how video can be a powerful tool to support educator self-reflection as a job-embedded professional learning strategy. Experience how Rockdale County Public Schools uses video technology as a way to promote reflective practices to support teacher growth and collaboration. Learn the advantages of using video as a best practice for coaching and mentoring. Hear how Rockdale discovered that providing structured feedback drastically improved classroom practices. Additionally, Rockdale principals and coaches have data-driven proof that job-embedded professional learning directly impacts teacher retention and student outcomes.

Participants will:

• Have a greater understanding of the research-based evidence of the impact of video technology on teacher practice;
• Receive an overview of the benefits and challenges of implementation and use of video in the classroom; 
• Engage in an interactive experience that demonstrates how to use video technology for professional learning; and
• Identify strategies and next steps to leverage video technology in your own context.

Learn 8 strategies that have helped us guide some of our most reluctant educators and leaders to engage and charge toward rock star status in their technology, integration, and work. Experience the journey that instructors go through when they are introduced to a new piece of technology. Discuss, develop, and implement a professional learning topic using the lens of empathy and the tools of persuasion.

Participants will

• Explore different strategies and techniques to support reluctant instructors;
• Experience the journey that instructors go through when they are introduced to a new piece of technology; and
• Discuss, develop, and implement a professional learning topic using the lens of empathy and the tools of persuasion.

Explore three types of conflict present in the classic film 12 Angry Men and make connections to conflict present in collaborative teams today. Examine techniques of consensus-building among a group of men whose diverse personalities create intense conflict. Learn about high-leverage best practices that help teams face and overcome similar challenges to collaborate and succeed.

Participants will

• Define productive conflict and understand its value;
• Identify the high-leverage best practices associated with effective collaborative teams; and
• Identify trust-building and trust-busting behaviors.

Explore two models of coaching that situate instructional coaching within a culture of care and include specific coaching questions and equity-based practices for coaches or mentors who routinely engage with Black educators. Engage with coaches who are currently enacting these racial equity coaching approaches. Use these adapted models, practice-based examples, and teacher-voiced definitions to inform the quality, design, and implementation of instructional coaching for Black educators.

Participants will

• Explore two models, abolitionist coaching and culturally responsive coaching, for situating instructional coaching within a culture of care. These include specific coaching questions and equity-based practices for coaches or mentors who care about and routinely engage with Black educators.
• Engage with coaches who are currently enacting these racial equity coaching approaches; and
• Examine how the early stage Black educators defined high-quality coaching experiences and what they recommended for improvements. These adapted models, practice-based examples, and teacher-voiced definitions can inform the quality, design, and implementation of instructional coaching for Black educators.

Learn how districts can make professional learning personalized and meaningful for all teachers. Explore Norwalk Community School District's personalized professional learning approach, which provides voice and choice to teachers and PLCs based on student data. Leave with an understanding of the theory/demonstration/practice/feedback model as the foundation for personalized professional learning.

Participants will

• Examine the theory/demonstration/practice/feedback model as the foundation of professional learning;
• Understand how to develop personalized learning plans at the PLC level based on student data;
• Identify ways to leverage teacher leaders to facilitate personalized professional learning; and
• Create an action plan for how to implement this learning in your own setting.

Create more just, equitable, and effective learning experiences for all students using an innovative, strategy-based approach to professional learning. Learn about a model of culturally sustaining social, emotional, and academic development centered on adult skill-building and reflection. Apply these strategies to your own setting.

Participants will

• Be able to identify the foundational educator competencies essential to implementing culturally sustaining social, emotional, and academic development in your classroom;
• Practice a set of strategies developed to build these competencies and reflect on areas of strength and growth; and
• Make a plan for how to incorporate these strategies into a whole-school approach to culturally sustaining social, emotional, and academic development.

Learn how Missoula County Public Schools pivoted in its approach to implementing professional learning when all in-person and virtual sessions were canceled. Explore a braided approach to professional learning that helps improve teacher efficacy. Delve into how Google Workspace for Education and other technology applications allow teachers to engage in self-paced learning with deliverable outcomes and built-in feedback loops.

