Wednesday, February 20 6:00 8:00 a.m. 8:00 9:30 a.m. 9:30 10:00 a.m. Break 10:00 11:15 a.m. Agenda Phoenix, Arizona February 20 22 Registration Continental breakfast 11:15 a.m. 12:45 p.m. Lunch (on your own) 12:45 2:00 p.m. Breakouts 2:00 2:30 p.m. Break 2:30 3:45 p.m. Breakouts Keynote Rebecca DuFour The Power of Professional Learning Communities at Work: Bringing the Big Ideas to Life Keynote Douglas B. Reeves Taking Your PLC to the Next Level in 2013: Creative Opportunities for Students, Teachers, and Leaders North Ballroom Pre-Function Titles & locations: pp. 3 4 Descriptions: pp. 7 13 Titles & locations: pp. 3 4 Descriptions: pp. 7 13 Agenda Thursday, February 21 7:00 8:00 a.m. 8:00 9:30 a.m. 9:30 10:00 a.m. Break 10:00 11:15 a.m. Registration Continental breakfast 11:15 a.m. 12:45 p.m. Lunch (on your own) 12:45 2:00 p.m. Breakouts 2:00 2:30 p.m. Break 2:30 3:45 p.m. Keynote Richard DuFour Implementing the PLC Process: Will You Soar or Settle? Keynote Robert J. Marzano The Perils and Promises of Current Trends in Teacher Evaluation Panel discussion A Q&A time with presenters. Receive practical answers to your most pressing questions. North Ballroom Pre-Function Titles & locations: pp. 3 4 Descriptions: pp. 7 13 Friday, February 22 7:00 8:00 a.m. Continental breakfast North Ballroom Pre-Function 8:00 9:30 a.m. 9:30 10:00 a.m. Break 10:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. Keynote Robert Eaker What It Means to Be a Professional Learning Community Keynote Anthony Muhammad The Will to Lead: Transformational Leadership Agenda and speakers are subject to change. 1
Breakouts at a Glance Presenter and Title Wednesday, February 20 Thursday, February 21 12:45 2:00 p.m. 2:30 3:45 p.m. 12:45 2:00 p.m. Rebecca DuFour Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Elementary Schools Richard DuFour Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Secondary Schools Rebecca & Richard DuFour North Ballroom D North Ballroom B C Breakouts at a Glance Building the Collaborative Culture of a Professional Learning Community at Work (Part 1) Building the Collaborative Culture of a Professional Learning Community at Work (Part 2) Robert Eaker Friday Night in America: A Common Sense Approach to Improving Student Achievement Aligning the Work of a Professional Learning Community: Central Office, Schools, and Teams Drilling Deeper Into the Daily Work of Collaborative Teams Timothy D. Kanold Turning Your PLC Teachable Point of View Into Action Living in the Flow of the With PLC Life Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work Thomas W. Many High-Leverage Strategies for School Leaders Powering Your Practice: Aligning Best Practice and Professional Learning Communities Mike Mattos On Solid Ground: How PLCs Build the Foundation for Successful RTI Interventions Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles We Know What to Do, but When Do We Do It? Making Time for Interventions North Ballroom B C North Ballroom D 121 A C 124 A B North Ballroom A North Ballroom B C 122 A C 121 A C 124 A B North Ballroom A 125 A B 121 A C North Ballroom A 3
Breakouts at a Glance Presenter and Title Wednesday, February 20 Thursday, February 21 12:45 2:00 p.m. 2:30 3:45 p.m. 12:45 2:00 p.m. Anthony Muhammad The Courage to Lead: Moving People Out of Their Comfort Zones 122 A C Kenneth C. Williams 12 Angry Men: The Impact of One, the Power of Team 122 A C At Risk or Underserved? Focusing on What Really Matters in Student Learning More Than a Mission Statement: Moving Your PLC From Compliance to Crusade North Ballroom D 124 A B Agenda and speakers are subject to change. 4
Phoenix Convention Center Map 5
Rebecca DuFour The Power of Professional Learning Communities at Work: Bringing the Big Ideas to Life The professional learning community concept is supported by research and endorsed by educational organizations at all levels as our best hope for sustained, substantive improvement. But what are the big ideas that drive the professional learning community concept, and what do they look like in the real world of education? Rebecca DuFour offers practical strategies for bringing the big ideas to life. Participants engage in the actual work of collaborative teams in a PLC and travel on virtual field trips to schools and districts that use these ideas to profoundly impact student and adult learning. Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Elementary Schools Schools that function as PLCs must ultimately do two things: 1) build a collaborative culture to promote continuous adult learning, and 2) create structures and systems that provide students with additional time and support for learning. Participants in this session examine strategies to collectively: Respond to the learning needs of each student in a timely, directive, and systematic way. Create and sustain strong parent partnerships to enhance student learning. Make celebrations a part of the school culture. After examining different models of systematic intervention and enrichment, participants receive criteria to assess their own school s response and an action-planning template for next steps in raising the bar and closing the gap. This session is recommended for elementary school educators. Richard DuFour Implementing the PLC Process: Will You Soar or Settle? The journey to becoming a professional learning community is fraught with dangerous detours and seductive shortcuts at every turn. Inevitably, these detours and shortcuts can circumvent actually doing what PLCs are meant to do. Recent studies have found that partial implementation of the PLC process produces no gains in student achievement while deep implementation results in dramatic gains. In this session, Richard DuFour alerts educators to inevitable challenges in implementing a PLC and provides research, rationale, strategies, and tools for overcoming these challenges. Session Descriptions = Keynote 7
