Erin Chavez

I’ve always been curious. It’s a trait that has landed me in hot water more times than I can count, and one that has helped turn a boring situation into an interesting one. Sometimes my curiosity can be an advantage. Sometimes it’s a liability. Curiosity has led to the call my parents got in the middle of the night when I was a teenager. And it has led to an acceptance letter that I never dreamed I’d receive.

Curiosity has created a similar juxtaposition in my professional life as an educator.. It has inspired me to create lessons that students long remember and colleagues still ask about. Likewise, my curiosity has moved me to create seemingly amazing lessons that I had to shut down midway through class, because they were so far off the path of what I intended to teach. That’s the thing about curiosity: It can be a secret weapon or a weapon of mass destruction.

Lately, though, curiosity has served me well. I knocked on one door over a year ago, and since then, a thousand more have opened. Behind that door was The Redesign Challenge— an online community of educators who collaborate to solve common challenges by turning innovative ideas into real solutions. In 2015, The Redesign Challenge asked teachers to propose solutions to the problem of professional development—one that any educator who’s been around for a while can relate to. The primary problem with professional development is that it does not provide an authentic opportunity for educators to pursue their own curiosity.

So I proposed something I called then, “Curio.” I envisioned it as a way for teachers to systematize what they already did naturally to become better teachers: follow their own curiosity to discover, curate, and collaborate on new ideas. This process is often a combination of online tools and personal conversations with colleagues. Most teachers I know Google first, talk about what they find, and create materials with their own original ideas. Why couldn’t professional development embrace this process, one that I knew teachers already did?

The Redesign Challenge selected my idea as one of the few to develop during Innovator’s Weekend in Washington, D.C.Over the course of those few days, I learned a lot about myself and a lot about learning. I learned that a person is not a set of defined boundaries and immovable traits; a person is elastic. A curious, creative spirit who prefers a pen to a keyboard can create an online world that emulates the one inside their own head. I learned that true collaboration is not necessarily multiple people coming to the table and walking away with one product or idea; true collaboration can be many people, many ideas, and many iterations of those people and ideas. I learned that learning is messy, and we should embrace it.

It’s been almost two years since Innovator’s Weekend, and I now have a  talented partner, Tarik Nally, who is helping me bring Curio to other teachers like me. People have willingly signed up to join Curio because they are, as I’ve known all along, curious about what might be possible when they try on a new idea.

During the last few moments of Innovator’s Weekend, we all stood in a circle and reflected on the path we had begun to walk. Jan Bathel, one of the experts there, said something that has resonated with me since. He said, “What I see here from these ideas is a sense that you have all felt so lonely before now. All of these ideas stem from feeling like you were alone. And now you’re not.”

I thought what sent me to Innovator’s Weekend was curiosity, and partly, it was. But after Jan said those words, I realized that I had also created Curio as a way to connect with people who think the way I do. And now, I have connected with partners like Tarik, and I continue to find new peers who think just like me.

What could be more curious?

June 2015 marked the beginning of a career changing opportunity. The third cohort of Kentucky Hope Street Group Teacher Fellows (HSG) met for the first time face to face and began a professional journey that has allowed us both to participate in high quality professional learning led by our peers and by Learning Forward facilitators. Along the way we were empowered to lead professional learning in our own schools, districts and statewide networks. We have designed and led focus groups collecting teacher perspectives and generating policy recommendations around issues that are important not only to classroom teachers but also to policy makers and community members. We continue to lead grassroots teacher led initiatives that will outlive our personal tenures as Hope Street Fellows.  Our involvement in Hope Street Group has helped us to quantify and define what it means to be a Teacher Leader.

Within a few months of our tenure as fellows, there was a huge shift in national educational policy. On December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law renewing our government’s commitment for every child to be successful in education. Across the nation, individual state legislatures, departments of education and teachers are creating new ESSA regulations and accountability measures. In Kentucky, Teacher Leaders knew that it was extremely important for us to have a voice and a seat at the table to guide where and how those decisions were being made. Our opportunity to make substantive change would be offered through Learning Forward; the only professional association devoted exclusively to those who work in educator professional development.

