Learn about a framework that supports teaching academic content areas and creating culturally responsive-sustaining classroom and school environments where students succeed and teachers thrive. Learn how the framework is integrated into preservice and inservice settings. Practice using the framework to analyze and enhance your own school or classroom work.

• Become familiar with the Center for Reaching & Teaching the Whole Child’s Social, Emotional, & Cultural Anchor Competencies Framework and its application to classroom practice and school context and culture.
• Learn how the Minneapolis Public School Academy has woven the framework into the pipeline of teacher readiness and school climate that supports academic achievement and students’ and teachers’ ability to thrive;
• Engage in activities that demonstrate how the framework provides a road map to strong teacher preparation, ongoing development, and positive school climate and culture that can impact teacher retention;
• Discuss what is needed to sustain the integration of social, emotional, and cultural competencies in schools beyond the initial professional learning experience.

Discover the transformative potential of responsive curriculum design in this dynamic session, where we delve into strategies for meeting the diverse needs of today's learners. Learn how to create adaptable learning pathways that foster inclusivity, engagement, and academic success. Leave empowered with practical tools and insights to revolutionize your curriculum approach and cultivate a responsive learning environment.

• Understand the principles of responsive curriculum design needed to promote opportunities to learn by infusing rigorous content with an assets-based approach;
• Be equipped with practical strategies for designing and implementing flexible curriculum structures that promote inclusivity and engagement; and
• Apply principles and tools to develop customized learning experiences tailored to students' needs, ultimately enhancing student learning.

Explore the what, why, and how of culturally responsive-sustaining pedagogy. Learn how to integrate the principles of cultural competence, critical consciousness, and cognitive capacity development in ways that lead to transformational learning experiences for students. Design and showcase a liberatory unit or project and get feedback and critique from peers. Leave with units or projects ready to implement in your own educational setting.

• Gain the knowledge and skills to design units or projects that foster transformative learning experiences for students;
• Have tangible units or projects ready for implementation;
• Internalize liberatory practices and integrate them into their teaching approaches; and
• Be equipped to lead conversations and initiatives within their educational communities, advocating for and implementing practices that honor the whole humanity of young people.

Develop your coaching expertise beyond the basics to a more advanced understanding of how to coach in ways that shift clients’ beliefs, attitudes, and practices, including having difficult conversations. Explore tools, structures, and protocols to move the focus from teacher behaviors to transforming teachers’ practice by examining their beliefs and testing their assumptions. Experience coaching and being coached around authentic thorny scenarios in a safe laboratory setting.

• Explore tools, structures, and protocols to move the focus from teacher behaviors to transforming teachers’ practice by examining their beliefs and testing their assumptions;
• Develop your capacity (knowledge, skills, dispositions, and practices) to deepen your expertise to impact learning through coaching even when it’s a difficult conversation;
• Practice coaching in a laboratory setting with a client who is facing an authentic challenge with the intent to shift their perspectives and thinking about the situation; and
• Experience being coached about a challenge you are encountering in a safe space.

Explore an eight-step process for measuring the quality, effectiveness, and impact of 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.

• 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.

Reimagine how data gets used in schools so that we can disrupt inequitable patterns and create more lively, loving, learning school environments for Black and Brown students. Identify what’s getting in the way of using data for liberation (e.g., racial bias, an over reliance on testing, or not adopting a systems view). Learn how to facilitate more equity-focused conversations about data so you can bring about meaningful change.

• Explore how our current systems are designed to create obstacles to using data for liberation;
• Discover the nuanced stories hiding in your data;
• Reimagine how data informs equity-focused change initiatives; and
• Facilitate more equitable conversations around data so you can translate data insights into action.

Discover practical and efficient ways to determine the effects of professional learning on teaching practices and student learning outcomes. Learn how to design professional learning experiences that target context-specific improvements. Develop strategies for gathering crucial evidence on those experiences to verify results and guide future improvement efforts.

• Explore factors trustworthy evidence shows do and do not contribute to the effectiveness of professional learning;
• Learn the five levels of evidence that are essential in evaluating professional learning practices and experiences; and
• Develop strategies for planning effective professional learning experiences that impact teaching practices and result in improved student performance.

Explore the principles of high-quality adult learning to promote system-level change. Examine learning structures that will breathe life into your organization while teaching and transforming the attitudes, perceptions, and learning of all stakeholders. Gain a system-level view of what adult learning is and what it could be. Construct and evaluate fresh, inspired professional learning for all.

• Co-create and design an innovative continuum of adult learning constructs aligned to the Standards for Professional Learning;
• Identify powerful structures for each of the adult learning constructs and unique ways to reimagine time for them;
• Align science of learning principles to craft inspirational learning experiences for adult learners; and
• Create a tool for providing high-quality feedback on various professional learning designs.

Examine and apply strategies from a mentoring cycle focused on diagnosing new teacher needs, providing coaching support to address those needs, and monitoring progress to measure growth and evaluate impact. Learn and practice skills to build strong relationships and communicate effectively with beginning teachers. Apply adult learning theory and understanding of new teacher mindset to the mentoring role. Design and implement a mentoring support plan that grows new teachers’ knowledge and skills.

• Learn the “why” behind mentoring and the impact mentoring can have on new teachers;
• Understand and apply mentor roles, responsibilities, expectations, and key attributes in your work with new teachers;
• Recognize and apply strategies from the mentor cycle framework for developing new teachers’ knowledge and skills; and
• Apply tools and strategies that establish trust between a mentor and a new teacher to build strong, learning-focused relationships.

Learn how to design high-quality, interactive, and relevant professional learning that can escalate changes in educator practice leading to improved student outcomes. Explore the specific learning needs of adults while experiencing a plethora of highly engaging processes to ensure those needs are met, all while extending your understanding of quality professional learning design. Collaborate with peers using a learning design template that can up your game in quality design.

• Explore a framework for designing and facilitating powerful professional learning that is directly aligned to the Standards for Professional Learning;
• Experience a learning environment that meets the physical, social/relational, and learning needs of adults;
• Engage with facilitators as they model brain-friendly strategies that capture and hold learners’ attention and increase retention; and
• Prepare to use tools provided in the session for the future design of high-quality professional learning.

Acquire coaching skills based on International Coach Federation core competencies. Enhance communication and self-reflection abilities to enable participants to foster stronger relationships, achieve higher levels of productivity, and experience greater fulfillment in both their work and personal lives. Discern and leverage a coaching mindset and stance for a variety of contexts.

• Apply coaching skills, tools, and activities to a variety of situations;
• Demonstrate foundational coaching skills; and
• Explore ways to leverage a coaching mindset in a variety of contexts.

Learn how to set goals and identify strategies to hit those goals. Focus on gathering data for goal setting and creating an instructional playbook to identify the highest-impact teaching strategies for helping teachers hit their goals. 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.

• Explore a research-based coaching cycle that can be used in professional practice;
• Learn about PEERS goals and what research says about goal setting;
• Determine how to gather engagement and achievement data that can be used for goal setting; and
• Understand why instructional playbooks are essential and how to create one.

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

Explore what’s really behind resistance that causes your change initiatives to result in less impact than you’d hoped. Analyze why some individuals face change fearlessly while others prefer the comfort of the status quo. Learn ways to ensure that your improvement plans aren’t stalled or sabotaged.

• Understand the types of change initiatives we lead and the response and stress resulting from each type;
• Examine the reasons why individuals may appear resistant to supporting and enacting better practices; and
• Learn to maintain a supportive partnership role that communicates respect while still resulting in widespread change and impact.

Explore ways to create an environment within which everyone can learn. Gain clarity on dignity, the essential condition for healthy school, classroom, and work cultures. Learn how to create an accountability system for dignity and, as a result, confront disproportionality and bring belonging, engagement, and performance to new heights.

• Deepen knowledge of dignity and belonging;
• Acquire an improvement process to ensure accountability for providing the conditions that people need to thrive in work and in school; and
• Enhance capabilities to collect and use perception data to identify a problem of practice and address the problem with dignifying actions to ensure people have the opportunity to perform at their best.

Learn about a community-empowered, equity-centered design process that is transforming education in Long Beach Unified School District. Explore how this approach addresses the accumulated historical impact of education on Black students. Practice applying the mindsets and modes of Liberatory Design to a systemic problem of practice in your context to reimagine inequitable processes and structures to allow students to reach their fullest potential.

• Practice applying the mindsets and modes of Liberatory Design to a systemic problem of practice in your context;
• Imagine ways to build leadership models that are inclusive, liberatory, and collaborative; and
• Learn practical and meaningful ways to engage the community in co-designing solutions to local equity challenges.

Identify the factors that contribute to teacher burnout. Learn how to support teachers to determine purpose and restore their passion for teaching. Explore 12 brain-based principles for avoiding burnout, increasing optimism, and supporting physical well-being.

• Discover the correlation between humor, optimism, games, and increased immunity;
• Gain understanding of the importance of quality nutrition, exercise, and sleep to support physical well-being; and
• Learn how to create a classroom that engenders optimal student success.

Learn to maximize collaborative learning time to solve student learning challenges by implementing a five-stage cycle of professional learning. 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 instruction and what that means for student and educator learning goals. Participants will receive a copy of Becoming a Learning Team.

• Make the connection between collaborative, teacher-led learning and improved instruction and student 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;
• Support the meaningful implementation of high-quality instructional materials through team learning;
• 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.

Explore the components of systemwide continuous improvement, a high-impact design for educator professional learning that leads to changes in student achievement. Engage in structured conversations to reflect on the strategies and actions taken to apply cycles of continuous improvement to address problems of practice. Articulate next steps to demonstrate shared responsibility for improving learning for all students. Learn how to advocate for continuous improvement as an effective form of professional learning .

• Learn the high-leverage actions and behaviors associated with systemwide continuous improvement;
• Reflect on the strategies and actions taken to apply cycles of continuous improvement to address problems of practice;
• Describe the next steps to demonstrate shared responsibility for improving learning for all students; and
• Align the practices of high-quality professional learning and collaborative continuous improvement to advocate for the use of continuous improvement in all learning environments.

Explore the Standards for Professional Learning with Learning Forward’s standards team. Learn how the standards guide and support high-quality learning systems and provide high-quality professional learning for individuals and teams. Gain strategies for designing engaging, high-quality professional learning, and examine aspects of a comprehensive system that produces effective learning for educators in all roles and at all levels. Participants will receive a copy of Standards for Professional Learning.

• Gain a deep understanding of the content and structure of the Standards for Professional Learning;
• Apply the concepts in the standards to your role, responsibilities, and context by engaging in interactive and collaborative activities; and
• Leave with strategies and resources that support individual and collaborative professional learning growth around the standards.

Explore strategies you can use to have productive yet challenging conversations. Gain insight into conflict and interpersonal communication. Learn how to create action plans and use scripting tools that foster humane and growth-producing conversations while avoiding trigger words that put others on the defensive.

• Identify why we hesitate to have hard conversations;
• Consider questions to ask ourselves before we choose to speak up;
• Articulate in professional language the topic we want to address; and
• Determine the goals of the conversation and write an action plan of support.

Join former principal Pete Hall in an investigation of the true challenge of leadership: How do we best lead our people? Equip yourself with the strategies and mindsets to effectively lead those under your charge. Explore practical tools and applicable protocols and engage in opportunities to collaborate and reflect.

• Embrace the fundamental truths of leadership;
• Collaborate to build a common vision of leadership practices and outcomes; and
• Explore a model of capacity building that meets the needs of individual team members in the pursuit of excellence.

Experience curriculum-based learning and consider how it differs from traditional 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.

• Engage in core, structural, and functional design features and enabling conditions of curriculum-based professional learning and consider implications for your work;
• Examine a case study and video using a framework for curriculum-based professional learning;
• Consider roles and responsibilities for putting into action the elements of curriculum-based professional learning; and
• Apply the framework to assess current practice and make plans for next steps.

Frederick Brown, Learning Forward’s president and CEO, believes in the potential to transform our schools and our children’s futures by ensuring educators are at their best so students can become their best. Brown knows firsthand how excellent educators can change lives, not just from professional experience, but from his experience as a student transitioning from a diverse urban school to a rural school, where he was one of few students of color. Brown will share the importance of educators recognizing how lived experience — their own and their students’ — defines who they are and helps them bring the best version of themselves to classrooms, schools, and systems. Drawing on his professional learning experience, including as a sought-after facilitator and author of Becoming a Learning System and The Learning Principal, Brown will offer insights for educators who aspire to create the conditions that will enable each of their students to thrive.

• Explore how lived experiences contribute to the version of ourselves that we bring to our classrooms, buildings, and systems;
• Consider how the Standards for Professional Learning, particularly the equity standards, can guide educators seeking to increase student achievement and well-being; and
• Celebrate examples of adult learning that contributed to student learning and well-being.

Keynote speaker Frederick Brown will answer your questions in this special session after the keynote address on Monday.

Explore a framework that helps instructional leaders build collective efficacy while creating a cycle of continuous improvement through collaboration and systems thinking. Learn how your school or district can move from a focus on the newest initiative to a consistent focus on student learning. Use hands-on tools, including a comprehensive school improvement rubric, to plan next steps.

• Challenge long-held assumptions that result in roadblock thinking and learn to embrace forward thinking that builds collective efficacy and impacts student outcomes;
• Define the real work of professional learning communities (PLCs) and engage in conversations that enhance teacher practice and student learning while ensuring implementation of an equitable curriculum; and
• Assess your school’s current reality related to an equitable curriculum and assessments, authentic PLCs, and a culture of collaboration.

Engage in a simulation based on a real-life case that takes you through the different phases of an improvement process. Immerse yourself in team activities that let you practice using the key tools of improvement science and experience the personal and relational aspects of the work. Reflect with other participants on how you might apply this approach in your own work.

• Understand and experience the different phases of an improvement process;
• Learn about and apply improvement science tools and methods; and
• Experience what it is like to be part of an improvement team.

Learn why so many well-intentioned school leaders struggle in their efforts to reform grading and reporting, and how to avoid the conflicts and pushbacks they face. Understand the change process and how to engage parents and families as partners in reform efforts. Develop evidence-based procedures to ensure fair, accurate, meaningful, and equitable grading policies and practices while avoiding policies proven to have negative consequences for students, teachers, and schools.

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

Explore three elements of effective coaching practice: the GROWTH conversational framework, based on an approach first developed in Australia; essential coaching skills; and a coaching way of being. Gain a solid grounding and platform from which to develop more sophisticated skills and understanding of coaching as a way of leading or coaching as a highly effective leadership stance. Consider how coaching as a leader is more nuanced than other forms of coaching. Begin to adopt a coaching way of leading with more confidence.

• Understand the challenges administrators face when they try to have coaching conversations;
• Comprehend the most popular approaches to coaching and what are their strengths and limitations;
• Understand the GROWTH coaching model and how can administrators use it to guide coaching conversations; and
• Name the skills and beliefs that administrators should adopt to be effective coaches.

Visualize the difference between the best and worst presentation you have experienced as an adult learner and consider the differences between them. Learn 20 strategies that you can use to make any professional learning experience unforgettable. Explore techniques that result in sustained adult behavior change. Discover 10 things that keep adults living well beyond the age of 80.

• Ascertain why it can be so difficult for adults to change behavior and determine the order of change when asking adults to implement new behaviors;
• Examine six principles of adult learning theory to use with faculty and staff in professional learning;
• Experience 10 characteristics of quality professional learning to apply when implementing professional development; and
• Plan your next professional learning experience using an original template while incorporating brain-based strategies that take advantage of the ways all adult and student brains learn best.

Explore the principles of human-centered design and structural tension to address the challenges facing coaches and other instructional leaders. Use these principles to connect, inspire, create, and learn from one another through the problem-solving process. Create a plan of action and receive feedback to work through constraints in your own setting.  

• Gain inspiration from a network of colleagues as we design solutions that impact students, ourselves, and the system;
• Learn about human-centered design in conjunction with structural tension to strengthen your repertoire of strategies as a leader and consider how to apply these in your current role;
• Create a plan of action and receive feedback to actively work through current and relevant constraints in your work; and
• Identify your assets and leverage the assets of other participants in a learning community through empathetic interviews, peer review, and other networking opportunities.

