Education

What Happens in Atlanta...Gets Blogged About Here

By Liana Loewus — December 05, 2010 1 min read
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Live from the Learning Forward annual conference in Atlanta

Just got down to Atlanta for the Learning Forward annual conference. (Formerly known as NSDC, Learning Forward is a nonprofit professional organization focused on staff and school improvement. The group will actually be starting to blog on our site in the coming weeks.) The conference is a gathering of school administrators, superintendents, learning coaches, and pd coordinators. Most of the sessions revolve around best practices for staff development.

As it looks, it should be an interesting few days. The conference is taking place between two massive downtown hotels—and I mean 5,000-room Vegas-style monstrosities. There were preconference sessions over the weekend, which I missed, and there will be postconference sessions after the gathering officially ends Wednesday morning. The events run from about 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day. Unfortunately, I arrived less than an hour after registration had closed, so I’ll have to pick up my 100+ page session book in the morning.

I do know that Beverly Hall, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools who was named National Superintendent of the Year in 2009, is scheduled to issue a keynote address tomorrow (Monday) morning. And considering her recent announcement that she will step down in 2011, ending an 11-year career, amidst allegations of widespread cheating on standardized tests in the district, the speech has the potential to be a juicy one (though just as much potential to be a dry, evasive one).

With dozens of sessions going on at any one time, I’ll have to do some careful choosing—that, or running. While I’m here, I’ll do my best to report back on this blog several times daily. For teachers, this could provide an inside view of what your principals and coaches are thinking about when they plan your professional development days and after-school seminars. I hope you’ll tag along for the ride...

A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.