Part of the new ESSA regulation was a redefinition of what quality professional learning must look like for teachers. Learning Forward wanted to make sure teacher voice was represented on a national platform in this vital area to increasing teacher quality and the quality of learning for all students. In that vein, Learning Forward and the National Commission of Teaching & America’s future (NCTAF) designed the Agents for Learning Competition. This would be yet another opportunity for us because of the networking and credibility that we’ve been able to establish through our work as Hope Street Group (HSG) Fellows. A small team of HSG State Teacher Fellows from Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina worked together to submit a multi-state plan for improved professional learning aligned to ESSA requirements.    We were one of 12 competition finalist teams that presented plans for the best use of federal funding for improved professional learning under ESSA guidelines to a panel of nationally recognized experts and judges.

Our presentation was limited to four minutes and the competition judges included Stephanie Banchero, Program Director for the Education Program at the Joyce Foundation; Jahana Hayes, 2016 National Teacher of the Year; Chris Minnich, Executive Director of CCSSO; and Rachel Wise, Chair of the Nebraska Board of Education. All 12 teams’ presentations were filmed and streamed live for viewing audiences across the country. The process was both challenging and invigorating as we used virtual platforms to collaborate and design a work plan for completing our application. Our pitch was centered around the common themes that we identified among each of the states represented by our team, and it ended up being similar in content to other presentations:

• Current professional learning opportunities are not meeting the needs of our teachers.
• Teachers are more than ready and capable to design and lead the professional learning of their peers, even peers outside their school and district.
• Professional learning has established a culture for compliance rather than growth.
• ESSA funds could and should be used to help compensate teachers with stipends and/or release time to implement programs that improve the quality and personalization of professional learning.

As we began to research and cultivate solutions, we discovered how fortunate we were to be members of the teaching profession in our state because the Kentucky Department of Education had already adopted professional learning standards based on Learning Forward’s work. These standards were used as a foundation to drive our work and helped us establish a clear vision of how we would like to see professional learning in our states.  Some of the professional learning standards were already familiar to us, such as the standards surrounding learning communities, leadership, resources, data, learning designs, implementation and outcomes, but the knowledge and the implementation of these standards was not widespread across the state.

Apart from the limited time constraints and the virtual facilitation for a multi-state team, the presentation itself was not that unusual in structure compared to others we have designed; however, the conditions and environment surrounding the competition were very different. We were treated as professionals. All expenses were paid.  Our expertise and experiences were valued. We were the experts in our field, and were treated as such. Our opinions were heard throughout the nation, and our solutions to common problems of practice mattered. Since the competition, other stakeholders have sought our opinions on various education policies. We were asked to share about our experience to the Kentucky Teacher Advisory Council comprised of 40 teachers from across the state, several Kentucky department of Education employees as well as our state’s Commissioner of Education.  This conversation sparked a healthy discussion about what professional learning means to Kentucky teachers, and how we can shape and transform it to an activity that builds the capacity of all teachers across traditional and often artificial barriers to deepen professional learning. The competition gave us even more hope that the inconsistencies and ambiguities that characterize professional learning in most schools and districts can be eliminated, and that new and experienced teachers alike can be a part of the movement to truly professionalize the teaching profession.

Carly Baldwin, who is National Board certified, teaches at Boyd County High School and has taught for eight years. Baldwin is highly involved in developing teacher leadership, as demonstrated by her involvement in Hope Street Group, ECET2 and Classroom Teachers Enacting Positive Solutions (CTEPS).  She earned a bachelor’s in biology from Murray State University and a master’s in education from the University of Tennessee at Martin.

Cassie, National Board Certified Teacher, taught six years at South Todd Elementary before moving to Russellville to teach at Stevenson Elementary. Cassie has devoted herself to maintaining a student-centered learning environment and instructional practice in which her students take ownership of their learning. Cassie is active in KEA and relishes the role of “hybrid” teacher-leader; it allows her to stay in the classroom while seeking professional development and sharing it with her colleagues.