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Professional Learning Communities at Work™ Institute
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June 10-12, 2010
St. Charles Convention Center
One Convention Center Plaza
St. Charles, MO
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Richard DuFour |
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Rebecca DuFour |
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Mike Mattos |
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Duane Graber |
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Mary Hendricks-Harris |
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Dennis King |
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Sharon V. Kramer |
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Geri Parscale |
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Steve Pearce |
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Kenneth Williams |
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This event is at capacity. Please confirm your registration before making travel plans.
"After several months of research and dialogue with practitioners throughout the nation, it became apparent that the hype was real. PLCs . . . are being used by schools and districts of all sizes and demographics to make significant impacts on student achievement.”
—Evaluating Professional Learning
Communities: Final Report
An APQC® Education Benchmarking Project
The Professional Learning Communities at Work™ concept is increasingly recognized as the most powerful strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement. This institute gives you and your team the knowledge and tools to implement this powerful concept in your school or district.
For three days, you will have the opportunity to network with some of the most insightful minds in education, including the architects of the PLC at Work™ process. Presenters are accessible to you throughout the event.
The program includes time for questions during the breakout sessions, a panel of experts to address questions from the audience, and time for teams to reflect and seek the advice of the presenters. At the end of team time, you will focus on next action steps, with presenters on hand to guide you.
For those just beginning to explore PLCs, this is an excellent way to build your knowledge base. For those who are already involved in deep implementation, this institute is the perfect opportunity to revisit your mission, introduce new team members to the process, and get answers to new questions.
As you delve deep into the three big ideas of a PLC—focus on learning, build a collaborative culture, and focus on results—you will gain specific, practical, and inspiring strategies for transforming your school or district into a place where all students learn at high levels.
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Embassy Suites St. Charles-St. Louis Hotel & Spa - Sold Out
Alternate Hotel 1
Ameristar Casino Resort Spa
One Ameristar Boulevard
St. Charles, MO 63302
Reservations
636.940.4301
Discounted rate (single or double)
$154 per night
Deadline: May 9, 2010
Online hotel reservations
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Keynote Presentations
Richard DuFour
Once Upon a Time: Confronting the Mythology of Public Education
Dr. DuFour addresses specific strategies for school improvement 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.
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.
Mike Mattos
Endless Possibilities: Meeting Our Moral Responsibility to Every Child
Never in our nation’s history have the demands on our educational system been greater or the consequences of failure as severe. For students who fail, the reality is that there are practically no paths of opportunity. Discover a compelling vision for what can be achieved when schools take collective responsibility for the success of every child and responds collectively when students don’t learn. Mike shares guiding concepts and practical strategies for providing your students with what they deserve—endless possibilities.
Breakout Sessions
Rebecca DuFour
Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Elementary Schools
Learn strategies for collectively responding to diverse student learning needs in a timely, directive, and systematic way. Explore different models of intervention and enrichment to assess your school’s response. Take home an action-planning template for next steps. This session is recommended for elementary educators.
We Need More Time!
Learn how to overcome the challenge of providing time and structures that support student and adult learning. This interactive session provides participants with tools, questions, and templates to identify existing resources and reallocate those resources to better support high levels of learning. This session is for elementary educators.
One Is the Loneliest Number: Developing Leadership Capacity in Your School
Examine a case study to identify specific strategies for developing leaders and creating the culture of widely dispersed leadership that is characteristic of PLCs. This highly interactive session illustrates the need for this leadership style in a learning organization and sheds light on why researchers and theorists support this practice.
Richard DuFour
Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Secondary Schools
See school from a student’s perspective. This session uses the video Through New Eyes to compare responses of traditional schools and PLCs to students who aren’t learning. Assess the culture of your school and examine models for creating timely, directive, and systematic interventions. This session is recommended for middle and high school teachers.
Getting Started: Building Consensus and Responding to Resisters
Gain a deep understanding of what consensus means and learn best practices for building it among your faculty. Learn how to use seven research-based strategies for addressing resistance, and return to your school with clear ideas for breaking the traditional barriers of isolation and individual autonomy.
