Professional Learning Communities

Whitney K. Freije is an elementary school principal at A.F. Palmer Elementary, a Model PLC at Work® school in the Windsor Central School District, located in upstate New York. She specializes in empowering teachers with effective instructional practices to promote high levels of literacy and mathematics.

Kim Monkres is the principal of Snow Canyon High School, located in St. George, Utah. She began her career 22 years ago as a high school English and communications teacher and has coaching experience as well.

Cheri Stevenson is the executive director of secondary schools for Washington County School District in Utah. She is passionate about sharing solutions she successfully implemented as a teacher, building administrator, and district director engaged in the PLC process.

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.

Amanda Hathhorn, district math specialist and mentor for the Aspiring Instructional Coaching Academy at Pasadena ISD, has over 20 years of experience in education. Notably, she played a pivotal role in successfully implementing the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) at Work® process and subsequently earning a Model PLC at Work school distinction at V. W. Miller Intermediate.

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!