STLinSTL 2018

This presentation will explore the successes, challenges, and ongoing work of developing a new approach toward teacher professional growth. Rather than settling with the inadequate practices of infrequent observations, congenial conversations, generic procedures, and the anxieties of being evaluated, we will explore a process to build professional growth at your school, one that will provide new approaches to mentoring, collaboration, guidance, feedback, and customized professional support to enhance teacher learning.

In this two-part workshop, you will get the strategies you need to fuel collaborative leadership in your school or school district.  Spend the day with former principal, Education Week Blogger, and author Peter DeWitt to unpack six important factors framed through research while painting a powerful leadership scheme: meet stakeholders where they are, motivate stakeholders to strive for improvement, and model how to do it!  This blueprint will inspire you to transform your leadership practice, identify areas for change, build and empower your team, and include all stakeholders in the conversation!

Research across multiple fields strongly supports our understanding that Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Executive Function (EF) skills are critical for academic and personal success. This session provides a brief summary of the research and focuses on how schools and parents can collaborate to help all kids be their best S.E.L.F.

The world continues to change at a rapid rate. Have schools kept up with the rate of change? What needs to stay the same in schools? What ought to change? We are passionate about ensuring schools are preparing students for the world they already inhabit and the world they will inhabit. We will share Principia’s continuing journey into making school more relevant, engaging and authentic for the students. The presentation will examine how the forces of globalization are impacting on schools and highlight several key areas that Principia, a 120-year-old college prep school, and other schools around the world have embraced to transform schools to be more student-centered so that each child can unleash their unlimited potential. You will be taken through the challenges of change, how classrooms can evolve, what professional development looks like and how to build a culture of innovation. This insightful presentation will be for leaders and teachers who believe that the way we do schooling needs to radically shift. You will leave with insights into what can be done to inspire change and engage a school community on a journey of continuous improvement to ensure we can begin to shift the way our children experience school.

In this two-part workshop, you will get the strategies you need to fuel collaborative leadership in your school or school district.  Spend the day with former principal, Education Week Blogger, and author Peter DeWitt to unpack six important factors framed through research while painting a powerful leadership scheme: meet stakeholders where they are, motivate stakeholders to strive for improvement, and model how to do it!  This blueprint will inspire you to transform your leadership practice, identify areas for change, build and empower your team, and include all stakeholders in the conversation!

School leadership is devolving and hierarchies are flattening as schools are tasking middle management to take on greater levels of responsibilities. However, leadership professional development is seldom sufficient or well-focused enough to give the middle managers the skills and dispositions to support schools through ongoing cultural and pedagogical shifts. Furthermore, current best practice and research shows that schools with more devolved leadership and a flatter hierarchy improves student learning. If this is the case, why don’t schools spend more time developing the leadership capacity, particularly transformational leadership skills, of their managers?

In this fast-paced and lively presentation, Peter will present some insights into the theory of leadership development, what works and what doesn’t work. He will then make the case for how schools could intentionally develop leadership by helping people better understand their leadership strengths and how to implement these strengths in the daily management of teams. Peter will provide some frameworks for how schools can successfully do this.

Peter is currently completing his doctoral studies in the development of leadership capacity in mid-level managers.

Change is hard! This hands-on Session on “Leading Transitions” will focus on the necessary steps to take before moving forward on any change initiative including filling Administrative positions. Leading begins with self assessment and desired outcomes. Next, you will learn how to apply the ten step practicals necessary in assessing the organizational needs. Finally, you will have the chance to assess a school’s organization when you will use these ten steps, many of which are assumed but rarely addressed, by inculcating them into well planned, change processes.

The Marzano High Reliability Schools (HRS) framework serves as a strategic planning framework to help schools focus on specific, research-based conditions for continuous school improvement. The HRS overview workshop introduces participants to the five levels of the framework and the hierarchy in which they are organized.

Participants will also learn the HRS process for strategic planning and explore example practices from other schools using the HRS framework. The one-day overview will engage participants in reflecting on their own schools through the lens of high reliability and how HRS is a data-driven leadership process.

During the one-day overview, participants will learn the concept of leading and lagging indicators of practice and the use of quick data as a monitoring tool. Attendees will explore key components of each of the five levels of the High Reliability Schools model and look at sample practices within different levels.

