EdWeek’s “Learning from Leaders” series features Danielle Kelsick, Chief Academic Officer at Environmental Charter Schools (ECS). Kelsick’s work is a wonderful illustration of how leaders can establish professional learning cultures that help teachers deepen their own knowledge and identity as educators, and also transform their teaching practices, so that all students experience “instruction that pushes them to think deeply and honors their intellectual curiosity.”
The article articulates how Kelsick has kept a focus on teaching and learning, even while navigating the pandemic and confronting anti-blackness. EdWeek notes that ECS staff members are reading Teaching for Black Lives and doing a book study together using Reading Apprenticeship strategies:
The metacognitive processes are helping teachers deepen their understanding … but it’s also symbolic—that not only can anti-racism and instructional rigor coexist as top priorities for a school system, but they can also reinforce each other.”
Teachers are participating in Reading Apprenticeship because this approach, as noted in the article, helped Kelsick find what she had been trying to “piece together over her years in the classroom—giving students the tools they needed to engage deeply with all kinds of texts and ideas.”
To learn more about the ECS and the role of Reading Apprenticeship in transforming teaching and learning, read the article or contact us.