Participants will:

• Learn how a braided approach to professional learning helps improve teacher efficacy;
• Learn how the plan-do-study-act cycle can drive systemic change that cultivates improvement science;
• Experience a learning platform designed for asynchronous learning that provides educators with opportunities for support through a continuous feedback loop and one-on-one responses; and
• Explore how this type of professional learning could be used in your setting.

Consider stories from the field that tie research to practice and amplify the role students play in creating an equitable school experience. Illuminate leadership practices tied to listening to students furthest from justice as critical data that informs a reimagined vision for your school. Discover ways to understand student experience using student-designed tools influenced by research, analyzing artifacts from school systems, and self-assessing your leadership practice.

Participants will

• Use a research-based framework to evaluate the current purpose and focus of student experience in your school or district;
• Examine the key practices of equity-based listening leadership that center student experience;
• Engage with a tool for gathering student experience data and consider how leaders can use that data to launch and sustain a vision for students furthest from justice; and
• Identify next steps in actualizing the vision for an equitable school.

Learn how to engage and lead your staff more effectively, encourage teacher leadership, and develop a greater sense of culture and climate in your building. Gain practical and functional ways to use specific leadership strategies that can help shape an organization. Brainstorm leadership strengths and areas of growth in your own building or organization. Determine and prioritize issues to attack and focus on once you return to your school or building.

Participants will

• Gain understanding of how to engage and lead your staff more effectively, encourage teacher leadership, and develop a greater sense of culture and climate in your building;
• Learn practical and functional ways to use specific leadership strategies that can help shape an organization;
• Explore the power of connectivity and relationships that permeate the climate and culture of a building;
• Brainstorm leadership strengths and areas of growth in your own building or organization; and
• Determine and prioritize issues to attack and focus on once you return to your school or building.

Learn how an urban school district has created cohesive professional learning that uses continuous improvement to define and reach equitable outcomes for all learners. Gain insights into the importance of embedding social and emotional learning into the classroom. Explore a professional learning model that includes micro-credential courses.

Participants will:

• Learn about a professional development suite that includes micro-credentials, professional learning planning committee, professional learning days, learner panels, and student/teacher showcases. 
• Understand how to create cohesive professional learning that uses continuous improvement to define and reach for equitable outcomes for all learners. 
• Understand the importance of embedding social and emotional learning into the classroom.

Dive deep and unpack data from a culturally inclusive perspective. Identify ways to develop skills that are applicable to the ongoing analysis of data while crafting a culture and climate based on evidence-based practices, research, and experience. Learn how to cultivate the relationships necessary to implement change.

Participants will

• Identify various types of student data beyond standardized assessments;
• Assess the learning environment for instructional equity; and
• Cultivate relationships necessary to implement change.

Engage in a powerful session where leaders discover a common-sense approach to engaging all educators in the work of observation and feedback rounds. Learn how we gradually built the capacity of teacher leaders to fill the role of coach because a principal and one coach didn’t cut it. Explore the tools and structures that built a strong team for schoolwide coaching, and develop a plan specific to your building.

Participants will

• Discover a common-sense approach for engaging all educators in the important work of consistent and frequent observation and feedback rounds;
• Learn how to leverage the support of teacher leaders in the role of coach and gradually release responsibility while maintaining effectiveness and accountability;
• Access resources and tools that build coaching capacity in teachers, establish clear look-fors in classroom visits, and simplify the feedback process to use in your own building; and
• Create a reasonable timeline for implementing a schoolwide observation and feedback system and outline the structures and systems needed to support the work in your school.

Explore how Science Hill High School uses curriculum learning labs as the platform for job-embedded professional learning by enacting real-time instruction, collecting and analyzing evidence of student learning through structured walk-throughs, and planning for next steps to meet all student needs. Leave with a sample year-long implementation plan focused on what’s important to your school or district.

Participants will

• Identify key components of job-embedded professional learning;
• Understand how to use collected data to inform the process;
• Investigate the most important skills to develop teacher leadership; and
• Design a job-embedded professional learning plan that emphasizes teacher observation of demo lessons and collaborative reflection on best practices.

Draw on research and expertise from the fields of communication and behavior science to improve communication. Increase trust and equity with effective messaging for busy families, overworked educators, and diverse communities. Explore communication theory and practice that drives effective school communication, both internally and externally, through a 5 Pillars Framework. Examine and evaluate communication and learn practical, applicable skills for improvement by applying lessons from communication research and practitioners.