Learn to increase the collective efficacy of a team through rigorous, engaging, and equitable collaborative planning and data analysis practices that lead to teacher and student engagement and success. Consider how to build planning processes for intentional collaboration that impact equitable student learning. Explore how to overcome barriers and challenges that often hinder collaborative structures within a building or district and how to address them through a leadership lens.

• Analyze current systems and structures for planning and determine areas to build deeper, more intentional collaboration and planning systems that target equitable student learning and engagement;
• Analyze current lesson design systems to map where key areas for equity exist and determine next steps; and
• Develop a timeline and a professional learning plan for implementation of collaborative data analysis and planning structures.

Identify and problem-solve the challenges of fostering teacher collaboration in small schools, where every teacher is teaching a different grade or subject. Engage in a discussion protocol that demonstrates how a competency-based inquiry approach can improve teacher collaboration in small schools. Leave with strategies that encourage teachers of multiple subjects and grades to collaborate and support each other.

• Explore a competency-based approach to find content and skills across grades and subjects where teachers will want to collaborate and support each other to improve outcomes for all learners;
• Simulate a collaborative meeting using a tool designed to find common ground between learning outcomes or standards of various grades and subjects that are united by a common competency;
• Identify ways to implement, monitor, and measure the success of separate interventions in each teacher’s classroom while staying connected to the competency; and  
• Be prepared to engage teachers of multiple subjects and grades in collaboration.

Learn a process for identifying what is at the heart of equity issues you are facing, distinguishing between symptoms and root causes. Understand the importance of taking an approach to root cause analysis that focuses on the system and our own agency and resists blaming and deficit thinking related to those we serve. Develop high-leverage change ideas you can use in your context.

• Distinguish between the symptoms and underlying causes contributing to a problem;
• Better understand how to prioritize root causes at the heart of equity issues impacting student learning and outcomes; and
• Facilitate a protocol with you own teams and those you support in improvement work.

Explore one Connecticut district’s innovative, combined professional learning and student enrichment opportunity. Learn how the district leveraged its summer acceleration program to support educator growth in mathematics instructional practice across elementary and secondary grade levels. Examine the outcomes of the combined opportunity, which have shown significant changes in educator practice and student growth in mathematics.

• Identify the high-leverage professional practices that support optimal teacher growth;
• Learn from the experiences of students and educators who participated in the professional learning series;
• Make data connections to determine the efficacy of the acceleration format of student learning during the summer program; and
• Leverage evidence and data to plan educator professional learning opportunities in your district.

Imagine a district where teacher leadership is encouraging and empowering. Engage in rich conversation and gain insight into how educators from one school district leveraged their district’s collective expertise and resources to develop a more culturally responsive and relevant K-12 Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) plan. Learn how they drew on teacher leadership to fuel the vision, and explore the implementation strategies used to build educator capacity in supporting all students for success.

• Understand how one district is changing the narrative on providing tiers of intervention for all students through a systems approach that uses data to inform decision-making;
• Gain insight into process and practices of an effective MTSS system, connecting culturally responsive practices across academics, behavior, and SEL;
• Understand how to leverage leadership with staff in individual buildings as part of MTSS and ongoing professional learning; and
• Leave with ready-to-use resources for creating and implementing effective MTSS systems and processes.

Explore the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on education through an Australian perspective on the integration of AI in teaching and learning. Delve into the latest advancements, address ethical considerations, and highlight successful AI applications in Australian classrooms. Explore educators’ roles in an AI-enhanced future, strategies for effective AI integration, and potential challenges. Gain a comprehensive understanding of AI’s role in shaping education.

• Explore the evolving role of educators in an AI-driven educational landscape and strategies for adapting to these changes;
• Examine the effects of AI on personalized learning, student engagement, and educational outcomes;
• Address challenges and opportunities of AI in education, including accessibility, equity, and digital literacy;and
• Develop skills for evaluating, selecting, and implementing AI technologies in teaching and learning contexts.

Explore a set of questioning protocols that will enable you to analyze curricula, account for imbalances in curricula, and move toward more balanced representations of people, cultures, and topics. Learn how to supplement and adjust instruction to address issues of representation and reframe discussions of people, groups, and historical topics in ways that engage and challenge students as they develop critical thinking and literacy analysis skills.

• Learn to analyze any piece of fiction or nonfiction to have a clear understanding of what identities are included;
• Build understanding of nuances in representation, particularly for traditionally marginalized groups;
• Examine specific language related to curriculum representation and rigor that will allow you to reflect on and discuss representational imbalances in new ways; and
• Understand how to collaborate with teams and parents in reviewing representation and rigor in curricula.

Learn how to coach teachers to ensure their instruction responds to students’ needs. Step into the shoes of a literacy coach and experience part of a reading coaching program from an urban school district that has led to double-digit gains in learning. Plan instruction aligned to student needs and rehearse a model lesson.

• Identify key components of a reading teacher fellows program and opportunities to embed them in your context;
• Participate in an experiential learning protocol where analyze student work, plan instruction aligned to student needs, and rehearse a model lesson.

Explore how our bias and blind spots are baked into the ways we organize, develop, and facilitate professional learning experiences in our schools and systems. Reflect on practices designed to improve teacher effectiveness that may, in fact, create marginalized experiences for diverse educators. Learn how to unpack and reform learning designs for conditions that allow participants to unmask their whole selves, enabling creativity, innovation, and collective efficacy to flourish.

• Examine how the complexities of identity development impact us all and how the power dynamics of any socially advantaged identity group create challenges in adult learning environments;
• Ascertain how the strategies employed by marginalized people in response to societal stressors cause chronic and historical trauma and how they manifest in and undermine the adult learning experience;
• Evaluate and discuss cognitive bias pitfalls using a collaborative inquiry protocol to explore whose identity, needs, voice, culture, and values are being centered and who is on margins; and
• Commit to relinquishing cognitive dissonance when developing adult learning experiences that leverage design thinking through equitable processes.

Explore how one Georgia school district moved from 22 state-designated schools to four by incorporating differentiated instruction for school administrators and teachers using the tiered approach. Gain insight into tiered professional learning, which considers supporting educators based on their levels of capacity, knowledge, and skills to cultivate shared responsibility, equitable access to learning, and a culture of collaboration.

• Gain insight on creating a tiered instructional design that will support all administrators and teachers in your district;
• Identify strategic components needed to support noninduction, administrators who are new to the district, and school-based designed professional learning for teachers; and
• Apply acquired strategies through collaborative responsibilities by providing high-quality initiatives to support administrators and teachers who are on professional learning plans that require individualized support.

Learn how your school can embrace student voice strategies to redesign systems with students, rather than designing for students. Explore a student-powered improvement approach that enlists students as authentic partners in school and classroom improvement. Gain specific protocols to increase student voice to improve schools and classrooms.

• Understand how students can be authentic partners in school and classroom improvement, leading to solutions that more closely meet students’ needs;
• Learn specific protocols to increase student voice to improve school and classroom practices;
• Explore conditions necessary to ensure equity is operationalized across student-powered improvement practices.

Cultivate a sense of belonging for diverse students in rigorous academic environments by defining rigor and understanding its correlation to equity, removing barriers, exploring culturally responsive instructional practices, and evaluating classroom environments. Explore personal mindsets and embark on a self-reflection journey. Determine action steps to impact more equitable opportunities for diverse students.

• Reflect on your own personal sense of belonging, how your understanding of belonging impacts the classroom environment, and how a sense of belonging impacts a student’s ability to be successful in a rigorous academic environment;
• Identify your own biases and mindsets, analyze how they impact your behaviors, and draw a correlation to how your behaviors impact equity; and
• Analyze your instructional practices and learning environments to see how they might enhance or inhibit a student’s ability to reach academic goals and their sense of belonging in a rigorous academic environment.

Discuss how professional learning is a critical lever to achieve equity. Unpack the relationship between equity and educator learning using Standards for Professional Learning. Engage in collaborative activities to explore what it means to have equity in professional learning. Discover how standards support leading, teaching, and learning to achieve equitable outcomes for students.

• 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 their own roles, responsibilities, and contexts by engaging in collaborative activities with several equity-based tools and resources.

Identify the unique characteristics of long-term English learners and explore research-based practices to engage and support them. Use an equity lens to focus on oral language discourse and reading complex, grade-level texts to promote academic achievement for long-term English learners. Explore leadership practices to facilitate and sustain achievement for long-term English learners that will help leaders and coaches embed the work in their everyday practice.

• Identify common characteristics of long-term English learners;
• Describe current research on long-term English learners;
• Implement research-based practices to support oral language discourse and access to complex texts for long-term English learners; and
• Plan ways to sustain a focus on long-term English learners within your context.

Consider how evaluating the impact of instructional coaching on student learning and achievement can increase desired outcomes. Learn how instructional coaching can transform teaching and learning through teacher-driven, job-embedded professional learning. Explore how to measure coaching outcomes and correlate them to classroom data measurements.

• Discover the “why” for 60% of a coach’s time in coaching cycles;
• Explore a process for implementing a tool to track the work of an instructional coach;
• Understand how to use a tool for tracking instructional coaching cycles to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional coaching programs in your school or district; and
• Reflect on your coaching programs and level of effectiveness to determine next steps for improvement.

Explore the contributors to effective learning program implementation — for student, teacher, and education leader alike. Examine cases from California school districts that highlight the intersection of liberatory design and educational leadership, STEAM professional learning, and the use of rigorous needs assessment to guide program design and implementation. Engage in dialogue on key findings from the cases and their relevance and application to local contexts.

• Understand how needs assessment, program design, and program evaluation all contribute to optimal learning program implementation and the pursuit of predictable program outcomes;
• Consider the intersection of liberatory design and learning practice, and cite implications for one's own role and effort;
• Identify critical implementation elements of a STEAM engagement and achievement initiative, including those supporting historically marginalized and underrepresented students; and
• Identify local challenges and opportunities that are well-suited for needs assessment inquiry and describe the anticipated benefits of such an investment.

Explore how school districts actualize anti-racism to promote educational equity and how professional learning can shift adult behaviors and beliefs in service of this mission. Examine how one district leveraged its anti-racist system audit to create leader learning at all levels that resulted in a shift in abilities to name and address racism. Leave with tools to collect learning data at multiple levels that capture these shifts in mindsets and practices.

• Examine how the district translated anti-racist system audit findings into a multiyear learning progression;
• Identify tools used to assess the development of leaders’ anti-racist behaviors and beliefs over time;
• Engage in key learning experiences designed to shift leaders’ behaviors and beliefs; and
• Evaluate the content and processes used to build staff capacity for anti-racist leadership and applicability to the attendee’s individual context.

Discover how an Oklahoma school district has strategically crafted a tiered support system for its newest educators, particularly career changers seeking alternative certification, to significantly impact student outcomes. Learn how this school district has aligned teacher support across departments to ensure coherence within a large system. Delve into the district’s tailored resources and strategies, and envision how they could be used to suit your district’s unique context and requirements.

• Explore a variety of aligned customized tools and resources to support teacher development;
• Consider how shared structures and resources might be adapted to fit your district context and needs; and
• Self-assess and reflect on current support in your district setting and ways in which you could shift toward more alignment.

Discover how an urban preparatory high school partnered with a reading and dyslexia expert to transform literacy in their schools using the Standards for Professional Learning, strategies, and protocols learned in the Learning Forward Academy. Explore components and tools of change as well as elements of reading instruction that teachers can use to help students gain literacy skills that will prepare them for the future.

• Analyze the elements of the Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teacher of Reading within the context of the Standards for Professional Learning;
• Critique the strengths, needs, and existing barriers of your educational setting to implement sustainable professional learning for teaching reading and writing for all teachers and students;
• Strategize targeted in-the-moment teaching opportunities to address student learning loss due to COVID-19; and
• Leave with implementation tools to share with colleagues.

Engage in collaborative, hands-on activities to develop a deeper understanding of the drivers of teacher turnover, explore the conditions within your control to address it, and begin to develop a theory of improvement and action plan based on equitable access to effective professional learning supports.

• Reflect on current practices and identify compelling evidence to support transformation;
• Identify effectives strategies and explore resources to increase educator voice, choice, and agency in their professional learning; and
• Begin to create an action plan to transform professional learning systems to address teacher development and retention.

Learn to leverage partnerships and digital tools to collaboratively build learning pathways and learning plans even with limited resources. Examine a career development framework that provides all employees in districts large or small with growth opportunities based on their position and personal interests. Gain strategies and collaborative efforts available to broaden their capacity.

• Explore how to identify resources, partners, and strategies to create a career development framework;
• Identify opportunities for staff retention through career development pathways;
• Create a plan of action for staff retention and growth, then establish an implementation plan that includes a strategy for building your own career development framework, forging a community of partnerships, and identifying the stakeholders that will champion the body of work.

Examine a district initiative to increase student achievement in middle school math through coaching a curriculum-based professional learning community (PLC) to support equitable, grade-level, rigorous instruction. Learn how coaching support has increased teacher effectiveness, built a culture of trust among collaborating educators, and increased student achievement. Develop a plan to increase teacher effectiveness while ensuring coaching conversations are inquisitive, nonevaluative, and nonjudgmental.

• Examine how coaching a curriculum-based PLC increases teacher effectiveness;
• Understand how coaching for district initiatives can increase student success;
• Reflect on current coaching practices to determine opportunities for change; and
• Develop a plan for implementation of coaching a curriculum-based PLC.

Learn how one district created a systemic, multifaceted approach to develop education leaders through professional learning, coaching, and a district culture that emphasizes continuous learning. Explore how to identify and nurture future leaders by providing them with opportunities to practice leadership skills and involving them in decision-making processes. Leave with a structure for creating a leadership development program.

• Examine research-based leadership development resources and strategies;  
• View feedback monitoring forms that promote dialogue and next steps; and
• Create an action plan for how to replicate this process.

Learn about an innovative school district-university partnership model of self-selected professional learning for teachers that provides pathways to leadership while staying in the classroom, increasing teacher performance and student achievement. Explore ways to customize this for your setting, consider roadblocks to implementation, and collaborate on possible solutions.

• Explore details of a successful school-university partnership in which teachers select areas of study, the district contributes funding, and the university offers courses based on teachers’ schedules;
• Engage in activities that model the mutually beneficial and flexible partnership process needed for meaningful professional learning programs to emerge and evolve; and
• Brainstorm local partners and programs in your area that may be possible fits for similar programs.

Discover the difference between destructive and productive conflict and its impact on equitable systemic change. Gain a deeper awareness of your conflict styles, explore foundational conflict theory like the physiology and predictable stages of conflict, and practice using a tool that has worked across multicultural settings for identifying positive action steps that transform conflicts.

• Explore definitions and surface assumptions about conflict and peace while deepening an awareness of conflict styles and our personal, familial, and cultural experiences with conflict;
• Explore foundational conflict theory, including the physiology of conflict as well as its predictable stages; and
• Practice application of the learning with a tool that has worked across multicultural settings for identifying positive action steps that transform group conflicts from destructive to productive.

Strategically plan to develop a leadership pipeline to ensure that every student excels. Experience how Newark Charter School engaged in a research-based self-study to take action to recruit, develop, support, and retain highly effective leaders who are dedicated to excellence. Leave with a strong research base and possible next steps to support your local education agency to build teacher leader capacity and enhance student learning.

• Examine and brainstorm ways to develop a leadership pipeline and establish systems and structures to build the capacity of educators to support professional learning so that every student excels;
• Identify priority domains for your local education agency using The Wallace Foundation Principal Pipeline Self-Study Guide as a research base; 
• Examine one local education agency’s action steps aligned with priority domains; and
• Create an action plan for next steps for your local education agency.

Reimagine a comprehensive professional learning plan to support teacher sustainability. Learn how intentionally designed professional learning for our newest educators increases opportunity for students to be successful regardless of the classroom in which they are placed. Explore the key capacities and fundamental strategies essential to improving teacher self-efficacy through onboarding, ongoing, and just-in-time learning.

• Engage in collaborative discussions on new hire educator data, teacher capacity, and effective mentoring support; and
• Examine ways to build a community of educators who possess a sense of self-efficacy to meet students’ needs and sustain them in their work.

Explore the elements of a fully virtual leadership program where social and emotional learning (SEL) is the content and the experience. Learn how we created a humanized virtual learning space of belonging and curiosity focused on the knowledge, skill, and will necessary to lead systemic SEL implementation. Leave with concrete next steps for designing and facilitating your next virtual professional learning.

