Article from October, 2015, California Educator:
The Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC) is moving into its second year with a bang, with two successful events in September.
At the first, 80-plus ILC supporters met at CTA head-quarters in Burlingame at its Second Annual Convening. The crowd included teachers, chapter presidents, principals and superintendents, and was welcomed by CTA President Eric Heins. Because of ILC, “for the first time I’m hearing about teachers being taught by teachers, and that’s really exciting,” Heins told them. “ILC is on the leading edge in making implementation of the California standards work for our students.”
"ILC is a collaborative effort of CTA, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE), and the National Board Resource Center at Stanford University. It is in the second year of a three-year project to build a statewide network of accomplished teachers and other education leaders who support implementation of the California Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts and mathematics, and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
“ILC is professional development at its finest,” said speaker Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun professor of education emeritus at Stanford University, noting that ILC is on target to train and serve more than 50,000 educators over the three years of the grant. “You are building a professional learning community. You are building a movement.”
Small-group roundtables focused on examples of successful collaborations at sites across the state. Members from Washington Unified School District, for example, offered professional development workshops on technology use in the class- room in partnership with the district, CTA and school sites. The Monterey County team organized two-part, half-day weekend workshops for educators to address Common Core instructional shifts in English language arts and math.
Deep Dives Into Topics
The following Saturday, some 125 educators met at CSU Fullerton for an action-packed day to discuss, strategize and exchange ideas about instructional practice around the CCSS and NGSS. The conference, “Teachers Teaching Teachers,” was presented by ILC and allowed participants to take deep dives into such workshops as “Getting Started With STEM by Introducing Engineering in the TK-12 Grade” and “Unlocking Text Complexity Using Socratic Seminar and Critical Thinking.”
Many workshops focused on collaboration and teamwork, and educators walked away with keen insights as a result.
>> Learn more about the Instructional Leadership Corps
