Learning Forward’s Annual Conference

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 demonstrating 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.

Areas of Focus: Culture of Collaborative Inquiry; Curriculum, Assessment, & Instruction

Topics: Curriculum-based professional learning with high-quality instructional materials & student performance standards, Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), Rural Issues and Settings

Ryan Sikkes
The Core Collaborative

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.

Areas of Focus: Culture of Collaborative Inquiry; Implementation

Topics: Collaborative Inquiry, Efficacy (Teacher/Leader, Collective, Self), Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

Katherine Smith
The Core Collaborative

Brian Schum
Lammersville Unified School District
Mountain House High School

Heather Sharp
Lammersville Unified School District

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.

Areas of Focus: Learning Designs; Culture of Collaborative Inquiry

Topics: Deep Learning, Personalized Learning (Educators and Students)

Kara Vandas
The Core Collaborative

Jeanette Westfall
The Core Collaborative,

Jodie Mills
Boise Public School District

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

Areas of Focus: Curriculum, Assessment, & Instruction; Learning Designs

Topics: Deep Learning, Instructional Approaches, Learning Science/Science of Learning

Michael McDowell
The Core Collaborative
Hinge Education

Hanin Hasweh
New York Public Schools
PS 59, The Harbor View School