Authors

Maria Nielsen helps teams see the big picture of a PLC and put it all together in a recurring cycle of collective inquiry. The 15-day challenge is a practical way to bring the PLC process to life.

The impact of Covid-19 will have a long-lasting effect on every facet of our society. Very few institutions were more disrupted than schools. The pandemic affected staffing, funding, morale, and the continuity of student learning. Participants explore the history of the field of education and examine why the tenants of the PLC at Work process were important before the global pandemic and why they are even more important after the pandemic. This is not the time to back away from the PLC at Work process; this is the time to reinforce its foundation.

During this hands-on training designed for school or districtwide teams, general and special educators will discover how to utilize PLC best practices to develop collaborative partnerships and identify high-leverage structures and strategies that will level the playing field, accelerate learning, and support success for all students.

Schools that truly want to “create lifelong learners” must understand the influence that their actions in the classroom have on realizing this mission. Creating lifelong learners depends on more than good intentions; it depends on intentional actions designed to encourage students to realize that they have the capacity to move their own learning forward regardless of life circumstances or experiences. While this truth is likely something that most teachers already believe, integrating practices that build student self-efficacy into daily instruction remains elusive in most classrooms. Creating lifelong learners happens only when teachers move from knowing about the importance of student self-efficacy to doing something about it.

In this session, we will explore how teams develop effective mathematics instruction using 6 elements of lesson design. The process of designing engaging, targeted, and high quality instruction allows teams to dig deeply into both best practices in mathematics and grow in content knowledge. Participants will leave with a set of tools and discussion protocols to enhance their instructional planning and teaching of mathematics.