Summer Learning: PLCs

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Education, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

One of the most profound professional development activities I took part in this summer was attending the Professional Learning Communities at Work Institute in Seattle with a large number of colleagues from my new building and across my district. We’ve all heard about PLCs and we’ve all been part of PLCs, but there were definitely some missing pieces in my understanding and implementation. (Read a short history of PLCs.) Maybe my story resonates with your experience.

A few years ago, I’m not quite sure how many, there were a set of four questions posted in the largest conference room at the district office, which also served as school board’s default meeting location (among other uses). Maybe they’re familiar?

  1. What do we want students to learn?
  2. How will we know if they have learned?
  3. What will we do if they don’t learn?
  4. What will we do if they already know it?

Good questions, but I had no idea where they came from or how I could use them. In fact I was a little suspicious of them because of the mystery that surrounded them. These questions seemed to show up everywhere. They were part of a number of school improvement plans and inexplicably appeared on collaboration forms my team was asked to fill out after working together.

A few years ago I was swept up in the Finland frenzy and was particularly struck by how much time teachers were able to collaborate during the regular school day. I already knew from my own experience that teachers needed more time to work together and I suspected that this was probably one of the reasons why the schools in Finland did so well. I joined a couple of PLCs and worked with teachers at my grade level, teachers from other schools, and teachers from across the grades interested in co-learning in my school. Still, I wasn’t totally clear on what the difference was between a group working together and a PLC. When I heard there was a conference on PLCs, I put my name in even though it was far off in the middle of the summer about nine months away.

INT. KITCHEN TABLE – NIGHT

Spencer writes a blog entry after the conference

So I’m here to tell you that I now believe that those four questions above are the secret to transforming public education. I wont be able to recreate the three day workshop with multiple keynotes and breakout sessions presented by some of the leading experts on PLCs working in education today, but I will explain those questions.

First of all, those questions form the cornerstone of the work that teachers in PLCs do together. They were articulated by Richard DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Rebecca DuFour. For further reading check out their books on PLCs.

Question 1: What do we want students to learn? This question is meant to be answered by teachers who collaborate together and work at the same grade level(s). These teachers must look at the standards and decide together what they guarantee that each of them will ensure that ALL students learn. What is non-negotiable? What, if not learned, would be disastrous for that student? Teachers need to commit to teaching those things as priorities. Not everything is of equal value. Teachers clarify and prioritize the standards together taking into account the intent of the standards and the needs of the students. This step can not be skipped, nor can it be mandated by above. This is where the team makes commitments to one another.

Question 2: How will we know if they have learned it? Now the teachers teach with the same objectives. They teach the best way each of them knows how. They decide on common formative assessments that will be given at approximately the same time. And when they have given those assessments and evaluated them, they come together to share their findings.

Question 3 & 4: What will we do if they don’t learn? What will we do if they already know it? These are the intervention and enrichment pieces, but there are a couple of important points to clarify if the PLC is to function properly. Firstly, we need to get vulnerable. Someone on your team will teach that particular concept most successfully and someone will teach it least successfully. Though there might be a nicer way to say that, this is where we feel threatened so we have to confront it. It must be visible so that the student learning can be addressed and this takes trust. Fundamentally, the teachers involved must see themselves as members of a team. Teachers in a PLC are not running side-by-side in a marathon, but rather rowing in the same boat (This was literally Rick DuFour’s analogy at the institute and it is a powerful shift in thinking). Secondly, the teachers need to take action with the information they obtain from looking at the results. That may include learning from the teacher who demonstrated the highest levels of student proficiency. It may also include having that teacher lead the intervention group for all of the students who have not learned. Nobody can meet the needs of all of their students by themselves. If we aren’t working as a team we don’t have a chance.

This process runs repeatedly and cycles through the key learning objectives for the students.

Time will be required and because we know it is a scarce commodity creativity will be necessary. One of the best ideas I have heard on creating time is to (occasionally) move the 30 minutes teachers are required to be available after school and combining it with the 30 minutes they are required to be there before school. In some cases you may be able to add an all-school activity to kick in another 15. All of this can be done without impacting buses, students, or families and could take place on a regular basis (with some contact negotiation).

