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The North Carolina Public School Forum is excited to sponsor the Rural Teacher Leader Network for teacher leaders in Western North Carolina. Thirty-three teacher leaders from ten NC districts were selected to participate in the 2023-2024 cohort.

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The North Carolina Public School Forum is excited to sponsor the Rural Teacher Leader Network for teacher leaders in Western North Carolina. Thirty-three teacher leaders from ten NC districts were selected to participate in the 2023-2024 cohort.

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The North Carolina Public School Forum is excited to sponsor the Rural Teacher Leader Network for teacher leaders in Eastern North Carolina. Thirty-four teacher leaders from eight NC districts were selected to participate in the inaugural cohort, beginning August 2022.

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The North Carolina Public School Forum is excited to sponsor the Rural Teacher Leader Network for teacher leaders in Eastern North Carolina. Thirty-four teacher leaders from eight NC districts were selected to participate in the inaugural cohort, beginning August 2022.

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Rural Teacher Leader Network - Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity

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The Rural Teacher Leader Network is designed to develop a sustainable network of Eastern NC rural educators who seek to improve their practice and foster community with teacher leaders from across districts.

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The Roadmap of Need is a whole child needs assessment for North Carolina youth.

The Roadmap presents county-level data and rankings on 20 indicators of wellness across five domains: economic development, physical health, mental health and safety, education inputs, and education outcomes. We believe these five domains capture the interconnected conditions and resources that are necessary for a child to succeed, both inside and outside of the classroom. A whole child needs assessment is critical to understanding what is needed for each child to have in order to thrive in school and in life. The Roadmap serves as a key resource for policymakers, school leaders, out of school time providers, funders, nonprofits, families, and the public to identify and communicate about areas in need of targeted investment.

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County Profiles Alamance Alexander Alleghany Anson Ashe Avery Beaufort Bertie Bladen Brunswick Buncombe Burke Cabarrus Caldwell Camden Carteret Caswell Catawba Chatham Cherokee Chowan Clay Cleveland Columbus Craven Cumberland Currituck Dare [...]

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Rural Teacher Leader Network promotes collaboration across districts (Article by EdNC)

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Rural Teacher Leader Network promotes collaboration across districts (Article by EdNC)

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Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity

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By Cheyenne McNeill, EducationNC
July 17, 2023

In 2021, the Public School Forum of North Carolina launched the first cohort of the Rural Teacher Leader Network (RTLN), which is designed for rural educators seeking to improve their practice and foster community with teacher leaders from districts across the state.

Programming for RTLN is facilitated by the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity. The Flood Center facilitates the program in partnership with Leading EDge Learning.

Ashley Kazouh, the associate director of the Dudley Flood Center, said RTLN was created to help meet teachers' needs.

"It was developed out of a need of educators for capacity building around certain aspects of topics that center around culturally responsive teaching, trauma-informed strategies and learning, global learning, teacher leadership, and policy," Kazouh said. "All of this is wrapped around an equity lens."

Anonymous Trust is the funder for the eastern RTLN cohorts. GearUp at Appalachian State University receives funding for the Western cohort and supports programming there.

Initially, RTLN started in 2021 in eastern North Carolina, with educators coming from Clinton City, Duplin County, Greene County, Jones County, Onslow County, Sampson County, Lenoir County, and Wayne County schools.

The first western cohort launched this year, with educators from Allegany, Ashe, Burke, Clay, Graham, Madison, Swain, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey counties.

The need to expand

RTLN is a year-long commitment. Cohort members meet in person once every three months in addition to various virtual sessions offered. Each training session focuses on the different pillars of the program: global learning, trauma-informed strategies, policy and advocacy, and teacher leadership. The virtual sessions that follow allow the cohort to stay connected, while offering a chance to reflect on the content learned.

It's important that with each training, educators are walking away with steps for classroom implementation. Kazouh said this includes strategy and content suggestions that educators can immediately implement. This is where the cohort model comes into play.

The community and cohort-based network allow educators to learn from and partner with people from different districts, often creating partnerships they wouldn't have otherwise.

The response from educators has been overwhelmingly positive, so much so that the Flood Center created an alumni network for educators to stay connected with RTLN even after completing the program.

An equity-centered program

Deanna Townsend-Smith, the senior director of the Dudley Flood Center, said RTLN provides resources in rural communities where resources can often be scarce or limited.

"I often feel that in education in general, having a true, grounded understanding in the importance of understanding what educational equity is and why it is important, regardless of your regional position, is something that is lacking," Townsend-Smith said. "So being able to do that consistently in a rural space has been important for us."

Townsend-Smith and Kazouh agree - the concepts learned in RTLN provide educators and districts with the tools to implement best practices.

"When we talk about educators and general leadership - administration, anyone - they all have this want to do what is best for our students," Kazouh said. "Sometimes there is just a gap between that want and knowing how to do that."

A guiding principle of RTLN is equity. Kazouh said it's a value that's woven into all of the training sessions RTLN offers.

"We want to make sure that when we say equity, we do give them a definition that it means that every child is served. No matter where they come from, no matter who they are, every child receives what they need," Kazouh said. "We try to build in those equity concepts throughout."

Investing in communities and making connections across districts

Part of what makes RTLN appealing is the opportunity for collaboration across districts that allows educators to share ideas and hone their craft.