Assessing Your Progress on the PLC Journey
This session is for educators who have deeply implemented the PLC concept in their school or district. Examine data, team artifacts, and survey results from a sample school. Identify questions to probe more deeply into practices. Discover areas of commendation and gain recommendations to move forward. Finally, debrief and discuss ways to implement the process.
Richard DuFour and Rebecca DuFour
Building the Collaborative Culture of a Professional Learning Community, Parts 1 and 2
Learn how educators transform congenial groups into high-performing collaborative teams and get a sense of the specific work teams do. Discover ways to provide time and support for collaboration during the school day. Most important, learn structures and strategies to help teams stay focused on work that positively impacts student achievement.
Duane Graber
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Culturally Responsive Teaching recognizes that culture is central to learning. Designed for elementary teachers and administrators, this session explores the characteristics of CRT and how it relates to professional learning communities. Explore possible obstacles and how to overcome them. Take an inventory of different cultures in your school and begin to develop your strategy for CRT.
Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support in a Professional Learning Community
The pyramid of interventions helps schools develop a plan to help students and close the achievement gap. It focuses on the academics of the student’s school life. But what about behavioral aspects? Explore the key features of positive behavior supports and how they relate to PLC interventions. Strategize the first steps of your behavior support plan. This session is designed for elementary teachers and administrators.
Mary Hendricks-Harris
Coasting Through the Roadblocks: Dealing With Those Slow to Change
Attempting to eliminate conflict is useless. Leaders must learn to anticipate and deal with those who do not initially support school change. Examine the change process and understand the stages of change. Then, learn methods to minimize resistance and work with those who are unwilling to move forward.
Using the Research to Establish a Pyramid of Interventions for Behavior
When initially developing a pyramid of interventions, schools often include interventions that have not been proven to be effective. Explore common myths about behavior interventions and identify those that are research based. Student mentoring, social skills training, and individual behavior plans will be discussed.
Dennis King
Collaboration, Coordination, and Cooperation: Are We a Team or a Group?
Explore the differences between a team and a group and learn the essentials of highly effective teams. Participants also learn strategies for focusing as a team on how members work together: Is it collaboration, coordination, or cooperation?
Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap in a PLC
Learn how to use a continuum based on six characteristics of a PLC to assess what you believe, what you do, and the important differences between the two. Discuss common problems associated with closing the knowing-doing gap as you create a journey map to support PLC implementation.
Developing a Leadership Team
Learn how to select and use leadership teams as part of school improvement. In addition to understanding team roles, participants design a team action plan.
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Breakout Sessions (continued)
Sharon Kramer
Creating Student-Friendly Learning Targets
Rick Stiggins says, “Students can hit any target that they can see and that holds still for them.” Explore the power of clearly defined targets for increasing teacher effectiveness and student learning. Gain hands-on experience in writing learning targets in student-friendly language and practical strategies for engaging students in the process.
Common Formative Assessments: The Key to Learning
Research is clear that regular formative assessments are the key to improving student achievement. These assessments are particularly powerful when teams of teachers create common assessments and then share and discuss the results. Dr. Kramer provides practical strategies for implementing and using common formative assessments to measure and manage student learning.
The Grading Dilemma
As teachers across the nation implement a standards-based curriculum, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we need to rethink the way we currently grade. Examine the reasons why grades are broken and explore practices that better communicate learning progress. Learn new approaches to grading that describe and support student learning.
Connecting the Dots: From Essential Outcomes to Formative Assessments to Intervention and Enrichment
How does a collaborative team use essential learning outcomes to create common assessments and the data to plan next steps for students? Learn how to use common assessments as an instructional tool. Gain practical strategies for deconstructing essential learning outcomes, mapping an assessment plan, and examining data to determine next steps for students.
