The teaching profession is entering a crisis point. Many teachers are looking for the exit, feeling exhausted by the competing demands they are expected to meet and disrespected as professionals, asked to do the impossible by solving society’s social problems while also delivering a rigorous academic education. According to recent surveys, teacher attrition is higher since the COVID pandemic than in prior years, and up to 55% of teachers are considering leaving the classroom soon. Burnout is a frequently-cited cause of this burgeoning mass exodus, and teacher pay is still lagging behind other professions, but just behind these factors is another reason that is hard to ignore: over a quarter of teachers cite a lack of career development as a reason for their desire to leave.

It can be easy for individuals and small organizations, especially those of us who are concerned as we support teachers from the sidelines, to feel like we can’t effect meaningful change around teacher salary and burnout. We can contribute, but at the end of the day, we are part of a great educational and societal ecosystem that must coordinate our efforts to make a meaningful difference to the teacher experience.

Career development is different. Supporting teachers is essential to what we do, but helping teachers grow, giving them the opportunity to create a positive impact, is our raison d’etre. 

For the past two years, we’ve been focused on how to make professional growth feel meaningful to educators, in a way that may play a part in their ultimate ability to grow and thrive in their classrooms. We began with our mission and our organization’s core beliefs, giving both a hard look and careful consideration, and we developed a vision statement that reified both in a way that felt tangible. But from there, we knew we still needed to find a way to define the ways in which we help teachers grow, the kinds of competencies that could serve as a beacon for teachers seeking to transform their practice while also being recognizable assets they could showcase within their districts. This was how we established our Core Teacher Competencies.

Of course, providing learning opportunities in itself is not enough to support teachers’ career development and growth, so our focus for the past year has been in making this learning visible and shareable. To this end, we turned our Core Competencies into microcredentials, represented visually by digital badges. Microcredential badges can be added to a resume, email signature, or networking website. Teachers who demonstrate proficiency in any of our six Core Teacher Competencies within our Co-Labs may earn a Practitioner-level microcredential badge that certifies their strength in this area.

Teachers who ultimately demonstrate continued growth and application of this competency as leaders can eventually earn Leader-level certification in that Competency. This is currently the highest level of recognition offered by our organization, an indication that the teacher is ready to lead their peers, formally or informally. And this carries real heft: we have brought Leaders back to be co-facilitators, to present in workshops, to contribute to thought leadership. And we hope to expand this in the years ahead.

Making Microcredentials Meaningful

What’s next is to make these microcredentials truly meaningful by working to ensure they carry currency. While a teacher can showcase a microcredential on LinkedIn or a resume, and while we know that teachers’ learning in these areas will translate into more effective practice, we also know that they will be most useful if they can help a teacher move up in steps, perhaps, or be eligible for a stipended teacher leadership role. To do this, we hope to band together with peer organizations to establish a common language for competencies and shared investment in common microcredentials. We hope to work with districts to offer our assessment of teacher competency in these areas in a way that districts will trust and back. All of this will take time, so in the meantime we have partnered with an institute of higher education (Fitchburg State University) to offer graduate credit for some of our programs; we offer stipends for engagement in our Co-Labs and task forces, and we are building a database of teacher competencies so that we can establish a clearinghouse of teacher professional expertise.

Ultimately, we know that the badges will be an afterthought if teachers feel seen as they grow and have a positive impact on their schools and, foremost, their students. Teachers are consummate learners who are growing regardless of any initiative. We hope to help them in growing within - rather than out of - their critical roles.

by Diana Lebeaux, Senior Director of Programs at The Teacher Collaborative

By Diana Lebeaux, Director of Programs at The Teacher Collaborative

When I first heard the term “Student-Centered Learning” used, it was in the university context.  While I was a teacher, sitting in a room full of other teachers, it was hard to see the term as anything other than a theoretical way of describing pedagogy that many of us, joining the profession in the late ‘aughts,’ saw as a kind of Platonic ideal. Ideal—both in the sense that it was something to which to aspire, and in the sense that it would always feel a bit unachievable in the real context of our lives as teachers.  

