2025, Alameda County, Social & Emotional Learning, Elementary School, Funded Projects
Our team of six elementary educators will work with The Teaching Well to obtain a two year cycle of wellness coaching. The program will include both self and collective care practices, and will also teach us how to model healthy SEL habits for our students. By integrating mindfulness into our teaching practice, we will develop tools to better manage our stress and build emotional resilience. Our students are still developing their prefrontal cortexes and rely on us to offer a regulated presence they mirror through co-regulation. Engaging in Mindful Mentoring and Group Coaching, the teachers on our team will not only grow individually but also as a cohesive group, equipped to mentor others and sustain this professional learning approach within the Garfield community.
2025, Alameda County, Language, Elementary School, Funded Projects
The purpose of this project is to establish a system of support for students who are multilingual learners, also known as English Learners. At Marshall Elementary, there has been an upsurgence in the number of multilingual learners. In this project, selected teachers from general education, special education, and Response to Intervention will work together to create units of study and implement common instructional practices in English Language Development (ELD) in our classrooms. In this community of practice, we will engage in job-embedded professional development to ensure long term, sustainable implementation of ELD practices.
2025, Alameda County, Language, Elementary School, Funded Projects
Four elementary ELD educators at three schools in our district will pursue training in Guided Language Acquisition and Development (GLAD) strategies to enhance and revitalize our own teaching. During the second year of our project, we will co-plan content-integrated units with classroom teachers at our schools. This project will make our teaching richer and more interactive, and will enable students to learn science and social studies content as they learn English. It will also create more support for English learners in the general education classroom, meet a need for teacher collaboration, and amp up instruction for all students.
2025, Alameda County, Reading/Writing, High School, Funded Projects
The Reading Department of Oakland International High School (OIHS) will use its LIGHT Award grant to deepen our instructional approach to reading for newcomer students. While we have established strong practices for teaching phonics and decoding (connecting the sounds and meanings of letter combinations), vocabulary, and word parts, we struggle to effectively teach syntax: the order of words to create meaning. We know that understanding how words work together is vital to the teaching and learning of reading, particularly for older learners and those with education gaps. Our project will allow us to receive training from experts (Strategic Inquiry). In collaboration with this consultant, we will learn new strategies, participate in inquiry cycles, and share widely with other educators at our school.
2025, Alameda County, Social & Emotional Learning, Middle School, High School, Funded Projects
This project will provide CVUSD Middle and High School Activities Directors (ADs) with dedicated collaboration and professional development time in order to build our own capacity as well as our students’ capacity for leadership and school connectedness. Because there are only 1 or 2 Activities Directors at each site, opportunities to collaborate and take part in meaningful professional development are limited. This dedicated collaboration and professional development will support our growth as a team and our ability to inspire and connect students to their schools. California Association of Directors of Activities (CADA) resources will add a new layer to our professional knowledge.
Interdisciplinary, Alameda County, 2024, High School, Funded Projects
Through professional development, retreats, peer observations and feedback cycles, and collaborative curriculum development, we will cultivate our collective efficacy. Our focus will be to develop our capacities to facilitate community circles, create interdisciplinary projects, and align our writing practices across the curricula.