Richard DuFour Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Secondary Schools The mission statement of most schools asserts that all students can and should learn. The nagging question that confronts those schools, however, is what happens when they don t learn? This session uses the powerful video Through New Eyes: Examining the Culture of Your School to help you see school from a new perspective the perspective of a student. Participants then contrast the traditional school response when students experience initial difficulty in their learning with the systematic response of a professional learning community. This session calls on participants to: Assess the current manner in which their schools respond when students do not learn. Examine different schedules and models that provide students who are not learning with a timely, directive, and systematic response that ensures they receive the additional time and support essential to their learning. This session is recommended for middle and high school educators. Rebecca & Richard DuFour Building the Collaborative Culture of a Professional Learning Community at Work (Parts 1 & 2) Powerful collaborative teams are the fundamental building block of a professional learning community and a critical component in building a collaborative culture. Learn how educators transform their congenial groups into 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. More importantly, identify structures and strategies to help teams stay focused on doing the work that has a positive impact on student achievement. This two-part continuing session is designed for educators at all levels and is highly recommended for all participants who are new to PLC concepts. Robert Eaker What It Means to Be a Professional Learning Community Given the fact that there is unprecedented agreement among researchers and practitioners that PLCs offer our best hope for improving schools, it might be said that the time for PLCs has come. However, a word of caution is in order even in the face of such widespread enthusiasm. 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. Robert 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. 8 = Keynote
Robert Eaker Friday Night in America: A Common Sense Approach to Improving Student Achievement Improving student learning is a difficult, complex, and incremental endeavor. However, more is known about ways to ensure student learning than is realized at first glance. Many of these methods are used in non-academic school settings. Practices that coaches on Friday nights use to ensure success on the football field are similar to efforts that school teams undertake to guarantee success in the academic arena. Robert Eaker reviews school practices that lead to improved student learning. He shows how teacher teams can suit up with powerful strategies to win every day of the week. Aligning the Work of a Professional Learning Community: Central Office, Schools, and Teams A districtwide professional learning community is more than a sum of individual parts. A highperforming school district that functions as a PLC reflects a thoughtful alignment and integration of work at the central office level, in individual schools, and in teacher teams. While highlighting the efforts of highly successful school districts, Robert Eaker describes how these districts organize and align at each level to implement professional learning community concepts and practices districtwide. Drilling Deeper Into the Daily Work of Collaborative Teams Collaborative teams are the engine that drives a professional learning community. However, simply organizing schools into collaborative teams has little or no effect on student learning. The real issue is what collaborative teams do day in and day out. Robert Eaker focuses on highperforming teams and their specific work in a PLC. This session features video clips of successful teams at work. Timothy D. Kanold Turning Your PLC Teachable Point of View Into Action The successful implementation of the PLC process is reflected in the teachable points of view (TPOVs) and behaviors of every leader and educator. In this inspirational and engaging session, Timothy D. Kanold offers insight into helping every collaborative team and school leader develop a compelling picture of the school s future in order to engender energy, passion, and most important, adult action toward the PLC vision and process. Dr. Kanold helps connect you to your personal PLC TPOV and highlights the importance of linking decision making to vision in order to sustain the PLC process in your school or district. In this session, participants learn to: Recognize the importance of influence on those within their PLC. Create a sustainable culture of positive accountability and celebration as a matched pair to improve student results and adult actions. 9
