Mills Teacher Scholars First School Site: Roosevelt Elementary School Five Years Later

December 18, 2013

 Five years ago Mills Teacher Scholars was encouraged to take its brand of teacher-led inquiryoff of the Mills campus and out into local schools. San Leandro Unified Roosevelt principal, Victoria Forrester, welcomed the pilot program to her campus. Five years later 20 teachers—98% of her staff —are engaged in teacher-led inquiry to better understand student learning.  Victoria, also active on the Mills Teacher Scholars advisory board, credits the program with building broad-based teacher leadership among the teachers at Roosevelt, leadership that carries over from the Mills Teacher Scholars work to all the other aspects of Roosevelt’s efforts to improve learning outcomes for all students.

Welcome to a New School Year!

September 26, 2013

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.

A Busy Summer for MTS

September 26, 2013

From presenting at the Alameda County Inventing Our Future Integrated Learning Summer Institute to running a workshop for teacher scholars to share their work via blog posts, to strategic program planning, this was a busy summer for MTS staff and teacher leaders.

Mills Teacher Scholars News – Spring 2013

May 1, 2013

Spring 2013 has been an exciting time for Mills Teacher Scholars. The following are some of our recent highlights: Mills Teacher Scholars at AERA Dina Moskowitz presented her inquiry “Reading for Pleasure?” at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Program Associate Aija Simmons presented her work on peer writing conferences. Anna Richert, Carrie Wilson, and Claire Bove, the Faculty Director, Executive Director, and Associate Director of Mills Teacher Scholars, presented a paper on teachers’ meaning making process through collaborative analysis of student work data. Teacher Scholar Claire Shorall wins OUSD Region 3 award

Dynamic teacher leadership

April 4, 2013

Mills Teacher Scholars participants have a variety of opportunities to develop as teacher leaders. Recent examples include: 1. Teacher scholars present their learning at the Mills Teacher Scholars Inquiry in Action Event on May 21st 2. Teacher scholars building professional capacity through teacher-led data collection

BUSD music program receives award

April 4, 2013

The Mills Teacher Scholars program is proud to have five current and alumni Scholars teaching music in the Berkeley program: Karen Wells, Michael Hammond, Sarah Cline, Merlyn Katechis, and Mary Dougherty. The BUSD music teachers and the...

Teacher scholars present at OUSD teacher convention

April 4, 2013

Mills Teacher Scholars Channon Neal de Stanton, Nessa Mahmoudi, and Mills Teacher Scholars Program Associate Aija Simmons will be presenting at the 2013 Oakland Teacher Convention. This is a convention sponsored by the Oakland Unified School district, where each session is by teachers and for teachers.

Teacher scholars present at Bay Area Science Project’s Saturday Seminar

April 4, 2013

Our teacher scholars Laura Alvarez and Krishna Feeney presented at the Bay Area Science Project’s Saturday Seminar on March 23, 2013. Laura teaches seventh grade humanities at Melrose Leadership Academy in Oakland. Her presentation, “Looking at academic language across the ‘mode continuum,’” addressed the...

May 21st : Teacher Learning Takes the Stage

April 4, 2013

How can I support my kindergartners’ development of number sense and what do I really mean when I say “number sense”? What do engaging discussions of a text sound like in fifth grade and how can I help my students develop the skills to engage in these discussions? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPj4RKH9daA These kinds of questions and the pursuit of their answers will be the subject of teachers’ talks at the Mills Teacher Scholars Inquiry in Action Forum on May 21st at Mills College, 5-8 PM.

Mills Teacher Scholars on the Road

March 7, 2013

In February Mills Teacher Scholars gave the keynote address to the Bay Area Science, Math, and Writing Saturday Seminar on examining student work. The focus of the talk  to over 80 Bay Area educators was to provide teachers with an alternative (and larger) view of data and introduce the idea of re-orienting teachers’ attention from exclusively thinking about teaching strategies and planning to include collaborative analysis of meaningful data to understand student thinking.