Projects We’ve Funded

As of Spring 2025, we have supported the professional learning of over 550 Bay Area teachers as part of 115 funded projects.

Year Awarded

Level

Subject

County

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Mindful Mentoring for Teacher Leaders at Garfield

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.

Marshall Elementary Multilingual Learner Support Project

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.

GLAD Training for ELD Teachers

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.

Foundational Literacy and Syntax for Newcomer Multilingual Learners

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.

Creating Culture through Collaboration

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.

Cultivating our Collective Efficacy to Support Future Social Justice Leaders

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.

Bilingual DEI Learning through Project Based Learning

This project aims to develop and implement DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) curricula through project-based learning that incorporate diverse perspectives, cultures, and voices in a K-8 Mandarin immersion school.

Cultivating Conversation: Increasing Student Talk in the Classroom

Our project aims to transform our classrooms into spaces filled with the voices of our English language learners and newcomers (rather than teachers).

Returning to our Roots: Crafting Empowering Learning

We will reinvigorate SEED’s mission by designing Project-Based Learning units infused with best practices in Dual Language and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

The Power of Play

Play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith concluded, ‘The opposite of play is not work–the opposite of play is depression.’ While research supports this, traditional schools continue to treat play as frivolous and double down on the pressure to raise students’ standardized test scores.

Our Changing Planet – Community of Practice

We want to deepen our understanding of environmental justice, indigenous wisdom and creative practice, to better understand our world, and as educators advocate for just climate solutions. Working with local experts/organizations in our community, we will deepen our knowledge and our facilitation practices to make more meaningful connections with each other, build knowledge across disciplines, and apply new learning in our classrooms.

Equity Learning Walk

This team of middle school teachers will cultivate a transformative learning community committed to anti-racist and inclusive education for all students, staff, and families. In the first year of the grant, they will apply the skills from Jenjii Hysten and Blaze Consultancy’s Emotional Intelligence, Equity, & Inclusion training to design and pilot a preliminary equity learning walk.

Differentiation through Student Self-Efficacy

This team of elementary school teachers wants to learn best practices in developing differentiated instruction to meet students at their current academic levels. With the pandemic widening gaps in competencies for students, these teachers plan to develop a toolkit that meets students’ specific needs, whether they are intervention, self-paced learning, or challenging enrichment.

Deeper Learning & Stronger Support for Teachers

A team of seasoned teachers plans to foster greater passion and engagement in their classrooms by building a professional learning toolkit around Deeper Learning.

Studying Climate Justice Through Science, Art, and Action!

This team of elementary educators will develop 4th and 5th grade Climate Change/Environmental Justice units that teach climate science grounded in the environmental justice concerns of their community. These units will integrate climate science into Spanish and English language arts, as well as visual arts, theater arts, and engineering projects.

Improving Outcomes for Multilingual Scholars through Collective Capacity Building

This team of dedicated high school teachers will deepen their focus and support of multilingual scholars. By attending seminars, participating in book study, and engaging consultants, the team aims to educate itself on anti-racist, socially-just education, and then build its collective capacity to provide students with high-interest content using engaging, relevant language activities.

PBL Pilot: Empowering Oakland

This team of middle school teachers plans to implement Project Based Learning (PBL) at our school. The team will attend trainings with the Buck Institutes and PBL Works to better understand how to design and implement a PBL curriculum.

Know Better, Do Better – The Science of Reading

This team of primary grade teachers strives to learn more about evidence-based best practices to support early reading acquisition for all students, including English Learners and students with disabilities. By attending training sessions with a variety of professional development providers like The Reading League, as well as working with various consultants like those from the Right to Read Project, the team aims to transfer current research findings in neuroscience and cognitive psychology to classroom practices.

Indigenous Voices in the Music Classroom

This team of teachers plans to learn more about the musical origins and current practices of its schools’ indigenous communities and grow its curriculum and practice.

Literacy GLADiators

This team plans to empower their emerging multi-lingual students and teachers with powerful literacy instruction through neurology-based and culturally responsive language acquisition strategies.

