Welcome to a New School Year!

For our Mills Teacher Scholars staff and participants, the new school year is off to a fabulous start, with our teacher scholar leaders facilitating at nearly half of our partner sites and with unprecedented interest in our work from schools and teachers from across the Bay Area as they navigate the new Common Core State Standards.

September means reconnecting with seasoned teacher scholars and welcoming dozens of new participants.

We have begun a new inquiry group with the Berkeley Unified School District music department and continue our work with Rosa Parks Elementary, which is celebrating some of the highest achievement scores in the district. This year the Rosa Parks teacher scholar leaders are facilitating the group.

At Roosevelt Elementary in San Leandro,  now in its fifth year of site-based inquiry , 18 out of 21 teachers are participating in a teacher facilitated professional learning group.

Oakland Unified School districts’ Korematsu Discovery Academy, New Highland Academy, RISE Community School and Melrose Leadership Academy have begun identifying their individual inquiry focus within their school wide topic, related to the Common Core.

Finally, our long running Scholars Group had its first meeting last month with 40 participants attending in school teams from across the East Bay.  The meeting focused on structuring a thinking space where teachers are building their capacity for supporting their colleagues’ idea development.