• Create opportunities for virtual professional learning sessions and communities that embed social and emotional learning across all topics and content areas;
• Learn how to center SEL content and practices in virtual professional learning design;
• Identify key elements of practicing SEL in the facilitation of virtual professional learning; and
• Collaborate to design and sustain virtual learning communities that authentically center humanity while improving systemic implementation.

Explore the transformative realm of microlearning in this session, unraveling its potent ability to enhance engagement and alleviate cognitive burdens. Delve into the intricate process of crafting dynamic microlearning videos using PowerPoint as we dissect the essential steps. Master the art of constructing self-service microlearning tutorials with Google Slides, ensuring hands-on involvement. Bring your laptops, collaborate, and forge impactful products together.

• Review research behind adult learning theory, attention spans and research behind the benefits of microlearning;
• Learn the basics of creating a video using PowerPoint;
• Learn the basics of creating a kiosk using Google Slides; and
• Review lessons learned, incluing tips and tricks.

Reimagine learning for leadership teams with an engaging project-based professional learning approach. Discover how project-based learning structures can shift the focus from sit-and-get to collaborative inquiry, learner-centered experiences, and authentic continuous improvement. Reignite your own passion for adult learning and expand your capacity to affect change.

• Discover the evidence-based benefits of project-based learning as an instructional model for adult learners;
• Consider personalized adult learning to achieve high expectations and reach shared goals; and
• Leave with tools, templates, and resources to duplicate desired processes on your campus, in your department, or districtwide.

Discover how to support professional learning facilitators in designing high-quality professional learning that honors participant feedback, is data-focused, and is aligned to district and site needs. Examine adult learning theory concepts as well as how to provide job-embedded follow-up resources to professional learning facilitators. Learn how to train your professional learning facilitators to use a tracking system to design differentiated adult learning experiences.

• Learn how a large urban district designed facilitator professional learning, what it includes, and how follow-up support is provided;
• Review the data used to design the program and learn how data drives its continuous evolution;
• Determine how you can design a program for your professional learning facilitators and how to monitor your program using data and evidence; and
• Brainstorm with others and draft a professional learning facilitators’ session.

Investigate the key elements for transforming school climate and culture. Learn strategies and practices to cultivate a sense of belonging among students and staff, which research shows positively impacts student engagement, academic achievement, and overall well-being. Leave with practical tools and ideas to cultivate a culture of belonging to drive both connection and engagement.

• Gain an understanding of the elements necessary for transforming school climate and culture and the impact a strong sense of belonging has on student engagement, academic achievement, and overall well-being;
• Learn strategies and practices that cultivate a sense of belonging among students and staff;
• Be empowered to make informed decisions for enhancing student success;
• Leave equipped with practical tools and actionable ideas to implement.

Explore how your school district can leverage professional learning to expand teacher leadership and instill mindsets and instructional practices that align with your district strategic plan. Investigate how one district focused on cohort learning in an internal university model to cultivate a culture of leadership, drive positive change, and, most importantly, improve student outcomes. Reflect on your current vision for adult learning and walk away with concrete practices to implement tomorrow.

• Gain insights into aligning professional learning initiatives with your school district’s strategic plan;
• Explore how targeted teacher leadership development can be a catalyst for achieving key educational objectives, enhancing both educator effectiveness and overall student outcomes;
• Investigate the success of an internal university model focused on cohort learning within a school district and understand how this approach fosters collaboration, shared learning experiences, and the development of a community of teacher leaders; and
• Reflect on your current vision for adult learning and leave with practical, concrete practices to implement immediately.

Learn how Moberly School District in Missouri created and implemented a support program for new teachers. Examine the program, called Supporting, Helping, & Inspiring New Educators (SHINE), and gather ideas and strategies for helping new professionals find support during the challenges of launching their careers.

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

Learn how one district has focused on assistant principal development as part of a systemwide strategy to strengthen leadership. Explore the ways district leaders, principals, and assistant principals can reimagine the assistant principalship, given its importance and centrality to school improvement and effectiveness. Examine the roles of district leaders, principals, and assistant principals in developing and supporting assistant principals.

• Consider how the number, distribution, and demographic characteristics of assistant principals changed over time and what might explain these patterns; and
• Explore how career advancement into the assistant principal role differs by educators’ race, ethnicity, and gender.

Learn about a disciplinary learning lab experience that examined considerations of argumentative reading and writing in each core discipline. Explore a learning lab model that humanizes the experience of learners and presenters. Gain an understanding of the components of learning lab design so you can design your own learning lab experience.

• Learn the difference between content-area literacy and disciplinary literacy and experience classroom examples of the latter;
• Leave with a framework to design your own learning lab experience; and
• Be able to engage in the components of learning lab design, from planning and preparing research to coaching a team of classroom teachers and using a debriefing protocol.

Learn how promising practices of two evidence-based professional learning approaches are structured to engage teachers in a culture of collaboration and support continual professional learning. Understand how each of these approaches are similar, how they differ, and what is needed to build and sustain a culture of collaboration. Examine how the components of these professional learning approaches could be developed and applied in the context of your district or school.

• Explore the components of two promising approaches to professional learning developed through a researcher-practitioner collaboration; 
• Examine the factors necessary for successful implementation of each promising practice; and
• Have an opportunity during the session to examine a real problem of practice from your district or school and consider how you might apply promising practices from the two approaches to professional learning to resolve your problem of practice.

Learn about a collaborative inquiry model that engages educator teams in collecting various types of evidence, analyzing it, and taking high-leverage action to accelerate learning. Explore the inquiries of several professional learning communities (PLCs), listen to student perception, and hear how a suburban high school has strategically scaled this inquiry model, resulting in increased assessment for learning and student achievement.

• Explore a framework for collaborative inquiry that can be used by all educator teams;
• Engage in purposeful classroom and team protocols that will guide and propel a team’s inquiry;
• Hear one district’s story and analyze the impact of its PLCs’ inquiries; and
• Leave with a strategic plan for scaling the inquiry framework to all PLCs.

Learn to design and create intentional gathering spaces for substitute educators. Hear how professional learning communities (PLCs) for substitutes, through a partnership with a local union, are transforming the way to support substitute educators. Explore how these PLCs offer ongoing support and community to substitutes and other marginalized groups in education. Review data collected over the past three years showing how PLCs for substitutes retain and recruit teachers.

• Experience a model PLC for substitutes that is grounded in equity, inclusion, storytelling, and the centering of student and educator voices;
• Acquire tools and a framework for establishing and adapting this model to your setting;
• Understand how supporting substitute educators and other educational support professionals supports classroom teachers;
• Leave with a framework for scaling the work.

Examine tools and practices K-12 teachers and leaders can use to build engaging learning environments in their schools. Explore the theory and practice behind artificial intelligence (AI), from developing lesson plans and resources to designing student-centered learning activities that capitalize on expanded technology yet capture critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration among students and staff.

• Understand the capabilities of AI in shaping instructional design;
• Explore tools and methodologies for creating interactive and engaging learning environments; and
• Design student-centered learning activities that combine technological advances with traditional academic goals.

Experience a model of a summer lab program as a method to improve teacher effectiveness. Learn how to design high-quality mathematics professional learning to shift mindsets and practices to better serve all students using collaboration, modeling, and reflection of current teaching practices. Gain insights and strategies you can apply to your own classroom or context.

• Learn effective classroom facilitation techniques, including how to create an academically safe environment, use quality tasks to promote deep understanding, and employ strategies to encourage student participation and discourse;
• Experience a model of a lab classroom as either a student or educator to understand how to facilitate a lab classroom, its impact on student learning and improvement of teaching, and how it supports high-quality professional learning for schools or districts that are ready to shift their mathematics education departments; and
• Be equipped to apply the learned strategies and insights in your own classroom or context, leading to improved student engagement, understanding, and performance in mathematical concepts.

Discover how lab classrooms can provide a form of immersive curriculum-based professional learning that meets the unique needs of skeptics and late adopters. Explore the structure of a lab classroom and the planning required to create one. Leave with a plan for enacting a lab classroom in your own context.

• Understand how the categories of adopters in the diffusion of innovation curve (from Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory) relate to your work in schools, districts, and networks;
• Make connections between the lab classroom design and the tenets of curriculum-based professional learning; and
• Create plans for a lab classroom in your context to support immersive curriculum-based professional learning during the adoption and implementation of high-quality instructional materials.

Explore mathematical illusions in the grade book for career and technical education courses and how they cause an opportunity gap for marginalized populations. Examine your beliefs and values about grading, and learn new ways to reduce bias. Create rubrics that assess skill over behavior, and learn how to backward plan for reassessment of skills throughout a semester.

• Excavate biases, beliefs, and values related to grading and assessment practices;
• Be able to articulate new ways to make grading practices more equitable and focused on skill development in a career and technical education course over time; and
• Generate rubrics and design actionable goals and next steps with grading systems, rubric design, and assessment.

Discover how your state or district can transform early literacy instruction to ensure students can read and write at grade level. Explore the types of support state and district leaders need to ensure meaningful change. Evaluate your current plan and consider ways to strengthen it.

• Describe each of the three components of a strong approach to implementing the science of reading, including the role each plays in improving teaching and learning and the consequences of removing one or more components;
• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a sample district and state plan for improving literacy instruction; and
• Evaluate the strength of your current plan, including missing components and strategies and resources you can use to strengthen it.

Explore how a district-university partnership designed a yearlong experiential and job-embedded learning experience for aspiring multilingual school leaders. Learn how participants implemented an instructional change project and participated in learning experiences that led to significant growth in leadership skills and program outcomes. Acquire knowledge of program outcomes, goals met, participant growth data, and next steps for program improvement to support your next steps in designing and implementing leadership support for aspiring multilingual leaders.

• Engage in collaborative conversations focused on developing leaders who create equitable learning environments for multilingual learners;
• Learn how one school district leveraged partnerships with a university and national expert in leadership development to build a job-embedded professional learning program focused on developing culturally responsive leadership in aspiring multilingual leaders;
• Identify components of culturally responsive leadership and how those components were embedded within a leadership development program scope and sequence; and
• Understand the barriers that arose in program development and implementation and hear the strategies used to address them.

Examine, analyze, and compare educators’ professional learning practices in countries that combine strong student performance with equitable opportunities in education. Apply Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning to compare professional learning processes and practices with those most often used in the U.S. Consider which international models could be adapted for the U.S.

• Learn and discuss the purpose, process, content, and results of OECD’s 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), and the rankings of educational systems, including those identified as high-performing systems and systems with equitable student outcomes;
• Learn about educator development and practice in selected countries and consider different models;
• Compare selected international processes and practices with those most often used in the U.S. using Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning as a framework; and
• Apply the knowledge and understanding acquired in this session to consider possible changes to United States teacher professional learning processes.

Ask yourself whether all students and families can see themselves in your school or some are expected to check their culture at the door. Reflect on your school’s current practices to determine how the existence or absence of culturally responsive practices may be promoting or inhibiting student achievement and engagement. Walk away with practical strategies and resources to help foster a school environment that honors the voice and cultural wealth of all students and families to enhance sense of belonging.

• Learn how to create equitable systems that will increase sense of belonging with students and families;
• Explore strategies and resources for helping students understand their why and empower their voice; and
• Leave with a road map that will help you lead your staff through equity-focused professional learning that moves from awareness to action.

Explore the transformative power of shaping school culture through meaningful conversations, developing student leaders and student-led support programs, building supportive communities, and implementing initiatives that resonate with students and staff on a deeper, more personal level. Learn practical strategies for creating a nurturing school culture that values emotional intelligence and student well-being while still achieving outstanding educational outcomes.

• Learn to apply empathetic leadership to foster a positive school culture and drive academic excellence;
• Gain strategies to create a nurturing school culture that balances emotional intelligence with student academic success;
• Explore methods to develop and support student-led initiatives, enhancing peer leadership and mental health advocacy; and
• Be able to integrate whole-student approaches into your practice, promoting inclusive, high-achieving educational outcomes.

Learn how to boost staff and student morale through a culture of collaboration by creating a schoolwide project with universal buy-in and benefits to all stakeholders. Say yes more to allow student and staff agency in school-based decisions. Experience how one high school focused on ensuring all stakeholders feel a sense of belonging by growing school spirit and embedding student choice and voice within the curriculum. Be in control of your school’s story by learning how to leverage social media as a recognition tool and how staff and students get to be the authors of your school’s story.

• Learn how to leverage what’s important to students and staff to create and sustain a culture of collaboration;
• Identify what the school community wants and needs through informal surveys;
• Use data to plan for and invite marginalized students into the school life and culture; and
• Embed student choice and voice within existing curriculum to improve engagement.

Explore how schools use evidenced-based changes to improve the rates of students on track for post-secondary success. Take a deep dive into an equity-focused improvement community composed of 40 high schools across nine California districts. Learn how this network is making gains for African American and Latinx students living in poverty by transforming their 9th-grade experience. Leave with tools and insight about proven strategies.

• Learn how an equity-focused improvement community works to provide schools access to professional learning, coaching, assessment tools, and monthly reports to support student success;
• Understand specific teaming structures leading to improvement;
• Dive into data that is helping the network improve 9th-grade off-track rates; and
• Leave with tools that you can use in your setting to engage students and teachers.

Learn ways school districts can understand and respond to the unique needs of the diverse populations they serve. Explore how Pasco Public School District in Washington is implementing a framework centered on belonging to better serve students and staff in a growing migrant community. Leave with resources and strategies to help inform a school or districtwide plan to support your school community’s changing needs.

• Examine the intersection of factors that hinder or heighten possibilities of equity in school communities;
• Explore an iterative improvement model and strategies for quantitative and qualitative data collection, analysis, and use; and
• Identify current practices and envision steps towards a desired state in achieving educational equity for your school community.

Explore strategies for measuring the impact of professional learning on teacher performance and student outcomes. Discover qualitative and quantitative methods for gathering data to measure five levels of evidence. Learn what school districts are doing to move from evidence to action as well as what others in the seminar are doing. Leave with ideas for documenting desired outcomes and inspiration for acting on the effectiveness of your professional learning initiatives.

• Become acquainted with Guskey’s (2000) five levels for evaluating professional learning;
• Learn about qualitative and quantitative tools for measuring the desired teacher, student, and system outcomes;
• Discover how districts are using data to determine the effectiveness of their initiatives, plan and implement professional learning based on teacher and student data, and design systemic changes; and
• Leave with ideas for documenting desired outcomes and inspiration for acting on the effectiveness of your professional learning initiatives.

Learn how a comprehensive districtwide approach to professional learning and coaching can create a culture of high expectations and continuous learning. Experience how one district uses a comprehensive districtwide professional learning and coaching system to drive results at the district, building, and classroom levels. Identify your current reality, set a goal, and create a plan for improvement.

• Assess how the alignment of professional learning across the district, school, and classroom promotes continuous improvement and creates a districtwide culture of coaching;
• Analyze the impact of personalized, ongoing embedded professional learning;
• Use impact coaching cycles to personalize professional learning to meet the unique needs of all educators; and
• Set a goal and plan for leveraging a districtwide system of coaching to deepen professional learning.

Learn to design a professional learning system that is rooted in the Standards for Professional Learning, reflects your district’s vision and values, and whose primary goal is to impact student outcomes through improvements in educator practices. Examine a district’s successful implementation of a professional learning system with experiences that are job-embedded, application-focused, and supported over time. Reflect on the importance of evaluating the learning system to ensure effectiveness and sustainability.

• Understand how to develop a professional learning system grounded in the Standards for Professional Learning, aimed at advancing long-term district improvement goals, and built to grow the capacity of instructional leaders at all levels;
• Use Guskey’s five levels of professional development as a framework for designing professional learning that engages teachers in experiences directly intended to improve student outcomes;
• Analyze exemplars of resources that ensure longevity and maintain a high standard of quality; and
• Reflect on ways to assess for impact.

Explore a countywide approach to building capacity, scaling up, and sustaining Universal Design for Learning (UDL) implementation to ensure inclusion and equitable access for all learners. Success, challenges, and lessons learned will be shared along with tangible strategies and methods that ensure sustainability and scalability. Consider how you can apply this to your context.

• Understand how to communicate the “why” and build agency around the implementation of UDL;
• Gain insight into the processes and challenges of building capacity, scaling up, and sustaining implementation; and
• Acquire strategies and methods that ensure sustainability and scalability.

