Creating an Impact School

Registration

• Registration form (Word)
• Registration form (pdf)

Space in this workshop is limited. If space is available for you to participate, you will be notified by email. Do not make non-refundable travel plans until you receive this notification.

What is the purpose of this institute?

Better teaching leads to better learning. For this reason, schools in North America spend billions of dollars, annually, to improve the quality of instruction in their schools. When professional learning is unfocused, when coaches and principals are unclear on their roles and responsibilities, schools are at risk of wasting valuable resources.

Fortunately, there are simple steps and actions school leaders can take to get the most out their investment in professional learning. State agencies, districts, and schools need to act to ensure that their professional learning is designed to have maximum impact.

This institute, Creating An Impact School, describes high-leverage activities educational leaders can employ to create professional learning that has an unmistakable impact. The content of the institute draws from ideas described in Jim Knightʼs Unmistakable Impact and is based on more than 18 years of research on professional learning conducted at the Kansas Coaching Project at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.

What content is included in this institute?

This institute will describe how schools and districts can focus their professional learning on easy-to-understand professional learning targets; how workshops, professional learning communities and other forms of professional learning can support implementation of school improvement targets; and what principals, coaches, and central office staff need to do to accelerate professional learning. The institute will address the following questions:

• What are the complexities of helping relationships?
• What is the partnership approach and why is it an essential foundation for professional learning?
• Why is an instructional target important?
• What are the step-by-step procedures leaders can follow to create school improvement targets?
• How can leaders best get school-wide commitment to implement the target?
• How can principals best lead and support implementation of the school improvement target?
• How should workshops, intensive learning teams and other forms of professional learning be designed to ensure impact on student learning and teacher practice?
• How can instructional coaches be best utilized to support professional learning?
• How can coaches build coherence and disseminate ideas across schools?

How does the Creating An Impact School Institute work?

This session will be facilitated through the use of Partnership Learning. All professional learning is designed to be “hands-on” and practical and to encourage meaningful dialogue, reflection, and action planning.

Participants will:

• develop a plan for the creation of a school improvement target
• create teacher observation tools that they specifically design for their school
• practice using the observation tools by viewing recordings of teachers
• define the principalʼs role in supporting implementation of the target
• identify how coaches can be utilized to support all learning
• learn how to use the many tools in the Impact Toolkit

Participants should leave the sessions with practical materials that they will be able to use right away and a step-by-step plan for creating an impact school.

Who should attend this institute?

This Institute will appeal to state and district decision makers, school leaders, principals, instructional coaches, and others interested in learning more about designing professional learning for impact.

We highly recommend that teams from schools, including a principal and coach and other educational leaders, attend together.

Guarantee:

This institute is intended to help schools design their school improvement initiatives and professional learning to have an impact on teacher practice and student learning. If, following this institute, you do not feel we have met this goal, you can request a full refund.