Kazouh said this is an opportunity that allows beginning teachers to work with mid-career teachers and even some veteran teachers - something she says benefits everyone involved.

Another major benefit is teacher retention. While the program is still young, participants in RTLN aren't leaving the profession. Townsend-Smith credits the relevant professional development that RTLN provides.

"I think that is because they are receiving professional learning that is relevant that they can apply to their everyday practice," Townsend-Smith said.

Ashley Grant teaches at Greene County Middle School and participated in the 2022-23 RTLN cohort.

Since participating in RTLN, Grant has seen the benefits of the program in her classroom and her relationship with her students. Grant created a "take what you need" station in her classroom that's stocked with personal care items like soap, deodorant, and more.

It's a small act that Grant thinks allows students to feel cared for.

"I've also seen that maximize my relationship with the kids because they see it as Ms. Grant taking care of them, and caring about them," Grant said.

Since participating in the program, creating a network with other rural educators and learning together has helped Grant grow as an educator.

"The Rural Teacher Leadership Network, for me, was an amazing opportunity to get to connect with like-minded teachers who have passion for their students, have passion for rural education, want to elevate it, and to be able to hone my skills and improve my craft and my pedagogy, but also to hopefully improve the experience for our rural students in North Carolina," Grant said.

Steps ahead

For Grant, the experience has been critical.

"This job is not easy. It is a very difficult job. It is a draining job. It's an important job, and the stakes are very, very high," Grant said. "To add to your support system and your network of people that you can call on, get advice from, get feedback from - that is invaluable."

The Flood Center is preparing to open applications for upcoming cohorts by the fall for districts designated through grant funding. If a district is interested in being a part of RTLN, it should contact the Flood Center for more information.

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Rural Teacher Leader Network promotes collaboration across districts - Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity

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By Cheyenne McNeill, EducationNCJuly 17, 2023 In 2021, the Public School Forum of North Carolina launched the first cohort of the Rural Teacher Leader Network (RTLN), which is designed for [...]

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RTLN Teacher Leader -Tim Gallagher Article

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RTLN Teacher Leader -Tim Gallagher Article

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The pandemic changed the school cafeteria line. Breakfast was put into plastic bags for students to take back to their classroom.

For a few years, the sealable, gallon-sized plastic bags came into classrooms with breakfast for students and was tossed in the trash can once the meal was finished. All of the food came prepackaged, so the bags were clean except for the occasional condensation from hot foods being inside the bag.

Heritage Middle School Teacher Tim Gallagher saw those bags piling up in the trash bins and considered a solution that was a little more earth-friendly.

His concern came into focus in early September when he noticed fellow teacher Erik Bathe collecting the bags to be repurposed.

"I said, 'Bathe, what are you doing with these?'" Gallagher said. "He's like, 'Well, I give them to the art teacher. Sometimes I take them home and use them. They're perfectly good.'"

That's when Gallagher, a member of the school's Global Leaders team, saw the bags as an opportunity to make a global change that ties in directly to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production.

Gallagher said the decision goes back to a lesson he learned from Freebird McKinney, director of partnership development at Participate Learning, on scaling your goals.

"He says you have to scope your globe," McKinney said. "So, the way he looks at it is this: you think of global changes as such a huge, huge undertaking. How am I going to change the world? That's the first thing I asked myself ... You have to change the scope so that your globe is small, and then you work out so it's a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger until you see changes being made around you."

On Sept. 25, Gallagher told his eighth-grade classroom they would be making the classroom their globe, and they were going to make some changes, starting with the plastic bags.

About 22 bags were collected on the first day. Gallagher put together a group of students to spread the word to other classrooms before breakfast was served.

That day, they collected 102 bags. The school distributes about 350 breakfasts a day in the plastic bags.

Before long, seventh-graders were bringing in bags.

Some of the students made a video about what they're doing and why it's important, and Gallagher said they plan to use that video to help recruit the sixth-graders to their cause. Summer Thompson, the art teacher at Heritage Middle, has been working with students to create infographics for the cause.

"Through the actions of kids, through the changes the changes the kids are helping to make, we can potentially see a powerful change at the school level," Gallagher said. "And that is so powerful for them, I think, that they can see that something they took part in changed the policy of the school?"

Gallagher was invited by Participate Learning, the organization that oversees the Global Leaders program, to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's Accelerate, Invigorate, Motivate Conference on Oct. 10, where he had a chance to set up a table during an expo and share the project with teachers from across the state.

Global Leaders hopes to prepare students for the modern workforce by integrating global issues, current events and global competencies into already existing school priorities. Heritage Middle School is the only Global Leader school in the Burke County Public Schools system, Gallagher said.

Moving forward, they'll tackle more of the U.N.'s sustainable development goals in projects using the plastic bags as a model.

"I ... want to see kids think more critically and act on change, no matter how big or how small it is," Gallagher said. "Just make changes around you to make improvements. Make improvements around you all the time, and it's easy to do if that's your habit."

He estimated the student are now saving about 200 plastic bags a day from ending up in a landfill.

Chrissy Murphy is a Morganton News Herald staff writer and can be reached at cmurphy@morganton.com or at 828-432-8941. Follow @cmurphyMNH on Twitter.

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Burke middle school students, teacher recycle plastic bags

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On Sept. 25, Gallagher told his eighth-grade classroom they would be making the classroom their globe, and they were going to make some changes, starting with the plastic bags.