Discover what Innovation Configuration (IC) maps are all about and how they help translate the Standards for Professional Learning into the daily work of educators in varying roles and responsibilities. Learn how to use IC maps to plan and monitor your work and the work of your colleagues regarding standards implementation at the daily behavior level.

• Experience a high-level review of Standards for Professional Learning;
• Identify specific actions for applying standards to your daily work using Innovation Configuration maps; and
• Discover additional resources available to support implementation of Standards for Professional Learning.

Learn from district leaders using BSCS Science Learning’s powerful Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STeLLA) professional learning program to support curriculum implementation over time. Engage in nested analysis of practice using a video clip from the classroom as one teacher implements high-quality instructional materials and a video clip from the professional learning setting as study group members analyze that same classroom video clip. Link the experience to the elements of curriculum-based professional learning.

• Engage in a nested analysis of practice and highlight core, structural, and functional design features and enabling conditions of curriculum-based professional learning;
• Consider leadership roles and responsibilities for putting into action the elements of curriculum-based professional learning based on district leaders’ experiences; and
• Reflect on the experience and consider implications for your work.

Explore ways school districts can create strong principal pipelines to recruit and retain effective school leaders. Learn how a medium-sized suburban school district in Florida developed comprehensive leader support programs aligned to rigorous leadership standards that lead to specific actions that define the day-to-day work of principals and create stakeholder efficacy.

• Identify promising practices in creating the conditions to recruit and retain effective leaders;
• Identify critical components of a strong talent pipeline;
• Examine multiple resources based on learning standards, competencies, or the concrete, specific actions that define the day-to-day work of principals; and
• Create an action plan for how to implement practices to support, coach, and help leaders develop meaningful professional networks.

Explore how one district revitalized its first-year teacher mentoring program and gain practical tips and stories on how a successful program can help beginning teachers reach new heights. Join us for an engaging discussion on growth, support, and teacher retention through mentorship. Get ready for an inspiring journey toward personal and professional elevation.

• Learn how one large district refined and revitalized its first-year teacher mentoring program;
• Gain insight into developing and successfully implementing a mentoring program for first-year teachers; and
• Identify different contexts where this approach could benefit your school or district community.

Experience the concept of four hats of shared leadership, which offers both guiding frameworks and sets of practical tools for anyone in a leadership position. Discuss how schools are adaptive in nature, where all players learn to wear all four hats of leadership: facilitating, presenting, coaching, and consulting. Consider how these hats give structure and support to the roles that leaders play in developing self-directed groups.

• Distinguish between and among the four hats of shared leadership: coaching, consulting, presenting, and facilitating;
• Examine the capabilities associated with each of the four hats and use those capabilities as a self-assessment tool;
• Learn when, why, and how to effectively and efficiently use each of the hats; and
• Explore and plan next steps for deepening proficiency.

Learn how to design effective professional learning about content instruction for multilingual learners. Examine guidance and practical tools from a multiyear partnership with Montgomery County, Maryland, from a needs assessment through ongoing professional learning cycles and coaching. Leave with tools you can implement in your school or district to strengthen your multilingual learner professional learning practices.

• Define a framework for intentional, ongoing professional learning to elevate multilingual learner instruction, including a needs assessment, professional learning cycles, informal “chat and chews,” coaching visits, and summary reports;
• Explore research-based tools aligned to the framework to determine areas of strength and growth in your context, including look-fors and coaching guides; and
• Create a plan to implement similar professional learning cycles to elevate multilingual learner instruction in your context using tools aligned to the framework.

Discover how one of the largest school systems in Tennessee uses research to implement high-quality instructional materials at scale. Hear from district and school leaders, instructional coaches, and classroom teachers about the ups and downs of the implementation process and lessons learned while holding firm to the belief that all students deserve the right to read. Learn how to implement high-quality instructional materials while supporting leaders and teachers’ developing knowledge base of reading.

• Compare and contrast two methods of high-quality instructional materials implementation;
• Learn ways to collect data for aligned leadership development and job-embedded teacher professional learning;
• Understand how to analyze and use data for aligned leadership development and job-embedded teacher professional learning; and
• Be able to develop principals to provide curriculum-based feedback.

Engage in a highly interactive, facilitated professional learning experience applying autoethnography that will lead to identifying and analyzing participants' pivotal lived experiences in managing, leading, facilitating, or participating in professional learning. Extract and share the individual and collective constructed knowledge about professional learning. Propose a draft of the synthesized knowledge for an article or paper to be submitted for publication.

• Understand how to use autoethnography (first-person research) to examine and learn from lived experiences as a form of professional learning;
• Analyze pivotal professional learning experiences to construct individual and collective constructed knowledge;
• Expand knowledge about professional learning by proposing ways to share the constructed knowledge broadly with others in professional learning.

Learn how a multi-tiered system of support's (MTSS) technical assistance center created values-driven professional learning to grow teams’ skills in professional learning design, implementation, and evaluation. Explore how Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning and other evidence-based resources informed the personalized, equity-focused professional learning based on participants’ needs and ongoing data collection. Examine the strategies, protocols, case studies, and evidence of impact data, and leave with resources you can adapt to your setting.

• Identify the evidence-based resources, frameworks, strategies, and data collection activities used to inform the design, delivery, and evaluation of the comprehensive professional learning plan;
• Describe how the technical assistance center’s organizational values were strategically infused within the learning designs to enhance individual and collective capacity;
• Practice applying high-leverage professional learning design methods, engagement strategies, and evaluation techniques featured within the series; and
• Use and adapt resources, tools, checklists, materials, and planning documents to facilitate customized professional learning at the school, district, and state levels.

Explore effective strategies to foster equitable educational outcomes. Gain practical tools for creating inclusive learning environments and tailoring teaching methods to meet diverse student needs. Apply these insights to your educational setting, enhancing educator capacity and student success.

• Build a professional learning tool kit using an action for equity framework design;
• Learn how to engage adults in reimagining and redesigning learning environments around equitable outcomes for every student; and
• Commit to taking action steps that will modernize the learning environment, address staff and student voice, choice and agency, and result in equitable outcomes for every learner.

Discover how embedding formative assessment and differentiation within professional learning is key to understanding and responding to learners. Experience choice and voice as you enhance your understanding of responsive facilitation practices.

• Deepen understanding of the relationship between formative assessment, participant engagement, and responsive facilitation;
• Reflect on the role of differentiation as it pertains to adult learning needs; and
• Experience facilitation strategies for implementing choice and voice into professional learning.

Join our flight crew to excite and ignite learning in your classroom and schools through a “flight plan” that builds learner agency. Examine numerous strategies as you build a plan for lifting off and accelerating learning through high-impact strategies with amazing student and classroom examples. Join us to design a flight path that best fits your students to enable them to soar in their learning and grow their efficacy to take flight.

• Examine and codify the enabling conditions in your classroom or school that provide the foundation for learner agency to thrive in your district, school, or classroom ;
• Design and plan steps and select tools to create your own plan to grow learner agency;
• Collect tools, establish next steps, and bank critical insights that inspire your team to increase engagement and efficacy in learning based on research and the science of learning; and
• Explore a variety of evidence-based learning designs that have proven successful from districts building learner agency in their organization.

Discover how a teacher apprenticeship program innovates teacher preparation, tackling teacher shortages and boosting education quality. Learn strategies for creating effective pathways for aspiring educators, enhancing career readiness and student outcomes. Apply insights to develop adaptable, progressive educational models tailored to your community’s needs, leading to continuous improvement and excellence.

• Understand how a teacher apprenticeship program addresses educator shortages and elevates teaching and learning quality;
• Explore strategies to design and implement teacher apprenticeship models within your setting;
• Learn how to support aspiring educators in their journey toward fulfilling careers, emphasizing the development of critical skills and competencies needed in today’s educational landscape; and
• Gain insights into tailoring the apprenticeship program to fit the unique needs of your educational community.

Examine the leadership efforts it takes to prepare all teachers for a strong start by ensuring a school climate based on strong relationships, clear expectations, and an understanding of what students need to learn and grow. Identify leadership practices that create a strong school culture in which teachers can thrive through efficient systems and intentional team building.

• Explore classroom systems that set teachers up for a strong start;
• Learn the steps teachers need to take to establish their teacher voice; and
• Examine the impact of trauma on students’ brain states and how teachers can proactively and reactively address student needs.

Gain a better understanding of the unique challenges faced by new teachers early in their careers. Consider the implications of designing support for new teachers who enter education through various certification pathways. Learn about ongoing support for new educators at the district and campus levels. Discover resources that align with effective new teacher support. Leave empowered to support and mentor new teachers effectively.

• Explore practical strategies and insights to foster a positive and impactful environment for new educators;
• Learn effective mentoring techniques, classroom management tips, and personalized approaches to meet diverse student needs; and
• Experience discussions, collaborative activities, and real-world case studies, equipping you with the tools to empower and inspire new teachers.

Learn how a Board of Cooperative Educational Services uses leader, student, and teacher voices to build strategic planning. Explore new ways to collect actionable data to provide real-time insight into aligning educators’ and students’ beliefs and actions to drive strategic planning. Gain an understanding of the importance of elevating all voices to ensure that the strategic plan meets the needs of all stakeholders.

• Acquire tools for collecting live data;
• Gain real-world insights into how to align educators’ and students’ perspectives that guide and create effective strategic planning; and
• Walk away with actionable practices you will be able the bring back to your district.

Explore the work of four regional inservice centers in Alabama and their ongoing support of secondary instructional coaches. Examine resources, tools, and materials that you can implement in your coaching practices to support secondary instructional coaches and teachers. Build a community of practice with other instructional coaches and leaders to foster collaboration and exchange ideas for effective coaching strategies. Leave with actionable takeaways that can be shared and implemented in your district.

• Understand the importance of instructional coaching;
• Understand the roles and responsibilities of a secondary instructional coach;
• Gain strategies for building a coaching community for secondary instructional coaches; and
• Engage in discussion with colleagues on resources and tools used to support secondary instructional coaches.

Discover what kind of teacher you are, why it matters, and how to tell the difference between a healthy classroom and a dysfunctional classroom. Gain strategies to help you with classroom management and student engagement. Learn how to increase instructional time and decrease students’ time off-task. Leave with strategies and techniques you can implement in your classroom.

• Gain strategies to help you with classroom management and student engagement;
• Learn how to increase instructional time and decrease students’ time off-task;
• Learn how to eliminate warnings for off-task students and multiple requests to stay on task; and
• Be encouraged and challenged to implement strategies and techniques that will change your classroom climate immediately.

Explore the role teachers will play in building a new educational architecture that meets the needs and aspirations of today’s students, postsecondary institutions, and the workforce. Identify new goals for what students should know and be able to do, new learning experiences that transform teaching and learning, and new indicators of success. Learn how teacher engagement, supportive policies, smart infrastructure, and intuitive technology are essential to this vision.

• Develop a deeper understanding of the research and tools related to the identification of skills, competencies, and dispositions that most accurately predict success;
• Access lessons learned from a diverse mix of urban, suburban, and rural educational communities that are testing Carnegie Unit alternatives; and
• Gain insight into learning experiences designed to build academic content knowledge and academic, cognitive, and social-emotional capacities at the same time.

• Identify and address specific aspects of teaching practices relating to the three domains of engagement;
• Gain practical strategies for fostering student engagement in elementary and secondary classrooms;
• Be equipped with effective assessment methods that empower students to actively contribute feedback on their engagement experiences; and
• Be prepared to apply the acquired knowledge and strategies in your teaching context.

Learn why physical exercise — coupled with cross-body movements, joyful learning, and play-based learning — helps minimize math anxiety and maximize the speed of learning and information retention through the development of new neurons and their connections. Gain practical ideas for creating structures to ensure equitable access for all learners. Boost your own wellness as you engage in low-impact, cross-body movements that can be done sitting or standing in place.

• Develop a deeper understanding of the research, theoretical approaches, and instructional implications of teaching and learning strategies that prioritize physical activity;
• Learn about the negative implications behind math anxiety, how schools use movement-based learning to lessen math anxiety, and why math anxiety limits efforts to offer equitable access; and
• Learn strategies for implementing activities and resources that are inclusive to all learning styles and effective for students who have faced adversity or live with adverse childhood experiences.

Learn how you can design and develop highly effective coaching teams aligned to Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning that can transform teaching and learning by using data to drive decisions, empower teachers to be the best version of themselves, and ultimately impact student success.

• Leave with a plan for building a highly effective team of instructional coaches;
• Access an implementation plan for developing an effective team; and
• Develop a variety of ideas for professional learning structures that touch on the roles of the coach.

Explore how one school district creates and implements flexible, collaborative book studies focusing on anti-racism and equity. Learn how the blended learning format meets teacher needs and interests while improving educational equity for students by creating safe spaces for challenging conversations. Investigate how it has been adapted, offer feedback, and learn how it could be adapted to your setting.

• Explore how one school district’s collaborative book studies focus on educational equity for students, creating safe spaces for challenging conversations about bias, racism, classism, sexism, and other prevalent issues in society;
• Investigate various iterations of the model along with the data associated with each iteration;
• Share ideas and feedback for adjustments for the future; and
• Learn how this model could be adapted for use in any educational setting.

Examine the research and strategies that support the health and well-being of employees to increase engagement and decrease burnout. Investigate a wellness framework created to support employees that, in turn, promotes students’ success. Apply and use resources to create personalized learning communities that will promote a positive learning environment, setting up learners for success.

• Discuss physical, social, and mental wellness strategies and resources that create healthy environments for educators;
• Incorporate brain-based principles and research to support well-being;
• Attain wellness frameworks to promote a healthy environment through health and wellness challenges that will create a positive culture within the workplace; and
• Create your own framework using provided strategies and resources to support health and wellness in your professional community.

Learn how a school with a 99% Black male student population is using fugitive pedagogy’s Black learner aesthetic to center Blackness and the cultural and historical contributions of Black people. Experience sample strategies like restorative circles, experiential learning, and curricula infused with Black culture and history to understand how the school is developing a learning environment that is more inclusive and responsive to the needs of their students.

• Understand fugitive pedagogy’s Black learner aesthetic and how it has transformed education for Black male students in a Washington, D.C., high school;
• Be able to identify students in your schools who are considered at the margin, not only based on standard metrics (such as poverty) but also more nuanced metrics (such as exposure to violence); and
• Leave with specific examples of restorative practices to make school a safe place for young Black men to try, develop, fail, and learn.

Learn how you can support the development of specially designed instruction for diverse learners in inclusive schools. Explore an instructional planning guide used to build the capacity of educators to develop specially designed instruction for learners with extensive support needs in the general education classroom. Leave with a new coaching tool for specially designed instruction planning as well as an understanding of how coaches can support teams in the planning process.

• Demonstrate proficiency in using an instructional planning guide to build educators’ capacity in developing specially designed instruction;
• Develop a deeper understanding of the coach’s role in supporting teachers to plan and implement specially designed instruction for diverse learners in inclusive school environments;
• Acquire coaching tools to assist general educators and their collaborative partners in personalizing instruction for learners with extensive support needs; and
• Reflect on personal coaching practices and continuously refine strategies to adapt to the evolving needs of educators and learners in inclusive schools.

Explore dynamic strategies in professional learning teams to foster collaboration, where you will engage in peer observation techniques to enhance instructional methods. Discover how to leverage evidence-based practices to cultivate continuous professional growth, directly impacting student achievement. Become empowered with actionable insights, fostering a culture of ongoing improvement and collaboration within the professional learning community.

• Acquire a deep understanding of the principles and structures underlying effective professional learning teams;
• Develop the skills necessary for conducting insightful peer observations, fostering an environment where educators can exchange constructive feedback and refine their instructional methods;
• Gain proficiency in gathering and interpreting evidence to inform your professional practice; and
• Be ready to apply collaborative team strategies, implement successful peer observation processes, and use evidence-driven approaches within your educational setting.

Learn how to implement the lesson study model in your school or district where professional learning is embedded into each teacher’s classroom and centered around collaboration and student outcomes. Engage with tools for planning and observation that allow for impactful professional learning. Leave with a deeper understanding of lesson study as a sustainable professional learning model and an action plan for implementation.

