News & Announcements
Project CLEAR (California Literacy Elevation by Accelerating Reading)
Project CLEAR builds capacity in implementing and accelerating literacy development in districts across the state. Educators can participate in one of two levels of professional learning offered through Project CLEAR – Teacher Leaders and Teachers. Participation is fully funded through Project CLEAR! For more information, see Project CLEAR’s webpage on our Learning Acceleration System Grant Website.
California Collaborative for Learning Acceleration – Math and Literacy Communities of Practice (CoPs)
The California Collaborative for Learning Acceleration (CCLA) in partnership with the CCEE and six County Offices of Education (COE) will be creating an inclusive space for collaboration and learning for educators across the state through a Community of Practice (CoP).
You can find more information using the flyers below:
California Mathematics Framework
The California State Board of Education approved the 2023 Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools at their July 12th meeting. You can read more about the new Framework by visiting the California Department of Education’s Mathematics Framework web page.
In Case You Missed It
Looking AHEAD
Open Door Sessions
CCEE, in collaboration with LEAs and partner organizations, is hosting “open door” sessions to share best practices, tools/resources, and strategies to support student learning. These sessions will provide opportunities for county office and/or district staff to listen and learn from other LEAs across the state, and connect further, if interested. Those who express interest in connecting further will be invited to join a smaller, more intimate “Special Interest Group” session, in which the presenting LEA will be available to listen, share, and help participants with more specific questions.
Register for upcoming Open Door sessions by clicking on the links below:
- Fresno CSS’s Tools for Navigating the Plan-demic (8/22/23)
- Graduate Profiles: Redefining Student Success (9/27/23)
To view archived materials from past Open Door sessions, please visit our Open Door Sessions Google Site. You can also check our Events Calendar or follow CCEE on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on upcoming Open Door sessions.
August Resources
- 21CSLA Regional Academies (Coaching)
- Women’s Equity Day
- International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
- National Vision & Learning Month
About the Teaching, Learning, and Leading Center (TLLC)
Our team works in alliance with educators to improve teaching, learning, and leadership so every student is inspired and prepared to thrive as their best self.
About the CCEE
The California Collaborative for Educational Excellence is a statewide leader delivering on California’s promise of a quality, equitable education for every student.
Executive Director’s Corner
Why is Coaching So Important?
By Matt J. Navo, Executive Director, CCEE
Why is coaching in education so important? Coaching provides opportunities for educational organizations and professionals to focus on the right work. Too often educational professionals are focused on the wrong indicators. For example, when schools and leaders focus only on test scores, we risk failing to comprehend the actual causes of those results. Coaching helps to uncover what we can control and/or influence that may be causing or have caused a potential result. Doug Reeves and Michael Fullan say it this way, “The number of priorities is inversely proportional to gains in student achievement” (Reeves, 2013). They go on to say, “while leaders and policymakers are often seduced by the promises of vendors that programs will solve educational challenges, the evidence is clear that it is practices, not programs that have the greatest impact” (Reeves 2023).
Only through coaching can we focus on the practices that achieve better outcomes.
Effective Coaching Benefits Everyone
By Stephanie Gregson, Ed.D., Deputy Executive Director, CCEE
Being an educator today, and even before today, is extremely hard. We are in the midst of the highest rate of educator burnout and fatigue causing many veteran and new educators to leave the profession. For this reason and many others, it is important we engage in practices that create spaces of community, belonging, vulnerability, and learning allowing educators to fill their buckets, rejuvenate, and reinvigorate their passion for education.
Effective coaching is one of those practices we should all be engaging in as individuals, as teams, and as an education community. Effective coaching isn’t just about achieving organizational goals, student achievement, and collaborative learning cultures, it is also about higher levels of emotional and physical well-being. We are in an era of initiative fatigue that can cause burnout and increased turnover in staff. Effective coaching can help peel back layers of initiatives as individuals and teams ask themselves, why?
There are more than 40,000 books on coaching showing the profound amount of research on effective coaching. Yet has it become common practice in our education community? When individuals and teams participate in effective coaching practices, they see an increase in psychological well-being, self-regulation, and self-insight. The teams benefit from gains in goal attainment and solution-focused thinking (Grant & Atad, 2021).
