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Significant disparities in educational outcome, opportunity, and achievement endure for students with disabilities and those from culturally and linguistically diverse groups. A need for effective, responsive, and inclusive practices in schools is imperative. Educators are at the heart of providing the challenging, responsive education that each child and adolescent deserves. Professional development is the lever of change, but can or help or hinder educators in improving instructional and school practices that result in improved outcomes for all students. This chapter examines the evidence base surrounding professional development and inclusive practice. Four approaches to professional development supporting more transformative professional learning and change are featured: inquiry groups (teacher study groups and lesson study); coaching, Professional Learning Communities; and Professional Development Schools. Snapshots to practice are included with each approach to provide integrated descriptive examples of varied inclusive professional development practices.

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As a state comprehensive university in a small, midwestern metropolitan area, “Students First” is more than a slogan. The preamble to our Faculty Constitution and our University’s mission statement both specify that students and their flourishing are the justification for our institution’s existence. We have learned, however, that a precondition to robust attention to students’ well-being is parallel attention to the well-being and development of our faculty. This article chronicles the principles and practices by which our shared leadership team responded to unique challenges presented by the COVID crisis and its ripple effects. A closing theme acknowledges that COVID revealed latent, pre-existing gaps in our care for faculty and students as well as introducing new and temporary challenges, and that some of our resulting solutions may require institutionalization as permanent fixtures.