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Professional Learning Communities at Work™ Summit: New Insights for Improving Schools
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February 23-26, 2010
Phoenix Convention Center
100 North Third Street
Phoenix, AZ
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Rebecca DuFour |
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Richard DuFour |
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Robert Eaker |
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Cassandra Erkens |
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Thomas Guskey |
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Janel Keating |
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Thomas W. Many |
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Robert J. Marzano |
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Mike Mattos |
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Anthony Muhammad |
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Rick Stiggins |
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Richard DuFour, Robert Eaker, Rebecca DuFour, and a lineup of hand-selected experts will deliver keynote presentations and breakout sessions designed to develop your capacity for building a professional learning community.
Hear from authors you know and trust as they address the most important aspects of school culture that must change as you create your PLC. Learn how to change assessment and grading practices, confront resisters to change, and build a system of interventions that satisfies RTI requirements. Each keynote presentation will address concepts essential to the PLC process. The speakers will be available to answer your questions. The materials you receive provide powerful tools, resources, and research to help you implement the PLC concept in your own school or district.
Bring your leadership teams for an inspiring experience. Whether you are just beginning to build a PLC or need to regroup for your next steps, this summit provides practical knowledge based on the three big ideas that drive a PLC delivered by experts who know the process best. You will return to your school systems ready to build staff capacity to work interdependently within high-performing collaborative teams committed to continuous improvement.
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Events reach capacity quickly. Please confirm your registration before making travel plans.
To receive the discounted hotel rate, mention Solution Tree.Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel
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Keynote Presentations
Rebecca DuFour
The Power of Professional Learning Communities: Bringing the Big Ideas to Life
Becky investigates the three big ideas that drive the PLC concept, offers practical strategies for bringing those ideas to life, and shares compelling success stories from schools throughout the United States that are using those ideas to have a profound impact on student and adult learning. Vivid examples and sound evidence show that the professional learning community concept is supported by research and endorsed by educational organizations as our best hope for sustained, substantive improvement.
Richard DuFour
Once Upon a Time: Confronting the Mythology of Public Education
Dr. DuFour addresses specific strategies for improving schools that are grounded in research and proven in practice. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the effectiveness of these practices, they do not represent the norm in North American schools. A major obstacle to their implementation is the mythology that has been created around and within the education community. Participants will be challenged to examine some of the persistent and pervasive myths that impede progress on the PLC journey.
Robert Eaker
What It Means to BE a Professional Learning Community
Advocates of PLCs face the daunting challenge of sustaining the hard work of change and ensuring that changes ultimately impact school culture in significant ways. Dr. Eaker offers a number of practical suggestions for moving a school along a continuum from knowing about PLCs to doing the work of implementation to ultimately being a PLC.
Thomas Guskey
Grading and Reporting Student Learning
Dr. Guskey outlines a variety of ways to report student learning progress to parents and the community, including report cards, standards-based reporting, alternative formats for parent conferences, newsletters, and phone calls. Learn how to design new reporting structures that better communicate and involve parents in student learning. Dr. Guskey also details the policies and practices that should be avoided due to their negative consequences for students, teachers, and schools.
Thomas Many
Forged, Not Forced: Illuminating What Works When Implementing Professional Learning Communities
Understanding the basic tenets of PLCs is important, but knowing is not enough. Leaders must implement, execute, and act. They must do. Leaders create a learning-by-doing culture by modeling learners’ behaviors. They roll up their sleeves and engage in the learning process with others, side-by-side, step-by-step. Using examples, stories, and anecdotes to support recommendations by influential authors in the field, Dr. Many offers specific strategies that increase the chance of successfully implementing the PLC model.
Robert J. Marzano
Formative Assessment and Standards-Based Grading
Learn how to implement an integrated system of assessment and grading that will enhance both teaching and learning. Dr. Marzano provides specific information on the benefits of formative assessment and explains how to design and interpret three different types. He also illustrates the necessary changes in instruction that must accompany a rigorous formatively based approach to assessment. Finally, he explains and exemplifies new approaches to grading that better support formative assessment.
Mike Mattos
Pyramid Response to Intervention: RTI, PLCs, and How to Respond When Students Don’t Learn
The underlying premise of RTI is that schools should not delay providing help for struggling students, but instead provide timely, targeted, and systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate the need. Building a PLC and implementing RTI are complementary processes. This keynote shows how implementing RTI practices within the PLC at Work™ model is our best hope to ensure high levels of learning for all children. Understand how PLC practices create an ongoing process that supports a schoolwide site intervention program. Gain practical, proven, research-based implementation ideas.