This month’s newsletter highlights some of the coaching embedded in the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence work with districts and county offices of education. We invite you to learn more and to consider how you can engage in effective coaching practices to find rejuvenation in your work.
Internal Coaching Cycles for Quality Improvement
By Rocio Gonzalez-Frausto, Assistant Director, CCEE
Our Direct Technical Assistance (DTA) focuses on utilizing quality improvement practices to improve instructional practices, cultivate coherent systems, and improve student outcomes. As the TLLC team supports its partners in their continuous improvement journey, we must reflect on our practices and implementations to ensure we are working to create sustaining change in collaboration with partners. These small but mighty teams are composed of two members, each with three districts receiving DTA. We meet weekly to biweekly and engage in our own improvement cycles, utilizing the identified LEA goal or aim statement to anchor our work together. The work is heavy and deep, so I create space at the start of each session with a personal check-in, many times including some laughs, before launching into reviewing the aims of our partners and providing progress updates since our last check-in. When the team shares challenges or areas of need, I begin utilizing the five whys protocol to shine the light as the team engages in thought; in other instances, we return to our Coherence framework to identify which of the four domains is the pain point and what steps we can take to get out. It boils down to: What are we trying to accomplish? Where are we now? What is our goal? What do we need to do to make it happen? These weekly meetings end with identified next steps in our support to partners and the students they serve.
The Role of Coaching in Accelerating Learning
By Stacey Wedin, Assistant Director, CCEE
Learning acceleration doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Supporting the rapid progress of students toward mastery of content requires a comprehensive, systemic approach to rethink the way we teach and learn. The CCEE’s Playbook for Accelerating Learning underscores this point by outlining the necessary conditions to accelerate learning, which includes having a system aligned to the tenets of learning acceleration in both mindset and practice. Professional learning and coaching for educators to deepen understanding of learning acceleration and embed evidence-based strategies into practice is paramount to a sustainable system.
With this knowledge, Learning Acceleration System Grant partners have designed their professional learning offerings centered on systems of coaching and mentoring. This affords educators valuable opportunities to collaborate, share, learn, and provide feedback while incorporating new strategies into their practice. Coaching is one of four prongs of support offered by the Rural Math Collaborative (RMC) where participating counties receive targeted assistance around using TOSAs and instructional coaches to improve math instruction. Working with the California Math Project and drawing from the work of Jim Knight, the RMC is working to build sustainable networks of effective coaching teams throughout the region. As another example, Project CLEAR offers job-embedded individualized coaching while participating educators complete the training offered through the program. Once certified, Teacher Leaders coach educators in their respective school/district on early literacy intervention strategies to accelerate reading.
Coaching is integral to a robust system of professional learning and plays a critical role in accelerating learning. As the Learning Acceleration System grant grows in future years, the use of effective coaching to support teachers will continue to grow with it.
21st Century California School Leadership Academy
Are you a current or aspiring California school or district leader looking for
free professional development and coaching?
Find your 21CSLA Academy HERE.
All Academies include:
Communities of Practice
A space for leaders in similar roles to come together and work on equity-centered problems of practice using continuous improvement while championing transformational leadership.
Localized Professional Learning
Leaders participate in a process of practitioner inquiry that advances educational equity for a specific context around leadership, equity, and continuous improvement. Problems of practice are situated in and arise from the regional communities and are determined through an extensive needs-assessment process.
Leadership Coaching
Coaches provide job-embedded coaching built on relational trust and focused on equity-centered problems of practice using continuous improvement. They also support leaders with system transformation to ensure all children fulfill their potential to thrive socially, emotionally, and academically.
21CSLA UTK
The 21CSLA Alameda Regional Academy, in partnership with 21CSLA UTK and the Solano County Office of Education, is launching Envisioning Equitable TK Classrooms on August 24–25.
New UTK Leadership Certificate and Courses
Starting this fall, 21CSLA is offering UTK Leadership Certificate courses to any current Preliminary or Clear Administrative Services Credential candidate. These are free, online, synchronous courses offered through UC Berkeley Extension. Receive 4 units credit along with a certificate upon completion of the two-course series. To learn more, download the UTK Certificate flyer or visit 21CSLA’s website.