Category Archives: Education

ESSA: A New Direction? (Part One)

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy

Maybe, maybe not.

I’ve been reading quite a few very divergent opinion pieces and policy summaries about the No Child Left Behind replacement, the Every Student Succeeds Act. I’ll be the first to admit that my first impressions were overwhelmingly positive, perhaps because I am easily influenced by syntactical shifts such as moving from the presumption of deficiency (We are leaving kids behind!) to the presumption of potential (All student can succeed!). I’m an advertiser’s dream.

Critics of ESSA are starting to emerge, of course, with argument ranging from the concern that Common Core is merely ‘not required’ as opposed to ‘forbidden, dismantled, and burned in effigy,’ to the reality that the amount of federally required testing hasn’t actually changed, despite all the hoopla. (One source points out that while states are given more autonomy and control under ESSA, the over-testing was actually the result of state and local policies, not federal policies.)

One of the most convincing critiques of ESSA has less to do with its content and more to do with its use as a political and rhetorical tool. Both Democrats and Republicans stand to benefit from playing this up as a “bipartisan” agreement. Some of the language is essentially moot: In the cases of at least 40 states, NCLB waivers granted states the same supposed autonomy as they will gain under ESSA; Similarly, Obama’s call for a cap on testing (that it take up no more than 2% of instructional time) sounded great in theory, but data suggests that most schools are already under that 2% cap based on time required for SBAC and PARCC assessments.

The shift of power to states is also receiving criticism, with one point being that states still must submit plans to the federal government for review and approval. I get the concern behind this, but the law also guarantees a hearing for states whose plans are denied. It’s imperfect, but in an accountability-addicted system like we have had for the last twelve years, this is a reasonable “stepping down” of dosage.

How States Can Really Screw This Up:
First and foremost, for states who have been wrestling for more autonomy and freedom from the burdensome yoke of Common Core Standards, I hope the baby doesn’t go out with the bathwater when it comes to standards. Standards in and of themselves are not evil, and like I’ve said many times, I’m not married to Common Core: I taught to standards before under a different name, and should CCSS be tossed, there’d be some sort of system of standards that would replace it. As a high school English teacher, the Common Core didn’t rock my world in the way it apparently did at other levels where concerns about developmental appropriateness do deserve rational examination and discourse. ESSA opens the door for revision at the state level, if nothing else.

What I’d hate to see is an unnecessary investment in inventing another wheel: New standards just so we can avoid calling them Common Core and escape the political public-relations nightmare whose symptoms include asinine Facebook posts about Common Core Sex Ed.

Another way to screw this up is for states to make the same mistakes so central to No Child Left Behind: Falling into the trap of designing the standards or assessment system that seems “easiest to administer” rather than the system that actually improves student learning. This should be the greatest lesson for states from the failure of NCLB: Differentiation is key. From a broad systems perspective, differentiation is hard (heck, it’s hard in the classroom), and for “accountability” purposes, differentiation is difficult to administer. Which leads me to my next thought:

This: Let Us Abolish the Cult of Accountability
I’m not saying schools or teachers shouldn’t be “held accountable,” but a system focused on accountability tends to oversimplify large and complex problems. (Take a read about “Accountabalism” and how it destroys the very systems it attempts to fix.)

I’d love a six-year moratorium on all use of the word “accountability.” Instead, let’s get clearer on what we’re actually talking about. Are we talking about improving test scores? Then let’s talk about that, not “accountability.” Are we talking about measuring teacher impact on student learning? Then there’s our language, not “accountability.” Accountability has come to imply the assumption of imminent failure if accountability controls are not in place. That schools are failing is an assumption we need to stop permitting in dialogue around public education.

In a couple of days, I’ll be posting Part Two of my thinking: What this all means for teacher voice and teacher leadership…particularly since teacher leadership is explicitly called out in the text of the law.

 

Where did 1351 go?

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Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom

I was incredibly excited to start the 2015 2016 school year.   After spending twelve years in a portable classroom, our high school moved into a brand new building, full of sunlight, windows, and classrooms.  We even have empty rooms.  But, my room is far from empty.  As soon as the construction company gave us “occupancy” I was in my room trying to figure out how to arrange my 30 desks.  I settled on a U shape because I like to be able to easily access all of my students when they need assistance and the arrangement is conducive for whole class discussion.  Prior to the beginning of the year, I watched my rosters and when the first day arrived, I had 36 students in one class period.  Soon the emails were flying among our staff, 38 students here, 40 students there.  