• Learn the components of the lesson study model and how to implement them in your school or district;
• Understand the value of collaborative professional learning centered around andrological principles that ensure buy-in and sustainability;
• Understand how lesson study builds capacity, creates equitable access to instruction for all students, and uses evidence of student outcomes as a motivation for change in instructional practice; and
• Be motivated and empowered to implement this change in the professional learning process.

Explore the concept of community co-created portraits of learners and graduates as well as the educators who support them along their way to post-secondary success. Hear from educators engaging in this work on why you should create portraits for your community, how you might go about doing so, and what you can do with them once they are created, from branding to systems alignment to transforming teaching and learning across schools. Engage in dialogue with colleagues to begin planning for the creation of portraits in your school or district.

• Understand and unpack the concepts of graduate and educator portraits that result in future-ready students;
• Learn how one district created and is implementing graduate and educator portraits;
• Examine the essential skills and attributes important to your community; and
• Plan initial steps in creating portraits aligned with the unique needs and values of your community.

Learn how to harness the power of data and in-building coaching to increase teacher retention. Reflect on your current onboarding practices for novice teachers and the impact those decisions have on student success. Gain practical steps and skills to build a lasting program to build teacher retention by supporting, coaching, and empowering instructors to become leaders in their classrooms.

• Learn how one school district used data to successfully build an onboarding system for new instructors in the county;
• Reflect on your current practice as school and district leaders to address specific needs; and
• Collaboratively create practical steps to build a support system for novice teachers at both the school and district levels.

Examine current retention rates of teachers and the data that supports an increased trend of career changers entering the field. Acquire strategies to support these fledgling teachers and develop their pedagogy. Learn how to harness these noneducation majors’ life experiences to your school or district to build relationships and career- and college-ready students.

• Acquire strategies and tools to support career changers;
• Consider how to effectively immerse career changers in your school or district; and
• Hear testimonials from career changers and school administrators in one district on the effectiveness of its program to support career changers.

Learn how a middle school literacy team created a leveled reading instruction intervention program that includes individual screening for fluency and comprehension skills for 600 6th- to 8th-grade students, targeted reading groups for the entire student body, and professional learning for secondary teachers who wanted to help students but were unsure how to teach basic reading skills.

• Explore the steps the literacy team took to create the middle school reading intervention program;
• Consider the program’s successes and growing pains; and
• Leave with steps you can take to begin creating similar programs to suit your school’s secondary literacy needs.

Explore ways to approach professional learning to best leverage the assets of the adults in the room. Learn how coaches of districtwide new curriculum implementation work with teachers who have learned mathematics in a particular way and taught it similarly. Consider how to balance leveraging teacher experience and expertise to relearn and deepen new teaching practices that shift and grow their professional practice.

• Develop the coaching tools to foster a supporting and effective environment and enhance skill acquisition and personal growth;
• Enhance adaptability of teachers by developing the capacity for changing circumstances and being flexible in problem-solving;
• Facilitate a pedagogical shift from traditional direct explicit instruction to a discovery-based instruction; and
• Be empowered to actively engage in the learning process by fostering critical thinking.

Learn strategies to provide high-quality, job-embedded support for teachers through intentionally designed instructional coaching. Collaboratively craft a professional learning plan that allows you to move forward and say no simultaneously. Communicate strategically while managing your time and priorities. Bring inquiry and differentiation into your personal learning as well as your staff’s professional learning.

• Learn strategies to provide high-quality, job-embedded support for teachers through intentionally designed instructional coaching.
• Craft a professional learning plan that allows you to move forward and say "no" simultaneously.
• Learn to communicate strategically while managing your time and priorities.

Learn how you can design and develop highly effective coaching teams aligned to Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning that can transform teaching and learning by using data to drive decisions, empower teachers to be the best version of themselves, and ultimately impact student success.

• Leave with a plan for building a highly effective team of instructional coaches;
• Access an implementation plan for developing an effective team; and
• Develop a variety of ideas for professional learning structures that touch on the roles of the coach.

Explore the three domains of engagement: cognitive, behavioral, and emotional. Gain practical strategies tailored to enhance student engagement in elementary and secondary classrooms. Become competent in effective assessment strategies to measure student engagement. Develop an awareness of how to empower students to evaluate their levels of engagement. Learn research-based strategies that can be applied to your context.

• Identify and address specific aspects of teaching practices relating to the three domains of engagement;
• Gain practical strategies for fostering student engagement in elementary and secondary classrooms;
• Be equipped with effective assessment methods that empower students to actively contribute feedback on their engagement experiences; and
• Be prepared to apply the acquired knowledge and strategies in your teaching context.

Explore research-backed strategies for teaching and assessing mathematics with multilingual learners. Learn how preteaching, supplementary aids, and explicit instruction on linguistic conventions enhance students’ understanding and allow for more accurate assessment of mathematical knowledge. Examine a comprehensive strategy integrating research-based, actionable items teachers can implement in their classrooms to support multilingual learners in math class and insights into how these items impact students and increase accuracy in assessing mathematical knowledge.

• Develop a heightened awareness of linguistic challenges specific to multilingual learners in math class;
• Gain the skills necessary to identify problematic words and phrases that pose barriers to the academic progress of multilingual learners in mathematics, fostering an inclusive learning environment that upholds the values of equity and diversity; and
• Leave with actionable strategies to support the diverse linguistic needs of multilingual learners, ensuring equitable opportunities for success in mathematics.

Examine the research and strategies that support the health and well-being of employees to increase engagement and decrease burnout. Investigate a wellness framework created to support employees that, in turn, promotes students’ success. Apply and use resources to create personalized learning communities that will promote a positive learning environment, setting up learners for success.

• Discuss physical, social, and mental wellness strategies and resources that create healthy environments for educators;
• Incorporate brain-based principles and research to support well-being;
• Attain wellness frameworks to promote a healthy environment through health and wellness challenges that will create a positive culture within the workplace; and
• Create your own framework using provided strategies and resources to support health and wellness in your professional community.

Explore one school district’s dynamic approach to supporting K-12 newcomers. Discover how the district built strategic staffing, designed curriculum, implemented wraparound support, and opened a high school newcomer center in response to welcoming thousands of immigrant and refugee students over the last five years. Envision creating effective programming and gain insight on fostering inclusive environments for newcomer students and families.

• Gain insights into the design of K-12 district newcomer programming through a focus on collaboration and the application of data-driven decision-making strategies;
• Reflect on its applicability in your context; and
• Engage in a Q&A session that will provide takeaway ideas for you to use in your educational setting.

Learn about Padres Unidos, a Latinx parent group presented in Spanish monthly whose goal is to provide support for Latinx students’ parents. Examine how Padres Unidos has grown exponentially and sustained the growth over 10 years based on effective program implementation strategies. Gain strategies you can use in your context.

• Learn about the evolution Padres Unidos underwent as it struggled to grow and maintain parent membership over 10 years;
• Investigate program implementation strategies, both effective and ineffective, as Padres Unidos continued to improve its effectiveness over the last several years; and
• Discuss your parent program with the group to gather and share resources that will help ensure continued program success.

Learn from leaders of three diverse school districts how to help your district become more equitable and inclusive. Explore the different approaches each district took to get to the same goal. Reflect on the work in your district and leave with specific examples and artifacts you can apply to move your district to become more inclusive.

• Understand how to develop a vision for the work and how to bring in key contributors;
• Explore models of success from three districts; and
• Leave with concrete steps that a district or school can take to move toward inclusion in every classroom.

Increase student academic ownership and support students in learning out loud. Learn how one school’s leadership team is helping teachers improve their teaching practice, and see evidence of their changes. Examine the data on dramatic changes in student talk, teacher use of wait time, and more. Explore how you might adapt these approaches to teacher feedback and reflection that pairs new technology with inquiry-based, personalized professional learning.

• Understand the role of instructional leadership in setting a clear vision for great teaching and learning with a focus on equity in a Title I setting and fostering teacher growth in line with that vision;
• Learn research-informed practices for analysis of evidence of teaching practice and student engagement, with special emphasis on improving teacher self-efficacy through job-embedded feedback and reflection; and
• Identify your next steps as instructional leaders and next steps for your school or district.

Dive into how you can support the collective humanity of your school or district and be inspired to reach new heights in leadership. Explore a human-centered framework for educational leadership that emphasizes compassion, purpose, and trust. Reflect on how these elements can guide your leadership. Create an action plan to implement in your setting.

• Explore a human-centered framework for educational leadership;
• Reflect via self-assessment on how these elements guide your leadership;
• Create your own action plan that you can implement in your own setting; and
• Network and build community with others committed to developing themselves in service of the adult cultures in their contexts.

Examine Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning to design professional learning for high-performing principals. Broaden your understanding of how to differentiate learning opportunities to meet district leadership development needs. Analyze how high-quality standards-based professional learning, when implemented in a peer-based model, impacts school leader retention and student achievement. Develop an understanding of integrating professional learning standards into professional learning communities.

• Identify key indicators of a quality leadership development program aligned with Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning;
• Analyze how high-impact adult learning leadership development opportunities promote retention of high-performing school principals;
• Conduct a gap analysis of your district professional leadership development experiences using Learning Forward’s Standards Assessment Inventory; and
• Discover how to integrate the Standards for Professional Learning into the design of your leadership development programs.

Discover how engaging educators in a personalized learning series will bring depth to your professional learning plans. Explore the benefits of a learning series, where educators gain new knowledge, use curriculum-based resources, collect and analyze data, and reflect on their students’ progress. Investigate a learning series model that is aligned to Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning and connected to research-based practices. Learn how this model is adaptable to each school’s setting.

• Learn how one school district developed common goals for professional learning based on Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning and other resources;
• Hear examples of how to build excitement for professional learning as educators receive more choice and voice in selecting topics;
• Understand how to create a professional learning series with four or more touchpoints throughout the school year; and
• Create a plan to adapt this model to your school.

Engage in conversation with experienced coaches on how to create a highly effective coach development program. Discuss the core values of these programs and the implications of the Standards for Professional Learning on coaching coaches. Plan next steps in supporting coaches in your learning community.

• Consider the strengths of your coach development program and identify next steps for supporting coaches;
• Study artifacts of three coaching programs to understand the explicit structures, approaches, and content used to develop coaches;
• Connect to the stories and lessons learned from three coaches; and
• Reflect on the best practices for developing coaches, measuring coaching effectiveness, and sustaining coaching programs.

Learn how to cultivate inclusive learning environments and foster student success by implementing the strategies and support necessary to retain BIPOC educators and leaders. Hear examples of successful strategic initiatives that address retention challenges. Explore ways to scale and embed this support in your context.

• Explain the work of the Public Education & Business Coalition (PEBC), specifically the BEST (BIPOC Educational STEM Thinkers) Conference;
• Analyze data regarding representation within the teacher population; and
• Be equipped with strategies and supports to effectively empower and enhance the longevity of the professionals you work with.

Explore how one rural school district in Utah developed an instructional coaching program aimed at supporting provisional teachers. Examine these teachers’ specific areas of needs through interview excerpts from rural provisional teachers. Learn how tailored professional learning can increase educator effectiveness, and consider how your school or district supports provisional teachers.

• Understand the challenges facing schools with a high population of provisional teachers and how this affects their development of professional learning plans;
• Consider how your school supports provisional teachers and if coaching programs play a part in that support; and
• Be able to discuss with district leaders the benefits of instructional coaching to improve teacher practice.

Explore global K-12 digital learning trends, uncovering insights from before, during, and beyond the pandemic era. Discover how emergency remote learning shaped educational practices and anticipate future shifts in digital education. Gain practical strategies to implement these evolving digital learning models in diverse educational settings.

• Gain a deep understanding of the latest trends in K-12 digital learning and be equipped to make informed decisions when developing or enhancing your digital learning programs;
• Be able to create and develop strategies for building and expanding your digital learning initiatives, focusing on practical, actionable ideas that can be implemented in your setting;
• Collaborate with peers to explore innovative solutions and approaches to common problems in digital learning environments; and
• Broaden your perspective and potentially uncover new methods for enhancing your digital learning programs.

Juliana Urtubey, the 2021 National Teacher of the Year, advocates for a joyous and just education for all students. Known as “Ms. Earth” for her efforts to unify the community through gardens, she uses her experiences as a bilingual special education teacher to build inclusive environments. Urtubey serves on President Biden’s Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics. In her keynote, Urtubey will share student, family, and educator stories that inspired the Joyous and Just Educational Framework. These powerful stories demonstrate what is possible when collective wellness and identity-affirming practices are centered in our educational designs. Educators will be inspired to reflect deeply on how their practice intersects with the principles of the Joyous and Just Educational Framework and what possibility lies ahead in their learning communities.

• Reflect on how your identity impacts the design of educational spaces;
• Reflect on how to collectively build spaces of joy and justice; and
• Dig deeper into your own definitions of joy, justice, belonging, and collective wellness to evaluate and enhance your educational spaces.

Keynote speaker Juliana Urtubey will answer your questions in this special session after the keynote address on Tuesday.

Discover how to take your professional learning communities and Response to Intervention efforts to the next level with structures and processes that maximize the collective capacity of a team and ensure high levels of success for students and staff. Explore an organizational mindset that involves fundamental shifts for schools and districts, such as layering collaborative team structures, transforming how we talk about student needs, focusing on students close to meeting expectations through thoughtful organization of data and evidence, and ensuring the tiering of support rather than students. Learn from numerous school and district examples and additional resources.

• Identify the three foundational components of a schoolwide responsive framework: collaborative structures and processes, data and evidence, and a continuum of support;
• Determine school structures and processes that support highly impactful and ongoing staff collaboration and shared learning that result in increased student achievement and equity for all; and
• Establish school or district priorities and next steps relating to establishing a framework of response and determine impact on staff collective efficacy and overall student success.

Explore the essential competencies for education leaders of color, a road map designed to help educators of color navigate leadership and thrive in today’s schools and systems — even as we work toward a just, inclusive future. Discuss and unpack the competencies, offer feedback and insights, and develop an action plan for self-care, professional growth, and systemic improvement.

• Understand how the essential competencies for education leaders of color complement other leadership frameworks along with dos and don’ts on their use;
• Discern how the competencies offer mirrors, windows, and doors into the diverse, multifaceted experiences of leaders of color in today’s schools and school systems;
• Provide actionable feedback on the competencies along with a suite of resources and tools for leaders of color and white allies; and
• Develop a personal action plan, including commitments and timelines, for using the competencies for self-care, professional growth, and systemic improvement.

Examine the attributes of effective feedback, a key component of continuous improvement, 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 continuous learning. Learn how to create a culture in which educators routinely engage in the feedback process. Note: Participants will receive a copy of The Feedback Process: Transforming Feedback for Professional Learning, 2nd edition by Joellen Killion.

• 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 feedback process in supporting the implementation of professional learning.

Engage in a simulation game that teaches how to implement the Standards for Professional Learning. Learn what it takes to implement high-quality professional learning that leads to growth in educator knowledge, skills, and practice and what applying the standards within districts and schools looks like in action. Plan ways to share your learning and apply it to your own schools and districts.

• Learn how to create the conditions necessary to build equitable professional learning systems driven by Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning;
• Discover how Standards for Professional Learning guide the work of educators seeking to advance equity for educators and students;
• Experience how a district adopts and implements the standards; and
• Explore the actions necessary for the system to provide high-quality professional learning for educators which, in turn, leads to growth in educator knowledge, skills, beliefs, and practice and improvement in outcomes for every student.

Increase your effectiveness as a facilitator by extending your skills for managing group energy, focus, and information flow in groups. Enhance your knowledge of group dynamics, facilitation, group engagement, and group development. Acquire a repertoire of strategies for engaging groups, and learn ways to help groups improve their capacity to get work done, do the right work, and manage change and adaptivity.

• Increase your flexibility, confidence, and authenticity as a facilitator while acquiring a repertoire of strategies to engage participants in meetings;
• Use new structures that promote success in decision-making meetings;
• Access new ways to developmentally enhance group productivity and enhance your nonverbal communication skills; and
• Examine tips and tools for teaching and expanding group member capabilities, knowledge, skills, and effectiveness.

Explore how to grow structures for continuous improvement in your district. Identify important considerations when establishing a continuous improvement team, how to create a sense of urgency about continuous improvement, and the benefits of embracing high levels of collective efficacy among team members. Hear specific examples of continuous improvement structures and consider ways you can apply this to your own setting. 

• Identify key stakeholders that 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.