Anthony Muhammad
Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division
Dr. Muhammad sheds new light on the age-old battle of gaining staff buy-in on school-improvement initiatives. Explore the root causes of staff resistance to change, and leave with concrete strategies that will improve school culture and lay the foundation for a powerful learning environment. Learn what makes a school culture healthy or toxic, understand subtle sociological issues that affect student learning, and gain strategies for eliminating staff division.
Rick Stiggins
Seven Essential Assessment Actions for School Leaders
Learn how to balance local assessment systems, weave standards into productive assessment systems, assure accurate systemwide assessment and effective communication of results that support student success, and make students partners in their own success. Participants leave with a focused action plan for making assessment a foundation of their school-improvement efforts.
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Breakout Sessions
Rebecca DuFour and Richard DuFour
Building the Collaborative Culture of a Professional Learning Community, Parts 1 and 2
Learn how educators move from congenial groups to high-performing collaborative teams and get a sense of the specific work undertaken by those teams. Discover ways to provide time and support for collaborative teams during the school day and, more important, structures and strategies to help teams stay focused on doing the work that has a positive impact on student achievement. This session is designed for educators of all levels and is highly recommended for participants new to PLC concepts.
Rebecca DuFour
Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Elementary Schools
Explore practices of traditional schools and compare and contrast them to a PLC system that provides additional time and support for student learning. This session is recommended for elementary school teachers.
Richard DuFour
Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Secondary Schools
Assess the current manner in which your school responds when students do not learn. Examine different models that create a timely, directive, and systematic response. This session is recommended for middle and high school educators.
Robert Eaker and Janel Keating
Collaborative Teams at Work in the Daily Classroom Culture
Collaborative teams are the engine that drives a PLC. Learn how to drill the work of collaborative teams deep into the day-to-day culture of classrooms to really impact student learning.
Aligning the Relationships and Work of Systemwide Leadership Teams
Just as principals should be part of a high-performing administrative team at the district level, team leaders should play an integral role as members of principals’ leadership teams at the school level. Learn how to align the work of leaders within teams as well as interdependently throughout the system to ensure your PLC stays focused on the right things.
Roadmap: Journey to Becoming a PLC
Beginning the journey to becoming a PLC isn’t enough. There is no right way for schools to complete the journey, but there are definite stops that all must make. Teachers need a map—a reference—to check where they are, identify next stops, and get a sense of progress. This session, which is aligned with the Solution Tree resource The Journey to Becoming a Professional Learning Community, helps participants pinpoint their place along the path.
Cassandra Erkens
Leading Change in Assessment Literacy
Educators now realize most assessment practices better serve student learning if they are formative. Such a significant change requires leadership at all levels to model the desired culture shift and quality assessment practices. Cassandra explores strategies for student-involved learning as leadership practices that can create and support the desired changes.
Promising Practices in the Design and Use of Common Formative Assessments
Understand the process of designing and using common formative assessments to both monitor and promote high levels of learning. Study best practices in assessment design and explore the process of working in collaborative teams to examine and respond to results.
Mike Mattos
Learning CPR: Creating Powerful Responses When Students Don’t Learn
Richard DuFour says, “Don’t tell me you believe that all kids can learn. Tell me what you are doings about the kids who aren’t learning.” Learn how to create a highly effective, systematic intervention process that ensures every child will receive the time and support needed to succeed.
Anthony Muhammad
Transformational Leadership: A Practitioner’s Guide
Dr. Muhammad delivers high-leverage, research-based strategies for leaders at every level. Taken from his book Transforming School Culture, these strategies have been proven to overcome, and in many cases eliminate, staff division that blocks progress. Engage in role playing and problem solving to discover how you can overcome even the most resistant opponents of change.
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You will receive a certificate of participation after the event. Please check with your state Department of Education for CEU information. You may also register for graduate credit through Grand Canyon University.
Download Request for University Credit and Official Transcript(s) Instructions/Form |
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By Phone: |
800.733.6786
812.336.7700
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We welcome and recommend substitutions for those who cannot attend. Substitutions may be made at any time prior to the event. If you send a substitute, please provide his or her name and send your request to registration@solution-tree.com. All cancellations must be in writing and sent to registration@solution-tree.com or Solution Tree, 555 North Morton Street, Bloomington, IN 47404. Cancellations more than 90 days prior require a $75 processing fee. Cancellations between 10 and 90 days require half of the registration fee. There are no refunds for cancellations less than 10 days prior. |
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By Fax: |
812.336.7790
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By Mail: |
Solution Tree
555 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404 |
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