Here’s the good news-parents want their kids to come to our school.  I love that!  Enrollment is up and admittedly, creating a balanced schedule is challenging for small schools that try to offer competitive courses.  Our union has bargained language (I helped bargain that language) that creates limits to the number of preps a core teacher teaches so this also places a hardship on the schedule and can tie the hands of the registrar and administrators.  I know that all stakeholders in my school see this as a problem.  I don’t place the blame with them.  I had faith that we could all put our heads together and come to a solution.  Afterall, we are smart people-we can figure this out.  I also believed that no one was going to argue that having 38 students in a math class was a good idea.  Now nine weeks into the semester, my excitement is far more contained, the dust has settled and adjustments have been made.  In order to bring class sizes down, a few staff members agreed to give up their prep period so that a few extra class periods can be placed in the schedule, creating more scheduling flexibility.  I don’t have 36 students anymore–I’m now down to 32.  The classroom still feels packed and it is a challenge to manage all class discussions let alone mobilizing to assist students on assignments.

I suppose I could blame all sorts of factors.  But I can’t help but feel that my school and students could have seen some relief with 1351.  Voter approved Initiative 1351 would have reduced K-12 class sizes.  While the initiative may have not directed the legislature to increase taxes or reallocate funds directly, approval of the initiative should have been viewed by the legislature as a mandate from the people.  When the 2014-2015 legislature delayed the implementation (see the Associated Press article from July 9, 2015) of the initiative by four years, they sent a message to voters and to my students.  My current students will see no immediate relief from the legislature.  How frustrating it is to to tell my students that the popularly elected legislature cannot figure out a way to enact a voter approved initiative that would directly impact their learning.   How is it that a legislator can see class size as a ‘luxury’ and not a necessity?

As our state legislature and court system evaluate what a basic education is in Washington, I can’t help but think that basic education must encompass quality instructional time between a teacher and each student.  While it’s challenging to quantify what quality instructional time looks like, it’s not a reach to assume that students in smaller classes have more access to a teacher during class time than students in larger classes.  It’s difficult to run around and work one on one with students on the writing process when you have 32 in a class.  Is that what a basic education looks like? 

What is the purpose of democracy if an act passed by the electorate in a democratic manner is set aside by the legislature?  I teach government and politics to high school seniors and our legislature has failed to recognize what democracy looks like.  How do I explain to my 17 and 18 year old students that voting matters when the outcome of an election can be suspended by the legislature?  Do I chalk that up to the Madisonian Model of checks and balances?  I have to admit-that’s not an example I intend to use with my students.  With the legislature under pressure again, I hope that 1351 isn’t dead.  I hope that democracy will eventually rule.  I have to believe that because it’s the foundation of the course that I teach.  What message would I be sending to my kids about the power of democracy?  I refuse for it to be the same message being sent to them by our legislature.  

 

High School Redesign?

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues, Teacher Leadership

Last week, the Obama Administration announced the offer of $375 million to support what it calls “Next Generation” high schools in an effort to improve graduation rates and career and college readiness (with a distinct emphasis on STEM as the be-all, end-all solution).

I am not anti-STEM, but I do not believe that preparing students for STEM careers ought to be the sole valued purpose for school redesign. As I read the press releases and fact sheets, I also see repeated references to innovation. Paired in the right sentence, “high school redesign” and “innovation” are truly exciting. However, if the word “innovation” is intended to mean “more STEM,” then I don’t think we’re heading down the right path. Adding more science and math is not a bad thing, but it certainly doesn’t amount to innovative redesign. If we are going to truly redesign what high school looks like, we need to do more than revise the course catalog or offer more internships in the community (also a major theme in the redesign literature released last week, also not a bad thing, but also not really a realistic “innovation” for all communities and all students).

Ultimately, adopting new standards, offering new classes or internships, layering on teacher accountability measures, or mandating exit assessments will not broadly result in school reform until we address the one resource that no school reform movement has meaningfully addressed: time.

By this I do not mean adding more time to the day or even the school year. I mean that we need to utterly rehaul how we structure the time both teachers and students spend at school. And by how we structure time I also mean whether we structure time.

