Learning Forward

Congratulations to Maunawili Elementary School in Kailua, Hawaii, winner of the 2018 Shirley Hord Teacher Learning Team Award. Maunawili’s Hawaii Math Lab Cohort Team received the award at Learning Forward’s Annual Conference in Dallas in December. The annual award, named for Learning Forward Scholar Laureate Shirley Hord and sponsored by […]

School-based coaches wear many hats, as described in Taking the Lead: New Roles for Teachers and School-Based Coaches by Joellen Killion and Cindy Harrison. Because of their multifaceted responsibilities, coaches, their supervisors, and the teachers they support benefit from clarifying the roles coaches play, how they support district and school […]

School leadership turns over frequently. Superintendent succession is well-documented, particularly in urban areas, where average tenure is about 5.5 years (The Broad Center, 2018). In 2015-16, 16% of public school principals left their jobs, with most of them leaving the principalship altogether (Goldring, Taie, & O’Rear, 2018). These patterns are […]

In fall 2016, more than 50% of teachers in Kokomo, Indiana, were leaving the profession within their first three years. Within the district, low-performing schools in particular struggled to retain teachers. Kokomo was far from alone in this trend, which is common across the country where high-poverty, high-minority, urban, and […]

Transitions are familiar to Olivia Zepeda. From immigrating to the U.S. from Mexico at age 14, to serving as the first professional development director for her Arizona school district, to serving as an associate superintendent, Zepeda has navigated multiple changes. Change is an ongoing and often challenging reality for many […]

More than 500 educators joined Learning Forward in standing up for professional learning by signing a Proclamation for Professional Learning at the Annual Conference in December. The proclamation, which calls on every policymaker “to support and fund effective, job-embedded professional learning every fiscal year,” will be presented to education leaders […]

Applications for the Learning Forward Academy, Learning Forward’s flagship deep learning experience, are due March 15. The Academy supports the problem-based learning of teachers, teacher leaders, instructional coaches, principals, regional leaders, superintendents, and others whose jobs involve supporting the learning of other adults and students. Academy participants spend 2½ years […]

Leigh Wall, superintendent of Santa Fe Independent School District in Santa Fe, Texas, is the new president of Learning Forward’s board of trustees, succeeding past president Alan Ingram. Steve Cardwell, associate vice president-academic at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, is president-elect. Learning Forward thanks Scott Laurence for […]

The 2018 Learning Forward Annual Conference Host Committee raised funds to replenish the library at Brundrett Middle School in Port Aransas, Texas. The school’s campus was devastated by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, and its library was destroyed. Because of the generous donations of conference attendees, the Dallas Host Committee […]