Join the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) for an interactive, hands-on workshop designed to help LEA leaders and stakeholders navigate and leverage DC’s educator workforce data.

In this session, participants will:

• Gain Proficiency: Access and utilize OSSE’s citywide educator workforce data tools, resources, and platforms, including the Educator Talent and Equity (ETE) Dashboard.

• Compare and Contrast: Learn how to benchmark your individual organization’s workforce trends against citywide data to identify key strengths, areas for growth, and opportunities for value-add.

• Formulate Strategy: Engage in a collaborative group activity to craft actionable research questions regarding the educator pipeline and preparation, turning raw data into insights for planning and stakeholder engagement.

Whether you are a "Data Newbie" just getting started or a seasoned "Spreadsheet Sleuth" looking to dig deeper into DC’s educator landscape, this workshop will provide the tools and framework you need to make evidence-based decisions for your organization.

Note: This is a repeat of the data analysis session hosted in last year's summit. If you attended that one, we invite you to attend our new data analysis session focused on formulating research questions in Breakout Block 2.

Conference Room 401-D

School systems are confronting a persistent challenge: how to build a sustainable educator workforce that not only recruits new teachers but prepares and supports them to succeed and remain in the profession. This session highlights a comprehensive approach to educator development that creates multiple entry points into teaching while strengthening preparation and early-career support.

Through a partnership between a local education agency and an educator preparation provider, presenters will share a portfolio of pathways designed to meet diverse workforce needs. These include grow-your-own strategies, paraprofessional-to-teacher pathways, teacher residencies, apprenticeship models, and clinically rich preparation experiences that integrate coursework, mentorship, and on-the-job learning. Rather than relying on a single pipeline, this model offers a coordinated suite of options that allow aspiring educators to enter the profession at different stages while ensuring strong preparation and alignment with district needs.

Participants will learn how cross-sector collaboration can align recruitment, preparation, and induction to improve Day 1 readiness and early-career success. Presenters will also share lessons learned about designing flexible pathways, building strong clinical partnerships with schools, and supporting new teachers through mentorship and induction structures that promote retention and long-term impact.

Conference Room 401-E

Building a strong leadership pipeline requires intentional efforts to cultivate equity-centered leaders and to support them as they navigate the personal and political challenges of leading change. In this workshop, participants will explore the Resilient, Representative Leadership Framework and examine its 10 Essential Competencies. They will also learn how DC Public Schools has applied these tools to strengthen its leadership development programs, particularly through mentoring first‑year school leaders and equipping all principals with the resources to coach their aspiring leaders. Participants will engage in self‑reflection and leave with practical ideas to support and sustain their own leadership pipelines.

Conference Room 401-G

Why don’t more high school students consider education as a career path? At Washington Latin Public Charter Schools, students are tackling the national teacher shortage head-on through their first innovative CTE course: "Principles of Education and Training." And instead of just studying educational theory, these students are actively getting into classrooms and exploring the profession firsthand.

In the first half of this interactive session, attendees will engage directly with the next generation of educational leaders. Following a brief student-led icebreaker, participants will hear from high school students about their classroom experience and anticipated trajectory. To ensure attendees can turn this inspiration into action, the second half of the session will feature a dedicated "how-to" deep dive for LEA and school leaders. Peter Anderson and Justin Rydstrom will pull back the curtain on exactly how they built and staffed this successful CTE pathway. By exploring the practical logistics, costs, and program design, attendees will walk away with tools to replicate this model and cultivate homegrown educator pipelines in their own schools.

 5^th Floor Event Space

Across DC, schools face a common challenge: how to ensure students with the greatest learning needs are supported by educators with deep instructional expertise. In response, several schools have developed innovative approaches to strengthening the knowledge and practice of special education and intervention teachers while building sustainable instructional systems.

In this interactive panel session, network, organization, and teacher leaders from several DC schools will share how they developed their special education and intervention teams through focused professional learning, collaborative structures, and ongoing instructional coaching. Presenters will describe how they identified specific instructional gaps, built shared expertise in evidence-based literacy practices, and created structures that allowed teachers to practice, reflect, and refine their instruction over time.

Participants will hear directly from LEA and school staff about what worked, what they adjusted along the way, and how these efforts affected teacher confidence, collaboration, and student outcomes. Attendees will also have opportunities to reflect on how similar structures could support workforce development in their own schools.

