Welcome to Equity & Instruction in Massachusetts!
By: Equity, Instruction In Massachusetts
Tags: Equity, Covid 19, Teaching, Education, Evaluation

We’re excited and grateful to have you join us here. We’ll try to keep it brief — we know that as teachers and school leaders, there’s a lot on your mind as you continue to grapple with the countless challenges that come with PK-12 schooling during a pandemic. We are beyond appreciative of all you have done and continue to do for your students and school communities.

We started this blog because we’re hoping to spark a conversation with you: during the unusual context of COVID-19, and with our national conversation finally focused more on racial justice, we’re exploring opportunities to rethink how things are done in schools and classrooms and how we can do better, especially by Black, Indigenous, students and educators of color who are so often marginalized by our current systems. One such system we are considering is educator evaluation — the ways it supports you to learn and grow as educators and the ways it could be improved to be more meaningful, supportive, and culturally responsive for everyone. We hope you’ll join this conversation, lend your voice, and share this journey with us.

Who We Are: We want to focus the content of this blog on you — the educators of Massachusetts who make incredible things happen every day for their students and communities. But first, it feels important to introduce ourselves. We’re the Educator Effectiveness team in the Center for Instructional Support at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and we work to make sure that educators have the tools and support they need to provide an enriching and culturally responsive space for their students to learn and grow. As former teachers and administrators ourselves, we seek to make our projects and initiatives supportive of your work and responsive to what’s going on in your classrooms and schools. We hope a conversation with you, through this blog, will help make that happen.

What This Is: Throughout the year, we’re hoping to use this space to hear from educators and highlight your experiences of professional growth and development, within and beyond the evaluation process. In light of historic and ongoing systemic racism in our education system, we especially want to elevate the voices of educators who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

We want to hear from you! Comment below and tell us:

When it comes to feedback and evaluation, what is most important to you? What supports do you need to thrive as an educator?

Throughout the school year, we’ll use this blog to share updates and surveys from our team, interviews with educators, and videos and other resources promoting equity and highlighting educator practice.

We’re looking forward to getting this conversation started with you. In the meantime, we hope you’ll subscribe to this blog (click the “About” link in the header to subscribe by email) so we can reach out to you directly with opportunities to share your voice! And of course, we’re thinking of you and wishing you well as you progress through this unusual school year.

All the best,

Anna, Claire, Shannon, & Stefany (the PK-12 Educator Effectiveness Team in the Center for Instructional Support)