ECLC Teacher Leadership Council Part I.

Emily Wilson

[This post originally appeared in the ECLC's Newsletter, Learning in Community. as part of the November edition]

​​This fall, the ECLC Teacher Leadership Council (TLC) resumed meetings to continue its work in advancing and integrating key learnings from ECLC’s major topical areas, including multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and Cultural Proficiency (CP). The TLC typically meets every other month and was on hiatus for a summer break so that teachers could focus on maximizing other professional development opportunities, such as the ECLC Summer Institute.
 
The TLC is comprised of teachers from ECLC school districts: each district selects up to three teachers who were involved in ECLC Topical Teams to participate and co-lead the group. The TLC last met on October 22, when teacher leaders were joined by ECLC Executive Team members Jane Feinberg, Dawn Shearer-Coren, and Laura Tota. The group embarked on a rich discussion about how to tell compelling stories about their practice—many teachers are natural storytellers. Executive Team members provided a few tools/templates to help get the creative juices flowing, along with guidance and moral support.
 
This fall, the TLC has undertaken an ambitious project called “Identifying Bright Spots,” or proof points of success, which will highlight two years of teacher learning and professional development across participating ECLC districts. The notion of identifying and codifying assets has a rich tradition in other fields such as healthcare, whereby noticing successes constitutes a critical way of scaling effective practices. This tradition is often referred to as “positive deviance.”
 
Members of the TLC from each ECLC district are currently working to harvest and synthesize “bright spots,” where teachers gained new knowledge and skills from their participation in the ECLC and then made critical changes in instructional practice and school-wide shifts—some of which have had meaningful ripple effects across the respective districts and schools. These stories will be collected and presented at the 2020 ECLC Showcase of Learning that will take place in early February.
 
We encourage district leaders and principals to ask their teachers about the bright spots they are spotlighting and perhaps share additional ideas for documentation and codification. The next TLC meeting is on December 5, 2019. We look forward to following TLC’s progress – stay tuned for more!