Participants will

• Use research and expertise from the fields of communication and behavior science to improve every type of communication;
• Increase trust and equity with proven, effective messaging techniques for busy families, educators, and constituents; and
• Walk away ready to increase message effectiveness and plan for strategic communication in every email, presentation, or message you send.

Address the challenge of meeting the personalized learning needs of all students. Learn how to create a learning environment that can open opportunities to personalize learning. Explore the type of professional learning that is required to make these instructional shifts in practice.

Participants will

• Examine the professional learning used to implement blended learning in one district;
• Identify the best way to engage all stakeholders; and
• Leave with strategies to bring to your setting to personalize the learning experience for students.

Reflect on your current practice to examine student engagement in your classrooms. Learn about research-based elements of engagement to improve teacher practice and student performance. Explore creating energetic and purposeful lessons, promoting participation and learning, and using available tools and resources to craft a classroom where we enhance the learning experience for all students. 

Participants will

• Reflect on current engagement practices;
• Learn research-based best practices;
• Introduce elements of purposeful, energetic lessons; and
• Consider tools to sustain authentic student engagement.

Learn from one rural district's journey in ensuring effective professional learning for its teachers. Examine the elements of a professional learning playbook, from defining effective professional development to implementing a proactive quality assurance system and the many steps in between. Gain an understanding of the research-based aspects of professional learning that improves student achievement. Leave with a review process that ensures elements of effective professional learning through the planning process before it is offered to teachers.

Participants will

• Learn about Guskey's five levels of assessing professional learning;
• Gain an understanding of the research-based aspects of professional learning that improves student achievement;
• Examine the decision-making process used: identifying objectives, articulating alternatives, and involving stakeholder involvement; and
• Leave with a review process that ensures elements of effective professional learning through the planning process before it is offered to teachers.

Learn how teacher leadership advocates can turn theory into action. Explore national, state, and local teacher leadership data trends that establish the need for effective teacher leadership models. Hear from one school that has implemented teacher leadership strategies to retain teachers and improve teacher practice. Determine next steps for implementing effective teacher leadership models in your school or district, including role identification, funding sources, and programmatic considerations.

Participants will

• Understand how teacher leadership opportunities impact teacher retention and school improvement;
• Assess the current state of teacher leadership in your school or district;
• Examine one school’s current teacher leadership model to identify transferable attributes; and
• Consider next steps for implementing teacher leadership pathways in your school or district.

Explore a coaching program that uses technology, evidence-based teaching strategies, and cognitive coaching and reflection to facilitate professional growth for new staff and move veteran staff into mentoring and coaching roles. Discover the power of developmental feedback to facilitate professional growth and reflection. Learn how to embed technology in coaching cycles to increase coaches' efficiency and promote deeper reflection.

Participants will

• Expand the traditional coaching framework to identify the coaching needs and skills of all professional staff;
• Identify ways to embed Learning Forward resources into individualized coaching cycles;
• Discover the power of developmental feedback to facilitate professional growth and reflection in new staff; and
• Learn how to embed technology in coaching cycles to increase the efficiency of coaches and promote deeper reflection.

Gain insight into how investing in administrator pipelines is an evidence-based school improvement strategy shown to improve educator retention and student outcomes. Learn how a state education agency, an institution of higher education, and local education agencies collaborated to complete self-studies and create sustainable pipeline plans based on The Wallace Foundation model for developing principal pipelines. Replicate these strategies to ensure qualified leaders are in every role, from the classroom to the superintendent's office.

Participants will

• Recognize the urgency of intentionally recruiting, developing, and retaining equity-centered leaders;
• Further develop awareness of research linked to equity-centered leadership pipelines as an evidence-based school improvement strategy;
• Develop collaboration strategies between state education agencies, institutions of higher education, and local education agencies focused on retention, equity, and leadership development;
• Create a plan to complete a self-study and develop a plan aligned to the seven domains of The Wallace Foundation Principal Pipeline Initiative; and
• Consider early-win pipeline strategies that can be implemented immediately.

