Professional Learning Communities

Tara Fulton is the principal at Clute Intermediate School in Clute, Texas. Tara has served as a teacher and administrator at the elementary and secondary school levels. She is passionate about professional learning communities.

Russell Hill is superintendent of the East Valley School District. With more than 20 years of education experience, he has served as both teacher and administrator at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

Bruce R. Fraser, EdD, is an assistant superintendent at a large metropolitan district in Georgia. He specializes in leadership, difficult conversations, coaching, creating a positive culture, and the power of influence.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators face an unprecedented challenge: how to close the learning gaps created by months of school closures and uneven access to virtual learning opportunities? In this breakout, Mike Mattos will discuss specific steps that schools can take to create a highly effective, multitiered system of supports to target learning gaps using the PLC at Work® process.

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.

The focus is to show how your urban school can make an impact on student achievement and change the trajectory of student lives using the time available during the day, the resources in the book, and the Brilliance in the Building - your amazing staff! The greatness of this webinar is the review of all the resources in the book available for educators to use immediately. I created all of the reproducibles based on 25 years of extensive research and actual use in schools. Leaders and staff in urban schools cannot do this work in isolation; they must work together to accomplish their goals, so therefore the work in this book is grounded in the PLC at Work principles. Let’s go!

Alvin Thomas, EdD, is a principal in a school district in Georgia and a part-time professor at Kennesaw State University and Georgia State University. He has 17 years of experience as an assistant principal, student behavior program specialist, and teacher.

Adam R. Hill is an assistant superintendent overseeing 13 middle schools in a large metropolitan school district in Georgia.

Dr. Loni Fife currently serves as the director of curriculum and instruction for the Littleton Elementary School District in Arizona. She has worked to bring greater awareness to the power of educator collaboration to enhance student learning.

Laura Conwell is the principal of Longfellow Elementary in Bozeman, Montana. She has nearly 20 years of experience as an elementary school teacher and principal.