How might we

  • create a safe space for teachers’ voices to be heard in professional learning?
  • build collaborative teacher-to-teacher professional learning networks?
  • support ongoing professional learning that embraces the unknown?

These questions planted the seeds for discussion in a two-day, face-to-face learning event last month in Seattle. Bringing together over 100 Teacher Practice Networks (TPN) representatives, teachers, and initiative staff, the event provided an opportunity for innovative problem solving.

With wooden blocks, pipe cleaners, clay, hundreds of post-it notes, and guidance from an Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) Action Collab facilitator, participants created visualizations of their ideas for designing and scaling teacher professional learning, from incentives and accountability to goals and impact.

The results featured concepts like “Teacher Lift,” a profile matching system for teacher-to-teacher learning and “Back to the Future,” in which evaluating student work drives professional learning priorities.

The event highlighted the need to use teacher-driven measures to define effective professional development and to create a safe space for teacher voices in the process. The Teacher Practice Networks initiative, comprised of 35 networks that provide professional learning opportunities to educators, is helping to create that space.

Facilitated by WestEd’s Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the initiative cultivates a learning community and shares resources and information on best practices, all with a goal of dramatically accelerating the work of teacher networks as they support the successful implementation of college-readiness standards.

Learn more about the Teacher Practice Networks and join the conversation on teacher leadership and professional learning on Twitter at@TeacherNetworks!