In Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders, PJ Caposey shares insightful advice and meaningful examples for building a healthy school culture. In this tip, Caposey discusses strategies for supporting professional development of faculty and staff members. 

The only things that look the same in America today as they did in 1962 are schools. While the school calendar and buildings may look the same, leaders must work to make sure that the practices in schools are ever-changing and ever-growing. During an #edchat on Twitter recently, somebody tweeted, “As professionals, teachers should want to improve their practice on their own.” I agree with the sentiment, but the operative word in the above Tweet is “should.” For those who do not, it is the responsibility of leadership to engage them in their own professional development...

In The 6 Keys to Teacher Engagement, Cathie E. West provides tools and guidance for education leaders at all levels to engage teachers in the process of increasing student achievement. This tip discusses three ways to successfully engage teachers at your next faculty meeting of professional development event.

In Professional Learning in the Digital Age: The Educator's Guide to User-Generated Learning, Kristen Swanson shows educators how to enhance their professional learning using practical tools, strategies, and online resources. This infographic focuses on curation and identifies ways for educators to start curating content in order to harness information and become lifelong learners in the digital age.

This tip discusses how school leaders can build a strong learning-focused environment in their district or school. High-Impact Leadership for High-Impact Schools: The Actions That Matter Most, by Pamela Salazar, presents specific knowledge and practical strategies for school leaders to reach high standards of excellence.

Strong learning-focused communities offer professional support and provide learning opportunities and mutual accountability for improving instruction. Principals must build a work culture that promotes collaboration, knowledge sharing, and collective responsibility for improving teaching and learning.

In this post, Bryan Harris, author of Battling Boredom: 99 Strategies to Spark Student Engagement, discusses a lesson plan that is perfect for refocusing students during the holidays.

Movement is critical to the learning process. Adults and children are better engaged when they are physical, particularly during the holiday season. This dueling lesson is just the thing to help students and teachers stay on track this hoilday season while blowing off some steam.Try this lesson during your next professional development meeting or encourage your teachers to do this with their students.

In this post, Sarah T. Meltzer, author of Step-by-Step Professional Development in Technology talks about the importance of assessing staff’s needs when it comes to technology infused professional development.

In this fast-paced society where the use of technology is embedded into all aspects of education, it’s important that we, as educators, take a step back and realize how to successfully integrate technology into our curriculum.  In order to do that, we must first ascertain where our teachers are with technology in general. 

The start of each new school year brings plans for the months ahead.  It also increases the amount of email all educators receive on a monthly basis.  In Get Organized!: Time Management for School Leaders, Frank Buck shares practical strategies on how to establish healthy emailing habits. School leaders, adopt these practices for yourself and share them with your teachers! 

Differentiation Is an Expectation: A School Leader's Guide to Building a Culture of Differentiation, by Kimberly Kappler Hewitt and Daniel Weckstein discusses how to promote and design differentiation in your school or district. One of the most important aspects in achieving differentiation is using differentiated teacher evaluations.

We're taking a short break from sending tips, but we'll be back with new tips in August.

Until then, here are the Top 5 Professional Development Tips from the 2011-2012 school year!

'Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers, by Heather Wolpert-Gawron, aims to motivate and inspire teachers as the work to engage their students, instruct with rigor, and improve their own experiences. This tip provides 10 simple ways for teachers (and school leaders!) to exercise and reenergize their brains during the summer!

Professional Development: What Works (2nd Edition), by Sally Zepeda, helps guide principals, directors of professional development, school/district committees, and other leaders in creating an effective professional development program that moves ideas from knowledge to action. This tip provides eight simple ways to keep staff engaged during a professional development opportunity.

Last week, Eye On Education hosted its premier online conference, Eye On School Success. The conference provided teachers and school leaders with a wealth of practical ideas for their own professional development. One of our expert presenters, Pete Hall, led the popular session Motivational Leadership. In this tip, you will learn one of Pete's key strategies for professional development: prioritization.

This tip, from Leading School Change: 9 Strategies to Bring Everybody on Board by Todd Whitaker, presents a strategy that will help school leaders leverage an essential group of staff members — their teachers. Todd Whitaker will be providing even more concrete steps for getting colleagues to champion and work toward the school change at Eye On School Success, An Online Conference, this March!

There are 3 categories of educators that will impact school change, “superstars,” “backbones,” and “mediocres.” Let’s examine the category that has the most influence, “superstars.”

The following guest post was written by Barbara Blackburn, author of Rigor in Your School: A Toolkit for Leaders.

One of the questions I’m often asked is how to use one of my books for a book study. Book studies are a great way to help develop a common understanding of a topic, such as rigor.

The following guest post was written by Toby Rothstein Gruber, Eye On Education's Director of Professional Services and the moderator of Eye On Education's professional development webinars.

Have you ever felt like you’ve used all your classroom strategies, yet you still have those certain students that no matter which strategy you try, it just doesn’t work? On our February 9 webinar, Managing Disruptive Behaviors in the Classroom, presented by Bryan Harris we not only identified the 5 most common classroom disruptions, we talked about what to do with them. Just when you thought you were out of strategies, check out what our participants had to say regarding the following common disruptions...