Learn how to design an intentional and sustainable microcredential ecosystem in your community. Identify processes that leverage both human and technology infrastructure and activate others around shared outcomes and incentives.

Participants will

• Explore the microcredential journey of REMC Association of Michigan from initiation to pilot;
• Investigate and leverage a framework for building a microcredential ecosystem in your community;
• Explore questions you'll have and decisions you'll need to make to build processes that meet the human capital and technology infrastructure needs of a microcredential ecosystem from initiation to implementation; and
• Identify concrete strategies and readiness indicators for how to engage others working toward similar outcomes.

Learn how to develop an aligned system of learning walks that includes students, teachers, campus administration, and educational services. Explore how one district reimagined learning walks through collaboration across campuses and departments. Examine the data analysis of the learning walks using the plan-do-study-act cycle, which provides real-time, actionable feedback on the current reality, allowing each department to provide support for teachers and students.

Participants will

• Explore a specific process and system of bringing central office and campus personnel together to be a collaborative and accountable group for student emotional, academic, and behavioral success;
• Use the plan-do-study-act model to evaluate alignment of the teacher evaluation process and district instructional resources;
• Examine a district framework for an online system for curriculum and instruction systems for all staff; and
• Access a curriculum learning committees system that provides immediate teacher leadership so the impact to the classrooms is aligned and immediate.

Expand your knowledge of implementation science and its benefit as a lever for school improvement through the implementation of a structured literacy program. Hear from school leaders and the lessons learned through a year-long study focusing on supporting leaders in four diverse districts that led to improved practice and feelings of efficacy. Engage in a virtual mind map exercise to organize your thinking, and consider the next steps in your own school’s implementation efforts.

Participants will

• Expand your knowledge of implementation science and its benefit as a lever for school improvement through the implementation of a structured literacy program;
• Work collaboratively in small groups to create a collective implementation virtual document to be shared with the larger group. You will have access to this shared virtual document at the end of the session with access to refer back to it as a resource guide for best practices at different stages of curriculum implementation;
• Be able to reflect and evaluate the current implementation practices at your school; and
• Develop action steps to bridge theory to practice for shared ownership with any curriculum implementation for maximum impact.

Shift your concept of traditional professional learning for educators away from a tabula rasa model of filling teachers with knowledge. Create professional learning that allows educators to engage in experiential learning and enhance their perspectives. Connect with the communities where your students live, and develop community-based relationships.

Participants will

• Evaluate your personal experiences participating in and planning professional learning;
• Learn about specific diversity, equity, and inclusion experiential professional learning and hear feedback from educators and students;
• Generate lists of potential types of experiential professional learning that are specific to your location and needs; and
• Design opportunities that allow for interaction and collective learning with all stakeholders.

Hear South Knox Elementary's journey to strengthen engagement as a way to intensify student agency, student voice, and student efficacy. Gain insight on how learning walks build capacity by identifying areas of strength and opportunities for growth. Adapt a learning walk template to increase capacity to move learning forward in your context and create next steps to transfer new learning.

Participants will

• Analyze and refine existing learning targets and success criteria to intensify student agency, voice, and efficacy;
• Develop an understanding of how to increase teacher and student ownership and relevance through using learning targets and success criteria;
• Adapt a learning walk template to increase capacity to move learning forward in your building or environment; and
• Create next steps to transfer new learning.

Explore how partnerships and on-site training between educator programs and local elementary STEM programs create authentic STEM mindsets for preservice and inservice teachers. See how using the engineering design process and 5E instructional model facilitates equitable learning and critical thinking teacher development in authentic STEM pedagogy so the teacher candidates will be prepared to effectively implment STEM planning, instruction, and assessment for enhanced student learning. Explore how professors are collaborating with local schools in using grant funding to create a state-of-the-art STEM lab on campus.

Participants will

• Explore how a reciprocate partnership between preservice educator programs and a local elementary STEM school contributes to richer learning in a STEM mindset for preservice teachers;
• Expand knowledge and application of interdisciplinary STEM instruction using the engineering design process and 5E instructional model to promote collaborative and equitable learning, engagement, and critical thinking for preservice and inservice teacher development in authentic STEM pedagogy;
• Unpack the elements of effective STEM pedagogical approaches for interconnected learning; and
• Explore the design and creation of a state-of-the-art university STEM lab for STEM education and training for preservice teacher education, inservice educator professional learning, and programs for school-age children.

