Learning Forward Conference

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explore the mental health and emotional crises affecting educators and students today, and chart a course to lead our schools through grief. Determine action steps you can take to improve and enhance school culture, based on medical and military research in disaster psychology and rooted in best educational practices to properly support students and educators in new and meaningful ways.

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

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

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

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