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Small Learning Community National Conference 2008

Small Learning Community National Conference

This national conference is NOT affiliated with the USDOE/OESE SLC Program or with the technical assistance provided through its contract with the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's Recreating Secondary Schools Program. All activities will be underwritten by registration fees and contributions by other participating organizations and businesses.

Conference Strands

Instructional Program Coherence

Curriculum and instruction strategies in use that increase consistency in teaching within grade levels and across years of school to create coherent small learning communities/small school programs, for example, interdisciplinary collaboration on development of student proficiencies and demonstrations, integrated units/projects, common instructional strategies and assessments.

Sessions offered under this strand include:

  • Ten Steps to Success; SLC Curriculum Design
  • Mixed Messages: Instructional Coherence and SLC Restructuring
  • Team Teaching
  • Pieces of the Puzzle: Interdisciplinary Curriculum
  • Eating the Elephant One Bite at the Time: A Safari Through Interdisciplinary Unit Development
  • The Magic is in the SLC!
  • From Paper to Practice - Overcoming the Challenges of Scheduling SLCs and Career Academies

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Practical Ways To Personalize

Manageable ways to enhance teachers' ability to respond to individual students' needs and interests, for example, reduced student load or class size through re-allocation of existing resources, instruction tailored to student learning styles or cultural background, advisement periods, individual educational plans.

Sessions offered under this strand include:

  • Taking it Personally: Evaluating SLC Impact on Personalization in Urban High Schools
  • Advisory Class: Up Close and Personal
  • Addressing Diversity in the Classroom: Cultural, Linguistic, Cognitive, and Socioeconomic
  • Becoming Partners In Learning: Personalizing Student Support and Using Guided Discipline In The Classroom
  • Developing Student Advisory Programs
  • Listening to Student Voices: An Experiential Session
  • Inspired Instructional Leadership
  • Ways that administrators and teachers assume leadership of instructional improvements including examples showing how interdisciplinary teams take responsibility for the educational progress of the students they share in common and how administrators share leadership with small learning community leaders and teams.
  • Participatory Action Research: Organizing curriculum for engagement, curiosity, skills and service

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Inspired Instructional Leadership

Ways that administrators and teachers assume leadership of instructional improvements including examples showing how interdisciplinary teams take responsibility for the educational progress of the students they share in common and how administrators share leadership with small learning community leaders and teams.

Sessions offered under this strand include:

  • Moving Forward With SLCs In Your School
  • Building Capacity for High School Redesign through Staff Support
  • Buy-in: What is and how do we get it?
  • Instructional Coaching: Program Design and Implementation
  • Instructional Coaching: Overcoming Challenges
  • Using Google Docs to Facilitate Distributive Leadership and Instructional Consistency
  • Distributing and Supporting Leadership in the Context of SLC Reforms
  • Building District Capacity to Support SLC Implementation
  • The new WWW: Whole, Wide Web - A Weaving of School Leadership to Support Students
  • Atlanta Public Schools...The Transformation Of All High Schools

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Really Requiring Rigor

Strategies that staff use to examine and increase the rigor of their instruction, replace remedial courses with on-grade level courses linked to tutorials and other supports for students who need it, modify instruction to make honors, AP, and IB courses accessible to all interested students, engage students in sustained efforts to revise, refine, and polish their work.

Sessions offered under this strand include:

  • This Puzzle is more than a Game
  • Getting Students Excited About Learning by Infusing Curriculum and Pedagogy With Critical Thinking
  • Building 9th Grade Success with Curriculum Integration and Teacher Teaming

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Rewarding Relationships

Strategies teachers use to get to know students better, increase student voice, enhance classroom climate for learning, increase peer-to-peer support including peer mentoring, connect students with community mentors.

Sessions offered under this strand include:

  • Understanding, Reaching and Teaching Today's Students
  • Fierce Conversations: Transform the Conversations Central to Your Success
  • We have common planning time: Now what?
  • Successful Advisory
  • Culturally Proficient Learning Communities
  • Restorative Justice: Reconceptualizing School Disciplinary Theory and Practice
  • And Justice for All: Small Learning Communities and Social Change

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Students Moving Up

Practices used to get students on track to graduate including accelerated learning, increased instructional time in the core curriculum, advisement to increase college aspiration, dual enrollment, community/business partnerships.

Sessions offered under this strand include:

  • Examining SLC Impact on English Learner Achievement on California High School Exit Examination
  • Back on Track - A "Catch Up" Program to Increase 9th Grade Promotion
  • Closing the Gap and Increasing Achievement Through Data Teams and Safe Environments
  • The Proper Growth, Care and Feeding of Strong Advisory Boards

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Planning and Organizing small learning communities

Small learning community Design and Implementation: Presentations share the features of small learning communities that school staffs have designed and successfully implemented. Participants will learn about how these experienced small learning community leaders gained staff support for small learning communities, created interdisciplinary teams, scheduled 'pure' small learning community classes, organized advisories, and created more rigorous and relevant instructional programs.

Sessions offered under this strand include:

  • Improving Freshman Transition: Evidence on the Effectiveness of 9th Grade House Structures
  • Keys to Successful Implementation: Lessons Learned to Impact Rigor, Relevance and Relationships
  • How to Plan and Implement Small Learning Communities at Your School
  • District Implementation
  • SLC Nuts and Bolts of Getting Started
  • Understanding and Implementing the National Standards of Practice to Strengthen Your Career Academy
  • Solving The Challenges Of SLCs Through Best Practices - Lessons From The Field
  • Brick by Brick: Building a Freshman Academy from the Ground Up

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