Dear Colleagues and Friends,
This year year we were excited to expand the PoP team to add Dr. Bryan Mascio as our new Faculty-in-Residence, bolstering our ability to support member districts in more targeted, customized ways.
Bryan comes to us as a practitioner-scholar who originally taught in a variety of settings specifically working with students and families who had struggled in the traditional education system. More recently he worked in teacher preparation with a focus on inclusive and equitable practices. Bryan leads professional learning for PK-12 teachers as well as university educators, and publishes both in academic journals and public Op-Eds about inclusive pedagogy, responding to concerning classroom behaviors, and the development of teacher thinking. We brought him on to help strengthen the continuity of our learning experiences by supporting practical implementation of strategies back in classrooms, schools, and districts.
With Bryan on board, this year we were able to provide customized support to two of our member communities.
At the start of the school year we were pleased to pair Bryan with the Amesbury School District to support their work in embracing Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework that aims to optimize teaching and learning for all students. This end-of-year summary describes how the journey began and how it has evolved.
We also continued our support of the Andover Public Schools Social Work Department in their adoption of equitable mental health practices, concluding a two-year effort. This work began during the 2023-24 school year, under the guidance of Laura Tota, our Senior Director of Professional Learning.
We are grateful to Amesbury Superintendent Elizabeth McAndrews and Joseph Yarid, Andover’s Director of School Social Work, for inviting us to partner with their educators on this critical work.
Both of these efforts have been fee-based, and custom-designed to meet the specific needs and budget of the school district. As we continue to build our internal capacity, we hope to do more of this work with other communities going forward. As a complement to the ongoing offerings of the ECLC Learning Agenda, we invite you to consider how our team could provide a similar type of tailored support in your community over the next school year to help you deepen the work in your classrooms, schools, and districts for sustainable impact.
It is our honor and pleasure to walk alongside you, and learn with and from you. We are here to support educators at every level of the system who commit to their own ongoing learning and development on the path to accelerate learning for all students and create cultures of belonging for everyone.
In connection,
Jane
Read the full newsletter here (pdf).