From California to Massachusetts, frontline professionals who deal with school redesign on a day-to-day basis gathered in New York City in early January to attend an institute on facilitating school change, co-sponsored by the AFT and the United Federation of Teachers.

More than 90 teachers, union leaders and administrators from the school, district and state level braved a snowstorm to attend the three-day institute, which for the second year running drew standing-room-only crowds. The big audiences reveal "there is a need for this type of assistance," says Aminda Gentile, director of the UFT Teacher Center. "It's not so much that people haven't heard what we have to say [about school reform], but we're putting it into a complete package."

Participants represented school labor-management teams as well as union leaders and administrators from districts including Toledo, Ohio; the ABC Unified School District in California; New Orleans; and Boston. School teams from West Virginia and New York state, including Albany, Rochester and Syracuse, also attended. On the agenda were effective communications strategies, professional development to support student achievement, facilitating productive meetings and data-driven comprehensive educational planning. Laced throughout the school redesign institute were opportunities for teams from individual schools and districts to brainstorm methods for implementing the information back home.

That work is already under way, reports Amy Zollars, a second-grade teacher at Pickett Elementary in Toledo who attended the institute with other teachers, administrators and AFT leaders from her district. Some of the communication techniques demonstrated at the New York meeting have been employed at Pickett staff meetings--exercises that have helped teachers and administrators identify common ground when it comes to boosting student achievement. That shared vision, and open lines of communication, are indispensable for a school like Pickett, which is implementing an improvement plan after being identified by the state as a low-performing school.

"One thing that this conference really gave us was team building," says Zollars. "To really make change happen in a school, you have to make sure teachers are on board with your plan. For us, that has been a missing piece."

Toledo Federation of Teachers president Francine Lawrence says the institute provided a strong start for union-district efforts to work as partners in providing support at Pickett and seven other schools identified as low-performing. Members of the Toledo delegation "felt they got a lot of skills and ideas on how to establish a process in their schools that, over time, would help improve student achievement and school climate," adds Lawrence.

Feedback was also positive from the delegation from Syracuse, N.Y., reports Katherine McKenna, president of the Syracuse Teachers Association/AFT, who attended the institute.

"This was all about being able to really listen to each other, to focus on internal changes, and planning with a focus," says McKenna. When it comes to school improvement, "administrators frequently see us as wanting to pull in the other direction, but in fact we and our members are focused on student achievement," the AFT leader observes. "I think this will help build awareness on the part of the administration of what the union is trying to do to improve professional development and student achievement."

Teams from four Syracuse schools attended the institute, including staff from Shea Middle School, which the state recently had cited as low-performing. Gene Darter, a 33-year teaching veteran and one of three Shea educators to attend the institute, says the conference provided constructive communication strategies that can turn school improvement plans from "flavor of the month" reform into concrete initiatives with staying power.

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