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Secrets Student Share Help Me to Help Them

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Assessment, Education, Life in the Classroom, Uncategorized

Irene

This guest post comes courtesy of Irene Smith, an EA ELA NBCT in Yakima, Washington, who teaches English Language Arts, Social Studies and more to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at the Discovery Lab School.  She and her students produce a full length Shakespeare play every year, and she is currently writing a companion text for The Tempest.

You may find this strange.

I collect students’ notes that they pass to each other. Sometimes I catch them passing their little missives and keep them. Sometimes I find them left on a desk or floor, tucked into a drawer or left on a filing cabinet. My students are aware of my fixation with their notes. Sometimes they even purposefully pass one in class in hopes that I’ll collect it in order to find the “Hi Mrs. Smith!” folded up inside. Some students purposefully intercept or find notes to bring to me.

I never read the notes aloud. I just save them until I’m alone to see what the message is. Mostly they are of relative unimportance- I m bored L. But not infrequently, they are full of mystery and angst.

Middle school students are careless, but I suspect they may sometimes leave these notes in order to let me in on their secret communications, to become more closely acquainted with their private worlds, and to help me understand them better.

Dear people at my school, I’m so sorry I’m weird. I’m sorry I don’t fit in. I’m sorry I don’t look pretty like all of you.

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Caution: Disillusionment Phase Ahead

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Education, Mentoring, Professional Development

Next week is our first support group meeting.

By name it is a “New Teacher Workshop,” but I know what it really is. When we gather those dozen newly-minted first-year teachers together, it isn’t going to be a time for “digging into the framework” or “unpacking standards” or “doing a data dive” (whatever that is). Instead, we’ll have an hour or two, with snacks and school-appropriate beverages (this time) where we can just be in a room with the only other people who understand what we’re facing: the October-January “Disillusionment Phase.”

This chart may be familiar to some. It originally came from Ellen Moir in 1999 as part of the Santa Cruz New Teacher project, and described her observations about first-year teachers:

Phases of first-year teachers' copy (1)

Image Source: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org

You’ll notice I’ve lumped myself in with that crew, even though I’m solidly “mid-career.” The reality is that I am a novice in my new work of working with novices, and I too am facing that roller-coaster of feelings: we’ve sped swiftly past the “survival” stage and the track is pointing down, down, down.

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Hiring a Teacher

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Education, Education Policy, Elementary

Concept illustration of hiring the best candidate. The graphic shows company making a choice of the person with right skills for the job among many candidates

By Tom White

Last week I was involved with the screening, interviewing and hiring of a new teacher in our building. It was an involved process, consuming most of three days. Along the way, I learned a few things about our profession.

First of all, accurate, unbiased information about candidates is hard to come by. We basically used four sources of information during the screening process: work history, letters of recommendation, confidential reference forms and answers to five teaching-related questions. Work history is useful in determining whether or not the candidate is experienced at the given grade level, which is important. Letters of recommendation were strange; in fact, after a while they all seemed to say the same thing. At some point it occurred to me that these were letters written by close associates or colleagues on behalf of someone who assumes the writer has something positive to say about them. Which is exactly what they are. Since they all say essentially the same thing, they aren’t very useful in screening applicants. More useful are the confidential references. In fact, a surprising number of references were written by the same authors of the letters of recommendation. And a surprising number of them were completely contradictory. Suffice to say that reference forms were more useful than the letters. And then there were the answers to those questions. They were useful in weeding out those applicants who either weren’t paying attention during their college courses or haven’t figured out how to use Google.

At the end of the day, we relied mostly on experience and confidential references.

The second thing I learned was that we as a system have long ways to go in terms of bringing diversity to the profession. My school is extremely diverse; whites account for about 40% of student population and a sizable amount of that 40% comes from Eastern Europe. Yet every single interview candidate was a middle-aged white woman. I’m not sure how to change the situation. Do we need to attract more diversity into teaching programs? Colleges in general? Who knows. But I do now this: we aren’t going to address the diversity issue during the hiring process. At that point, the hiring team simply needs to select the best teacher available.

