Learning Forward’s top professional learning blog posts of 2023 focused on critical topics addressing priorities faced by educators globally. Our top blogs of the year surfaced innovative models and strategies for supporting educator growth and equipping leaders, schools, and systems to address the evolving needs of their students.
Several of our top blogs featured educator comments and insights culled from Learning Forward-facilitated online discussions.
By far the year’s most widely read blog post was “Educators respond: Designing professional learning when teachers are overwhelmed” by Learning Forward Director of Digital Marketing Ariel Durham as part of a broader engagement campaign to solicit educator insights about professional learning. For the work, Durham and Learning Forward were recognized as a finalist in PR Daily’s 2023 Nonprofit Communications Awards in the Social Media Campaign category.
Here are Learning Forward’s top 10 2023 blog posts reflected by the number of website page views each received from January through mid-December, when applicable:
10. 7 articles to make the most of this year’s professional learning The Learning Professional staff curated a list of seven must-read articles for educators to get the most out of their professional learning in the 2023-24 school year and beyond.
9. With high-quality support, principals become true learning leaders Strong principals make better schools, and thanks to decades of research, we know a lot about the content and learning approaches that are most-effective for developing excellent school leaders and equipping them to handle the demands of the role. This article showcased evidence-backed practices.
8. Writers wanted for The Learning Professional in 2024 Learning Forward published the themes for the six issues of The Learning Professional that will be produced in 2024 and encouraged educators to explore how they can contribute articles on timely professional learning topics and strategies culled from their expertise and lived experience.
7. How SEL can reduce educator burnout The Learning Professional Editor Suzanne Bouffard wrote comprehensively about the considerations of supporting adults’ social and emotional learning (SEL) skills and the implications for teachers’ wellbeing and career longevity. In the article, Bouffard cited key lessons that have emerged from the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative, an effort in six U.S. communities that was funded by The Wallace Foundation.
6. 7 easy ways to celebrate teacher growth We invited our community of professional learning leaders to share how they acknowledge, promote, and celebrate the growth of teachers. We displayed seven popular methods in a downloadable infographic that also included links to tools to help educators make more meaningful celebrations happen throughout the school year.
5. Mentors make all the difference to a new teacher An article that described the attributes of standards-based mentor training programs like Learning Forward’s Mentor Academy and provided a step-by-step approach to planning and implementing a strong, instructionally focused mentor program.
4. A tool to help when everything feels urgent Learning Forward members tell us they value the tools we publish. In this blog, Learning Forward’s Sharron Helmke, senior vice president of professional services content, demonstrated how to use an effort-to-impact matrix, a simple yet powerful tool for designing ongoing support for educators.
3. 15 pieces of advice for first-time professional learning facilitators We put out a request via LinkedIn for insights from veteran professional learning facilitators on what those who are new to the field need to know starting out, and they responded in abundance. This article is a compilation of their responses.
2. How school leadership teams lead to success Addressing the importance of school leadership teams, this article articulated three reasons why they matter: leadership teams create a consistent vision and alignment; they bring multiple perspectives to the table; and they divide up the sheer volume of work that leaders must accomplish. Look for more content on leadership teams from author Jody Spiro and colleagues in The Learning Professional in 2024.
1. Educators respond: Designing professional learning when teachers are overwhelmed This massively popular article published educator comments about professional learning, organized into six themes that emerged from online discussion. Author Ariel Durham anchored the comments in Learning Forward standards-based research and resources. The blog was an outcome from an award-winning Learning Forward social media campaign tapping into a prominent online community of diverse educator voices and viewpoints. The question prompting the discussion, originally from Dean Shareski, was, “Teachers are overwhelmed and tired and teachers still need and want to learn. To that end, how do we design professional learning that equally honors both of those truths?”
