All LIGHT Awards projects feature collaboration in some way, and for some teams, the opportunity to collaborate defines the essence of their professional development projects.
We are extremely honored to feature the work of the Spanish for Native Speakers Professional Learning Community grant team. Comprised of six teachers at four different schools in San Bruno, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz, the team has made it their mission over the past two years to develop a way to share learnings, lend support, and develop materials together for this crucial but under-resourced field. Now in the final year of their LIGHT Awards project, they are presenting their pedagogical work at conferences. They are also planning to continue the personal and professional alliance that they now share.
In the words of the participating teachers, their LIGHT Awards grant helped build a strong, sustainable community of like-minded teachers:
“That’s where the power of this came, ultimately: that we got to make of it what we wanted, and it has served us as a team, and I can see it serving us individually for the different needs of our populations…. The grant has allowed us to collaborate in such a way that other teachers do not normally get a chance to collaborate, and that makes the material much more rich.”
“I can’t imagine going back next school year and thinking I was alone again. I’m not! I have a community that I work with.”
Learn more in this video.
