​Dr. Sherrish Holloman
​Our core principles came out of the philosophy and practices driving our work, which I think makes them really, really powerful — they represent how we live and work, both internally and externally.


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​Dr. Roberta Lenger Kang
Communities of practice come from a deep value that we have as professionals and as human beings, and for me, this principle is really rooted in the belief that every single person is valued and valuable.



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​G. Faith Little
With communities of practice, we have this way of doing something and we're willing to argue about it, respectfully. We have a passion for wanting to improve our practice and to find the promising practices that we can be engaged in every day if possible. In a school community, it's so important to be able to provide space for everyone to use their voice and to really encourage people to engage, especially when they may think ‘I don't really have anything to say about this’.

FINDING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

(RE)BUILDING LEARNING COMMUNITIES

SEE & BE SEEN

Melissa Bryant
District of Columbia Public Schools

​Don’t feel ashamed by the data like you didn’t teach something right; instead, use the data as the catalyst for something in your instruction so students have another chance to learn. Blended learning programs and the ways in which people have been so innovative with their use of software have helped students learn in new ways. These also give us an opportunity to re-teach concepts as we enter into the next school year. 

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Makaela Manning
San Francisco Unified School District

​One thing that was really eye opening this year was the use of holistic data beyond knowing how well students can read and write; for instance, in our quarterly wellness checks, we collected data by asking: how are you doing as a human being? How is your family? What barriers are in place that we can help remove?

The next step involved using that data to determine which families needed support — like with an internet hotspot for children to participate in aspects of blended learning. This process is one that should continue going forward.
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UNDERSTANDING DATA

EQUITY & ASSESSMENT

DATA & PRODUCTIVE STRUGGLE

Ginger Spickler
Crosstown High School

That standardized testing data is always good data. I think there's a strong argument to be made for the fact that a lot of data measures things other than children's actual academic achievement and progress. It's measuring other cultural and societal factors that are often outside of the control of kids, or teachers, for that matter.

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Samantha Stiles
​Crosstown High School

It's a misconception that the only good data is data that tracks growth in terms of academic progress. Social data is also really important for students. 

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PROJECT-BASED WRITING INSTRUCTION

USING PBL TO MAKE LEARNING LAST

INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECTS

Quinterrence Bell
Principal, ​Excellence Boys Charter School Elementary Academy

There are many stereotypes out there — when people hear terms like "all boys school" or "all girls school", they have some pre-conceived ideas that come to mind. Whatever those stereotypes are, we have to do the work of unpacking them right away.

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Josh Duennebier
Teacher and Director of the Brunswick Faculty Institute

​For me, the common misconception is that you are getting a smaller group of people — and you are, but you are not getting a smaller sample size. There's a tendency to equate a smaller group with one that's narrower. But there's so much personality in a single-gender school. There are opportunities everywhere you look. 
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Dr. Stephanie McCall
Co-Founder and Principal of Re/scripted
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I would like school leaders and teachers to consider the explicit ways in which gender gets compacted or stereotyped, including with curriculum, dress codes, and language around boys and girls. As opposed to messages about proper or improper gender, or proper masculinity or proper femininity, which are traveling in very hidden and subtle ways. 

While it’s easy to look at some of the bigger policies within a school, I think it's the hidden and invisible relations that can be the scariest. What I would like people to really take a look at in their schools is: how are notions of gender and sexuality traveling in ways that we can't see? ​
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ONLINE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS

DATA: HOW DOES IT ALL ADD UP?

LOCATE THE ZONE OF PRODUCTIVE STRUGGLE

​Courtney Brown
Center for Professional Education of Teachers

At a very basic level, we should continue being creative about the ways we think about data and how we define what’s important, especially when it comes to our students. That can mean not relying only on quantitative data or data that comes from standardized tests. But it can also mean really advocating for creating systems that think creatively about student affect, attendance, and what they say about what and how they’re learning. 

​G. Faith Little
Center for Professional Education of Teachers

Pay attention to the questions that come up as we're still in a period of a data gap, and see where they lead us. Because we might find out something important about the connection between learning and the assessments we had been giving, or the data we had been collecting. And really we’re in it to understand learning, so it’s great to have these questions bubble up, even during a period of hard times and uncertainty.  

​Dr. Sherrish Holloman
Center for Professional Education of Teachers
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Over the course of the pandemic, a lot of teachers and schools began using a different form of data. The pandemic, by default, changed the structures and traditions around schools, which also changed the relationship and the distinction between school and home and community. All of those lines got blurred. Teachers were able to get more information about their students — how they live, how they learn. I would encourage us to continue looking at the whole child, not just how they are for one day or one test. 
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DATA & PRODUCTIVE STRUGGLE

EQUITY & ASSESSMENT

VALUING TESTING VS. TESTING VALUES

Tylar Ann Colleluori 

I think that other instructors can use this to move away from ideas that are singular or normative, whether that's in terms of representation of the target culture, grammar, or accents. 


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Claudia Sbuttoni

It's been important for me to create a tool that will live beyond us — something that is iterative and can be revisited again and again. We by no means are going to get it right the first time around, but there doesn't have to be only one version of the framework.


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Andrew LaSalle Wyatt

We play a really important role for Columbia students, because students will often take their language requirements in their first semester or first year and so, in many cases my class is one of their first at the college level. The idea that one of their first courses could be one that really foregrounds and tackles these issues, and one where they can see these tools at work in the classroom — I mean, what a way to start your college experience!

DEVELOP INCLUSIVE CURRICULUM

EQUITY & ASSESSMENT

ANTI-BIAS TRAINING IN SCHOOLS