Most educators probably know what it feels like to be part of an unproductive professional learning community--one where the topics range from last night's TV episodes to everyone's weekend plans before coming around to instructional issues. Other communities might just feel like another staff meeting with a list of announcements. But there are…

Snapshots of two Colorado districts in the Redesign PD Community of Practice: Denver Public Schools' professional learning partners help subject-matter experts and others provide educators with a high-quality learning experience. In Jefferson County, Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning guide educators to make teacher…

For eight years, more than a dozen district superintendents in New Jersey have joined together for a full day each month during the school year to listen to and learn from each other as a community of practice. Known as the New Jersey Network of Superintendents, this community of practice has a tight focus on advancing equity through improvement…

For more than a century, teachers in Tennessee's Loudon County School District have come together before the start of the school year for a professional development day. For the first time this year, professional learning in the district will be based at each individual school -- a result of the district's use of a new rubric, which states that…

Web-based coaching shows significant promise for linking teachers to highly expert practitioners. This is particularly important in districts that cannot afford to hire full-time school-based coaches or to train and support coaches to be experts in all content areas. While web-based teacher professional development shows a great deal of potential…

As part of the Redesign Professional Development (PD) Community of Practice, which includes 22 school systems across the country, Pittsburgh Public Schools is working to build greater alignment and coherence into its professional learning efforts. That means creating a district-wide professional learning system that helps the schools grow…

How do educators at a systems level know that professional learning is impacting teacher practice in a way that leads to improved student outcomes? California's Long Beach Unified School District, a member of Learning Forward's Redesign PD Community of Practice, partnered with other districts from across the country to answer that question. As…

This article provides a vignette which demonstrates some of the outcomes that occur when teachers collaborate across school district lines. The project began as an idea from Ben Owens, a 2014 Hope Street Group National Teacher Fellow. The basic notion was that good teaching doesn't happen in isolation. As someone who came into teaching after a…

The Minnesota Elementary School Principals' Association offered Minnesota principals professional learning that placed a high priority on literacy instruction and developing a collegial culture. A key component is the literacy classroom visit, an observation protocol used to gather data to determine the status of literacy teaching and student…

To stem the tide of new professionals leaving teaching, the Oceanside School District in New York created a program that sees teaching as a six-year career ladder beginning with an internship and ending with National Board Certification, with board-certified teachers supporting new interns and residents.

The Greece Professional Learning Center, a New York State Teacher Center in Greece Central School District, works to ensure all district employees have access to high-quality professional learning that supports and facilitates their learning and ultimately advances student achievement. The center is an integral part of the district -- the state's…

When school district leaders attend instructional sessions about professional learning, they might take away a few ideas and strategies they want to try. But when experts provide those districts with ongoing coaching, the educators are more likely to gain the ability to create strong professional learning systems that benefit all educators. That…

Teachers matter. Do our actions show that we believe this to be true? When treated as professionals and given the opportunity to participate in building and extending the profession, teachers rise to the occasion. Beyond Our Own Walls, a series of cross-school instructional rounds, was born out of a conversation that focused on what would happen…

When leaders in Lewisville Independent School District in Texas saw the district's writing scores on STAAR--the Texas standardized tests introduced in 2011--they panicked. They were not alone. The response from many neighboring districts, and from some of Lewisville's own campuses, was a renewed commitment to summer and after-school drill-and-kill…

Imagine the opportunity to invest in 2 1/2 years of thoughtful and stimulating interaction and learning with colleagues from around the nation and beyond. In 2010, Karla McAdam was the winner of a competitive Learning Forward Foundation scholarship that allowed her to do just that. McAdam, then a district resource reading specialist for Decatur…