The launch of Power of Place Learning Communities (PoP) marks a milestone on a journey that began a half-decade ago.
In 2018, the Essex County Learning Community (ECLC) was incubated through the Reimagine Learning Fund, a multi-pronged effort of New Profit, a national venture philanthropy firm based in Boston. With funding from the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation, ECLC was designed to better support teachers and administrators in meeting the needs of the system’s most marginalized students. It recognized that educators needed time and space to interrogate their prior assumptions and biases and harness a much wider repertoire of skills, strategies, and tools to reach all students.
School districts in Essex County responded to an initial Request for Proposals, and six school districts were selected for the first cohort. A second cohort launched in January 2020. ECLC also convened a “guest faculty” roster of national experts who helped us deliver on the promise of best-in-class professional development. After the initial incubation period, the Essex County Learning Community became an independent project, funded by the Tower Foundation and directed by Full Frame Communications, LLC, with implementation support from the Center for Collaborative Education. 
ECLC was initially envisioned as a two-year professional development experience for educators. Each participating district brought together a multi-stakeholder team to meet regularly with other districts in a defined cohort. When the first cohort of six school districts completed the two-year experience, two things happened. First, many of our participants wanted to continue learning in the community they had helped establish. Second, the global pandemic, which occurred toward the beginning of our second cohort’s experience, made it impossible to convene in person. Our response was to invite both cohorts (eleven districts in total) to participate in a robust schedule of virtual learning, thereby transitioning ECLC to an ongoing, voluntary learning network. As we began to emerge from the pandemic, another cohort of four districts joined ECLC; we now serve educators in nearly 130 schools across 16 districts serving approximately 65,000 students.
The creation of Power of Place Learning Communities was prompted by ECLC’s continued growth and impact, as well as by inquiries from elsewhere to build regional networks modeled after ECLC. There is an urgent need to provide educators with a chance to step away from their demanding schedules and enter collaborative, creative, compassionate spaces designed to enable them to learn, grow, reflect, and connect with peers from neighboring communities. ECLC is now the flagship of Power of Place Learning Communities, a 501(c)3 that we hope will enable such important work to flourish in many communities.
