Assessment

Ken Mattingly is a retired classroom teacher with 27 years of experience. He has implemented classroom assessment for student learning for the past 15 years.

Amy Tollefson is the district-level principal with Osseo Area Schools in a diverse suburb of Minneapolis. Over more than 20 years, she has also served as a secondary school principal, secondary social studies teacher, district office coordinator, and assistant principal.

Rea Smith is an elementary mathematics and science curriculum specialist in northwestern Arkansas. She passionately supports the work of professional learning communities with a focus on common assessments to improve student and teacher learning.

Matt Townsley, EdD, is an associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He is a former district administrator and teacher in Solon Community Schools, also in Iowa, where he led curriculum, assessment, and school-improvement initiatives, all under the umbrella of a professional learning community philosophy.

Nathan L. Wear is the associate superintendent and chief academic officer of Linn-Mar CSD in Marion, Iowa. He has served as an elementary teacher and as an elementary and high school principal.

Assessment sits at the center of instructional decisions and multitiered systems of support that ensure student success. This webinar, featuring assessment expert Nicole Dimich, will provide guidance in how to design meaningful assessments and set up information that empowers teachers to be instructionally agile and students to be invested in their learning.

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.

During this workshop, teams of teachers, counselors, building administrators, and district administrators will study four distinctive leadership behaviors proven to promote positive change: (1) communication, (2) trust building, (3) professional capacity, and (4) universal accountability.