Conference Room 401-A

Schools across DC are experiencing a set of persistent workforce challenges such as inconsistent preparation and support for novice teachers, insufficient collaboration time, and staffing models that leave educators isolated in a “one teacher, one classroom” structure. Many schools also struggle to effectively provide meaningful advancement pathways for both novice and experienced educators.

In this interactive Evidence‑to‑Action Lab, participants will self‑select into groups based on a challenge they identify in their own school. After a brief introduction to the career lattice, each group will choose one lattice‑aligned strategy that directly addresses its selected challenge. Participants will then turn that strategy into a simple, practical 90‑day action plan they can take back to their school or LEA.

Participants will leave with:

• A research‑aligned strategy tailored to a real workforce challenge in their context

• A draft 90‑day action plan

• Greater clarity on how Career Lattice innovations can strengthen educator preparation, leadership opportunities, retention, and school‑level staffing systems

5^th Floor Event Space

As schools work to strengthen educator pipelines and retain effective staff, competency-based career pathways offer a strategic approach to developing talent from within. This panel will highlight how intentional role design and clearly defined competencies can support transitions across key stages of the educator career continuum—from paraprofessional to teacher, teacher to peer leader, and peer leader to school administrator.

Featuring voices from the field, panelists will share their experiences navigating these transitions and discuss the systems, mentorship structures, and leadership opportunities that supported their growth. Participants will explore how schools and LEAs can design competency-based pathways that expand leadership opportunities, strengthen instructional capacity, and create sustainable pipelines for future school leaders. 

Conference Room 401-D

Experienced teachers make hundreds of instructional decisions every day but most of those decisions happen automatically, invisible to the resident teachers watching them. This session explores practical strategies for helping mentor teachers surface and articulate their professional thinking in real time, transforming clinical placements into rich apprenticeship experiences. Participants will explore protocols and coaching moves that support mentor teachers in narrating their decision-making, using think-alouds, and creating structured reflection routines that accelerate resident readiness.

Conference Room 401-G

Teacher and leader pathways begin with retention, not with incentives or programs—it begins with understanding. The strongest organizations know their people well enough to recognize the “inside jokes”: the shared language, pressures, motivations, and aspirations that shape daily work. When leaders truly understand their teams and the direction their organization is headed, they can design pathways that are both strategic and human-centered.

This session explores how school systems can move beyond generic retention strategies and instead build intentional teacher and leadership pathways rooted in deep knowledge of their people and their mission. Participants will examine how organizational vision, culture, and workforce realities intersect to shape innovative approaches to teacher development, leadership pipelines, and school design.

Through real examples and guided reflection, attendees will leave with practical ways to better understand their teams and use that insight (along with their startegic plan and organizational vision) to design pathways that strengthen retention, leadership capacity, and long-term organizational growth. 

Conference Room 401-E 

Preparing new educators for the complexity of today’s classrooms requires more than coursework—it requires opportunities to practice instructional decision-making in realistic contexts. This session will share how Instituto Mundo Verde (IMV) has implemented an AI-powered educator simulator to help teachers rehearse challenging classroom interactions before they occur in real life. 

Participants will learn how the simulator places educators in authentic scenarios involving students, colleagues, and internal decision-making moments. The scenarios focus on high-leverage teaching practices such as inquiry-based learning, language development in multilingual classrooms, differentiation for language learners, and the intersection of dual language and special education. 

We will share how the tool is used within IMV’s educator fellowship and professional learning model to strengthen teacher readiness, support reflective practice, and build confidence when navigating complex instructional situations. The session will highlight examples of simulation scenarios, demonstrate how AI provides feedback aligned with sustainability and culturally responsive teaching frameworks, and share early insights on how simulation can support teacher development and retention. 

Participants will leave with practical ideas for integrating simulation into induction programs, coaching models, and professional learning structures to better prepare educators for the realities of diverse classrooms. 

Conference Room 401-D

DC schools are under pressure from both directions: student needs are growing more complex and the educator workforce is stretched thin. Strategic staffing offers a practical path forward — and tutoring is the entry point.

When tutors, aides, and community educators are intentionally integrated into instructional teams, something powerful happens: students get more targeted support, early-career talent gets real classroom experience, and schools build a more sustainable, diverse pipeline into the teaching profession.

CitySchools Collaborative has spent years working alongside DC schools to design sustainable interventions that move the needle for students. In this session, we'll share what we're learning alongside DC school leaders who are rethinking their instructional teams to strengthen small-group instruction, upskill new talent, and create clearer pathways for educators at every level.

