Plenary Speakers

Douglas Reeves

Douglas Reeves has a solution for accountability that uses innovation borne out of flexibility even in the midst of financial constraints. ”Specifically,” Reeves states, “we have an opportunity to take our schools from test prep centers to meeting the critical needs of the 21st Century. We can develop practical assessments that will engage students, reduce failure and the enormous costs associated with failure, and improve our focus on creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.” 

Backed by cutting-edge research, compelling evidence, and practical ideas for implementation, Reeves will share effective strategies for a wide range of school environments, including schools with high percentages of low income and English Language Learners.

Founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, which serves school systems around the world, Reeves is author of 30 books and many articles on leadership and organizational effectiveness. He has twice been named to the Harvard University Distinguished Authors Series.

A New Era for Accountability, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning | Friday, March 23, 2:45 – 4:15 p.m.
Book Signing | Friday, March 23, 4:30 – 5 p.m.

Andrew Hargreaves

Andrew Hargreaves, Thomas More Brennan Chair of Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, outlines an alternative path for the future focused on innovation, inspiration, and sustainability. Hargreaves shares many lessons learned on performance and leading performance beyond expectations in the executive summary of his recent report, Performance Beyond Expectations, which you can download at no cost. 

Before moving to Boston, Hargreaves taught primary school and lectured in several English universities, including Oxford, and he had been the co-founder and director of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. He has been awarded visiting professorships in the U.S. (Regents Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz), as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Sweden, Japan, and Singapore . 

The Future of Educational Change | Saturday, March 24, 7:30 – 9 a.m. 
Book Signing | Saturday, March 24, 9:15 – 10:15 a.m.

Richard DuFour and Rebecca DuFour

What's the secret to leading your school to continued improvement? The answer is teamwork, according to Richard and Rebecca DuFour. Learn from two of today's foremost experts on building and maintaining Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).

Richard DuFour is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on applying the principles of professional learning communities in the real world of schools. He draws upon 34 years of experience as a public school educator—teacher, principal, and superintendent—and two decades as a leader of one of the most recognized, celebrated schools in America, Adlai Stevenson High School District 125 in Lincolnshire, Ill. Author of fourteen books and more than eighty articles on the Professional Learning Community concept, he has served as a columnist for the Journal of Staff Development for nearly a decade. He has received numerous state and national awards for distinguished educational service and scholarship.

Rebecca B. DuFour has been a teacher, school administrator, and central office coordinator. As a former elementary principal, she helped her school earn state and national recognition as a model professional learning community and a Blue Ribbon School. She has co-authored nine books, was one of the featured principals in the 2001 Video Journal of Education production, “Leadership in an Age of Standards and High Stakes,” and was the lead consultant and featured principal in the 2003program, “Elementary Principals as Leaders of Learning.” She has written for numerous professional journals, reviewed books for the Journal of Staff Development, and authored a quarterly column for NAESP’s Leadership Compass.

Together, the DuFours, as the go-to authorities on PLCs, consult with school districts, state departments, and professional organizations throughout the world.

Building the Collaborative Culture of a Professional Learning Community |Thursday, March 22, 12:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Book Signing |Thursday, March 22, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.

Spend a full afternoon on March 22 with the DuFours when they will also present these two level-specific Concurrent Sessions following their Plenary Session:

Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Middle Schools (Richard DuFour), 2:45 – 4:15 p.m.
Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever It Takes in Elementary Schools (Rebecca DuFour), 2:45 – 4:15 p.m.

Eric Jensen

Eric Jensen will address the new science of academic achievement for low-income students. You’ll get fresh, research-supported insights, key background knowledge, and a practical roadmap for academic success with kids from poverty. Learn how experience changes the brain, and discover if it is genes or environment that matters most. You’ll find out which factors are reversible, and which are not. Most importantly, you’ll learn what you can do immediately to help your students achieve.

Jensen began his teaching career in San Diego, CA as an English teacher at the middle
school level. His love of learning has been a lifelong passion. While most of his classroom
experience was with middle school students, he has taught at every level, including at three universities. Jensen’s academic background is in English, and he is currently completing his Ph.D. in Human Development. He is an active member of the Society for Neuroscience and the New York Academy of Sciences. Jensen co-founded the first international brain-compatible learning program in 1982, which now has more than 50,000 graduates, and has written 26 books on the brain and learning including Teaching with Poverty in Mind, Teaching with the
Brain in Mind, and Enriching the Brain.

Practical Strategies Linking Brain Research to Student Achievement of Students from Poverty| Friday, March 23, 7:30 – 9 a.m.
Book Signing | Friday, March 23, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

Yong Zhao

The Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global Education, College of Education at the University of Oregon, Yong Zhao also serves as the director of the Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE). He is a fellow of the International Academy for Education. Until December 2010, Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology and executive director of the Confucius Institute as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence.

Zhao’s research interests include educational policy, computer gaming and education, diffusion of innovations, teacher adoption of technology, computer-assisted language learning, and globalization and education. He also has extensive international experience, having consulted with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in many countries on six continents. His current work focuses on designing 21st-century schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution.

Zhao has published more than 20 books and 100 articles. His most recent books are Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization and Handbook of Asian Education: A Cultural Perspective. He has also developed computer software, including the award-winning New Chengo/ZON, the world’s first massive multiplayer online role-playing game for studying Chinese.

Zhao was born in China’s Sichuan Province. He received his B.A. in English language education from Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages in Chongqing, China, in 1986. After teaching English in China for six years, he went to Linfield College in the U.S. as a visiting scholar in 1992. He then began his graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. He received his A.M. in education in 1994 and Ph.D. in 1996. He joined the faculty at MSU in 1996 after working as the Language Center Coordinator at Willamette University and a language specialist at Hamilton College.

Based on his own experience as a student in China and as a parent of children attending school in the United States, Yong Zhao skewers conventional wisdom while setting straight the recent history and current state of U.S. schools. To make his case, Zhao explains:

• Why the perceived weaknesses of American education are actually its strengths;
• How reform proponents, business executives, and politicians have misjudged American education;
• Why China and other nations in Asia are actually reforming their systems to be more like their American counterparts; and
• What really matters for an education system and what really counts as educational excellence.

Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization | Saturday, March 24, 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. 
Book Signing | Saturday, March 24, 12:45 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.