Timothy D. Kanold Living in the Flow of the With PLC Life The pursuit and the choice of the with PLC life, though not always easy, is filled with great hope and promise. Whatever your educational role, the with PLC life is one that must be lived and practiced now, but can best be understood for its impact later. This inspirational message will challenge each attendee to consider three legacy-building PLC practices: responding positively to failure, preventing deep regret, and building a path of trust and enduring inspiration. Based on Dr. Kanold s book, The Five Disciplines of PLC Leaders, this session provides deep insight into energizing every day and fully engaging in the flow of your with PLC life. It s up to you to decide how you will be remembered by those you have taught, learned from, collaborated with, and influenced over the years. Find out how to make it great. This session calls on participants to: Examine how to nurture a supportive, risk-taking culture. Learn how to prevent deep regret by building trust in the PLC culture. Understand the tenacious and never-ending pursuit of improvement, the legacy of the with PLC life. Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work With the 2015 CCSS for mathematics assessment only two years away, how can you ensure that your K 12 current mathematics program is effectively preparing to meet the expectations of the CCSS? This motivational and engaging session is based on the five-book series, Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work. Series editor Timothy D. Kanold explores how to create a highquality, knock your socks off collaborative team improvement plan that prepares all students for the Common Core. He will also share the most current timeline and resource information from the PARCC and SMARTER balanced assessment consortia 2015 assessments. Participants will use the PLC teaching assessing learning cycle on a unit-by-unit basis to: Determine high-quality mathematics assessment instrument use and criteria. Understand how to develop effective formative assessment processes. Examine criteria and tools for effective lesson planning and design. Thomas W. Many High-Leverage Strategies for School Leaders There are many ways to improve student learning, but some strategies are more impactful than others. Given that time in school is so precious, it makes sense to identify the most effective and efficient strategies and focus our time and attention on what matters most. This breakout uses the three big ideas of a PLC to help principals and teacher leaders identify the few, well-focused actions that produce significant, enduring improvement. Intended for those with an interest in deepening their understanding of practices proven to promote a developed focus on learning, participants identify high-leverage strategies and learn specific leverage points to improve their schools. 10
Thomas W. Many Powering Your Practice: Aligning Best Practice and Professional Learning Communities Just as we power and unwrap standards to identify what is essential, we must power and unwrap our practice to identify the strategies that positively impact teaching and learning. This session explores the relationship between the big ideas of professional learning communities and specific, high-leverage strategies as identified by John Hattie and Robert J. Marzano that enhance a teacher s instructional effectiveness. Robert J. Marzano The Perils and Promises of Current Trends in Teacher Evaluation This keynote reviews the current trends in teacher evaluation and projects the major changes that will occur over the next three to five years. Dr. Marzano makes specific recommendations for how your PLC can help shape the direction of teacher evaluation. He addresses topics including the use of common assessments scored by teachers as valid indicators of student growth, including teacher growth in pedagogical skill as an aspect of teacher evaluation, and teacher self-evaluation as a necessary part of the evaluation process. Mike Mattos On Solid Ground: How PLCs Build the Foundation for Successful RTI Interventions The underlying premise of RTI is that schools should not delay in providing help to struggling students until after they have fallen far enough behind to qualify for special education. Instead, schools should provide timely, targeted, systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate need. Many school intervention programs fall short of this goal because they lack the proper foundation that is, the collaborative culture, curricular focus, and ongoing student learning data needed to effectively respond when students don t learn. Mike Mattos shares practical, proven PLC tools teams can use to put their interventions on solid ground. Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles Compelling evidence shows that response to intervention can successfully engage a school staff in a collective process to provide every child with the additional time and support needed to learn at high levels. Yet, at most schools this potential lies dormant, buried under layers of state regulations, district protocols, and traditional school practices that are misaligned and counterproductive to the essential elements of RTI. This session provides guiding practices and practical ideas to create a systematic RTI program to guarantee that every child, no matter what teacher(s) he or she has, will receive the support needed to succeed. = Keynote 11