This is the technical/structural shift, but the cultural shift may be the toughest to make (and hardest to recognize). This was brought to a very sharp point by Dr. Anthony Muhammad when he asked us to examine the achievement gap and equity from our own mindsets as well as within the de facto mindset of the system in general. More on this in another post…

Teacher Dreams

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Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Uncategorized

imageIt always starts with a dream. A real dream; not an aspiration or goal, but the kind you have when you sleep. One year it was a poorly-executed field trip to Manhattan (with fourth graders) and another year I had a class of forty but no classroom. I was expected to teach them out on the lawn.

In this year’s late-summer teacher dream I was giving a practice spelling test to my kiddos and the third word on the list was “sh*t.” It was a difficult situation, especially trying to come up with an appropriate context sentence. I remember silently cursing the publishers from whom we adopted the curriculum.

My annual awkward teacher dream is how I know my summer is winding down. The next phase involves completely going over my plans for the year. Then there’s the “Leadership Team Retreat” where we revisit our School Improvement Plan and chart out corresponding Professional Development. After that there’s a few days of moving furniture and putting up bulletin boards, some whole-staff meetings, a slew of online, state-mandated health trainings and before I know it, kids.

But let me back up a bit, to the part where I go over my plans for the year. One thing I’ve noticed is that as the years go by, I find myself changing things less and less. Back in the day, I would practically reinvent myself every summer. Different homework plans, new classroom management programs, alternative seating plans, you name it. But now, thirty-three years in, I find myself merely tweaking.

When I first noticed this trend I felt lazy. Is this what it feels like to be burned-out old-timer? Perhaps. But maybe it’s what it feels like to be a competent veteran. I think about the major changes I used to make – classroom management, for example – and I honestly don’t feel compelled to make any major changes. Not because I’m afraid of the effort, but because it worked last year. And the year before that.

Change is good. But so is repeating something that still works. I guess the challenge is trying to figure out what to keep and what to tweak.

And believe it or not, the only thing I’m going to totally overhaul this year is my spelling curriculum.

I wonder why.

The First Day of School

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Like so many teachers, I nervously plan, re-plan, and then overplan the first few days of school.  I want my students to feel like this is their class, not my class.  This helps create a positive learning environment that is based on mutual respect and trust.  However, for most of my teaching career I’ve started the first day of school with the course syllabus.  When I left student teaching and landed my first high school teaching job I was told, “Don’t smile until November,” and “Set the rules on the first day so that there is no question as to who is in charge.”  Admittedly, I thought that I could do that.  I could easily tackle the rules part but the whole not smiling axiom just didn’t work for me.  A smile communicates warmth and I certainly didn’t want to create a classroom where students felt that I was cold and uninterested in them as individuals.  So I smiled and then went through the rules.  And I’ve continued to do just that for sixteen years of my teaching career.  Until this week…

On Wednesday, I’m changing it up.  Instead, we’re going to do some relationship building.  If our classroom is going to be focused on teaching and learning, then we’re going to have to build a classroom community based on trust and respect.  So instead of going through the rules immediately,  we’re going to focus less on the “how “ of this class and more on the “who” is in this class.  My high school students are going to be diagnosing their learning styles and committing to habits that support those styles.  The juniors in U.S. HIstory will be creating infographs that demonstrate key events in their lives and word clouds that depict who they are and the things they hold dear.  My goal is that together we will work to create products that depict who we are so that we can create the foundation to our classroom relationship.

If ever you’re in a job interview and you’re asked, “What is your greatest strength?” and you don’t answer, “My connection with students,” then it is entirely likely that you will not get the job.  I’ve sat on many interview committees over the years and admittedly, if I don’t hear that sometime during the interview, I’m not likely to recommend a candidate to be hired.  It’s not that I have a script that I want a prospective teacher to follow or that I am willing to overlook other issues with an interview once I hear that magic phrase, but ultimately, I believe that our connection with students is what allows teachers to access and activate student learning.  Teachers who focus on relationship building first, content, second will inherently find more success in helping that content stick.

 

pencils

Best Teachers Ever

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Uncategorized

The first teacher I really remember was Mrs. Hester. She was absolutely rigorous, absolutely strict, and one of the most fun teachers I ever had. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. She was the first person who inspired me to be a teacher. I think I’m still channeling her.

The thing is, I was super lucky. I had multiple memorable teachers.

read_over_shoulder

Mrs. Garland in sixth grade not only taught me math but she read the most incredibly vivid stories, stories I still remember. Mr. Spivey in seventh grade made grammar and writing both comprehensible and fun. Besides teaching us how to speak Spanish, Sr. Isidro Jesus Maytorena y Robinson shared with us what it was like to grow up in rural Mexico. Our junior high librarian took us to the Stanford library and let us tour the rare book section.