Optimize your school or district's process for data analysis. Impact student achievement by turning data analysis into practice. Enhance the collaborative process to grow educator and leader efficacy.

• Learn how to embed data analysis in the consistent, collaborative work of your school or district;
• Be able to establish procedures, protocols, and parameters for effective data analysis and subsequent application; and
• Apply the research surrounding the best practices detailed in the session.

Explore ways to build skills and model productive engagement through deep listening and other concrete strategies for managing high conflict. Learn what superintendents, board members, and educators can do to keep the focus on students. Gain strategies to manage and decrease polarization and conflict in your community.

• Learn concrete strategies for managing conflict and polarized situations in education;
• Develop deep listening skills and engagement strategies;
• Understand how to manage and decrease polarization and conflict in your community, allowing you to focus on your strategic direction for students.

Learn about one district’s partnership with a regional service center in implementation and supporting the use of open-source curriculum. Reflect on the value of using open-source education resources and a curriculum-based professional learning model to foster collective efficacy and curriculum implementation, including curriculum implementation planning, individualized coaching support, and ongoing improvement cycles. Gain insights on the value of such a model through an OpenSciEd implementation example.

• Engage in analysis of attributes of curriculum-based professional learning for student and teacher growth;
• Examine the role of collaborative inquiry for the successful implementation of curriculum;
• Consider how partnership and coaching blaze a pathway for ongoing implementation cycles; and
• Take away strategies and ideas to implement high-quality curriculum and instructional materials into teaching and learning at a district level.

Explore integrating student perspectives into educational improvement, focusing on the essential conditions on school teams for leveraging student voices to drive decision-making at multiple levels. Apply these insights to your context, fostering a shift in school culture through meaningful partnerships with young people. Transform your school into a more humanizing space by actively engaging and valuing student perspectives.

• Identify the necessary team conditions for implementing student voice in improvement work;
• Plan for use of varied student voice data, protocols, and measurement strategies; and
• Apply lessons to your school context and plan for incorporating student voice authentically.

Learn how implementing CASEL-aligned discussion strategies not only enhances content skills but also cultivates student agency. Engage in hands-on exploration of evidence-based techniques, aligning with CASEL standards, and learn to tailor them for diverse learners. Leave equipped to seamlessly integrate these practices into your educational setting, with a personalized plan to measure their profound impact on student growth and classroom dynamics.

• Explore how a discussion-based classroom can enhance learning, promote emotional well-being, and cultivate student agency;
• Examine ways to integrate evidence-based, CASEL-aligned discussion strategies in the classroom;
• Identify ways to differentiate within those strategies to meet the needs of all learners; and
• Develop a plan to implement and measure the impact of these strategies at the classroom, course, or building level.

Explore ways to maximize the impact of high-quality instructional materials by unpacking strategies for intentional use that meet the needs of all learners. Engage in hands-on activities that demonstrate how universal design tenets can enhance the implementation of high-quality instructional materials. Leave with strategies and a plan for implementing systems for adapting high-quality instructional materials to increase access for all learners.

• Reflect on existing barriers in the implementation of high-quality instructional materials for neurodiverse learners;
• Explore tools and strategies that can enhance the impact of implementing high-quality instructional materials; and
• Evaluate an approach to adapting high-quality instructional materials to meet the needs of all learners through universal design.

Discuss the collaborative efforts used to support student achievement using high-quality instructional materials. Explore how district, school, and network leaders can work together to develop and implement targeted support for effective curriculum implementation. Engage in discussion on tools that will help all stakeholders trust the curriculum implementation process to attain increased teacher efficacy and student achievement.

• See an example of a school that experienced an increase in mathematics learning and participation over a three-year period centered around its use of Illustrative Mathematics, a curriculum chosen by the district;
• Learn about the support at the district and school level for implementing high-quality instructional materials;
• Consider how to support teachers and students through the process of implementing high-quality instructional materials.

Explore the preparation, support, and reflection teachers need when leading units with experiences different than your own or your students. Learn how a small rural district in upstate New York chose to teach the Kendrick Lamar unit from the International Baccalaureate curriculum to bridge connections between it and Compton, California, through poetry. Gain insight into how to connect students with diverse perspectives and navigate challenges from the community.

• Develop an approach for connecting students to curriculum that represents diverse perspectives (e.g., race and class) different from your own;
• Develop an approach for supporting teachers who are teaching about race;
• Consider how bold you can be in pursuing discussions about race through classroom units; and
• Learn instructional strategies for navigating complex issues such as race in the current political environment.

Gain a deeper understanding of how to apply equity-minded coaching strategies to enhance employee retention, resilience, and satisfaction. Investigate how coaching approaches create optimal conditions to explore equity drivers, equity practices, and equity foundations within your role. Leave with protocols to support creating a more inclusive culture within your team, school, district, and community.

• Investigate equity-minded strategies for creating optimal conditions for employee retention;
• Practice how to have equity-minded conversations within supervisory and collegial relationships; and
• Acquire strategies, language, and resources to use as a lever for transformational change.

Explore innovative strategies and successful models for recruiting teachers. Learn about the benefits of GROW (Growing & Recruiting Opportunities for Well-prepared teachers) model and how it can be used to expand the pool of potential teacher candidates and support student success. Discover how to implement, replicate, or modify a successful grow-your-own model in your school district.

• Understand the benefits of a GROW your own model and how they can be used to expand the pool of potential teacher candidates and support student success;
• Learn innovative strategies and successful models for recruiting teachers;
• Evaluate current recruitment strategies and identify areas for improvement; and
• Develop a plan to implement, replicate, or modify a grow-your-own model for your school district.

Learn how district and central office leaders advance equity in collaboration with teachers and school leaders and the conditions and systems necessary to sustain an equity agenda. Examine systems and processes for creating or revisiting your districtwide equity agenda, including vision, shared understandings, strategies, and progress monitoring systems, and tools for gathering meaningful data that deepens the district’s common understanding of equity.

• Identify the elements of, and a process to create, an actionable districtwide equity agenda;
• Analyze the components and uses of equity visits as a professional learning data collection tool;
• Examine the technical and relational conditions necessary for central offices and schools to work together to foster professional learning that advances and sustains equity.

Review missing elements of many districts’ plans to recruit and retain teachers of color. Identify teacher recruitment, retention, and empowerment strategies that education leaders can implement independently, in collaboration with colleagues, or through external partners. Compose a list of new practices that your school or district can begin to employ right away.

• Collaboratively reflect on your district’s current teacher recruitment and retention practices, with a particular focus on teacher diversity;
• Identify effective teacher recruitment, retention, and empowerment practices that are being employed around the country; and
• Prioritize teacher recruitment, retention, and empowerment practices that you plan to implement independently, in collaboration with colleagues, or through external partners.

Learn how peer-to-peer equity coaching to increase racial consciousness and cultural responsiveness in teachers and administrators had a transformative impact on school culture and adult behavior in one Midwestern public school district. Experience peer equity coaching with your fellow participants, and consider how peer equity coaching could impact your school system.

• Understand how one district used peer equity coaching to create a system of change;
• Engage in meaningful conversations with colleagues to practice critical self-reflection about race and culture; and
• Apply critical self-reflection practices in multiple contexts such as the classroom, department meetings, district offices, and board rooms.

Explore the historical impact of slavery, dehumanizing language, and behaviors. Incorporate quantitative data from student, staff, and family sessions, revealing evidence of post-traumatic slave syndrome’s impact and the need for professional learning. Empower yourself with practical strategies, using design thinking to craft an inclusive dehumanizing language and behavior protocol. Walk away equipped with a process to collectively address these issues and create an inclusive start to the academic year.

• Master evidence-based practices, aligning with Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning, to design and implement inclusive protocols for responding to racial slurs, set goals, create transformative learning experiences, and demonstrate a steadfast commitment to advancing equity and excellence for every student;
• Ignite innovation, champion respect, and propel advancements in school improvement, student achievement, and educator excellence; and
• Gain cutting-edge tools fostering a culture where every student thrives with a unique voice, recognized potential, and valued individuality.

Create a system of accountability for belonging in your classroom by applying this four-step process that centers dignity and feedback within instruction. Develop confidence in prioritizing and advocating for belonging as a human need, engagement activator, achievement platform, and equity foundation. Walk away with a profound frame, pragmatic strategies, and plenty of ideas to immediately use with students to co-create belonging and ensure opportunity for peak learning and success.

• Enrich understanding of belonging and dignity as variables that ensure people have the opportunity to thrive;
• Learn how instructional belonging operates in classrooms as one of three essential belonging structures: instructional, institutional, and interpersonal;
• Acquire a four-step process for creating an accountability system for belonging and dignity in the classroom; and
• Experience a variety of pragmatic techniques to implement instructional belonging.

Gain a heightened awareness of the need for increased equity in our schools and discover actionable strategies for achieving greater gender and sexual orientation equity. Explore gender and sexual orientation terminology, unpack problematic habits, and learn to use self-reflection as a tool for personal continual growth in this area. Dive into research-based best practices for supporting LGBTQ students through mindful, inclusive pedagogy.

• Deepen your understanding of gender as a spectrum, delineate the difference between equity and equality, and gain an understanding of the current state of LGBTQ student equity and access; and
• Learn best practices for supporting LGBTQ students in the classroom by exploring research-based best practices for ensuring an equity-centered approach to instruction.

Engage in a design sprint to leverage current data analysis practices to more effectively prompt strong Tier 1 classroom instruction, outside of implementing interventions. Discover how this approach extends teachers’ participation beyond filling out a template for the sake of completion and protects equity and access to appropriate Tier 1 instruction. Learn how to structure and facilitate data meetings to ensure daily Tier 1 classroom instruction improves consistently.

• Reflect on your data analysis practices to determine the opportunities in using the a teacher-based team process to more explicitly connect student achievement data to trends in Tier 1 instruction;
• Unpack a cyclical data analysis process that includes a framework to collect and analyze the right data, create a plan to address gaps in instructional practices and strategies, and apply a cycle for accountability of shared implementation of the plan; and
• Learn how to facilitate the teacher-based team data analysis process and enact subsequent accountability measures to support improved Tier 1 instruction across the school.

Take the first step toward deep implementation of the Standards for Professional Learning by assessing the current state of professional learning in your school or system. Experience an overview of the Standards Assessment Inventory (SAI) and how this web-based teacher survey helps schools and districts measure their alignment with standards, identify strengths and areas of focus in their professional learning, and plan professional learning that has maximum impact on teaching and learning. Analyze SAI data and apply it to professional learning in your system and learn how to use the tool to measure alignment to standards.

• See examples of how schools and systems use the SAI as a tool for measuring alignment to standards and planning targeted professional learning;
• Take the SAI and examine real-time data; and
• Use supporting tools to conduct SAI data analysis and apply it to professional learning in your system.

Explore effective data routines from the CARE 8th grade on-track network and understand their role in enhancing student belonging and success. Reflect on existing data practices in your system. Develop a strategic plan to implement data-driven routines that bolster educator inquiry and student belonging and achievement in your context.

• Learn about key data routines used in the CARE 8th grade on-track network that have supported student belonging and success;
• Reflect on data routines in your system that could be built on to support educator inquiry to support student success goals; and
• Leave with a high-level plan to support the rollout of incorporating data routines to guide educator inquiry in support of student belonging and academic success.

Imagine a school where staff are crystal clear on where they’re headed, know precisely what is expected of them instructionally, and experience learning and support aligned with that direction. Briefly explore implementation science research, examine tools and processes for creating instructional clarity, and hear about the practical implications of this work in one system. Walk away with a plan for how you will apply this learning to your setting.

• Develop an understanding of the importance of a leadership team for leading the successful implementation of improvement efforts;
• Learn about how these concepts were implemented in one system, together with successes and roadblocks; and
• Create a preliminary plan for how to incorporate these concepts into current structures in your school setting.

Explore ways to make your professional learning implementation outcome-driven and evaluation-aligned. Learn how to use the KASABs (knowledge, attitude, skills, aspirations, and behaviors) to clearly articulate end goals of learning for teachers, leaders, and students. Leave with strong knowledge, beefed-up skills, an improved product, and the attitude and motivation to do something with it all.

• Connect the KASAB framework to specific outcomes for professional learning;
• Use the KASAB framework to design large and small, short and long, simple and complex professional learning; and
• Revise or create professional learning with explicit KASAB goals for relevant stakeholders.

Learn how school and district leaders striving to design and implement improvement strategies to meet the needs of their educators and students can use tools steeped in improvement science to achieve student success. Explore real-time strategies for the effective use of logic models and theories of change to undergird improvement efforts.

• Gain clarity on the use and purpose of logic models and theories of change for planning, implementing and evaluating programs and initiatives; and
• Analyze the benefits of using tools for continuous quality improvement and engage in developing of sample models to be used in your setting.

Explore coaching’s potential to influence the performance of all employees and the entire culture of an organization. Identify the elements of effective transformative coaching, which requires coaches to reflect on their personal identity, embrace the dynamics of race and gender in interactions with others, see the system in which they operate, and integrate the principles of Liberatory Design to learn and grow as a coach. Gain understanding of how a coaching approach offers the opportunity for job-embedded and personalized learning and the potential for personal transformation and systemic liberation.

• Learn how the evidence base for transformative leadership can be applied to develop a coherent leader development model for a district or system;
• Learn how leader performance expectations and evaluation systems, supported by a coaching approach, accelerate excellence and equity agendas;
• Develop an understanding of the role of coaching as an equity driver and job embedded learning opportunity; and
• Consider starting points or next steps in developing a culture of coaching across a school or district.

Examine how coherent and aligned professional learning systems can impact instruction and learning for all students. Learn how the University of Utah Education Policy Center partners with districts and schools to offer professional learning for school leadership teams to increase the alignment and coherence of professional learning systems. Leave with tools and examples of how school and district leadership capacity for coherence and alignment improves student outcomes.

• Learn about key research-based strategies for ensuring alignment and coherence for greatest impact on student outcomes;
• Use a self-assessment tool to identify how your school and district professional learning systems are coherent and aligned for equity and impact; and
• Create an action plan for how this learning could be implemented in your setting to support alignment and coherence.

Learn how to implement strategies to give you more time to focus on being an instructional leader. Flip the script and discover how to turn staff complaints into positive focus areas for the building. Explore ways to have all voices in the room and understand why this is an excellent strategy to build climate, culture, and leadership.

• Analyze and discuss the differences between managing and leading, the balance between the two, and your current practices;
• Understand the connection between staff voice and autonomy and growing student learning and building culture;
• Learn specific strategies and structures to build the leadership capacity of staff; and
• Leave with a tangible plan of how to spend more time as an instructional leader.

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 and shifts in instruction needed to maximize student learning.

• 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 professional learning communities (PLCs), 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 and practice the phases of design thinking, a structured approach to generating innovative solutions to adaptive challenges. Examine tools aligned with liberatory design thinking, and see how educators have used design thinking in their pedagogy and practice. Plan how you might use design thinking in your work in participatory, equity-centered, and solution-oriented ways that increase learner outcomes. 

• Learn about the phases of design thinking, liberatory design thinking, and tools that can be used with students, educators, and educational stakeholders;
• Experience design thinking activities such as ideating, and see examples from other educators for professional learning design, strategic planning, curriculum design, and promoting equitable outcomes;
• Make a plan to use design thinking for an adaptive challenge faced in your work; and
• Reflect on the benefits and challenges of design thinking as a pedagogy and process for students and adults. 

Learn from research and school-based examples how to apply a simple brain-based model of learning to transform professional learning from dreaded into joyful learning. Gain practical strategies and tools, and plan next steps for improving professional learning in your school or system.

• Learn how to apply the science of learning and a simple six-phase model of learning to adult learning;
• Learn practical strategies and gain access to related tools for enhancing teacher professional learning for each phase of learning; and
• Be able to identify concrete next steps for improving professional learning in your school or school system.

Explore innovative practices in professional learning to design more personalized experiences that empower educators to taking a standing role in their own growth. Apply the personalized learning principles of voice, co-design, social construction, and self-discovery to design a personalized professional learning model for your district or school. Make use of planning tools, models, and collaborative time to put your plan into action.

