The instructional coaches in Kildeer Countryside School District 96 (KCSD 96), outside Chicago, are like tugboats, a key part of a maritime navigation system. Just as tugboats nudge and guide barges and ships that need steering assistance to navigate tricky waters, the coaches in KCSD 96 nudge and guide educators to navigate toward school and…

Asking questions is essential for building empathy, understanding, and trust -- all of which are necessary for group success but are sorely lacking in today's divided political climate. In a time of immense stress among and unusual hostility toward educators, listening and learning are among leaders' most important responsibilities. Fortunately,…

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…

One of the most effective forms of professional learning happens when teachers conduct collaborative inquiry in their own classrooms around difficult and challenging topics -- even topics that are potentially divisive. In this article, the authors describe how they have seen this powerful process at work in their district in Pitt County, North…

When a new community forms, whether it is an elementary school class or a teacher inquiry group, co-constructing norms or community expectations is often one of the members' first tasks. The authors advocate that norms should be given to (rather than created by) a newly formed community to elevate the different needs, goals, and perspectives of…

Teachers are uniquely situated to enact best practices for the direct benefit of student learning. However, teachers often lack opportunities to exercise agency, the capacity to "make an impact or exert power." When teachers develop agency, they are better able to implement place-based, relevant lessons for their students. The authors…

Although there is a wealth of research about what works in schools for both teachers and leaders, it has been an ongoing challenge to ensure quality implementation of those practices. In this article, the evidence-based practices that the authors are concerned with relate to school leadership, not least of which involves the work that school…

As leadership coaches, Kendall Zoller and Antonia Issa Lahera has worked with diverse groups of students. As they have pursued a path of equity for all students, teachers, families, and communities, they have developed a framework to develop, nurture, and grow collaborative relationships. They call it HeartSpace (Lahera & Zoller, 2021).…

A recent independent evaluation by WestEd of Learning Forward's What Matters Now Network looked at the ways in which a structured, facilitated network provided support for state-level coalitions working with districts, schools, and educators to improve instruction and make progress toward achieving content standards. The network was facilitated by…

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…

In this article, a two-year partnership aims to disrupt inequities in curriculum and instruction by supporting teachers' efforts to better teach American Indian studies. The authors focus on the foundations of the partnership and how they implemented their professional learning, as well as important lessons about facilitating teacher professional…