Then came high school. Mr. Meredith and Mr. Rigley demanded higher and higher levels of writing. (When I got to college I tested out of most of the required composition classes because of what they taught me.) Mr. Bradburn taught my whole sophomore English class how to speak in public without fear. An amazing feat! Mr. Barley and the other geometry teachers team-taught a fluid set of three classes we could move up and down within; meanwhile the teachers wrote their own geometry textbook. M. Keplinger had us speaking French from the first day of school. Miss Allshouse ran the Model UN and the Asian History Club and let us make dinner at her house. Mr. Viera would NOT let me leave the room until I understood each day’s physics lesson.

Sir Isaac Newton said he saw further as a scientist because he stood on the shoulders of giants. I feel like I had a similar experience. I am a better teacher because I grew up in the classrooms of giants.

As I start school next week, I won’t begin the year alone. I will be accompanied by all the great teachers who laid the foundation for my own education.

Now seems like an ideal time to remember and thank them.

Teacher Induction Programs

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Education, Education Policy, Mentoring, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

Over the next two weeks, thousands of teachers, new to teaching or new to a school district will gather in excitement to learn details about their new jobs.  Many of those teachers will find themselves deflated in hours.  All too often, new teacher training days end up as Intro to Human Resources 101, far from focused on the realities of teaching and learning.  I’ve been witness to such programs and I’ve wondered, what did these teachers get out of this day?  Did we just curb their enthusiasm for this job?  Did teachers feel supported and mentored and were we (those who put on the training) good stewards of our practice?  After all, we know that supporting new teachers can lead to a reduction in attrition and can go a long way for a new teacher and a district.

So how do we balance the paperwork and the practice?  What should a new teacher induction program look like?  What goals do these programs aspire to meet and how will they evaluate when those goals have been met?  

Admittedly, until about six months ago, I hadn’t put much thought into this.  I’ve attended our new teacher meeting each year.  I’ve seen the revolving door of district staff and administrators introducing our newest staff to the paperwork, policies, and website.  I’ve been part of that revolving door, advocating for National Board Certification and working as a mentor teacher over the years.  For the most part, I thought that we had done a nice job introducing the new teachers to the must know information for the job.  And then I learned about the Beginning Educator Support Team (BEST) program.  

BEST is a program designed to help administrators and mentors support novice teachers as they make the transition into the classroom.  This program was designed by OSPI (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction) and funded by the state legislature.  The program has three goals:

  1. Reduce educator turnover.
  2. Improve educator quality for student learning.
  3. Ensure equity of learning opportunity for all students.  

You will notice that nowhere do you see — “4.  Learn how to put in for a substitute teacher when you are sick.”  

When our district hired several novice teachers, our assistant superintendent applied for and received a BEST grant.  The BEST grant partnered our district with our local ESD to support  a year-long mentoring project with our novice teachers.  One of my colleagues, Malinda, dove into the work of BEST and attended several academies and conferences, so that she could better understand what supports were needed.  Malinda brought back to a team of administrators, instructional coaches, and district support staff a set of standards, created by OSPI and CSTP for Teacher Induction Programs.  I should preface this by indicating that I’m not a BEST mentor and I have not been thoroughly trained by our state’s BEST program.  However, I’ve seen the impact of that training and having witnessed our first teacher induction program as a result of BEST training,

Our team of instructional coaches, human resource coordinators, building and district administrators came together and studied the standards.  We worked independently to see where we were in approaching those standards and we learned quickly that we were deficient in several areas.  To respond, our team came together every two weeks for several months to create a game plan for how to meet those standards.  Although BEST helps support novice educators, we wanted to ensure that we were supporting veteran teachers who were new to our district, too.  Malinda worked diligently to keep us focused on the standards and after months of work, the team established a game plan that included strengthening our hiring process, partnering with local universities, and developing a standards based teacher induction program.

Our new teacher induction program kicked off this week.  It is no longer a one day, rotating door meeting.  Instead our new teachers began their career in our district with a focused, five day training.  Our new teachers (novice and veteran) worked with district administrators, building administrators, instructional coaches, and peer to peer mentors.  They met together as a team of new teachers and were also broken into smaller teams, based on buildings/grade levels.  They worked to establish procedural plans and assessment goals, and also learned about curriculum and instructional materials.   And when the week concluded, the music was cued and the lyrics “Money, money, money, money” by the O’Jays blared while our Payroll Staff handed out paychecks to our new teachers for the week’s worth of time/work.  I heard shrieks of excitement and even an “oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!”