Finally, I learned that when it comes to getting a teaching job, it doesn’t matter where you went to college. Actually it does, but not in the way most people think. I’ve only worked in education, but I’m under the impression that in many fields, going to a prestigious college results in a head start in your career. But I’m not sure we even checked the names of the colleges these people attended. Most of them, I assume, did what most of us did, attending the best state college they could afford. There were a few, however, who were able to highlight the fact that they worked with a diverse population while student teaching. That’s important, especially at a school like mine. If I were to offer advice to anyone looking for a teaching college, I would suggest finding a solid school located in an inner city; someplace like Cal State Dominguez Hills, for example. It’s a great little school located just south of Compton. Teachers coming out of that school are pretty well prepared to teach anywhere.

Hiring that teacher was a lot of work. Important work. But we pulled it off. We ended up hiring an awesome teacher who’ll be working right next door to me.

Challenging a Growth Mindset

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Books, Education, Life in the Classroom | , ,

Alfie Kohn published a Salon opinion piece August 16th imploring educators (and others) to take a closer look at the current fad in education: Growth vs. Fixed mindset.

Carol Dweck’s research about the impact of growth versus fixed mindsets (with regard to children achieving their full potential) seemed to sweep quickly through the education landscape. There’s a lot of good in the idea: what we focus on in the learning process ought to focus on improving knowledge and skills rather than simply aiming for a specific score on an assessment. Dweck’s 2007 book, Mindset, perseverates on that point though examples and in my personal opinion, contains about seven really great pages that get to the core of the idea (you can skip the rest).

Kohn points out that the fundamental principles of the growth mindset focus aren’t inherently bad, but he offers this, which to me sums up everything (everything) about education reform, trends, and change:

Having spent a few decades watching one idea after another light up the night sky and then flame out — in the field of education and in the culture at large — I realize this pattern often has less to do with the original (promising) idea than with the way it has been oversimplified and poorly implemented. (Source)

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The scale is not in balance

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Education, Education Policy

The 2015-2016 school year marks my sixteenth year as a professional educator.  I’ve worked in Washington for thirteen years.  One of the draws that brought me to this state was the state salary allocation model (SAM).  As strange as that sounds, it’s absolutely true.  I taught in Illinois for three years at the second largest school district in the state.  My husband, a music teacher, taught for a company that brought in outsourced band/orchestra teachers to schools that couldn’t afford to hire their own music teacher.  We both became acutely aware of the disparity between the districts where we worked.  Because salary models are all locally negotiated and district funds are based on property taxes, property rich communities could afford to pay their teachers two to three times more than property poor districts.  The district that I worked in encompassed property rich and property poor communities, but the neighboring district housed multiple corporations and could afford to pay their teachers twice as much as the district where I worked. Districts could compete for teachers using salary as incentive.  As a result, my district saw a great deal of turnover; teachers, including one of my closest friends, became experienced in the low paying district and then moved to the higher paying districts when they had a few years under their belt. Although there were some veterans in my department, teachers who served as excellent stewards of pedagogy and their content, I was often asked when I was going to leave to move on for more pay at a neighboring district.  This mindset frustrated me.  When my district was $52,000,000 (yes, you’re reading that correctly) in the red, the solution was to cut teachers and I, like the other 1700 first, second, and third year teachers were RIFed (reduction in force).  Although I was offered my position back, I turned it down, looking to find employment in a state that created more equity.  So in the end, I left, too.

So for thirteen years, I’ve been in Washington and I don’t regret the decision to move, whatsoever.  However, I have stopped looking at the world of educational funding through rose colored glasses.  Equity doesn’t really exist, but there are attempts at it and the SAM is one attempt.  Negotiated TRI (Time, Responsibility, Incentive) pay and dollars for professional development and technology resources differ from district to district.  My husband teaches in a large district which can afford to offer TRI pay and substantial extra curricular contracts.  Some districts levy at higher percentages and others receive levy equalization.  There are districts that foot the entire cost of National Board Certification (my district is one of those) and others provide a free cohort (my district also does this).  So, back to my point—equity doesn’t really exist.  But our SAM does provide a foundation for our teachers. That foundation is solid. But maybe our state needs to reconsider adjusting the foundation a bit.

This legislative session has been noteworthy for several reasons.  Teachers have asked for the reinstatement of our COLA (cost of living allowance) and for pay increases.  While the legislators voted themselves a substantial pay raise, teachers received a 1.8% increase in pay and a 3% COLA for two years.  Does that make up for the 1.9% loss from a few years ago?  Frankly, I’m not so sure that I’m coming out ahead all that much, if at all.  Recent discussion as to whether the legislature will see the contempt charge dropped, also has me concerned.  I worry that the lawmakers will find victory and we won’t see increased dollars in our SAM or in a future COLA.   I’m disappointed.

But the SAM isn’t perfect and it doesn’t recognize veteran teachers who are continuing to improve their education.  Reality hit me about two weeks ago.  I’m on year sixteen and I’m almost at an MA+90.  I’ve officially topped out on the salary model.  I know that I should be thankful that I’ve got that extra degree plus additional credits.  Believe me, I am thankful.  I worked hard for the MA (Master of Arts) in History with a 135 page thesis to prove it.  On the other hand, I’m still working to get more education.  I’m really digging educational technology and I’ve attended several technology courses and once I hit that 90 credits mark (which is going to be in the next month) I don’t have anywhere else to go in order to earn more money.  I suppose I could coach a sport or advise a club to make more money.  I could do additional work outside of school, too.  But frankly, I wonder, why does the legislature stop providing pay increases once you hit 16 years of teaching?  Shouldn’t we want to keep veteran teachers teaching?  I keep reading articles from EdWeek and the Washington Post talking about a teacher shortage and problems with retention rates.  Maybe the place to start is at the logical first step—salary.  Let’s start recognizing veteran teachers and rewarding them for being leaders in their field.  I look at that salary schedule and feel stagnated in my income.  I wonder where my potential for income growth is at this point. What are my viable options?  I won’t avoid the cliché—I don’t teach for the income, I teach for the outcome.  However, the income does have to provide for my continuing education, mortgage, and my children’s college education.   While we could argue the merit system when it comes to teacher’s salaries and raises, under our current model, I have no where to go if I’d like to increase my income.  I’m 37 years old and I’ve topped out on the SAM.  I believe that I have the skills, the heart, the grit, and the knowledge to stay in the classroom for the next 20 years, but can I afford it?

Sadly,  I know other veteran teachers feel the same way.  Attrition in the field is on the rise.  There are myriad reasons for this and pay is a factor.  We’ve worked hard to advance our own education.  We’ve adapted, adjusted, and watched the pendulum swing in our field and we’re still in the classroom, demonstrating our grit because we love students and we want them to succeed.  But that success doesn’t always help to put dinner on the table or pay for our kids to take piano lessons.  In a field where the pressure to perform is already so high and the spotlight is always on, it might be good for state legislators to consider recognizing and rewarding the teachers who’ve decided to remain in the classroom to work with students.

 

Focusing on “Can’t” at the expense of “Can.”

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Education, Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment
Secretly studying animal physiology after bedtime.

Secretly studying animal physiology after bedtime.

On the drive home from school a few weeks ago, my middle son, at the time a first grader, said that from then on he wanted to be homeschooled.

My mind raced: Is he being bullied? Is he struggling to learn? What is happening that might make this otherwise happy kid want to be homeschooled?

As it turned out, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to go to his public school any more. He wanted to learn things that weren’t being taught in school: specifically, he was deeply curious about science. We came to the agreement that he’d keep going to regular school, but that we’d do some science experiments and learn some science at home.

This is the same boy who when I think about his education, it keeps me up at night. Not because I don’t trust his teachers or his school, but because I am concerned about what the coming years in school will look like for him.

This past year in my other job (teaching high school English to 12th graders) I had the opportunity to work with a young man who had spent his entire academic life with a label. Served by an IEP with all the best of intentions, this now-adult sat in his IEP meetings this year and articulated something that made my heart sink. He talked about how being part of the “IEP program” as he called it led him to assume that he was incapable of being successful. He described how he felt conditioned (his word, not mine) to wait for help because the message that he was not able to do it on his own and that he “needed help” was repeated loud and clear and often. Now possessing greater maturity, he was able to agree that everyone had the best intentions at heart, yet the collateral effect on him was that the “program” seemed to communicate to him that he was incapable. That became part of his identity. Rolled in with the other struggles he faced, a downward spiral ensued, and whether he would graduate from high school was in question almost to the very last minute. He did make it, though, and his reflections on his experience are shaping the way I think about my own son and what school can do for and to him.

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For English Language Learners, Intentional Collaboration is Key

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Education, Education Policy, Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

Tamar Krames

Guest blogger Tamar Krames is a NBCT in English as a New Language, a certified GLAD trainer, and an ELL instructional coach currently working with OSPI. Prior to her work at OSPI, Tamar worked as a district GLAD trainer and coach, taught ELL classes and co-taught sheltered ELL content classes. 

I recently sat at a table in a windowless conference room with a 3rd grade team of teachers. As you might expect, the table was covered with grade-level ELA curriculum materials, open laptops, and copies of Common Core Standards. Far less common were the open and highlighted English Language Proficiency Standards (ELP), Tier 2 vocabulary lists, and the laminated pictures piled on the table. Two teachers were pulling up engaging image files related to an upcoming unit on their personal tablets and one was searching her phone for affixes and Latin roots to support their vocabulary mini-lesson. While the driving force of the co-planning session was ELA content and standards, addressing the profound language needs of their dynamic students was inspired. This is it, I thought, this is what best practice for ELLs looks like. These teachers were clearly committed to their craft and to their multilingual students. But what made that collaborative moment so powerful was the shared focus of the whole building to best meet the needs of their particular student body. The teachers had common understanding of second language acquisition and ELP standards because a team of teachers had requested ELL training for the whole staff. The planning session had the full support of the building’s leadership. Collaboration was not happening on the fly. It was intentional and deliberately supported.

As a traveling ELL instructional coach, I visit diverse school communities across WA State. The geographic context and demographic mix varies greatly. One school community is comprised of Spanish-speaking migrant families living in a small town surrounded by orchards and mountains. Another school has no clear ethnic majority, the students speaking 15 different languages in one urban classroom. Regardless of setting, I walk into my first building visits with one central question; What might best practice for ELLs look like in this unique school community? I ask this question to school leadership right off the bat.

More often than not, the answer to this question disappoints me. Consistently the first answer points to a single focal point. “ We are so lucky to have a wonderful ELL teacher named A” or “ We just purchased this amazing online language program called B”, or “ our ELL Para has attended a training called C!”. Clearly this singular view of best practice begs the question – What happens when A, B, or C leaves the building?

As far as I can tell, there is no right answer to this question of best practice for ELLs. The learning needs of multilingual students are complex and always changing. A linguistics professor once said to my class, “ if you remember one thing about second language acquisition, remember this – language acquisition is without fail developmental”. For teachers this means that the ELLs support structures (scaffolding) must change and flex as their students’ English proficiency and content mastery develops. On top of that, the rate at which ELLs develop proficiency and mastery varies drastically in relation to a seemingly endless set of factors (literacy in first language, status of first language in the dominant culture, educational background, poverty, learning disabilities, access to quality instruction…)

If you need further proof of the complex and ever-changing learning needs of ELLs, try navigating though the English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards (An amazingly thorough matrix that outlines language development by grade level in relation to common core standards). Best practice for ELLs is truly a moving target as students trudge through the stages of second language development and academic literacy at their own unique pace.

More than a “right” answer to this question of best practice for ELLs, what I hope to hear is a plural answer that points to shared ownership instead of pointing towards one program or person. Whatever the site-based vision for ELL support entails, it must involve intentional and ongoing collaborative structures. Collaborative structure is different from collaboration as it is proactive and systematic – it implies a deeper commitment than amazing content teacher, X, that collaborates with one-of-a-kind ELL specialist, Y. Intentional collaborative structures answer questions such as, How and when do counselors, administrators, content teachers and ELL specialists work together to best schedule ELLs according to their developing proficiency level? How and when do content teachers investigate and integrate ELP standards into their grade-level planning? If the ELL specialist is ‘pushing in’ to core instruction – how and when do teachers learn about, experiment with, and reflect on co-teaching models?

Ultimately, the goal of any ELL program model is to expedite the academic English language/ literacy development of multilingual students so that they can meet grade-level standards and breeze through any gatekeepers they encounter on their path towards earning a diploma. Supporting ELLs through the K-12 system is not about finding the right teacher, program, or PD session. It is about shared ownership and commitment to refining best-practice, uniquely designed for each community, together.

TamarArt

The above drawing is an original piece done by Tamar Krames.