Mike Mattos
Beyond Buy-In: Creating Consensus and Ownership in a PLC
The biggest obstacle most schools face when starting down the road to becoming a PLC is a lack of staff buy-in. In reality, it is not a question of buy-in but a need to create collective ownership. This session reviews the obstacles to creating consensus and provides practical, proven strategies to overcome these barriers.
It’s Just ED—A Practical Look at Response to Intervention
RTI is far more than another federal mandate or new special education initiative. It is a research-based process designed to provide every child with the time and support needed to learn at high levels. For PLC schools, this approach should hardly be considered new. Take a practical look at RTI and learn how it aligns perfectly to PLC practices.
Learning CPR: Creating Powerful Responses When Students Don’t Learn
The most significant difference between a traditional school and a professional learning community is the response when students don’t learn. Many schools use interventions that simply don’t work and, in many cases, are actually harmful. Learn the essential characteristics of effective interventions, as well as how to use these powerful characteristics to evaluate and improve current site intervention programs.
Filling the Cracks: How to Create a Systematic Intervention Program
Most schools have intervention programs, but without a systematic identification process, some students are bound to slip through the cracks. This session provides guiding practices and practical ideas to create a systematic intervention program that guarantees all children, no matter who their teacher is, will receive the support needed to succeed.
Geri Parscale
Trips, Traps, and Trauma: PLC From a Central Office Perspective
No PLC will be completely successful without board of education and community support. Learn techniques to bring all stakeholders on board with PLCs and get specific tips for positive media relations. Take home a greater understanding of the role central office administrators play in a PLC, as well as specific activities that involve stakeholders.
Making Your Goals SMART
Learn how to design and develop SMART goals to achieve the main focus of PLCs—increased student learning. Geri explores the elements of SMART goals and clarifies the steps involved in creating them. An interactive exercise involves examining sample student data and developing a SMART goal that supports increased learning.
Using Meeting Protocols
Using protocols in professional learning keeps educators on a path of careful collaboration, deep understanding, and changes in practice to achieve improved student learning. Geri examines the importance of protocols to facilitate learning. She shares various protocols and provides time to practice using specific ones to meet your needs.
Focus on the Right Things!
Being a learning leader in an authentic PLC requires administrators to focus on the right things. Examine Robert J. Marzano’s “21 Responsibilities of a School Leader” and use the three big ideas of a PLC to narrow these areas of focus to lead your school forward on its PLC journey.
Steve Pearce
PLC Leadership 101
How does a school get started in the PLC process? How does a leader make a difference? An experienced PLC leader who has implemented the model at two different schools shares the lessons he learned. Understand how to build effective teams, leaders, and staff and effectively guide them on the PLC journey.
Flip My School
It is difficult for most people to disagree with the PLC at Work™ model. But where is the best place to start for school transformation? How do you go from learning concepts to making your PLC a reality? Learn practical tips and strategies for changing school culture and gain a clear vision of what your school can become.
PLCs at the Middle School Level
How does the PLC at Work™ model work at the middle school level? Steve shares effective strategies he has used in effectively implementing the PLC at Work™ model at two different middle schools. This session includes ideas regarding teams, departments, scheduling, and systems of intervention.
Kenneth Williams
At Risk or Underserved? Focusing on What Really Matters in Student Learning
The questions we ask about educating our youth impact our results. During this session, participants learn to shift traditional thinking and change paradigms by collaboratively using expertise and resources to maximize student achievement. Learn to capitalize on PLC principles to ensure student success for all.
Failure to Launch: Avoiding the Common Pitfalls of Collaborative Teams
The collaborative team is the engine that drives a PLC, and a series of necessary steps makes that engine run. After working with hundreds of teams, Ken has identified the most common pitfalls that sabotage progress. Explore these areas and walk away with tips, tools, and templates for improving team effectiveness and student learning.
Navigating the Seven Cs of Relational Leadership
School leaders and teacher leaders must be skilled relationship builders with diverse groups of people&mdash:especially with those different from themselves. Ken highlights seven practical principles and strategies for success.
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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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This event is at capacity. By joining the waitlist, your position in line will be held. Your credit card will not be charged. |
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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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