Integrated Learning for Equity

This team will increase their learning and leadership skills with Arts Integration and Culturally Responsive Teaching in order to support growth and learning with colleagues throughout their district.

Facing History’s Professional Learning Community for Ethnic Studies

This team from across the Bay Area will launch a professional learning community focused on learning and growing in the area of Ethnic Studies.

Building a Community of Literacy Leaders

This team of teachers plans to level up their existing Literacy Inquiry Group by attending literacy and EL trainings and partner with experts.

Berkeley High School World Language Makeover

This team’s goal is to modernize their World Language Department by training in teaching strategies that focus on communication and meeting the national standards created by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL).

Amplifying Student Voice: Developing Teachers to Support East Oakland’s Young Writers

This team will regularly meet with the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP) coaches to design a project-based, action-oriented, writing curriculum that integrates expository, persuasive, and narrative writing into standards based social studies and science units.

Revving Up for Dual Immersion

This team of teachers at a newly Dual Immersion (DI) school will focus on teacher preparedness as their school transitions to be a DI program.

Increasing Access to AP Curriculum for Language Learners

This team of teachers aims to support the unique literacy needs of English Language Learners taking Advanced Placement classes by engaging English Language Development (ELD) experts. San Lorenzo High School, San Lorenzo

Deepening Mathematical Practices and Improving Student Access to College Math

This team of six high school math teachers with a 100% English Learner population at their school are seeking to improve college math readiness in their school community.

Revolutionizing How Students Engage With Climate Change Education

These four high school teachers will develop climate change units through four disciplines (life science, earth science, chemistry, and physics).

Project Based Learning to Improve Equity in Learning

Five middle school teachers endeavor to learn the skills for, gain exposure to, and create a sustainable culture for project-based learning at their school.

Cycle of Inquiry Committee Looking Closely

This team of six middle and high school teachers will systematically consider their students’ learning, with a structure of collegial discussion focused on data. As teachers, classroom time occurs rapidly with little time to think deeply.

Spanish Teacher Professional Learning Community

The team of six elementary-level Spanish Dual Language teachers are pursuing professional development in second language acquisition.

Be GLAD

The team of four elementary school professionals identified the need to create and maintain an embedded ELD program that is woven throughout their curriculum in order to support their 52%-ELL student population.

Transformational Teacher Mentoring

The team of five high school teachers and one middle school teacher at four schools across the Bay Area are part of the Trellis Mentor Fellowship, through which they have all made a five-year commitment to mentoring new teachers.

Project Based Learning with a Maker Mindset

The team of four elementary school teachers will pilot a Project Based Learning (PBL)/Maker-Centered program.

Interdisciplinary Real World Challenges

The team of four middle school teachers will work collaboratively on Project-Based Learning (PBL) techniques to address two pressing student needs: increase student readiness for Algebra 1 and improve English/Language Arts writing skills across subject areas.

Improving Mathematical Literacy: School Wide, TK – 12

The team of five teachers, spanning elementary through high school, will engage in a two-year study around best practices to improve mathematical literacy.

Reading Lab Sites

The team of three elementary school teachers will conduct “job-embedded” professional development in the form of lab-sites (action research in the classroom during the course of an entire lesson) to help increase the effectiveness of classroom Reading Workshops.

Peer Coaching: Using Video in Collaborative Inquiry Groups

Six full-time teachers will become facilitators of Collaborative Inquiry Groups (CIGs) aimed at improving literacy in all subject areas.

Inquiry into ELD

The team of three middle and three high school teachers will design and investigate their own inquiry questions on best practices in English language development.

Blended Practices to Achieve a Project-Based Learning Culture

The six team members will pursue professional development opportunities in Blended Practices, with the objective of ensuring that students gain the technical and communication skills necessary for a rapidly changing workforce.

Deepening Student Engagement: School Wide, K-12

The four-member teaching team, spanning first through tenth grade, will engage in a two-year study of best practices in student engagement.