Learning Forward

The Perfect Partnership: What it Takes to Build and Sustain Relationships that Benefit Students. By Joellen Killion When educators consider potential partnerships, they gain from thoughtfully examining several questions to assess how such opportunities will further their goals. In addition to calculating tangible and intangible costs and benefits, educators can […]

Geoffrey Canada said in a recent presentation, “Education is the only business I know of where you can change anything you want, as long as you change nothing” (2010). After so much debate and so many policies, why is our education system still failing so many of our children? What […]

We have always said that becoming culturally proficient is a journey, not a destination. Our four-stage model for developing cultural proficiency is based on the notion of continuous growth. And even as long as we have been working in this area, we have always said that we, too, are on […]

Directions: Brainstorming is a way of generating an assortment of ideas without criticism or judgment about the quality of those ideas. The team leader, or another team member, can use this procedure to lead team members to brainstorm answers to questions or responses to issues as needed. Have chart paper […]

As professional learning has transformed from one-shot and short-term trainings into job- embedded, team-based, and results-driven professional development, so, too, has the perception of the external partner changed from the oldschool image of an outside consultant flying in to tell a group of educators what it needs to do. Once […]

Ask a group of struggling elementary school students which ones want to give up a month of vacation to go to summer school, and you’ll see few, if any, raised hands. Most students attend summer school not because it’s their idea of a good time, but because they need to […]

The holy grail of education leadership is that of the principal as instructional leader. Are aspiring principals effectively prepared for this role in the master’s degree programs that most states require to obtain a principal’s certificate? We think not. At best, these preparation programs require only two to three courses […]

In 1995, the California Department of Education convened a commission to develop academic content standards as part of a long-range plan for school accountability. California’s standards-based curriculum and assessment model presented school districts the opportunity to examine instructional practices that focused on raising student achievement, especially for students who most […]

In a professional learning community, adults learn through focused conversations on teaching practices and teacher learning to support student learning. Teachers in a professional learning community push each other’s thinking and learning about teaching through questioning. While there are multiple opportunities for this critical thinking to occur, it is a […]

At 4 o’clock on a Monday afternoon, more than an hour after students have left, 30 teachers gather in a classroom at the district office to discuss leadership styles in a seminar co-taught by a Northern Illinois University professor and a district administrator. Across the hall, another cohort studies instructional […]