Experience Universal Design for Learning, a powerful framework that ensures learning experiences are implemented in a way that helps all students be successful. Learn how to bridge theory with practical implementation strategies to elevate educator and student engagement and improve overall student academic success.

Participants will

• Understand Universal Design for Learning applications to adult learners and embedding Universal Design for Learning in teacher professional learning;
• Be able to help professional learning staff design and implement experiences that model Universal Design for Learning across disciplines and grade bands;
• Align teacher professional learning and expectations of teacher protocols in classrooms, resulting in teaching and learning practices that embrace the strengths of diverse learners and provide appropriate support to address challenges; and
• Apply Universal Design for Learning principles to courses within your current catalog of professional learning.

Examine how traditional norms silence BIPOC educators and those who are eager for organizational change and professional growth that dismantles structural inequities that continue to oppress diverse communities in our schools. Collaboratively craft group norms that cultivate the necessary relationships for transformative adult learning. Generate a variety of facilitation skills to call colleagues into reflection by protecting and maximizing norms, particularly within moments of conflict. Practice using these skills within scenarios from school settings where the status quo typically prevails. 

Participants will

• Uncover ways typical group norms (such as “start/end on time, use technology appropriately, everyone has a voice, and assume good intentions”) demean participants, impede improvement efforts, and protect the status quo;
• Examine how traditional norms silence BIPOC educators and those who are eager for organizational change and professional growth that dismantles structural inequities that continue to oppress diverse communities in our schools;
• Collaboratively craft group norms that cultivate the necessary relationships for transformative adult learning;
• Generate a variety of facilitation skills to call colleagues into reflection by protecting and maximizing norms, particularly within moments of conflict; and
• Practice using these skills within scenarios from school settings where the status quo typically prevails. 

​Learn how the largest state virtual school in the nation capitalizes on an aligned system of adult learning to develop and implement high-quality professional learning for teachers, leaders, and support staff anchored on Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning. Explore a coherent framework for developing, implementing, and testing high-quality professional learning that empowers and retains a diverse workforce while enhancing instructional practice and increasing student outcomes. Leave with useful tools for applying the learning to your own setting.

Participants will

• Learn how Florida Virtual School capitalizes on an aligned system of adult learning to challenge teachers, leaders, and support staff to build their skill set while incorporating new ideas and approaches in their daily operations;
• ​Explore how Florida Virtual School implements high-quality professional learning that empowers and retains a diverse workforce while enhancing instructional practice and increasing student outcomes;
• Experience how the professional learning team at Florida Virtual School is instrumental in the development of a coherent framework for developing, implementing, and testing a high-quality professional learning system; and
• Identify next steps for modifying and replicating the model in support of professional growth and student achievement.

Learn how one district's instructional technology team re-established a culture for coaching with school-based coaches by creating a shared vision and assessing the strengths and growth opportunities of the coaches' skills. Identify the key components of quality coaching. Determine and interpret the appropriate data collection methods to develop a professional learning plan of support for your coaches.

Participants will

• Explore the design thinking and the formula for change processes and apply them to coaching;
• Develop a vision for coaching;
• Identify key components of quality coaching; and
• Determine and interpret the appropriate data collection methods to develop a professional learning plan of support for your coaches.

Learn how educators and students, with the new, widespread proliferation of 1-1 devices, can engage in transformational ways of learning in and out of the classroom. Equip yourself and other educators with the key knowledge and strategies needed to enhance learning with tech tools and ultimately support active modes of learning.

Participants will

• Understand the SAMR model of tech-enabled learning, tracing the path of technology adoption from substitution to transformation;
• Leave with strategies for transformational, tech-enabled instructional coaching; and
• Learn specific, actionable techniques they can use to drive active learning, rather than the passive use of 1:1 tech tools.

Examine how one school district empowers its coaches to support student learning by supporting their development as coaches. Dive into a holistic support system that strives for alignment and consistency to leverage a higher quality of coaching conversations. Identify strategies to ensure that implementation is successful across a large team of coaches and multiple buildings. Leave with tools to support and develop professional learning plans for coaches.

