As AI use in schools grows faster than districts can plan for it, leaders and educators need reflective spaces and structures to thoughtfully navigate its effect on teaching and learning. This brief, written by Lead by Learning’s Executive Director Jennifer Ahn and PACE’s Director of Education Policy and Outcomes Alix Gallagher, explores how California districts are responding to the use of generative AI in schools. Drawing on Lead by Learning's Community of Practice (CoP) focused on ethical classroom AI integration, it highlights how a CoP helps educators experiment with AI, explore its role in improving classroom instruction, and understand its impact on student learning. The brief concludes with recommendations for how County Offices of Education and district leaders can activate Communities of Practice as they develop AI policies and guidance.
Lead by Learning's Supportive Challenge Step Into Practice Tool is featured in the Fall 2026 issue of CABE's Multilingual Educator. Written by former Lead by Learning Program Facilitator Charley Brooks, Ph.D., and Mills College at Northeastern University Professor Jacquelyn Urbani, Ph.D., the article explores how Supportive Challenge talk moves help educators of multilingual students examine their practice, surface their assumptions, and use student data to guide instruction. Through stories of our educator partners from Oakland Unified's English Language Learner and Multilingual Achievement (ELLMA) Office, who use Supportive Challenge in their inquiry work, the article shows how these conversation structures helped educators strengthen instructional practice and increase students' use of academic language.
Sarah Sugarman, Lead by Learning's Senior Director, has been published in CASEL's new journal, Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, with her research article, "Public Learning: A Collaborative Practice for Cultivating Educators' Decision-Making Power and Advancing Equity in Schools." Sarah's piece explores how Public Learning enhances educators' social and emotional competencies, empowering them to make more equitable instructional decisions. Beyond her findings, she also offers actionable strategies for leaders who aim to build a culture of Public Learning within their teams, deepening collaboration, raising awareness of implicit biases, and improving learning opportunities for both adults and students.
"As schools and districts address the current health and economic crisis in addition to the widening of their students’ opportunity gap, the most effective response will prioritize the system’s ability to learn from the practitioners who are working most closely with students and their families."
A 2019 report from the Aspen Institute takes on the important agenda of educating the whole child. We’re honored to be one of a handful of programs to serve as models for districts across the nation in A Policy Agenda on How Learning Happens. The entire report is worth reading but if you’re short on time, skip ahead to page 32 to read about our work with our amazing partner OUSD.
"If we are successful, continuous improvement could become a part of the fabric of our
education institutions, in which educators model for our students the mindsets, skills, and
behaviors that support true learning."
Over the 2019-2020 school year, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) worked with Mills Teacher Scholars as a learning partner, focusing on collaboration with district and school leaders in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD).
"Teacher Leaders used the Mills Teacher Scholars meetings to expand teachers’ responsibilities and to strengthen their professional judgment (Wood, 2007) to, in essence, take expertise back into their own hands. This required learning and growth by both the TLs and their colleagues. The teachers began to recognize their expertise, to work towards developing their professional voice as urban school teachers, and to engage in continuously learning about their students’ learning and their own teaching. The TLs worked to support the teachers in this work that required restoring a learning context where all teachers’ knowledge was encouraged and valued."
"For all of these people, professional learning is central to their jobs. It is not an add-on. It is not something done on Friday afternoons or on a few days at the end of the school year. Teacher professional learning is how they all improve student learning; it is how they improve schools; and it is how they are evaluated in their jobs. They work in systems that are organized around improvement strategies explicitly anchored in teacher professional learning."
"In the end, well-designed and implemented PD should be considered an essential component of a comprehensive system of teaching and learning that supports students to develop the knowledge, skills, and competencies they need to thrive in the 21st century. To ensure a coherent system that supports teachers across the entire professional continuum, professional learning should link to their experiences in preparation and induction, as well as to teaching standards and evaluation. It should also bridge to leadership opportunities to ensure a comprehensive system focused on the growth and development of teachers."
"Specifically, we documented how the Mills Teacher Scholars Teacher Leadership Network meetings (a) offered safe thinking spaces that positioned teachers as intellectual professionals who could socially construct knowledge and learn together, (b) allowed teachers to surface and name the complexities and uncertainties inherent to teaching that would undoubtedly arise as they sought to facilitate learning communities at their school sites, and (c) provided guidance for teachers through a parallel process, that is, modeling for them and supporting them in experiencing firsthand what they would be responsible for enacting and scaffolding with their teaching colleagues."
In 2016-17, Resourcing Excellence in Education (REEd) at UC Davis School of Education was contracted by Mills College to conduct an evaluation of the Mills Teacher Scholars Program. During this program evaluation year, the Mills Teacher Scholars Program was working with 16 school-based teams of teachers and principals throughout Northern California to model and facilitate the collaborative inquiry process around a local problem of practice directly related to student learning. Program developers were interested in conducting an evaluation to determine the extent to which the program is meeting its goals with building capacity for teacher-led communities of inquiry.