Student-Centered Learning (called SCL by its superfans) was generally defined as an equity-focused pedagogy that allowed the interests, needs, and goals of the learners to drive instruction. When I left  direct work with students to consult with teachers and leaders in the non-profit sphere, the term had picked up steam. Progressive educators, pre-pandemic, vacillated between embracing this brave new world of student-centered personalization—and becoming terrified of the ways in which the concept was co-opted, diluted, and—inevitably—weakened. What had first been a Platonic ideal, reserved for theory and the ivory tower, and then had been—for a tantalizing moment—the darling of the education vanguard, was on the cusp of becoming almost meaningless. 

Like many other things, the pandemic changed all this. Student-centered learning was no longer capitalized like something abstract (or, worse, a commodity to be marketed) and instead became embedded in the DNA of strong, 21st-century teaching practices. Effective pandemic teaching required student-centered learning in order to work, along with its underpinning principles: flexibility, innovative assessment, student agency, and authenticity.  Approaches like culturally-responsive teaching and technology-infused practices were no longer niche interests but, finally, recognized as endemic to strong, dynamic teaching.

What saved student-centered learning wasn’t a bunch of marketing executives agreeing on a shared definition, or the concept reaching some kind of tipping point in educational think tanks.  What saved student-centered learning was the way in which teachers, increasingly, were drawn to the practices that it represented.  During the pandemic, student-centered learning moved distinctly from theory to practice all around the country, as teachers put their fierce energy to the gigantic task of finding new ways to reach students where they were every day. A new recognition of systemic inequities and injustices, combined with the challenges of reaching students during remote and hybrid instruction, both necessitated and enabled so-called innovative approaches to become standard. 

This didn’t happen automatically, of course. Throughout this period of flux, teachers found new reasons and new ways to collaborate. Where one teacher pioneered a performance assessment, others iterated on that approach to build their own. Groups of teachers found new ways to bring authentic and engaging topics into the classroom and volunteers piloted it until the approaches were refined. Amidst this energy, The Teacher Collaborative’s Co-Labs became more exciting than ever, providing a home base for “collaborative innovation” for teachers across Massachusetts.  

Although I came to the Teacher’s Collaborative only half a year ago, I have found countless examples of student-centered principles at work with our teachers. And it is these examples, straight from practitioners, that contributed to the design of the Teacher Collaborative’s new student-centered learning framework.  We see this framework as the touchstone for what is still an ongoing conversation. As we continue to create Co-Labs, platforms, and events where teachers can learn and problem-solve together, we hope that the framework serves as a kind of common language.  It’s not a single answer; it is a kind of question to which every teacher has an answer of their own: in the world of student-centered learning, where is your growing edge? 

The pandemic didn’t save student-centered learning; the pandemic simply provided the perfect storm in which it could be forged. What did save student-centered learning was that teachers wrested it from the hands of those fighting over it and made it their own. In the hands of practitioners, we hope that it keeps on being more than just an ideal, but a kind of continuum on which each educator is actively growing—and in turn, making schools a better place, even when the pandemic becomes a distant memory.

***

Interested in Student-Centered Learning? Join a Student Centered Learning Co-Lab for Leadership for an opportunity to explore student-centered practices and to collaboratively build a toolkit to share broadly with educators across Massachusetts. Learn more about Co-Labs here.

A Note on Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist, Inclusive and Equitable Practices:

At The Teacher Collaborative, we unequivocally support teachers’ work to create more equitable, just, and inclusive classrooms and schools. 

We support teachers in navigating important issues such as race and equity, through a critical lens, in ways that encourage respectful participation and individual points of view while elevating work toward equity and justice for those who have been historically marginalized. Culturally Responsive Teaching and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have been throughlines in our teacher-facing programming since we opened our doors in 2017 because these are issues teachers have always cared about and have always known to be crucial to building classroom communities that serve all students. 

