Efforts to tackle educator stress should balance self-care with demands for changes to the unjust systems that cause the stress. To illustrate how coaching can ensure that the steps educators take are equitable and include perspectives and voices of educators who have been historically marginalized, the author has created a composite story about…

Last month, the U.S. government lifted the emergency designation put in place three years ago to address the COVID-19 pandemic. But the impacts of the pandemic live on, especially in schools, where there is a dire need to address the interrupted learning students experienced and continue to wrestle with now that they are back in classrooms. The…

New Visions for Public Schools is in the third year of supporting a network of 18 New York City public schools to address uneven student success in Algebra 1. One of the ways New Visions is helping schools achieve greater equity in algebra is by supporting them to use a shared curriculum. But how is it known if the shared curriculum is making a…

Designing professional learning that meets the diverse needs of special education professionals is exciting, challenging, and critically important. The staff at the Children's Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf in Massachusetts support deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing children from ages 3 to 22 with a range of communication and…

In spring 2022, the continuous improvement team at the Bank Street Education Center (the Ed Center) set out to articulate what it means to "center equity" in their work with school districts and how to ensure that they do so consistently. They have identified a series of thinking routines that they use regularly to infuse…

As part of the network hub for CARPE College Access Network, a coalition of 30 schools across Southern California working to ensure that more students who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, or experiencing poverty apply to and enroll in colleges where they are most likely to graduate, the authors provide support to team members to use continuous…

In this article, the author describes their experience coaching teacher leaders as part of the NYC Continuous Learning Multilingual Learner Network, which is composed of 33 New York City middle schools working together to strengthen support and outcomes for Black and Latinx multilingual learners who experience the impact of poverty. Network…

Continuous improvement methods, widely used in fields such as medicine, can help educators identify and try out adjustments in practice, known as "change ideas," which contribute to better outcomes and more equitable systems for students. Since 2018, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in 24 organizations across the…

Professional learning focused on racial equity in schools should transform educators' beliefs and interrupt inequitable outcomes for students. To ensure that it does, professional learning leaders must not only excel at typical facilitation skills -- such as being aware of group dynamics, supporting inquiry, and creating relationships -- but…

Inequities in education, health care, and other social services are often rooted in systemic challenges that organizations must work together to address. If not done with a focus on advancing equity, improvement efforts risk reproducing or exacerbating inequities instead of eliminating them. In response to this need, Shift, an organization…

Viewing classrooms as apolitical, race-neutral environments is not working -- and never has. In promoting color blindness, educators have denied student racial identities. In using the broad language of multicultural education, schools have maintained a strict adherence to white, middle class, heteronormative definitions of success. As a result,…

As advocacy communications professionals who work with educators, one truth is constant in the current conversations with superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and youth advocates: Education conversations today are riddled with more land mines than ever before. In their current work at RALLY, an issue-focused communications firm, the…

Collaborative efforts are key to transforming schools into communities of powerful learning where all students excel academically and develop the agency, integrated identity, and competencies necessary to have successful lives as adults. Such efforts start with leaders, learning to cultivate anti-racist systems, structures, policies, and…

Every student deserves to be seen, included, understood, and celebrated. For that to happen, teachers need to be culturally competent. Cultural competence is best built through reflecting on and discussing real-world experiences. Classroom vignettes support this difficult but important work. This article shares three fictional classroom vignettes…

Cultivating inclusive classrooms, where all students are heard, affirmed, and validated, is an equity issue. As an instructional coach and a supervisor of coaches, the author has a moral obligation to work against the system that was designed to and continues to oppress some students and benefit others. This work often brings up difficult…