Conference Sessions

What can I do to get my students more engaged with tasks and with each other? And more importantly, how can I get them to collaborate and support one another as they learn? There is no magic formula but there are structures and routines that we can build to have more supportive teams. Focus on skills students need in the real world and look at ways to turn the learning over to the students to mimic real-world collaboration and teaming. Attend this session, if you feel you have teaming foundations in place.

LSI and the Maine Center for Leadership and Innovation (MCLI) are partnering to increase professional and sustainable leadership practices within a consortium of school districts. LSI empowers schools and districts to transform core instruction and leadership practices, building systems’ capacity to sustain the improvements. Maine Leadership Teams build district capacity for change by bringing together instructional leaders from every level, from superintendents to teacher leaders: anyone who will be responsible for leading implementation. Only through the creation and development of great teams will we make substantive and lasting changes in our educational systems.

This session focuses on the combined use of the Focused School Leader Growth Tracker, Action Boarding, and a book study on School Leadership for Results as a first step in implementing the Focused School Leader Evaluation Model. The Gary Community Schools have been engaged in virtual professional development on this formative assessment method for more than six months to understand and implement elements of Domains 1, 2, and 4 (A Data-Driven Focus on School Improvement, Instruction of a Viable and Guaranteed Curriculum, and Community of Care and Collaboration) as an administrative group and with building leaders. School and building initiatives were aligned to the 3 domains, and action steps were aligned to school improvement goals within each Domain. Since all instruction has taken place virtually during the 2020/21 SY, action boards were created using spreadsheets and/or Trello. The professional development plan, examples of action boards presented by Gary Principals, and integration of the action boards with the growth tracker and FSLM protocols will be presented during the session.

One of the most frequently asked questions of 2020 was, “How do we see virtual student evidence?” One of the distinguishing factors of the Marzano Focused Teacher Evaluation Model is the recognition of students demonstrating the desired effect of an element. Virtual instruction required educators to look at student evidence through a new lens. What were the takeaways from this? How do observers re-frame student evidence to truly capture desired effects, regardless of where instruction takes place?

Social-Emotional Learning is at the forefront of educators’ minds and plans. 2020’s pandemic made the need for embedded SEL skills within instruction clear and districts put many steps in place to build SEL into daily practices. Teacher evaluation is an opportunity to provide feedback on instructionally embedded SEL. With the release of updated protocols in 2020, join us to discover why you should be talking about SEL in evaluation and how to use the FTEM protocols for growth.