• Explore strategies to integrate educator voice early in the professional learning planning process to build investment and engagement;
• Learn to incorporate educators as co-designers who help identify the success metrics of professional learning and map out the action plan to achieve desired results;
• Consider the role that social construction plays in the professional learning process, including expanding the role of facilitator and definition of engagement; and
• Understand the importance of self-discovery and the various forms it can take in the professional learning cycle.

Elevate the teaching and learning that occurs every day in your school or district by making subtle shifts through the application of key learning science principles. Implement opportunities to develop excellent teachers who understand how learning happens and what that means for teaching. Strengthen your school system’s ability to leverage learning science to recruit and retain educators who are equity-driven and evidence-informed.

• Use a model of the mind to explain how learning happens and what that means for classroom instruction;
• Identify key evidence-informed learning science principles that ensure instructional effectiveness and equity; and
• Analyze identified components of successful evidence-to-practice implementation in teacher induction and professional learning.

Collaborate, share strategies, and exchange ideas while exploring artificial intelligence (AI) tools to streamline your professional learning session and workshop design. Leave with a curated resource tool kit and inspiration for integrating AI into your design practices, enhancing efficiency. Empower yourself and engage in collaborative exploration to leverage the potential of AI tools for your design process.

• Collaborate with peers to share insights, experiences, and best practices related to AI-powered professional learning design, and leave with access to curated resources for continued learning;
• Identify and evaluate specific challenges or opportunities within your professional learning design processes where AI tools can be integrated effectively, with a focus on promoting equity and inclusivity in professional learning materials and practices;
• Develop practical skills in using various AI tools for designing and creating professional learning materials that are inclusive, differentiated, and accessible to diverse learners;
• Explore strategies for incorporating AI-driven approaches in professional learning design practices, cultivating a culture of continuous improvement in educator effectiveness and professional learning experiences.

Discover how your state or district can transform early literacy instruction to ensure students can read and write at grade level. Explore the types of support state and district leaders need to ensure meaningful change. Evaluate your current plan and consider ways to strengthen it.

• Describe each of the three components of a strong approach to implementing the science of reading, including the role each plays in improving teaching and learning and the consequences of removing one or more components;
• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a sample district and state plan for improving literacy instruction; and
• Evaluate the strength of your current plan, including missing components and strategies and resources you can use to strengthen it.

Explore mathematical illusions in the grade book for career and technical education courses and how they cause an opportunity gap for marginalized populations. Examine your beliefs and values about grading, and learn new ways to reduce bias. Create rubrics that assess skill over behavior, and learn how to backward plan for reassessment of skills throughout a semester.

• Excavate biases, beliefs, and values related to grading and assessment practices;
• Be able to articulate new ways to make grading practices more equitable and focused on skill development in a career and technical education course over time; and
• Generate rubrics and design actionable goals and next steps with grading systems, rubric design, and assessment.

Explore how math teachers in grades 3-8 engaged in self-directed professional learning to improve their practice. Identify tools and resources to assist teachers in selecting, implementing, and reflecting on high-quality professional learning opportunities. Consider the types of district and campus processes that need to be in place to ensure self-directed professional learning initiatives are successful.

• Examine the preliminary findings from ESC 18-TxCEE’s MiPLAN project for teacher-directed professional learning;
• Identify the facilitators, barriers, and processes necessary for teachers to successfully implement two self-directed professional learning cycles; and
• Create actionable steps for aligning identified needs with teacher choice to improve teacher and student outcomes.

Discover how a Northern Virginia school system’s innovative 360-degree support framework for new educators and Learning Forward’s Evidence standard revolutionized professional learning programs. Examine induction strategies, new teacher support, and data-driven, evidence-based growth. Focus on these core principles: School system leaders taking collective responsibility for teacher support boost educator success, and collective educator responsibility for student learning enhances student achievement.

• Compare, contrast, and adapt a beginning teacher induction and mentoring framework to your context;
• Gather ideas for enhancing new teacher support through robust and reflective discussions on your current practice;
• Examine methods for gathering qualitative and quantitative data and collecting evidence of impact during the design, implementation, and evaluation phases of new teacher professional learning programs; and
• Construct practical, meaningful data collection strategies tailored to different aspects of teacher induction professional learning programs.

Gain a better understanding of the unique challenges faced by new teachers early in their careers. Consider the implications of designing support for new teachers who enter education through various certification pathways. Learn about ongoing support for new educators at the district and campus levels. Discover resources that align with effective new teacher support. Leave empowered to support and mentor new teachers effectively.

• Explore practical strategies and insights to foster a positive and impactful environment for new educators;
• Learn effective mentoring techniques, classroom management tips, and personalized approaches to meet diverse student needs; and
• Experience discussions, collaborative activities, and real-world case studies, equipping you with the tools to empower and inspire new teachers.

Explore the Curriculum Implementation Change Framework and a suite of tools designed to support leaders of curriculum implementation in their efforts to build teachers’ and school-level leaders’ capacity for high-quality implementation of curriculum. Learn how the framework was developed, examine what researchers learned about the challenges and opportunities of curriculum implementation, and preview opportunities to use the framework.

• Learn about the challenges and opportunities revealed through research around curriculum implementation;
• Become familiar with key change management tenets for successfully implementing high-quality curriculum at scale; and
• Explore how the framework can support high-quality implementation of curriculum and aligned professional learning.

Discover how an elementary school district provided instructional support of professional practice based in teacher choice and agency. Explore how establishing trusting relationships between coaches and teachers serves as a foundation for individual coaching work with video reflection. Hear from a variety of teachers and coaches who have engaged in this process using Danielson’s Framework for Teaching Clusters and initiate a similar process for yourself, creating opportunities for more personalized and collaborative coaching.

• Gain an understanding of the individual coaching with the video reflection process;
• Learn how Danielson’s Framework for Teaching Clusters and the PLI Guidebook serves as the foundation for goal setting and instructional improvement;
• Hear from professional educators representing various roles who were involved in implementing this process; and
• Develop an individual goal from the Framework for Teaching Clusters that will allow you to experience this process firsthand.

Use goal setting, cycles of continuous improvement, and structures for teacher collaboration to build leadership capacity, promote educator effectiveness, and harness collective efficacy. Take your school to the next level of student achievement and well-being by activating, empowering, and inspiring every member of your school community -- and have fun doing it. Leave with a plan for lighting a motivational inferno in your staff to spark student success.

• Learn how to plan and implement a process called “state of the school,” which asks: What is the state of the school? How do we know? What do we do now?
• Learn about a strategic process used at two at-risk, urban schools to accelerate student success;
• Develop next steps for taking your school to the next level in student success by homing in on specific goals, developing structures for teacher collaboration, planning ways to build leadership capacity, and using cycles of continuous improvement; and
• Learn to lead professional growth and sustain a learning system and culture designed to foster student success at a whole new level.

Explore how the one district has overcome the “this too shall pass” mindset in professional learning through an application-based fellowship. Dive into the process and protocols used to attract a growing number of teachers, develop their professional expertise, and create teacher leaders. Engage with these leaders and other educators to brainstorm ideas and “light the fuse” in your program or district.

• Acquire an understanding of the 10-year evolution of the fellowship program;
• Examine participant data and personal reflections to assess the fellowship's impact on participants’ teaching and learning, often serving as a pathway to further leadership roles within the district;
• Investigate specific fellowship components; and
• Apply insights gained to identify and plan to incorporate specific elements or processes into your professional learning opportunities.

Explore a professional learning routine that builds teacher capacity and efficacy to provide rigorous and scaffolded instruction for multilingual learners. Learn how to design and build a content cycle series that leads teachers through learning, planning, practicing, and reflecting on theory, action, and strategies that result in improved outcomes for multilingual learner students. Walk away with a design plan that engages teachers in learning and applying new strategies and tools to support multilingual learner students.

• Gain understanding of the content cycle process as an effective vehicle for professional learning for all educators;
• Be able to identify evidence-based instructional moves to improve support for multilingual learners; and
• Add strategies to your toolbox to engage all educators in active learning, planning, rehearsing, and reflecting cycles to provide a stronger learning experience for multilingual learners.

Explore a collaboration between a large district and a teachers union that uses improvement science to structure professional learning driven by educator needs. Learn how this collaboration supports teachers to learn together and how leaders are building new ways to understand the impact of educator learning on practice and on students. Gain access to a tool kit of resources and examples.

• Examine the principles of improvement science and how an improvement science approach can be infused in a professional learning system;
• Understand how this model situates educators as active agents of their own learning and practice improvement;
• Examine how one district seeks to understand impact of its professional learning and address inequities in the system using a theory of improvement and system of measures; and
• Articulate an improvement theory for professional learning in your setting and relate possible measures of impact.

Deepen your understanding of anchored inquiry learning by experiencing how an anchored inquiry learning instructional model creates learning experiences that motivate students with significant, real-world phenomena and problems. Learn how anchored inquiry learning promotes instructional equity through authentic societal challenges, cycles of inquiry, and sensemaking. Consider how you can apply anchored inquiry learning to design meaningful learning experiences.

• Deepen understanding of a research-based instructional model for anchored inquiry learning;
• Learn how to create instructional coherence, with equitable access and motivation for all learners;
• Develop high-quality instructional materials that form the basis for robust curriculum-based professional learning.

Learn how a large comprehensive high school leveraged Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning to develop a systematic and viable curriculum review cycle. Explore the ways professional learning takes on added relevance by frontloading curriculum skills and content with culturally responsive pedagogy, SEL standards, and multilingual supports, leading to greater student engagement.

• Apply Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning to the curriculum review process;
• Embed Short and Hirsh’s The Elements: Transforming Teaching Through Curriculum-Based Professional Learning to ensure systemwide coherence;
• Learn how to connect curriculum skills and content to high-impact professional learning strategies using an inquiry approach based in professional learning community (PLC) teams; and
• Participate in a model PLC team planning session using a social studies example, and begin to map out a five-year plan for a curriculum review cycle using the model unit plan provided.

Explore how district leaders from across the country work to bring the “why” to life to help support and sustain high-quality instructional resources for all students. Discover ways to work with educators to develop curriculum-based professional learning that will transform learning experiences. Learn how to leverage the essentials of curriculum-based professional learning — leadership, resources, and coherence — to sustain and support implementation of high-quality instructional resources.

• Identify the importance of coherence and communication around the “why” with implementation of high-quality instructional resources;
• Examine tools used by three district leaders to support job-embedded professional learning and learn how a national professional learning network for district leaders implementing high-quality instructional resources supports not only the efforts in the district but the district leaders as well;
• Evaluate the essentials of curriculum-based professional learning; and
• Create an action plan focused on the reflection and extension to move implementation forward.

Learn about a rigorously tested change management framework and tools that support school, system, and state leaders in implementing high-quality curriculum and aligned professional learning to engage students in rigorous, student-centered instruction. Hear from state education leaders how they are using these tools to strengthen statewide curriculum implementation. Explore how you can drive the broader effort to effectively implement high-quality curriculum in your school, system, and state.

• Gain access to the Curriculum Implementation Change Framework, a customizable change management framework and tools for curricular implementation;
• Learn about and apply the framework and tool suite through a data-based planning simulation;
• Explore how this framework and tool kit and others like it can support teachers and school leaders; and
• Learn to use the framework and tools to leverage the voices of those closest to the work to learn, measure progress, and improve over time.

Work in teams to navigate a teacher’s experience with a student-centered educational dilemma that has far-ranging implications with stakeholders, including administrators, staff, students, parents, and the community. Gain insight into the challenges and consequences teachers face in making decisions in the classroom.

• Articulate the trade-offs that make the decision so challenging and consider mitigation strategies to be used after the decision is made;
• Explore the impact of school and district climate on classroom decision-making;
• Determine the importance of the perspectives of different stakeholders and the weight each should have in decision-making; and
• Learn how to apply decision-making practices in your context.

Discover 10 habits that allow teachers to achieve a balance across three categories of learning. See these habits in action, and learn from educators at a high-performing urban school. Leave with strategies to lead for rigorous learning.

• Explore research concerning taxonomic levels of learning and habit science to redefine rigor;
• Observe and analyze 10 instructional habits that integrate surface, deep, and transfer learning opportunities for students;
• Learn key strategies for building instructional capacity and leading rigorous learning; and
• Develop an action plan to leverage habit science and incorporate rigor at your site.

Learn how one district developed an equity playbook of culled resources, then systematically infused equitable practices into the classroom through a symmetrical model of professional learning. Explore strategies that can be replicated at all levels and are grounded in evidence-informed practices to create an ongoing improvement cycle.

• Learn how to create an equity framework aligned to your district mission and initiatives;
• Explore how to implement a district-level model of professional learning that leads to transformation at the school level; and
• Practice strategies for leaders to demystify equity theory into actionable, practical next steps for educators.

Discover the transformative power of human-centered design in education. Learn how to enhance attendance, engagement, and relevance, fostering equitable learning environments. one district's use of human-centered design to address challenges such as attendance and instruction. Gain insights into operationalizing equity and supporting educators through a culture of inclusivity. Acquire practical human-centered design tools to apply to your context and address specific problems of practice.

• Understand the mindsets and principles of human-centered design and how they support the implementation of district, school, and classroom improvement and equity goals;
• Be introduced to tools such as a fishbone diagram and empathy interviews to help you see your systems’ strengths and opportunities for change from the user’s perspective;
• Experience the transformative process through a case study discussion of one district's improvement work; and
• Reflect on improvement efforts from your context and identify places where those efforts can be more human-centered. 

Learn how one district uses site-based equity liaisons to promote equity and access across all schools and departments in the sixth-largest school district in the nation. Explore the ways ongoing professional learning and coaching can support equity liaisons to develop and implement an equity plan of action focused on improving student outcomes, culture, and climate through targeted professional learning, student-led activities, and parent involvement opportunities. 

• Learn how an equity liaison program can support the achievement of academic, social, and behavioral goals;
• Be able to complete an equity audit for your school or organization; and
• Create an equity plan of action for implementation in your context.

Learn how one school district established a supportive, collaborative school culture that prepares staff for optimal engagement in professional learning communities (PLCs), instructional coaching cycles, and other job-embedded learning opportunities. Explore strategies and structures that increase collaboration and collective efficacy, and apply these to your setting.

• Be prepared to implement strategies and structures to increase collaboration among staff and foster a culture of vulnerability, support, and celebration of teacher and student success;
• Understand how to support staff in increasing positive energy and engagement in job-embedded learning to increase collective efficacy; and
• Be able to use positive psychology to influence teacher happiness and wellness to positively impact school climate and collective responsibility.

Explore the use of instructional rounds to explicitly examine the intersection of equity and academics. Learn methods to capture and make sense of classroom observation, coach for honest conversations about race, gender and intersectionality, and use protocols to examine differences in students’ academic and social experiences. Explore how inclusion of students as rounds partners deepens the work and how equity rounds can be a critical part of professional learning communities and improvement cycle work.

• Learn how to collect and use race-centered qualitative data on instruction to inform improvement planning;
• Develop strategies for coaching and leading teachers, students, and administrators to implement instructional practice through an equity lens;
• Refine coaching and leadership strategies using protocols for engaging in evidence-centered deliberation around the experiences and outcomes of students of color; and
• Deepen capacity to engage in conversations and coaching practices that center race, academics, and equity.

Examine the research studies that support the usefulness of using data to develop a framework for forming productive differentiated groups. Investigate effective methods for producing professional learning to meet the needs of all students. Apply and use resources and strategies that promote the development of high-quality, data-driven differentiated groups.

• Gain insight on research from real-world implementation of data driving small-group designs while exploring universal research that supports the development;
• Correlate the importance of data and the differentiation of small groups through the use of taught frameworks; and
• Walk away with a data-driven strategy framework that provides a guide to effective small-group design.

Learn how the Learning Forward Academy supported an urban school district’s professional learning team in creating a leadership institute for teachers. Explore an innovative pathway designed to build leadership capacity, improve teacher practice, and elevate outcomes for all students. Engage in dialogue surrounding the implementation of a district model where teachers develop knowledge and skills that positively impact student outcomes, school culture, and systemic coherence.

• Learn standards-based tools and frameworks from the Learning Forward Academy to build systemic leadership capacity, improve school culture, and elevate student outcomes by establishing pathways for teacher leaders;
• Explore how the leadership institute has equipped teacher leaders to lead instructional teams, empowering them to collaborate with peers in improving teaching and learning;
• Apply Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning to plan, design, implement, monitor, and evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher leadership program; and
• Identify next steps for implementation, replication, or modification of such a model within your school district.