The five specific levels include:

Level 1: Safe and Collaborative Culture
Explore specific strategies for shared decision making and developing collaborative processes that clarify the work of teacher teams and help schools operate as a cohesive network of teams clearly focused on curriculum, instruction, assessment, and achievement for all students.

Level 2: Effective Teaching in Every Classroom
Learn the concept of establishing a district- or schoolwide model of instructional practice and how it can be used to create a culture of pedagogical growth for all teachers.

Level 3: Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
Understand the concept and processes for establishing a guaranteed and viable curriculum, which includes establishing a district- or schoolwide comprehensive vocabulary program.

Level 4: Standards-Referenced Reporting
Understand critical aspects and strategies for implementing a standards-referenced grading and reporting system in your district or school.

Level 5: Competency-Based Education
Learn specific aspects of competency-based education and review strategic initiatives schools should consider for implementing competency-based education.

Note: Part 1 of this full-day workshop will address levels 1-3.  Part 2 will focus on levels 4-5.  You may either either or both parts.

Future Ready leaders lead from their passions, believe in collaboration, and understand innovative uses of technology with respect to curriculum and pedagogy. Join Sheryl as she shares highlights of her learning from her 30 day road trip and year-long work on the United States Department of Education’s Future Ready Leaders project. Find out what exemplary, Future Ready superintendents around the country are doing to ensure they leave a legacy for others to follow.

Continuing to carry out the greatness of a building is challenging for school leaders. We want our audience to learn about our struggles & celebrations of our path in regards to the continued education excellence Ridgewood Middle has seen throughout the past decade. Our team of educators collaborate & work together with limited resources & time in order to make the "dream work" here at Ridgewood. Our population of students is challenging at times - 40% free or reduced lunch population, however working as a strong group of leaders (which included everyone, staff, students, & parents) we continue to see growth, while thinking outside the box to see greatness happen for our students' success. You will leave this session with ideas to collaborate with key staff stakeholders, how to involve everyone as a team, and what to do when things aren't working out!

Our session will address middle school issues grades 6-8, however high school could easily have many take aways as well to implement into their schools.

Link to our presentation: https://bit.ly/2LYgBkW

The Marzano High Reliability Schools (HRS) framework serves as a strategic planning framework to help schools focus on specific, research-based conditions for continuous school improvement. The HRS overview workshop introduces participants to the five levels of the framework and the hierarchy in which they are organized.

Participants will also learn the HRS process for strategic planning and explore example practices from other schools using the HRS framework. The one-day overview will engage participants in reflecting on their own schools through the lens of high reliability and how HRS is a data-driven leadership process.

During the one-day overview, participants will learn the concept of leading and lagging indicators of practice and the use of quick data as a monitoring tool. Attendees will explore key components of each of the five levels of the High Reliability Schools model and look at sample practices within different levels.

The five specific levels include:

Level 1: Safe and Collaborative Culture
Explore specific strategies for shared decision making and developing collaborative processes that clarify the work of teacher teams and help schools operate as a cohesive network of teams clearly focused on curriculum, instruction, assessment, and achievement for all students.

Level 2: Effective Teaching in Every Classroom
Learn the concept of establishing a district- or schoolwide model of instructional practice and how it can be used to create a culture of pedagogical growth for all teachers.

Level 3: Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
Understand the concept and processes for establishing a guaranteed and viable curriculum, which includes establishing a district- or schoolwide comprehensive vocabulary program.

Level 4: Standards-Referenced Reporting
Understand critical aspects and strategies for implementing a standards-referenced grading and reporting system in your district or school.

Level 5: Competency-Based Education
Learn specific aspects of competency-based education and review strategic initiatives schools should consider for implementing competency-based education.

Note: Part 1 of this full-day workshop will address levels 1-3.  Part 2 will focus on levels 4-5.  You may either either or both parts.

When the word "data" is mentioned in a school, hallways are suddenly empty, dining halls are abandoned, and meeting areas become as silent as libraries. It seems that there is a trepidation around the collecting and interpreting of data. This session aims at making numbers a lot more friendly and data a lot more manageable to the novice interpreter. In this session we will explore what data says and doesn't say, and how to best engage with data when it is presented to us. We are swimming in information throughout our school days. It is a huge opportunity to begin interacting with that information in ways that will help us help our students better.