Fostering the Capacity of Teacher Leadership in a K-5 RPPK12In-Person
School districts typically purchase prepackaged curriculum created by curriculum writers. Often, this method doesn’t allow for student needs of a certain demographic area to be met. A large urban school district composed of over 25,000 students and 4,500 teachers chose to prioritize the needs of their community. Over the past 5 years, district and school level administrators, researchers, evaluators, and educators have been involved in a large-scale Research Practice Partnership funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Over 50 teachers in the district wrote and revised computer science lessons to be integrated into preexisting content areas. Unique to this project, many teacher leaders were developed starting with five teacher coordinators who quickly became the guiding force of the project. They were able to develop skills necessary to coordinate a large scale RPP and made it their purpose to utilize other up and coming educators within the district to maximize exposure of the project and create sustainability. We have built the capacity for early adopters involved in the project to become facilitators in a variety of areas throughout the district. Teachers involved have become mentor teachers, facilitators of professional development, gained exposure in national and regional conferences, and even been hired as academic supervisors in the district. The RPP plans to continue to foster the development and growth of teacher leaders to guarantee the success of the project long after the RPP is complete.