Explore the challenge of supporting teachers to make data-informed decisions to improve mathematics teaching and learning. Learn how coaches within the Long Beach Network for School Improvement supported mathematics teacher teams to use data-based decision-making to inform their instruction. Examine the micro moves coaches and teachers within the project used to inform the structures, systems, and practices for data use in your own settings.

• Dive into the development of change ideas with a specific attention to equity as pathways to realizing team, school, or district strategic targets;
• Understand and use key data as a foundation for teachers to monitor progress toward student, teacher, and team goals;
• Analyze a script and video of a mathematics team’s data-focused conversation to identify teaching and coaching micro moves; and
• Be positioned to use data-based instructional decision-making to help teachers establish engaging and student-centered learning environments that promote high-quality equitable, mathematics instruction.

Learn about one district’s approach to redesigning what it means for students to do math. Discover how a multiyear implementation grounded in design thinking and aimed at building teacher content knowledge and reflective capacity positively impacted students. Investigate how the decision points, research, and contextual forces work together (or not) to lead to system transformation during an effective implementation.

• Understand how to leverage design thinking and implementation science;
• Explore the impact of curriculum-based professional learning to support technical and adaptive growth;
• Learn how to plan multifaceted adult learning that is responsive to continuous feedback; and
• Reflect on current or past implementations and collaborate on areas for refinement.

Hear how Standards for Professional Learning can become and inform policy at many levels: state or system adoption, teacher and principal evaluation and growth systems, and guidance for funding and external providers. Explore examples of different policy pathways. Discuss how to create stakeholder teams, establish plans for policy improvement and alignment, set policy goals, and evaluate how policy influences practice.

• Understand the many ways Standards for Professional Learning can inform policy;
• Understand how standards can be mapped to state and district educator professional learning systems;
• Apply a new tool from Learning Forward that supports collaborative policy advocacy and development; and
• Create plans for using standards in your home state, district, or school.

Explore the critical components of a successful principal pipeline as you gain understanding of the need for creating an aligned and coherent system for school leadership through the Standards for Professional Learning. Learn strategies for identifying and nurturing leadership talent within educational institutions. Determine next steps for prioritizing school leadership as a strategy for district improvement.

• Consider the importance of coaching-based supervision as a support and retention strategy;
• Share best practices and innovative approaches to leadership development; and
• Advocate for results-oriented, evidence-based professional learning to prepare instructional leaders who develop capacity to lead school improvement and work with teacher leaders to lead professional learning.

Learn how one school district created a culture where leaders build, inspire, and support coaching leaders, leading to statistically significant student achievement. Explore the framework and key elements that develop the mindset, structure, and conversations used by coaching leaders.

• Understand the framework and key elements of creating a culture of coaching leaders that both coaches leaders and empowers leaders to coach other leaders;
• Explore key elements that create the mindset, structure, and conversations used by coaching leaders; and
• Integrate different coaching models and skills currently used in districts to create a coherent system for coaching leaders who impact learning for all students.

Learn how districts make the invisible work of leadership more visible for all stakeholders within their organization. Explore a framework for high-quality instruction and adaptive leadership that brings coherence to instructional and leadership practice while providing greater equity to scholars’ experiences. Gain ideas on how to explicitly identify and grow teachers’ and leaders’ understanding, using critical strategies to impact student outcomes.

• Examine one district’s framework for clarifying expectations for students, teachers, and leaders at the classroom, school, and district levels;
• Examine one district’s definition of high-quality instruction and reflect and refine your vision for instruction;
• Trace one district’s journey to build a shared vision of high-quality instruction and leadership through its districtwide plan for professional learning from the perspective of central office administrators and school leaders; and
• Review districtwide systems and structures that allow for the diffusion of knowledge and improved practice around high-quality leadership and instruction.

Reimagine what leader professional learning can be, focusing on creating an inclusive culture where all students and staff can be their authentic selves, feel supported, and thrive. Learn strategies to design human-centered equity professional learning, sustain aspiring and current principals with transformational coaching, and support leaders through affinity-based think tanks.

• Experience an innovative approach to cultivating equity-centered leadership in a large, urban school district;
• Understand the importance of centering equity;
• Gain strategies for equity professional learning; and
• Consider the qualities of and barriers to becoming an inclusive leader.

Learn what current research is saying about the role of assistant principals — and specifically how to support assistant principals in leading equity-focused learning communities. Examine ways to support assistant principals’ development so that they get the most out of their current role and are prepared to transition into the principalship. Leave with knowledge of the leadership behaviors that assistant principals need to master in preparation for their role as principal.

• Gain knowledge about current research on the role of the assistant principal and a clear understanding of the needs of assistant principals;
• Examine the leadership behaviors assistant principals should master in preparation for the principal role;
• Understand how principals can best support assistant principals to lead thriving learning communities; and
• Establish a plan for integrating assistant principals into a leadership team in support of viable leadership pipelines.

Reflect and analyze your support and retention plan for novice teacher mentors. Explore how a multitiered support system strengthens attitudes and actions to increase novice teacher mentor success. Apply this multitiered approach to plan for sustainability, increased efficacy, and growth in the invaluable work your mentors provide new teachers.

• Analyze current systems of novice teacher mentor support;
• Connect to research-based strategies around novice teacher mentor needs that will strengthen and sustain master teachers as teacher leaders;
• Explore the benefits of investing in and providing systems that encourage consistency, collaboration, and connection; and
• Plan to integrate strategies from the systems of support that will positively impact teacher mentors and in turn their novice teachers and students.

Explore strategies for building classrooms that are affirming of neurodiversity. Gain a comprehensive understanding of the concepts of neurodiversity and neurodivergence and the importance of reducing the need for students to mask their differences. Learn practical strategies for supporting neurodivergent students, such as normalizing accommodations, implementing Universal Design for Learning practices, encouraging collaborative team teaching, and using language that promotes belonging.

• Gain a deep understanding of neurodiversity and neurodivergence and be equipped to identify and challenge common misconceptions;
• Learn specific, actionable strategies to support neurodivergent students;
• Acquire inclusive language practices that affirm neurodiversity and promote a more authentic learning environment; and
• Be prepared to apply new knowledge and strategies in your classroom, leading to more neurodiversity-affirming learning environments.

Understand how a large urban school district designed a large-scale, cyclical, and multitiered professional learning structure for principals, assistant principals, coaches, and teachers to improve K-2 literacy instruction. Discover the challenges and revisions encountered during implementation and efforts to combat inconsistencies within a large district. Gain a deeper understanding of large-scale early literacy professional learning.

• Examine one district’s process of creating and facilitating content centered on the science of reading within multitiered professional learning cycles, with content adaptations for audience and capacity level;
• Analyze implementation challenges and barriers, with lessons learned and insights gleaned for future cycles of professional learning;
• Consider opportunities within current professional learning offerings or school and district-based programs or processes where key data points may be leveraged to provide evidence for action, specifically in K-2 literacy.

Investigate new ideas for professional learning that create positive changes for your multilingual learners. Learn about a professional learning model that is working in one district. Participate in a design-thinking process that will guide you to some creative solutions for job-embedded, ongoing, and sustainable professional learning that meets the needs of a specific group of multilingual learners.

• Identify your school’s or district’s needs for professional learning based on known data, demographics, and student portraits;
• Generate multiple possibilities for structuring and implementing ongoing, job-embedded professional learning by building on the presenters’ examples and your experiences;
• Select possible ideas for professional learning to present to a leadership team at your school.

Explore the keys to student engagement and learn how to help students make meaning and connect their learning to relevant artificial intelligence experiences. Tackle five strategies that work to engage students at every grade level and inspire innovative work: choice-based instruction, inquiry-based projects, authentic audience, competitive challenges, and launching to the world. Create an action plan that makes learning meaningful and relevant to your students.

• Focus on using artificial intelligence as a tool with specific engagement purposes;
• Develop an action plan to make learning meaningful and relevant in any classroom context; and
• Explore real strategies and structures that drive engagement in a 21st-century learning environment.

Immerse yourself in compelling case studies featuring K-12 math teachers. Examine the intricate interplay between teachers’ math identities, their teacher efficacy, and their mastery of grade-level math content to unveil connections that significantly impact the effectiveness of professional learning practices. Explore tangible protocols that elevate mathematics teaching and learning.

• Dissect the nuances between professional learning strategies tailored for K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 teachers, considering their varying levels of content knowledge and individual math identities;
• Gain insight into the pivotal role a teacher’s math identity and comfort with mathematical content play in the success of professional learning strategies and protocols;
• Consider how strategies and protocols used in two rural districts could be applied to our school or district; and
• Engage in a model of one of the key protocols.

Explore a road map for beginning teachers and those who support them in navigating their crucial first years in the classroom. Identify six phases every beginning teacher goes through, with crucial advice and strategies for each. Leave with a yearlong action plan centered around research-based instructional and self-care practices that are essential to not just surviving, but thriving.

• Explore the six phases of beginning teachers: anticipation, survival, disillusionment, rejuvenation, reflection, and second anticipation;
• Understand the feelings and challenges associated with each phase;
• Discover practical strategies for instruction, classroom management, and relationship building; and
• Develop a plan for decreasing stress and increasing student achievement.

Explore a job-embedded professional learning program that builds the capacity of coaches, facilitators, and interventionists as leaders of professional learning. Interact with tools that allow educators to identify their leadership potential and empower them to grow and increase their capabilities as professional learning leaders so every student excels. Create an action plan to support a systems approach to continuous improvement of a professional learning program.

• Gain knowledge of quality tools to support a continuous improvement approach that cultivates expertise of professional learning leaders;
• Engage in collaborative learning to explore research-based tools, protocols, and resources to assess and advance expertise — the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are essential to the role of the professional learning leader and impact teaching practice; and
• Apply research-based tools, protocols, and resources to identify strengths and opportunities for a professional learning program and plan next steps.

Consider how to write about your professional learning insights, experiences, and journeys for publication. Identify writing goals and ideas, gain strategies and tips for communicating effectively and compellingly to an educator or policymaker audience, practice writing in response to prompts, and give and receive feedback from peers and facilitators. Examine submission processes and guidelines for The Learning Professional and other publications.

• Understand strategies for communicating insights, experiences, and stories about professional learning;
• Identify topics and messages specific to your work and practice writing for an audience of educators or policymakers;
• Give and receive feedback from peers on quick-write drafts; and
• Explore publication venues, set a writing goal, and make an action plan.

Discover the Learning Forward Academy, a professional learning experience that offers educators an unmatched opportunity to profoundly deepen their expertise and increase their capacity to meet the challenges in the modern educational landscape. Hear from Academy coaches and members about how this 2½-year inquiry-based learning experience has transformed their work.

• Learn about the Academy experience; and
• Hear about opportunities to expand your involvement with Learning Forward.

Explore peer observation — the guiding research, its formats, its benefits, its obstacles, and strategies for successful implementation. Leave equipped with practitioner-focused information and actionable resources to use in starting or sustaining teacher peer observation practices in schools.

• Learn about research supporting the benefits of peer observation as professional learning;
• Consider the different formats of peer observation and how they might look in your school context;
• Predict obstacles to peer observation that may exist in your context and brainstorm possible solutions; and
• Share your experiences and questions about peer observation.

Learn how Illinois preschool and kindergarten coaches have come together to create a process and tool kit for supporting school districts as they transition children from preschool to kindergarten and beyond. Hear about how coaches are facilitating the process with four school districts, and explore ideas for dealing with challenges and celebrating successes. Leave with tools and ideas for implementing your own process.

• Understand the goals and challenges in creating a transition process; and
• Gain tools for implementing your own process in your setting.

Share struggles, triumphs, questions, and ideas about 6th- to 12th-grade math intervention with other passionate leaders. Explore an unbiased list of math intervention resources that are working for schools to close the math achievement gap.

• Access a curated list of 6-12 math intervention resources that are achieving real results in real schools;
• Share challenges and wins you’re experiencing in closing math gaps at your site to spark networking and sharing of ideas; and
• Explore any questions related to 6-12 math intervention with a thought leader in the intervention field.

Examine the sequence of learning and professional support that will lead teachers to change instructional feedback practices. Discover how educators in one school district engaged in sustained learning around feedback practices leveraging a feedback for growth professional learning tool in which educators progressed across a continuum strengthening teacher formative feedback, peer-to-peer feedback, and student self-regulation. Leave with insights from research, a professional learning tool, and ideas for implementation.

• Explore how education leaders can gather student voice to identify student needs and design responsive professional learning for teachers;
• Examine a model for supportive professional learning around key feedback for growth strategies; and
• Discuss features of effective learning within this model, potential barriers, and implications for implementation in unique school contexts.

Explore how building leaders can reframe behavior systemwide to support a deeper understanding of what behavior really is — and is not — and to empower all stakeholders to effectively navigate challenging interactions with students. Learn new ways to understand student needs, powerful shifts in mindset to expand stakeholder perspective, and concrete tools to create more inclusive learning environments.

• Define what behavior is and name considerations to take into account when understanding the deeper “whys” of the behavior;
• Explain educator mindset shifts and how they can help us better understand and support students who are exhibiting challenging behaviors; and
• Identify tools school leaders and staff can use to better understand, track, support, and attend to challenging situations surrounding student behavior.

Explore ways to build school culture through community relationships and teacher retention through positive events and marketing. Learn how to make, maintain, and grow connections with community partners.

• Identify resources to market schools and grow partnerships;
• Leave with ideas for teacher retention and marketing strategies; and
• Create an action plan for implementing and fostering community relationships.

Explore how equitable learning environments drive student success by amplifying voices and integrating perspectives from marginalized communities. Learn how breaking barriers fosters inclusivity, ensuring all students gain essential global skills. Discover keys to an educational landscape that exceeds expectations for every learner, regardless of background.

• Understand the transformative power of amplifying student voices, fostering empowerment that transcends conventional educational boundaries; and
• Understand how breaking down barriers in education fosters inclusivity, ensuring that all students, regardless of their background, acquire essential skills.

Navigate the turbulent skies of organizational change using a “preflight checklist” for instructional coaches that clarifies roles, elevates collaboration with all partners, and aligns goals for continuous progress. Explore a framework that guides next steps in supporting districtwide transformation. Use reflective questions to identify your next steps in advancing within the framework, enabling you to lead — and produce — change through influence without formal authority.

• Understand the relationship between a strategic plan and the points of leverage instructional coaches have to support schoolwide change;
• Analyze the current reality of your school environment to determine points of leverage you need to pursue to drive change in your school or district; and
• Use a personalized “preflight checklist” to initiate conversations with administrators and teachers, strategically align goals, and seek relevant professional learning opportunities to further enhance your coaching practice.

Unleash your power of influence in coaching. Explore eight transformative strategies to advocate for coaching, including gaining the skills to align coaching objectives with district priorities, forging strong relationships with decision-makers, and effectively articulating the value of coaching. Discover the secrets of strategic communication, forming powerful partnerships, and showcasing instructional coaching success. Learn to secure support, drive sustainable improvements, and become a true catalyst for change in your coaching program.

• Understand eight powerful strategies to effectively advocate for and promote instructional coaching within your organization;
• Understand three key moves that can be readily implemented for forming strategic partnerships, collecting vital program data, and showcasing coaching success; and
• Be empowered to take immediate action and drive positive outcomes in your coaching programs.

Delve into the critical role of continuous professional learning through a districtwide lens. Explore the transformative impact of ongoing development on teaching practices, student outcomes, staffing, and overall school success. Gain valuable insights into the latest educational trends, effective instructional strategies, and the importance of fostering a culture of learning, coaching, and continuous growth within the school community.

• Reflect and plan the conditions to build a strong coaching cycle to maximize educator practice; and
• Acquire a deeper understanding of evidence-based instructional strategies through an equity lens, a cycle of feedback, ensuring a growth mindset, and embracing challenges as opportunities while fostering a commitment to continuous improvement.

Explore how to get more effective work done in less time. Find ways to return to work refreshed and sustainably do this over the long term, using practices backed by research and interviews with school leaders.

• Learn strategies to determine the most essential tasks for your school and how to focus on them and get them done efficiently;
• Learn strategies to develop a balance between work and personal life;
• Understand the research that demonstrates how these practices will drive the entire school forward; and
• Apply evidence-based implementation best practices so these strategies can be sustained long-term.