So was the work worth it? I sure hope so.  It’s too soon to measure whether this induction program is going to meet the three BEST goals. That will be better assessed later in the school year.   But anecdotally I feel that we are on our way.  I witnessed those smiles and heard those conversations.  I spoke with a new-to-us teacher who indicated that he could see our district’s vision being emulated in the staff’s passion for teaching and learning and the work that had been put into planning for the week.  Our new teachers felt valued.  

A growing attrition rate coupled with a teacher shortage requires that schools and districts critically examine the supports that are in place for new teachers. Supports must include thoughtfully planned, goal oriented, standards based teacher induction programs.  If we want to keep good teachers teaching we must demonstrate that we value their professional growth at the onset.  Let’s keep these teachers enthusiastic about the work that lies ahead and give them the tools early on so that they may be successful in accomplishing those goals.  

Second Tier Certification in Washington: A Year of Reckoning

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Education Policy, National Board Certification, Uncategorized |

Conroy DuringMy youngest son recently announced he was thinking about becoming a teacher. “What are all the steps you have to go through?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “First you need to get into college. Then you’ll spend your first two years taking general courses designed to give you a rounded education. After that you’ll apply to the college of education at your university. They’ll want you to have pretty good grades and they’ll make you take a basic skills test to make sure you have a decent foundation of knowledge and skills.”

“That sounds reasonable,” he said.

“And once you get into the program you’ll focus on classes that train you how to teach. You’ll learn about child development, lesson planning, classroom management and how to sequence instruction. You’ll also spend a lot of time out in classrooms observing and teaching small groups and short lessons. You’ll write a lot of reports on your observations and reflections. During your last semester you’ll take over someone’s classroom and teach full time. During all of this you’ll get lots of feedback and help from the teachers you work with as well as the faculty from your college.”

“Is that it?” Continue reading →

Read Those Standards!

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National Board Certification

CaptureI recently celebrated my 30th wedding anniversary, and as it happened, my wife and I attended a wedding three days later. While watching the wedding my thoughts naturally turned to the differences between a wedding and a marriage. It’s one thing to promise everything to your spouse; it’s another thing altogether to renew that promise year in and year out.

Those same feelings returned the following week while working with a massive group of National Board candidates. I was a trainer at Jump Start, WEA’s pre-candidacy program for teachers pursuing National Board certification.

One of the many activities through which we lead our candidates is deceptively simple. We have them read their standards. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is, after all, (as the name implies) grounded in standards. In fact, the NB spent the first five years of its life focused on writing those standards – 25 sets in all – so that teachers would have something rigorous to which to aspire.

The process of certification is essentially providing evidence that one’s practice aligns with those standards. Therefore it’s incumbent upon each candidate to thoroughly understand those standards.

And because those standards aren’t going to read themselves, we make them read their standards, closely and thoroughly.

But here’s the thing: It’s impossible to read a set of standards and completely retain them. After all, a set of National Board standards is roughly the size of a thick magazine. With no ads or pictures.

So what I try to do each summer is re-read my standards. Front to back. And I usually do. It’s not what I’d call great literature, in the order of Faulkner, Twain or even Richard Brautigan, but it’s not bad. In fact, you might even call it inspirational.

So I’m challenging you to read your standards. Set aside a few hours before school gets crazy, go online, download them and go for it. You’ll be glad you did.

Think of it as a renewal of vows. To your profession and to your students.

Lesson Plans vs. Professional Development

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Education, Food and Drink, Professional Development

Thanks to the internet, I have hopelessly messed up some of the most (supposedly) tasty recipes ever posted: Homemade breads….desserts including many species of cookie…a few things involving breading and frying various other foods…

It is foolish for me to believe that merely following a recipe will net the kinds of results I see on the Food Network.

That, along with my roles as a mentor and leader of teacher PD, is why the headline “Give Weak Teachers Good Lesson Plans, Not Professional Development” caught my eye when it posted in Education Week recently.

The article made a few valid points, including this: Often, the least-effective teachers are so because of ineffective planning, ergo starting with stronger lesson plans is a great remedy. By “least-effective,” I’m talking the lowest 5-10% of the struggling corps.

