23rd Annual Essential Schools Conference

I was asked to fill in for Sara Lawrence Lightfoot as a keynote speaker for this conference. I was very last minute so I put together the presentation but 1.) I didn't know the audience -- and since this is the 23rd annual meeting there are some folks who have been coming for a long time. 2.) I had to go with content that I knew. We decided the topic would be: Effective Schools Need Effective Teachers: Learnings from Research on Online Teacher Professional Development.

I'll put a link on this site to the final version of the presentation -- which got assembled on the flight out to Scottsdale, AZ where the conference was. But in the mean time, here are the recommendations for next steps from the session:

• Look at your school/district teacher retention data. (of each 100 teachers who enter the profession, only 32 are still teaching after 5 years)
• Put the head of professional development on the Superintendent's Cabinet
• Make it clear to the Head of Professional Development that they are working to improve student learning.
• Begin the process of building learning communities.