Learning Forward Conference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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