Unfortunately, that valid point gets buried by this statement toward the end: “Giving teachers lesson plans is also cheaper and easier to scale than other interventions aimed at improving student achievement.”

I can follow a simple recipe, sometimes. I will never be Wolfgang Puck by just following a recipe. What do people who want to truly excel at their cooking do? Take classes. Get a mentor or coach. Collaborate with a peer. If I’m stuck on using a recipe, maybe I need to learn to cook without one…or better yet, learn to write recipes I and others can follow.

I’m a big believer in planning. I have never, not once, used a lesson plan written by someone else. That’s just me, not a wholesale indictment of “planning via Pinterest.” I simply cannot wrap my head around someone else’s script and make it work. I’ve tried, but I end up completely rewriting the recipe on the fly… my students tend to be picky eaters.

The point in all this: Yes, good lesson plans are a must for some teachers just starting their careers, wading into a new grade level or content area, or who are struggling to be effective. The lesson plans should be the starting point, though. Only through deliberate practice, peer support, and (gasp!) well-designed professional development, can we move beyond the recipe. The false dichotomy of “lesson plans” or “professional development” suggested by the article (which also cites that studies reveal almost no impact of PD on test scores) ignores the very real truth that well-structured PD whose practices are implemented with the support of peers, teams, or instructional coaches does in fact have a research-supported positive impact on student learning.

Lest we scrap our PD budgets and start just printing recipes for everyone… let’s remember that we have some pretty talented cooks in our kitchen already. We can, and should, learn from them. “PD” doesn’t have to mean sitting in the cafeteria to watch a PowerPoint. What “PD” looks like has evolved to be much more job-embedded and meaningful…and much more powerful than a few lesson plans printed out from TeachersPayTeachers. When it comes to PD making a difference, the quality of and follow-up provided in concert with the professional learning we experience is what transforms the recipe into a meal to remember.

When the Superintendent Sues the Schools

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Current Affairs, Education Policy | , ,

I am as frustrated with the legislature as anyone. The Supreme Court has ruled they are not fulfilling their constitutional paramount duty to fully fund public education, there has been plenty of politicking and posturing and planning to plan… but no action.

So I understand Randy Dorn’s lawsuit against seven of the biggest school districts in the state of Washington.

I understand that he’s making a point: Schools across the state are “illegally” passing local levies to fund schools in a way that makes them more functional spaces for educating kids and more appealing workplaces to attract and retain a teaching workforce, and that schools are compelled to do this because the state has failed miserably in allocating adequate funding for public schools.

I understand, but I don’t agree with the move Dorn’s making. It reminds me of the old saying about “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” It’s been woefully clear that threats, sanctions, being legally found in contempt, and even “fines” of $100,000 per day do not influence legislator action. How exactly will suing schools from Spokane to Bellevue to Vancouver (Evergreen) actually influence the legislature to act?

While the Seattle Times Editorial Board came out supporting Dorn’s move (see: “Kudos to Randy Dorn…”) claiming that it will “put pressure” on the legislature, I don’t buy it. Simply put, this puts pressure on those seven school districts to divert resources and energy to a lawsuit whose purpose is obviously aimed at different defendants. This lawsuit exists in a parallel universe to the one in which the legislature operates. I do not believe this will motivate one iota of action. Dorn’s logic, so far as I can tell, is this: As pointed out here by Rep. Chad Magendanz (R-Issaquah), if Dorn’s suit is successful it would mean an immediate loss of two or three billion dollars of levy-sourced school funding before the state legislature has mustered a better funding plan. In theory, this ought to make the legislature sit up and go “Hey, wait a minute! We don’t have a plan yet! Don’t strip away the local funding and decimate our schools!”

But this seems to expose the problem with how the Court and the SPI are attempting to compel action: The threat isn’t really against the legislature itself, the threat is against someone or something else. Those $100,000-a-day fines? Not coming from legislator pockets…and I never really have understood from where and to where that ghost money is to be shuffled. Suing schools? Again, this doesn’t affect the lawmaker him- or herself, it affects the districts subject to the ploy. Still too distant from lawmakers to influence them. Plus, Dorn’s handed them a future scapegoat: If this chess game were played out to the end (which I doubt it would be, thus even further hollowing the whole gesture) and Dorn were to somehow succeed to strip levy monies from schools…leading to RIFs, lower salaries, a mass teacher exodus, cuts in programs for kids…the legislature can all too easily point at Dorn’s suit and say “Look! This mess your children is now in didn’t come from us: It came directly from him.” Of course, it won’t go that far. This suit is a stunt, not an actual endgame to be pursued.

