Maine Curriculum Leaders Association Offers Professional Learning Opportunities for Educators

The Maine Curriculum Leaders Association (MCLA) is offering two professional learning opportunities in early 2025: Differentiation for Leaders and Crucial Conversations. You can find more information about these opportunities below:

Differentiation for Leaders

Participate in this online learning opportunity to sustain differentiation within your school district. These meetings will take place virtually for four sessions with Cheryl Dobbertin, a leader in professional development, proficiency-based learning, and differentiation.

Descriptions of each session are as follows:

1. January 15: Differentiation that Makes a Difference - What is high-quality differentiated instruction This session will explore a comprehensive model of differentiated instruction and include discussions about common misconceptions.
2. February 12: Structures that Support Sustainable Differentiation - This session will help leaders to understand the communication, professional development, and coaching plans necessary to implement quality differentiated instructional plans.
3. March 12: Barriers to Quality Differentiation - This session will dive into the sometimes-invisible barriers that keep differentiated instruction from becoming a way of life in a school and/or district.
4. April 2: Integrating Differentiated Instruction into Other Structures How does differentiation work for students who need intervention or enrichment? How might it be part of your Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) plan or Social Emotional Learning work? This session will review how differentiation can fit into all plans and structures when it's well understood, helping leaders to create classrooms that allow all learners to thrive.

The cost for Differentiation for Leaders is $200 for MCLA members and $300 for non-members.

Register here.

The Maine Curriculum Leaders Association will reach out to those who register to determine the best time for sessions for the majority of registrants. For more information, please contact MCLA at [email protected].

Crucial Conversations

A Crucial Conversation is a discussion between two or more people where the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong. When conversations turn crucial, people tend to follow one of two ineffective paths: They either speak directly and abrasively to get the results they want but harm relationships, or they remain silent with the hope of preserving relationships only to sacrifice results. Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue gives people the skills to step into disagreement-rather than over or around it-and turn disagreement into dialogue for improved relationships and results.

"The health of any relationship, team, or organization can be measured by the lag between identifying and discussing problems," Joseph Grenny, coauthor of Crucial Conversations said.

Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue teaches nine powerful skillsets grounded in decades of social science research. The course helps learners develop these vital skills through instruction, application, practice, group discussion, and self-reflection all based on educational scenarios. This opportunity will include 12 hours of professional development, a digital copy of the learner guide, model cards, cue cards, and a digital copy of the book Crucial Conversations.

MCLA Executive Director Deb McIntyre will lead the training sessions and has previously delivered this professional development.

This course is appropriate for all school district leaders and is more powerful if you have a team that attends. The cost is $400 for MCLA members and $500 for non-members.

Register here. A date for this course will be selected after MCLA has gauged the number of participants interested.

To provide this excellent learning opportunity, MCLA must have at least 25 participants to run this offering. For more information, please contact MCLA at [email protected].

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