An Investment in Educators Is An Investment in Students

One of the most powerful aspects of Linked Learning is that, at its core, it is designed to be teacher-driven, and that is both revolutionary in education and hard to do really well,  unless you have faith in teachers and invest in them. 

That is why, in the fall of 2024, as the Director of College and Career Pathways, Linked Learning, for the Oakland Unified School District, I decided to partner with Lead by Learning to build a Pathway Teacher Leader Community of Practice. 

From my own experience as a teacher and pathway lead while in the classroom, I know deeply that something electric happens when teachers have time, space, and resources to design programs that inspire every student. And while this type of electric learning was happening in pockets in Oakland, it was not yet district-wide. On the contrary, there was inconsistency,  which was leading to inequity. 

What became clear to me is that we needed to tend to the core, the pathway team, and ensure that teachers felt empowered to innovate. 

At the onset, interest in the Community of Practice was high amongst school-based pathway leads. As a leader, I felt at home in the space. Inquiry and reflective practice were my comfort zone. It connected me to my time as a teacher and soon became a nourishing part of my work. 

In that first year, I learned and was reminded that strong routines, consistency, and focus on adult learning set the conditions for safety, which in turn allows for deep reflection, innovation, and shared learning. I learned that adult learning doesn’t need to be complicated, but asking consistent questions can elicit incredible learning. And, staying the course matters. 

Pathway teacher leaders from across the district, continuation schools, small schools, and comprehensive high schools were seeing each other’s practice, and the conditions were set for people to come with what they have, what they know now, and be helped by colleagues.

That first year, we also leaned into a set of rubrics and tools. We wanted our pathway leaders to build tools around adult teaming for their pathway department time, set intentional agendas, and bring back the adult learning culture that they were experiencing at the district level to the site level. While the adult learning was robust and we were seeing collaboration, what was missing was true clarity. We began too open-ended about our end goal. However, this foundation set us up for a stronger year two; trust was built.

In the second year of the Community of Practice, with the conditions set, we were able to develop a Community of Practice Continuum. Using a resource from ConnectED, we modified and created a rubric for adult learning that was true to Oakland. With Lead by Learning’s support, we refined the resource and created space for our pathway leads to assess themselves at the beginning of the year and throughout. We then zoomed in on a key part of the rubric: instruction. 

By creating a focus on instruction, our Community of Practice not only had greater clarity but also greater rigor. Pathway leads began to bring artifacts from their pathway teachers to our meetings. We had a clear goal, and conversations and practice were shifting. 

One lead teacher, during year one, was challenged by low team trust and low attendance at pathway team meetings.  With the help they received in the Community of Practice, they were able to embed tools and strategies for adult learning, which led to growing trust, increased attendance, and clearer roles. By the end of the second year, their team had successfully engaged in collaboration around vertical alignment, which would not have been possible at the start of year one.  

Another teacher leader built their confidence discussing instruction with their team and, in support of improving student writing, they brought Claim-Evidence-Reasoning to every teacher in their pathway. This enabled the lead teacher to work with educators individually about student writing, and empowered teachers to bring student artifacts to their meetings to support each other’s practice.

At one of our continuation schools, which struggles with over 85% chronic absenteeism, a pathway teacher in the Community of Practice noticed that on days students had on-site internships, attendance increased. While the CoP did not make the attendance increase, it did support the educator to realize what kind of learning leads to greater student engagement and attendance. The clarity she gained in the Community of Practice enabled her to share this learning with her site leader, her students, and her colleagues. 

While we are learning all the time, if we don’t create intentional spaces to crystallize and punctuate the learning, it can be quickly lost. The Community of Practice allowed us to surface the learning and build on it. 

Our work is also not done, and we are energized for what’s next. We plan to:

• Continue to increase participation in the Community of Practice to grow consistency district-wide.
• Begin learning walks with participating pathway leaders to visit each other’s team meetings and classrooms to see the impact of our collaboration in real time.
• Expand our Community of Practice model and offerings and increase the investment in our adults in the system to continue to encourage reflection, practice sharing, and improvement.
• Continue to use our rubric to hold a narrow focus on improving teaching and learning. 

For other district leaders looking to build consistency, coherence, and efficacy, this process with Lead by Learning reminded me how important it is to invest in the adults in your system. I know firsthand that when budgets are tight, it can feel hard to prioritize. But the work we are doing and the work we are asking our teachers to do is not technical; it is hard, beautiful, and adaptive. It is fundamental to the health of our city and our community. If we don’t invest in the adults to be reflective and improve their practice, then we are making an assumption that teaching is transactional. We are following a fallacy that if a teacher just gets a “good curriculum” and then knows how to use it, it will work for students, and that teachers just “pour the knowledge into the kid.” We know better than that. When teachers learn deeply and are supported to get better, we not only get much better outcomes, but we also get highly skilled professionals. 

It can be tempting to offer transactional professional development because it can feel easier to just pass information to people and ask them to “figure it out,” but learning is complex. Kids do better when adults are doing well. 

As I look back at our first two years of this investment and our partnership with Lead by Learning, I can say that reflection is now a core part of the work we do as a department with our district-wide pathway coaches and with their pathway teams. In a district where there is endless urgency, caring about reflection matters so that we know what is working and what is not, and where to invest our time, energy, and resources. 

Personally, as a leader, I feel renewed. Often, as leaders, we seek fellowships or schooling outside our systems to reenergize ourselves, but by working with Lead by Learning within my system, I was provided a refreshing perspective on the work I am doing and my reasons for doing it, and that is electrifying.

Rebecca Lacocque is the Director of College and Career Pathways (Linked Learning) in Oakland Unified School District. Originally from Chicago, Rebecca has lived in Oakland since 1999, when she got her teaching credential from Mills College. Rebecca taught English and Education to 9th and 12th graders for 12 years, always passionate about the power of transition and voice in adolescent development. When not working for equitable voice and transition, Rebecca enjoys her family and early morning coffee in her fledgling garden. 

Interested in partnering with Lead by Learning to build the schools students need? Connect with a member of our team to learn more about our range of partnerships designed to reach your goals for student and adult learning.