Mike Mattos We Know What to Do, But When Do We Do It? Making Time for Interventions The greatest obstacle most secondary schools face when implementing RTI is not what to do when students need additional time and support but how to create time during the school day to provide that needed help. The traditional secondary master schedule is often counter-productive to this end. This breakout explores ways to create intervention time for teachers during the day, when students are required to be at school. Participants in this session learn: How to create time to regroup, reteach, and enrich students during the school day Options for designing a master schedule that provides intervention and elective options for at-risk students Ways to use flexible time to also meet the needs of students who are already proficient Anthony Muhammad The Will to Lead: Transformational Leadership The primary responsibility of a leader is to improve productivity. In a PLC, that simply means learning for all students. Effective leadership is the key to developing high-performing PLCs. This keynote explores the strategies that inspire, enlighten, and push people to do great things for students, as well as identifying those strategies and behaviors that can destroy momentum and productivity. Dr. Muhammad discusses the importance of: A solid understanding of what recent research teaches us about human motivation Recognizing leadership behaviors that undermine the purpose of a PLC Practical strategies that will improve your ability to lead others to new levels of performance The Courage to Lead: Moving People Out of Their Comfort Zones This session addresses the importance of ethical leadership. Dr. Muhammad leads an examination of why it is imperative to put kids first and shows strategies that deliver that message and get favorable results. Participants look at four important areas of leading: creating purpose, capacity building, collaboration, and accountability, and leave with theoretical frameworks and practical strategies to improve leadership effectiveness. Participants in this session learn: Strategies for consensus building Methods for strategic planning and vision development How to develop effective systems of job-embedded professional development 12 = Keynote
Douglas B. Reeves Taking Your PLC to the Next Level in 2013: Creative Opportunities for Students, Teachers, and Leaders Although the Common Core State Standards are a step in the right direction, the document and delivery model of standards will disengage students and disempower teachers. In this interactive keynote session, Dr. Douglas Reeves considers the primary pitfalls of the Common Core and how schools can approach standards without standardization. He includes the latest evidence on engagement, culture, and high performance for every student, teacher, and leader. Participants in this session: Apply the lessons of Standards 1.0 from their experience and that of their colleagues. Explore and apply the latest evidence on culture and high performance. Create individual and team learning plans. Kenneth C. Williams 12 Angry Men: The Impact of One, the Power of Team Kenneth C. Williams uses the classic film 12 Angry Men as a lens to discuss the five qualities that support effective teams: 1. Open inquiry 2. Accepting responsibility for decision making 3. Participation of team members 4. The value of productive conflict in discovering ideas and revealing new information 5. The essential role of diversity in decision making The film explores techniques of consensus building among a group of men whose diverse personalities create intense conflict. Ken shows how teams face and overcome similar challenges to collaborate and succeed. Participants gain ideas to substantially improve team effectiveness. 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 success for all students. More Than a Mission Statement: Moving Your PLC From Compliance to Crusade Take a moment of honest, quiet reflection and ask yourself: Is your school on a crusade? Do you feel like you re a part of something larger than yourself? Don t you want to be a part of a school that s on a crusade to continually improve? Every school has a mission and vision statement, highlighting the power and potential of learning in its classrooms. However, for many schools these statements are not worth the paper on which they re written. While educators agree that school communities should have some sort of covenant, vision, mission, philosophy, and values to guide their work, few can articulate what is being done to bring it to fruition. In this session, Ken Williams engages participants in identifying and implementing practices for complete alignment of the daily work of schools, and seeing the realization of the school s mission as their crusade. 13