In our 2014-15 program evaluation survey, conducted by WestEd, our teacher scholars’ feedback indicated overwhelmingly positive attitudes about their collaborative inquiry work through their Mills Teacher Scholars partnership. What aspects of the Mills Teacher Scholars work resonate with teachers? Facebook posts such as these imply that educators are rarely upbeat and active participants in professional development opportunities. The reality that we experience at Mills Teacher Scholars is that teachers are open and hopeful to new professional development, but often jaded by the top-down training model they have frequently experienced. In this top-down model the goal is to “tool” the teacher with new curriculum and content strategies to implement and the delivery often resembles the banking model of learning where key information is deposited by the trainer into the minds of the learner (the teachers). Undoubtedly, teachers need access to the most current thinking about enhancing student learning, but professional development design impacts both teacher engagement in the process and professional learning outcomes. Those designing learning experiences for teachers need to carefully consider the following questions: What is the instructional approach for teachers to build their conceptual understanding? How does the local knowledge of teachers intersect with district or school learning goals? In our 2014-15 WestEd Survey Mills Teacher Scholars participants’ feedback indicated overwhelmingly positive attitudes about their learning through engagement in their year-long Mills Teacher Scholars inquiry experience.

A new set of standards has districts and schools racing to implement aligned curriculum. In teacher professional development efforts there is an unprecedented focus on curricular implementation and in the implementation rush, the curriculum can become the end game and the students’ learning...

At last month’s Teacher Inquiry in Action Forum, attendees walked away with new ideas about what teacher-led learning looks like and sounds like.  From using video to strengthen collaboration and instruction to understanding the connection between academic learning and social...

The wordle above illustrates the OUSD SEL teacher scholars' reflections on their all-day Mills Teacher Scholars experience. As we support our teacher scholars from across the East Bay to engage in making sense of the Common Core standards, we are hearing a repeated refrain: student success hinges on their social emotional learning (SEL) competencies. Indeed, there is wide-spread agreement  that the SEL competencies are foundational to achieving the communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity goals embedded in the Common Core State Standards. But how do teachers support this competency building while developing content understanding? Mills Teacher Scholars is excited to partner with OUSD’s Social Emotional Learning and Leadership Development and Developmental Studies Center to explore this question with a group of dynamic SEL teacher leaders from Caring School Communities demonstration schools. In late January seventeen K-6 OUSD teachers from Parker, Emerson, Crocker Highlands and Garfield elementary schools began a year-long series of collaborative inquiry sessions that focus on two essential questions: What conditions do we need in place to support collaborative adult learning communities that build understanding? How do the Caring School Community Curriculum and the OUSD SEL standards support students’ academic content development? Focus on conversations that promote understanding The all-day January session at Mills College at Northeastern University provided opportunities for teachers to notice, name and better understand how social emotional learning and building academic content knowledge overlap for both adults and students. SEL teacher scholars deconstructed a video of a powerful teacher learning conversation, identifying the adults’ SEL competencies and discourse moves, then participated in a learning discussion themselves. Throughout the session the teacher scholars surfaced the conditions and agreements necessary for teachers to engage in learning conversations together.