A: Our grant work was strategically crafted to incorporate teacher voice as a way to continue the implementation of CCSS instruction across our four partner organizations. As teacher voice is something that can be hard to authentically capture and use at a high level for organizational planning, TCRP chose two different methods for engagement. The first is relatively simple: ask teachers for feedback on different aspects of the work and report this data in a meaningful way to influence what to keep and what to change. The second is to ask each teacher participating in one of our workshop strands to share a resource they created or curated with their fellow teachers.

A: The Southwest Georgia RESA and Coastal Plains RESA Teacher Practice Network (SW/CP RESA TPN) reflects collaboration between two educational service agencies in Southwest and South Central Georgia, providing support for teachers in grades 4-12 as they navigate instructional strategies that facilitate the implementation of CCSS literacy standards in all content area classes. The heart of our work can be found at our Teacher Practice Network RESA site, a support platform for a set of professional learning tutorials, which emphasizes using assessment data to select appropriate text and needed scaffolding strategies to assure students develop and improve literacy skills. 

During Phase I of our project, teachers who were trained in the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) were encouraged to act as mentor teachers and expand the use of LDC in their schools by using the online professional learning tutorials to help fellow teachers navigate CCSS. During Phase II, LDC specialists continue to expand the scale of work by training teachers in new schools, doubling the number of mentor teachers, and exponentially increasing the number of teachers supported. As the year progresses, SW/CP RESA TPN will continue to support the work of mentor teachers, increase the number of teachers who are experts in the use of LDC as a tool to facilitate the implementation of CCSS, and share the professional learning tutorials with schools in member districts to target specific areas of need when implementing CCSS.