Symposium Webcast

School improvement is a complex issue fraught with ambiguity and challenge. To create “harbours of hope,” where learning by all is a reality, a school must create a climate that supports collaboration, good planning, frequent monitoring of progress and the celebration of successes.

The climate of support is created when school staff members see one another as resources to support teaching and learning and invite parents into the process of supporting their efforts. Good planning, monitoring progress and celebrating are based on the ability of a school to use meaningful data or critical evidence.

This keynote presentation will highlight the importance of focused goals and energy in fulfilling the mission of “learning by all, whatever it takes.”

As teachers plan classroom assessments, they often feel torn between two competing demands: that for increased accountability and that for feedback in words, not scores, which research suggest is a hallmark of the most effective assessment strategies. This session will present eight “big ideas” to help teachers simplify the assessment process and achieve a balance of assessment for learning (i.e., to promote learning) and assessment of learning (i.e., for grading and reporting).

Schools can become much more efficient and innovative as learning organizations by using data effectively and efficiently. When schools use data effectively, they are able to see which processes are working to help students become proficient and which ones are not. Using data to improve processes enables teachers, collectively, to take their practices to the next level and to make a difference for all students.

Jane Bluestein will affirm that principals, teachers and parents do have a powerful influence on a child and hold in their hands the ability to make a positive difference in a child’s life: parents, who set the stage for nurturing and supporting; teachers, who continue the nurturing by establishing a rich learning environment within their classrooms; and principals, who set the tone for leadership and inspire within their schools a lifelong desire for learning and for motivating our youth. We are preparing our children for a future that we do not know and a time when we will not be there. If our children have emotional intelligence, academic strengths, social awareness, empathy, compassion and a sense of our truly global society, we will have given them wings to fly. Jane will talk about some of the specific strategies that each of us can put in place to ensure this success and the privilege that it is to play such roles in the lives of our children.