We recognize that this is hard because it’s hard. To be perfectly unbiased is not possible. All individuals have biases and the best we can do is be actively aware of them, work to correct them on an ongoing basis, and commit to constant improvement. It’s also true that there are some issues where there are not two sides--to be antiracist is the only right side, to fight for equal opportunity for historically marginalized groups is the only right side.

But this is something teachers are practiced at: teachers know their job is to offer information to students that allows them to draw informed conclusions. Their job is to listen to students as they form their thoughts, and to create a classroom environment that supports open, respectful, fact-based dialogue. The classroom, when set up well, is the perfect place for students to practice skills that will benefit them throughout their lives: forming and defending opinions and having conversations with others who disagree. Teachers call this the “heavy lifting” and the goal is to set up lessons where students do the heavy lifting--the grappling, the thinking, the weighing of information and points of view--not teachers. 

We will continue to support teachers’ efforts to learn and grow personally and to bring a focus on equity and anti-bias efforts into their classrooms. We will be adding more teacher-developed content to The Art of Anti-Racist Teaching Co-Lab for Learning online space, where teachers can access teacher-authored and vetted activities and strategies. We will continue to highlight teachers who have experience and expertise in culturally responsive teaching so that their knowledge can benefit teachers and students beyond their own classrooms. 

As educator Paulo Freire said in The Politics of Education (1985), “Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”  We are not neutral about ensuring that all teachers are provided with the tools they need to create inclusive, liberatory spaces that invite critical discourse and question the social systems that result in inequitable outcomes for the young people they teach. We are doing our own work as an organization and individually to ensure that we are ready to support teachers in this important and challenging work while acknowledging that the learning is lifelong and imperfect.

November 30th marks the 2 year anniversary since our very first Educator Exchange event, held on a chilly evening with about 70 educators gathered in a downtown Boston loft space in 2017. 

Kat and I were excited by the turnout, people who were, like us, taking a chance on an unproven concept. We had spent the prior 18 months meeting with teachers in coffee shops, classrooms, and homes to better understand: 

• Where do you go for support, advice, camaraderie? 

• What happens when you have an out of the box idea you want to try? 

• When and why do you change your practice? 

• Where do you find “your people?” 

What we learned laid the foundation for the Teacher Collaborative: teachers wanted spaces to connect and collaborate across artificial boundaries and they wanted to be both recognized for and supported in the entrepreneurial side of their work--the creative and innovative parts of being a great teacher that aren’t talked about enough.

Part of my remarks at that opening event included:

What happens next is totally up to you. 

And there is literally no other group of people I would feel more comfortable saying this to because you guys are the awesome, brilliant architects of what the future can be. 

I’m perfectly happy being the foundation. My job is to listen to you, hear out your half baked ideas and big dreams, and try to make them real. 

The next thing you should know and I hope you are feeling this in the energy of this room: you are already experts. You are already part of a truly amazing group of professionals. To borrow a great line from President Obama: you are the ones you have been waiting for. 

I feel very proud that the Teacher Collaborative now boasts a community of over 1,000 educators hailing from 142 districts across Massachusetts. We’ve facilitated over 5,300 hours of cross-school collaboration including 16 Educator Exchange events and 13 Co-Labs for Innovation. Recently, we launched a first-of-its-kind podcast to share #storiesfromtheclassrom in teachers’ real voices and we were recognized by DESE to be able to offer PDPs. 

As an organization, we’ve gone from not having an office to being able to offer up conference room space for teachers that includes wifi, printing, and great views. We’ve gone from carrying our belongings in reusable grocery bags to being able to offer stipends and sticky chart paper (the good kind) to teachers. We made a website, wrote down our organizational mission and beliefs, and grew our team.

I’d say the foundation is pretty solid.

But back to supporting your half-baked ideas and big dreams. What’s next? 