In these stunts and schemes, lawmakers really don’t have anything to be afraid of. So why change course?

Do I, a lowly educator in southwest Washington, have a viable solution that will compel lawmaker action? Where Dorn’s move feels too passive aggressive and face-spiting, maybe my ideas are just plainly too aggressive: Do we lock ’em in a room and not let em’ leave until a budget is built? Do we arrest them for contempt? Do we withhold their salaries until the $100,000 a day is recouped? Since I’m also a believer that fear is a flawed motivator and rarely results in sustainable long term solutions, I’m at a loss for what will convince these people to suck it up, make the tough choices, and do the right thing.

This is where I think Randy Dorn feels he is as well.

Which is why I understand his actions with this lawsuit, even if I disagree and wish there were a different way. The sad part: Maybe there isn’t.

Professional Learning Interloper

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Professional Development, Teacher Leadership, Travel

One of the greatest myths about public school teachers is that we have the summer off. Certainly, it’s nice to have a few days where the alarm doesn’t ring at 5am or to forget what day of the week it is, but most teachers, in fact, spend the summer finding themselves again as adults by connecting with family (and working out or going to the dentist), by working a second job to help pay for expenses, and by stretching themselves as learners–which means, finding relevant professional learning opportunities.

These professional learning opportunities create a space in which teacher can deeply reflect on what did/didn’t work last year and make the creative changes needed. Although exhausted by the last day of school, I anticipate attending workshops such as building retreat days, AP institute, GLAD training, or tech conferences that push my thinking. While research shows that the best professional learning is job-embedded and on-going, one-time conferences have a place–they’re a little surge of energy that’s just enough to wake you up. They give us a drone’s-eye view by showing us that we are connected to teachers across this state and around the nation.

However, this summer calendar was oddly clear. So, I decided to interlope. I tagged along with my husband, the WA STOY (see Lessons from the Road) to DC, Colorado, and Illinois. I eavesdropped at the Education Commission of the States during Happy Hour debriefing sessions. At the Aspen Institute Program on Education & Society (special invite only event!), I secretly read articles from the syllabus and chitchatted over dinner about policy with incredible leaders in equity work from across the country. The final conference of the summer was the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) where Nate gave a lunch time keynote speech. To my delight, the NNSTOY conference was open to “any teacher”. Alas, once I arrived, I learned that it really wasn’t any teacher (only a few of us were without titles like STOY or finalist of ___), but I was already there, my registration paid, and Katherine Bassett, the conference organizer, far too gracious to kick me out.

I was eager to release my inner nerd, especially because this year’s theme was “Bridging Theory and Practice.” If you’ve ever hung out with me, you know I’m obsessed with merging these two elements in my life. This theme was further developed by a focus on four strands keynoted by outstanding leaders in our field and facilitated by excellent teachers from across the country.

  1. Constructing Student Centered Classrooms
  2. Leadership Spanning
  3. Building Professional Networks
  4. Expanding on Teacher Leadership
  5. This conference delivered.

I walked out with a better sense of how to engage my students through technology. I was inspired by creative models for teacher leadership such as what Denver Public Schools is doing with their Teacher Leadership & Collaboration model. I heard exactly what Charlotte Danielson intended for the Danielson evaluation (omg! Geeked out that I heard the real Danielson!). I felt empowered to build my teacher leadership through blogging. I was challenged to keep equity at the center of everything I do. Finally, I was reminded by Maddie Fennell, an NBCT from Nebraska who works for the Department of Education, to get involved in policy work because “if you aren’t at the table, you’ll be on the menu.”

Most importantly, I met, networked, and collaborated with absolutely fantastic educators from Washington (shout out to the WA Teacher Advisory Council!) to Jersey.

This last takeaway is why I want to encourage all of you to interlope at an upcoming conference or training that you think will make you a better teacher or give you an opportunity to network with agents of change.

Although, the conference is over, I highly recommend you read the writing of James Ford “What School Segregation Looks Like” or watch Nate Bowling’s invitation to join “The Family Business” Also, go to Twitter and do some post-conference lurking…I mean learning… by using the hashtags #teachersleading and #NNSTOY16