Participants will

• Examine how one district is implementing student-centered coaching to shift the narrative from teachers feeling evaluated to student learning;
• Dive into the steps to measure impact on student learning;
• Identify strategies to ensure implementation of cycles is successful across a large team of coaches and multiple buildings; and
• Leave with tools to support and develop professional learning plans for coaches.

Explore a mentoring program for new principals in their journey into school leadership that districts can use for new -- and not-so-new -- professionals. Learn about resources that can help all system and school leaders make the smooth transition into school leadership’s challenges found in 2022 and beyond.

Participants will

• Understand the need for a new principal mentoring program;
• Identify the elements of an effective mentoring program; and
• Engage with resources to keep our administrative workforce stable.

Examine the steps one Title I school used to support its staff culture, combat teacher burnout for new and experienced teachers, and avoid high turnover rates to become a National School of Character and a National ESEA Distinguished School. Leave with resources and practical strategies for coaching, providing feedback, individualized professional learning, and self-care you can implement today to support yourself and your own staff culture.

Participants will

• Learn how to recognize the signs of teacher burnout and assess your own level of burnout and the level of burnout in your building;
• Learn ready-to-implement strategies for transforming staff culture;
• Learn about a coaching cycle that provides individualized support, feedback, and professional learning for teachers; and 
• Learn about several strategies for embedding a system of self-care into your staff culture.

Hear how one large metro school district integrates social and emotional learning into academic content and instruction. Explore engagement strategies, practices, and resources that support building a community of learners where all students feel seen, heard, and valued. Gain social and emotional instructional tools to support teachers and administrators to shift from student compliance to student engagement and empowerment.

Participants will

• Learn practices and strategies to build relationships, foster agency, and build a community of learners.
• Be able to apply engagement strategies and structures that can be used in the classroom and in professional learning to engage all learners; and,
• Learn how to create the optimal state for learning and engagement by integrating social and emotional learning practices into instruction.

Learn how to help students become technologically fluent through a framework that helps teachers integrate state and national technology standards into their curriculum. Explore the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework (TPACK) and how it can be used with the T.E.A.C.H. (trust, equity, advocacy, collaboration, and humility & humor) andragogy-related coaching process to create support for teachers as they integrate technology into their curriculum across multiple learning delivery models. Review and discuss selected lessons aligned to the ISTE Standards for Students and adapt these lessons to your own state standards.

Participants will

• Become familiar with the TPACK framework, the T.E.A.C.H. coaching process, and andragogy theory;
• Understand how TPACK and andragogy help meet the Learning Forward Learning Designs standard;
• Learn how the process moved teachers from tech-phobic to tech trainers and improved teacher-student engagement, students’ English language arts skills, and STEM learning through the engineering design process; and
• Explore how TPACK and T.E.A.C.H. help with implementing standards by reviewing and discussing selected lessons aligned to the ISTE Standards for Students and adapting these lessons to your own state standards.

Examine those subtle perceptions or biases that we all face when looking at our students, parents, colleagues, and, the hardest of all, at ourselves. Reflect, reconsider, and self-examine how your perceptions might influence your expectations for not only your students, but also your fellow teachers, parents, school, and community -- and, subsequently, the ways you teach. Identify strategies to assist you in creating action plans in your context.

Participants will

• Examine those subtle perceptions or biases that we all face when looking at our students, parents, colleagues, and, the hardest of all, at ourselves;
• Reflect, reconsider, and self-examine how your perceptions might influence your expectations for not only your students, but also your fellow teachers, parents, school, and community -- and, subsequently, the ways you teach; and
• Identify strategies to assist you in creating action plans in your context.

A highly regarded urban educator in New Jersey for over 20 years, Baruti Kafele distinguished himself as a master teacher and a transformational school leader. As an elementary school teacher in East Orange, New Jersey, he was selected as the East Orange School District and Essex County Public Schools Teacher of the Year and New Jersey State Teacher of the Year finalist. As a middle and high school principal, Kafele led the turnaround of four New Jersey urban schools, including Newark Tech, which went from a low-performing school in need of improvement to being recognized three times in U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best high schools. Kafele is the author of 12 books, including his most recent release, The Equity & Social Justice Education 50 (2021).