You'll leave with a concrete understanding of how high-impact tutoring and strategic staffing work together, what it takes to implement both, and ideas you can bring back to your own school or organization. 

Conference Room 401-F 

Schools must often meet diverse student needs while working within limited staffing resources. This session explores how strategic staffing decisions can align talent, time, and roles to expand instructional capacity and strengthen student outcomes.

Participants will learn how interventionists are assigned using student data to deliver targeted support, how grade-level leads promote instructional alignment and teacher collaboration, and how Early Childhood Education (PK and Kindergarten) aides are empowered to lead small-group instruction while building the skills needed to transition into classroom teaching roles. By intentionally designing these roles and structures, schools can maximize instructional time for students while also developing a sustainable internal pipeline of future educators.

Attendees will gain practical strategies for rethinking staffing models, leveraging support staff in meaningful instructional roles, and creating systems that simultaneously improve student learning and build educator capacity.

Conference Room 401-F

At Inspired Teaching Demonstration School, we learned — sometimes the hard way — that educator wellness isn't a luxury. It's the foundation for student success.

In this interactive workshop, participants will experience the strategies we've embedded across our school culture, including self-guided restorative circles, collaborative teaming structures, and other tools including committees and surveys. We'll share how we shifted from reacting to staff burnout to proactively building conditions where educators want to stay.

Participants will leave with a practical circle protocol ready to use with their teams, frameworks for identifying both tangible and intangible wellness supports, and strategies to address common barriers like time, funding, and buy-in.

We'll also tackle the "yes, but" moments — because we've lived them. Through a gallery walk and guided reflection, participants will map barriers and brainstorm real solutions alongside fellow educators.

This session is built on a simple belief: when relationships among adults in a building are strong, students feel it. Come ready to connect, reflect, and reimagine what wellness could look like in your school — because thriving staff build thriving schools.

Conference Room 401-E

Trinity Washington University’s Math for Educators certificate program, which launched in 2024 through a partnership with the District of Columbia Public Schools, is a new model of professional development designed for truly transformational change in the way mathematics is taught. The four-course sequence builds the capacity of teachers, coaches, and instructional leaders to deliver high-quality math instruction across grade levels by deepening mathematical content knowledge and enhancing instructional support strategies aligned with how students learn. Based on the Developing Mathematical Ideas series and Taking Action texts from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the curriculum uses real classroom case studies to explore how students learn math concepts. The program is playing a central role in the newly launched Capital Math Collective, a $20 million public-private partnership designed to accelerate math learning across Washington, D.C.

In this session, participants will engage in activities they would experience within the course sequence and will discuss how those activities develop the knowledge and skills that foster transformational change.

Conference Room 401-G

This session explores the direct connection between educator well-being and student outcomes, making the case that adult SEL is not a wellness add-on but a core staffing and culture strategy. Grounded in DC's K-Adult SEL Standards and OSSE's framework for a whole-school approach to educator wellness, the session draws on more than a decade of Peace of Mind's implementation experience across DC, Maryland, and Virginia schools.

Facilitated jointly by Peace of Mind's Executive Director and a clinical social worker and embedded Peace of Mind practitioner at Sousa Middle School, participants will move through mindfulness practices woven throughout the session, structured peer dialogue, and concrete takeaways they can use immediately.

Participants will leave able to:

• Articulate the relationship between educator well-being, school climate, and student outcomes

• Connect mindfulness-based practices to DC's K-Adult SEL Standards, particularly the Self-Awareness, Self-Management, and Relationship Skills competencies

• Describe how a train-the-trainer model builds sustainable, school-based SEL capacity

• Apply practical tools for embedding adult SEL into staff meetings, professional development, and daily school routines

The session is grounded in real implementation experience from a DC middle school and designed for immediate application. 

Conference Room 401-F

Too often, schools begin searching for strong Vice Principals and Directors only after a vacancy occurs. But what if leadership succession wasn’t reactive, but strategic?

LEAs and school leaders cannot afford to build leadership pipelines in moments of urgency. This session highlights how one leader at a public charter network designed and implemented an internal leadership development program to proactively develop high-performing instructional and non-instructional staff for future Vice Principal, Director, and manager-level roles.

Participants will explore how the program was built to solve a common challenge: strong individual contributors without structured pathways to grow into strategic, people-centered leaders, while giving their staff opportunities to feel seen, developed, and nurtured for their next step. