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The ECLC Team The January issue of ECLC's monthly newsletter, Learning in Community, is now available on our website. Check out our newsletter for recent ECLC news and notes, and to see what we are up to this winter/spring! Each month, Learning in Community brings current news highlights and resources from within the Essex County Learning Community (as well as the region) to our membership. The newsletter is archived monthly on our website. Please visit our "About Us/Newsletter" page to access our current newsletter edition and all past editions from 2019 through 2021. If you are interested in joining our mailing list to receive Learning in Community regularly, please do not hesitate to reach out to Emily Wilson, ECLC Project Manager, at ewilson@fullframecommunications.com and request to be added to our newsletter list. 
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Emily Wilson We are thrilled to announce that ECLC will be welcoming Dr. Marc Brackett, psychologist and author of Permission to Feel, for a special event later this month, which is open to all Essex County, Massachusetts educators! Here is a description of the upcoming event, with more information available including registration in the flyer below... We hope you can join us for this exciting afternoon of learning in January during our first special event of 2021! "Emotions matter. What we do with our emotions is especially important. The goal of this interactive session is to (1) inspire a new mindset around the power of emotions to transform our lives, (2) describe the five key underlying skills of emotional intelligence, known as the “RULER” skills, and (3) provide innovative strategies and tools for developing emotional intelligence so that our emotions help, rather than hinder, our well-being and success at home, in school, at work, and in everyday life." Please reach out to Emily Wilson, at ewilson@fullframecommunications.com, with any questions.  The ECLC Team We are calling upon all principals in Essex County public schools to consider joining ECLC for a unique leadership development experience designed specifically for you, called Soul of Leadership. In this time of unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, as well as a national reckoning on racial justice, we deeply believe that your role as school leaders and your well-being are crucial. In order to be able to lead and thrive, you need time to slow down, reflect with your peers, nurture your personal resilience, and expand your capacity to build a trusting and culturally responsive school community. This complimentary, four-part series is free of charge and will be capped at 25 participants. Slots are already filling up, so please take this opportunity to sign up before we reach capacity and close registration. Registration information is available here. You can find more information about this opportunity, including presenters/facilitators, dates/times upon which the series will be held, and who to contact with questions in the flyer below. Please feel free to reach out any time to ECLC Project Manager Emily Wilson. We hope you will be part of this exciting series, which is made possible thanks to generous support from the Essex County Community Foundation and The Tower Foundation.  The ECLC Team As 2020 draws to a close, we want to encourage our members to take full advantage of the Fall 2020 PD programming that ECLC provided this season on a range of timely topics from best/emerging practices for remote learning to universal design for learning (UDL). All of the resources from the Fall 2020 PD sessions are archived and available for ECLC educators and districts in our secure District Hub, which is exclusively available to you as a member of our learning community and located on ECLC’s website. These resources typically include recorded sessions, curated readings, slide decks, and more. If you misplaced your password for the District Hub, please reach out to Emily Wilson, ECLC Project Manager, for assistance at ewilson@fullframecommunications.com. Also, here are some photos from within the community during the Fall 2020 PD season - thank you to our members for being part of this learning community. We are wishing everyone a peaceful, restful winter holiday season and a renewal in the new year for 2021!      The ECLC Team ECLC's monthly newsletter, Learning in Community, brings current news highlights and resources from within the Essex County Learning Community as well as the region to our membership. The newsletter is archived monthly on our website. Please visit our "About Us/Newsletter" page to access our current newsletter edition for the month of November and all past editions from 2019 through 2020. If you are interested in joining our mailing list to receive Learning in Community regularly, please reach out to Emily Wilson, ECLC Project Manager, at ewilson@fullframecommunications.com and request to be added to our newsletter list.  As we near the end of 2020, we wanted to take a moment and remind our members to check out the ECLC District Hub for all PD resources. Not able to attend one of the fall PD sessions this season? Looking for that helpful resource or slide deck you saw at this year’s ECLC Summer Institute? Want to grab a refresher of this spring’s PD series on Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic? All resources for ECLC educators and districts are regularly archived in our secure District Hub, which is exclusively available to you as a member of our learning community and located on ECLC’s website. The Hub is password protected and limited to ECLC members. If you misplaced your password to access the Hub, please feel free to reach out to Emily Wilson, ECLC Project Manager, for assistance at ewilson@fullframecommunications.com  The ECLC Team Check out our new ECLC Fall Community Convenings flyer below for details on our drop-in meetings over the next few months, on the third Tuesday of every month from 3:00-4:30pm. All ECLC members across Cohorts 1 and 2 are welcome and no pre-registration is required!  The ECLC Team
Last week, ECLC was profiled in The Gloucester Times by guest columnists Stratton Lloyd and Michelle Xiarhos Curran as an effective approach for addressing the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic upon learning in Essex County. Check out an excerpt here: For both youth and adult learners, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wrench into a system already burdened by deeply rooted challenges and inequities. The virus didn’t just blow through, damaging the walls of a structure that could easily be rebuilt. Rather, it stormed in like a tornado and exposed the faulty lines of our educational foundation. The pivot to virtual learning has exposed a deep digital divide between those with and without access. Educators, already tapped before the pandemic, are burning out trying to meet the evolving needs of their students while caring for their own health and families. There is the annual “summer slide,” which disproportionately affects economically disadvantaged and minority students. And now there’s “COVID slide,” which some experts predict will be defined by as much as six to 12 months of learning loss, and the “COVID career slide,” which hinders adult learners from pursuing advanced education – and, subsequently, higher wage jobs – because of heightened anxieties about cost. The good news is that pre-pandemic systems work to start dismantling foundational challenges and inequities across Essex County – work proudly supported by ECCF – continues today. And at its core, this work aims to solve our region’s most pressing issues at their roots, which COVID has so starkly reminded us is crucial if our systems are to be resilient in the future. Strengthening K-12 by creating a network of support. When COVID-19 forced the physical closure of public schools, 11 of Essex County’s districts – serving more than 35,000 students – had immediate access to critical resources as members of the first two cohorts of the Essex County Learning Community (ECLC), an intensive, two-year professional development experience funded in large part by the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation. It is aimed at helping local educators better meet the diverse needs of students with learning disabilities, learning and attention issues and exposure to trauma – as well as those who experience systemic bias related to race, ethnicity, language, income and gender. In the midst of a global pandemic, this work has become more important than ever before. “Our mission has met its moment,” said Jane Feinberg, director of the ECLC. You can read the full article here, and please share widely with your networks!  The ECLC Team STRIVING FOR DIGITAL EQUITY A report on the challenges and opportunities the Digital Divide presents to Essex County The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the Digital Divide in Essex County as residents have been forced to transition their lives online. Suddenly, education, healthcare, employment and other critical services are unreachable for those without the means or ability to shift to a fully digital world. To better understand these challenges and explore real opportunities for equity, ECCF partnered with the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tisch College, Tufts University to produce a baseline analysis of how the Digital Divide impacts each of Essex County’s 34 cities and towns. YOU ARE INVITED to join ECCF and other local community leaders for a Zoom presentation of the Digital Divide data and learnings. Together, we will...
YOU ARE A CRITICAL VOICE IN THIS CONVERSATION. Join us for this special event. Tuesday, October 20 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Zoom Event RSVP by October 16 eccf.org/digital-divide/ Special thanks to our Corporate Partners for making this event possible.  The ECLC Team
This fall, ECLC's second cohort will embark upon a professional journey around universal design for learning (UDL), an evidence-based framework for inclusive practice. The upcoming UDL Professional Development (PD) Series will be open to ECLC Cohort 2 district participants from Andover, Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School, Hamilton-Wenham, Manchester-Essex, and Saugus Public Schools. The Series is titled "Universal Design for Learning: Managing Change for the Pandemic and Beyond," and will begin on Tuesday, November 10th. Last year's UDL PD Series for Cohort 1 received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Led by Dr. Gabbie Rapolt-Schlichtmann, Cohort 1 districts worked on reflection around universal design and accessibility for every learner, along with empathy mapping. You can read more about this UDL training experience that our first cohort of districts completed here on the blog. About UDL It seemed ironic to us that legislators and architects were working very hard to ensure that educational buildings were universally acceptable, but no such movement pursued universal accessibility for the methods and materials used inside the buildings--the curriculum. --David Rose, Founder of Universal Design for Learning Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework that is focused on proactive, goal-driven design to support learner variability. UDL recognizes that many learners’ difficulties in the classroom can be attributed to the learning environment, not the learner. When educators design more accessible environments, a much greater number of learners can be successful in the general classroom—whether in a live, hybrid or distance format. With UDL, educators can work smarter, not harder, especially during such a demanding time. About Our Series Gabrielle Rapolt-Schlichtmann and Laura Vanderberg, two seasoned learning scientists who specialize in UDL, bring a unique equity lens to the framework. This series will be tailored around the current context, the unique needs of our Cohort 2 schools, and the SEL focus that your districts have chosen as an ECLC theme. The series will consist of four virtual 2.5-hour sessions over several months, with customized coaching and asynchronous pilot work between sessions. Each district is asked to select a team of 15 participants who will become equipped to help lead the adoption of UDL in the district. Administrators and teachers are encouraged to participate. Logistics Dates: Tuesday 11/10/20, Tuesday 11/24/20, Thursday 12/10/20, and Thursday 1/7/21 Time: 1:00-3:30pm Platform: Zoom Please contact Diana or Emily for more information about registration for Cohort 2 members, at dlebeaux@ccebos.org and ewilson@fullframecommunications.com. |
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