Professional Learning
Effective Teaching

The New Art and Science of Teaching

The New Art and Science of Teaching comprehensively addresses the most alterable effect on student achievement—quality instruction. Explore the elements of this research-based framework, and discover instructional strategies proven to successfully enhance student learning.

• Learn the instructional framework components, which include: 3 categories, 10 design questions, and 43 elements.
• Experience many of the 43 elements through hundreds of modeled instructional strategies.
• Use reflective guides as a means of enhancing instructional practices.
• Explore how the companion online compendium can support the model by highlighting 300 instructional strategies, video descriptions, and print resources related to the new design questions and all 43 elements.

Improving Teacher Development

Designed for teachers, coaches, and educational leaders, this training offers a paradigm-shifting approach to teacher development. You’ll learn research-based steps for improvement, principles for successful observation and coaching, and protocols designed to help teachers, coaches, and administrators support and promote the development of teacher expertise.

• Understand why the professional growth of teachers is vital to the well-being of the educational system.
• Discover the beneficial influence of teacher self-reflection and self-rating on elements of effective instruction.
• Learn strategies for offering targeted feedback, nurturing the drive for self-improvement, and engaging teachers in the process of growing their professional knowledge and skills.
• Explore the concept of instructional rounds as an extension of instructional coaching and a way to coach small groups of teachers.

Coaching for Educator Wellness

Fully and confidently step into your role as an instructional coach. This training offers evergreen strategies alongside fresh new solutions that will help you differentiate coaching practices for new and veteran teachers, address teacher self-care, and more. Partner with our experts as you continue to improve your craft and help teachers find their own greatness.

• Review research surrounding best teacher coaching practices.
• Explore strategies for differentiating coaching practices for teachers at every stage of their career.
• Study the four types of support, and learn how to match support to meet each teacher’s needs during different phases of the school year.
• Use interactive activities, tools, and templates to help support all teachers in increasing their expertise.
• Consider how self-care and professional wellness for adults are foundational supports for social-emotional learning for students.

Supporting Beginning Teachers

Learn how leaders, coaches, and mentors can support beginning teachers through specific, research-based mentoring strategies that can be applied at the school or district level. Improve teacher retention by gaining an in-depth understanding of the four types of essential support beginning teachers need that make them different from veteran teachers.

• Explore how to identify effective mentors, and gain an understanding of how to establish a solid foundation for mentoring.
• Acquire specific strategies to provide essential physical, emotional, and institutional support for beginning teachers.
• Frame essential instructional support strategies within a common language of instruction, including how to engage in goal setting, focused practice, and focused feedback.
• Gain tips for encouraging reflective discussions between beginning teachers and their mentors.

Beginning Teacher’s Field Guide

This training dives deep into the personal side of teaching, offering crucial advice, empathy, and new-teacher support. You’ll learn six phases every new teacher goes through—anticipation, survival, disillusionment, rejuvenation, reflection, and second anticipation—and targeted classroom-management strategies and self-care practices for each.

• Understand the feelings and teaching challenges of each phase during a beginning teacher’s career.
• Practice self-care to combat beginning and first-year teacher stress and burnout; avoid the mental pitfalls that so often lead to teachers changing careers.
• Learn effective classroom-management strategies for new teachers and how to maintain positive relationships with students.

Improving Teacher Evaluation

Designed for educational leaders who formally supervise and observe teachers, this training offers a paradigm-shifting approach to teacher observation and evaluation. Explore research-based steps for improvement, tips for effective evaluation and observation, and strategies proven to promote teacher expertise.

• Restructure systems of classroom observation and evaluation to improve their effectiveness and encourage teacher development.
• Learn new, more reliable methods of scoring teachers’ classroom practices and students’ academic growth.

Mindsets and Skill Sets for Learning

Cultivate confident thinkers who have a strong sense of agency over their lives. In this training, you’ll learn what student agency looks and sounds like in the classroom and gain strategies for developing a learner-centered culture, establishing well-defined learning targets, deliberately planning and structuring lessons, and more.

• Explore the Mindsets and Skill Sets framework for building agency, and understand the importance of developing self-agency in students.
• Receive detailed explanations of each component of the framework and guidance for putting it into practice in your classroom.
• Utilize an agency unit planner to design student-centered learning experiences that develop learner agency and skills.
• Hear perspectives from teachers and students who have transformed learning and increased student engagement using the framework.

Self-Care for Educators

Establish habits and routines that allow you to bring your very best self to those you serve. By utilizing a research-based framework for self-care, this training helps educators of all levels and backgrounds develop personalized self-care plans. You’ll leave feeling inspired, rejuvenated, and empowered.

• Explore foundational research and theory on self-care.
• Understand how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes into play in one’s personal and professional life.
• Gain strategies and recommendations related to each level of the hierarchy that can be implemented immediately.

Motivating and Inspiring Students

This interactive training (previously known as Creating a Highly Engaged Classroom) is based on the idea that we all have four systems—knowledge, cognitive, metacognitive, and self—working in our minds at any given moment. While K–12 education has traditionally done a solid job of focusing on the knowledge and cognitive systems, the metacognitive and self-systems have often been neglected in schools. Help teachers understand, appreciate, and address these other two systems in order to reach the whole child and awaken each and every learner in the classroom.

• Learn the four systems that humans operate under at all times and how these systems impact students and teachers in schools.
• Delve into the metacognitive and self-systems’ hierarchy of goals, and understand how teachers can address these goals in order to reach students’ hearts, heads, and hands.
• Discover ways to create a culture and climate in schools and classrooms that awaken students to new possibilities and excitement.
• Reflect on your own teaching practices and the extent to which your behavior instills purpose, inspiration, and passion in your students.

Designing Effective Classroom Management

Create a classroom environment that supports student achievement and fosters positive behaviors. This training provides teachers and school leaders with an overview of the keys to positive and proactive classroom management, using real-life examples and practical steps for implementation.

• Define and teach classroom expectations and rules.
• Create classroom structure and procedures.
• Learn effective methods for increasing student engagement.
• Reinforce classroom expectations with a range of strategies.
• Manage unwanted behavior using a hierarchy of appropriate responses.

Instructional Rounds

High-quality instructional rounds serve as a means to provide ongoing, job-embedded professional development and coaching to teachers for continuous learning and growth. In this interactive training, you’ll learn and then be guided through the process of instructional rounds from observation to debriefing.

• Discuss how administrators can serve as coaches.
• Learn how to set up and implement instructional rounds in your school.
• Revisit structures and protocols for coaching.