SIM 2011 International SIM Conference

Room: Griffith Ballroom
Presenter: Jim Knight, KUCRL
Registration fee: $80

This all-day workshop describes high-leverage activities educational leaders can employ to design professional learning that has an unmistakable impact on teaching. The content of the session draws from ideas described in Jim Knight’s Unmistakable Impact and is based on more than 18 years of research on professional learning conducted at the Kansas Coaching Project at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.

This session will describe how schools and districts can focus their professional learning on easy-to-understand professional learning targets; how workshops, professional learning communities, and other forms of professional learning can support implementation of school improvement targets; and what principals, coaches, and central office staff need to do to accelerate professional learning. The session will address the following questions:

• What are the complexities of helping relationships?
• What is the partnership approach and why is it an essential foundation for professional learning?
• Why is an instructional target important?
• What are the step-by-step procedures leaders can follow to create school improvement targets?
• How can leaders best get schoolwide commitment to implementing the target?
• How can principals best lead and support implementation of the school improvement target?
• How should workshops, intensive learning, teams and other forms of professional learning be designed to ensure impact on student learning and teacher practice?
• How can instructional coaches be best used to support professional learning?
• How should central office and school leaders work together successfully to support professional learning that makes an impact?

Participants will receive a copy of the book, Unmistakable Impact, A Partnership Approach for Dramatically Improving Instruction.