Designing professional learning that meets the diverse needs of special education professionals is exciting, challenging, and critically important. The staff at the Children's Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf in Massachusetts support deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing children from ages 3 to 22 with a range of communication and…

After several years of operating in crisis mode, many teachers are feeling exhausted and burned out. More than ever, they need to feel appreciated, valued, and respected to be resilient in the face of ongoing stress. One of the best ways to show appreciation for teachers is to value their professional growth and provide support to address their…

Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning define and describe professional learning that leads to improved educator practices, leadership, and student outcomes. Standards draw on the latest evidence and research about what works in professional learning to help educators implement every phase of the professional learning process. They…

The educational landscape around standards, assessment, professional development, and funding is changing at a rapid pace. This article asks how can education institutions--and educators--respond with a balance of urgency and coherence? How can education institutions temper the need for risk-taking and innovation with the responsibility to deliver…

School administrators often seek out personnel to facilitate embedded professional learning, usually by asking a skilled classroom teacher to serve as an instructional coach, curriculum specialist, or teacher on special assignment. One source administrators do not often consider is a certified school librarian, but these professionals are ready…

Although instructional coaches are deeply committed to continuous improvement, they rarely have access to professional learning themselves. Rarer still is differentiated professional learning that meets coaches where they are in their careers and their professional growth. Just as Florida's Orange County Public Schools accentuates the importance…

Like many districts across the United States, Galveston, Texas, is focused on building a culture of excellence. The district is a study in contrasts. On one hand, it is laced with opulent vacation homes and resort hotels used by out-of-town owners. On the other, the median household income level is $28,895, with 22% of the population living below…

For over two decades, Giselle O. Martin-Kniep and her colleagues have worked for Learner-Centered Initiatives, a consulting organization based in New York, promoting best practices in curriculum, development, assessment, and leadership. A significant portion of their work is directed toward helping educators attend to and assess students' ability…

Learning Forward's Professional Learning State and District Planner is a guide to help state, district, and school leaders implement professional learning to support high-quality curriculum and instructional materials. Grounded in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) definition of high-quality professional learning as intensive, data-driven,…

While the concept of being a professional prominently features in teaching standards worldwide, as a profession teachers do not devote much time to the study of what it takes to be one. In schools, the idea of defining, and then supporting, the emotional and psychological development required to be a professional remains on the periphery -- it is…

Equipping educators to hear students' voices, and then translating that information into concrete behavioral and instructional changes, is what the team at Partners in School Innovation has undertaken in San Jose, California, for the last several years. Their efforts have not only suggested promising practices, but also highlighted important…

Education professionals face myriad problems of practice, especially in the face of current trauma, injustice, and other stressors. To address those challenges, educators should work collaboratively to target the sources, not just the symptoms, of the problems. Asking why can begin to surface root causes, which may be related to systems,…

Many education stakeholders might grapple with some of these challenges in designing a new way to drive positive change in public education policy: (1) Implementing strategies that appear to hold promise but have never been scaled; (2) Maintaining the integrity of research-based interventions while addressing the need for contextual adaptation…

In fall 2016, more than 50% of teachers in Kokomo, Indiana, were leaving the profession within their first three years. Within the district, low-performing schools in particular struggled to retain teachers. The costs of teacher attrition are high for districts. According to a report from the Learning Policy Institute, each teacher who leaves the…

Personalized learning for students is gaining steam across the country and pushing on traditional instructional practices. But many teachers have never experienced personalized learning themselves, making it challenging to implement it for students (Sawchuck, 2015). As personalization experts Tom Vander Ark and Karen Cator (2015) said, "If we…