We know we haven’t reached nearly enough educators yet. How do we grow our community to be truly inclusive, diverse, and thriving? What access points and onramps to people want and need?

We are constantly thinking about the skills and knowledge teachers need to innovate and problem solve. We are thinking about virtual-only modules this spring, as well as a larger “summit” or convening where teachers and other well-respected organizations could offer workshops to share learning and, importantly, convince more teachers that they don’t have to wait to be given leadership, it’s theirs for the taking. What workshops and modules would be most helpful?

We’re proud of the podcast as a new venue where educators’ voices speak for themselves. How else can we use this medium to elevate the stories that unite teachers no matter who or what or where they teach?

And, of course: What are the ideas we haven’t thought of yet?

If you have ideas, please (and I mean this) email me! We honestly get emails all the time from teachers who have ideas...and we love getting them. This is the job we’ve signed up for and feel honored to be able to do it. 

It is the season to be thankful and we are so thankful for those of you who have taken a chance on us to see what this is about and who are continuing to contribute to what it will become. 

Sincerely, 

Maria (and team!)

maria@theteachercollaborative.org 

P.S. If you haven’t seen it, take 5 minutes to check out this TED Talk about How to Start a Movement. It’s something that has inspired us and helped us go from a few lone nuts dancing on the side of a hill...to many.

Seven years ago, I became a mom for the first time. It was a huge moment of growth. Each day felt simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting, time both crawled and flew, and I had a million questions about the tiny creature in front of me. 

It struck me as similar to the moment I became a teacher, looking around at 23 wide-eyed nine year olds for whom I was responsible. How could I challenge the kids who were reading several grade levels ahead of their peers? How should I handle the student who crawled under her desk every day? How should I plan for Back to School Night effectively? So. Many. Questions. 

As a mom, I had the great fortune to find an online group populated by ten thousand local moms (for real, it’s called Garden Moms and it saved my sanity and my time, and helped me through the many moments in parenting where I thought: “What do I do now?” ). In that community, I could get my mom questions answered by people who had exactly the experience and expertise I needed. I had stumbled upon a treasure trove of information and a giant family of moms who were looking out for each other and all of our children together.

This is what we want to build for teachers. We want to create a space where teachers can find trustworthy, tried-and-true advice, resources that fill that specific need, answers to questions that are un-Google-able, and a community of people who care about everyone’s kids. 

The Better Together Podcast is one step towards building this community. Through the podcast, we are hoping to reach more educators in a format that is easy to find and listen to, as opposed to being yet another thing to read. The podcast format also allows teachers’ real voices to come through to reinforce the message: we’re all in this together. 

The main content of each episode is a teacher (or pair of teachers) sharing the story of their own teacher-led innovation or change. This format is loosely based on the How I Built This podcast, in which entrepreneurs tell the story of their company’s founding and growth. Spoiler alert: every successful entrepreneur encounters setbacks and moments of doubt along the way. 

We want to normalize this concept for teachers: teachers who do amazing things also encounter setbacks and moments of doubt. Teachers who plant and tend to their seed of an idea usually don’t have special degrees, certifications, permissions, or resources. They just take the first step and keep going. 

Additionally, the podcast will include calls from the Better Together Podcast hotline, where educators call in to (anonymously) share moments from their classrooms that other educators will appreciate. These are small moments--those  funny, brilliant, inspiring, embarrassing, heartwarming, or heartbreaking things that happen in the course of a day in classrooms everywhere. 

We hope you will give our podcast a listen (first episode will be available weekly on Tuesdays, starting November 12th), share it with colleagues and teacher friends who are looking for connection, inspiration, humor, call the hotline and leave us a message, or share your story (#storiesfromtheclassroom)...and most of all, we hope you know regardless of where you teach, who you teach, or how long you’ve been at it: we’re all in this together! 

- Maria Fenwick, Teacher Collaborative founder and Executive Director (and former fourth grade teacher…and mom of three!)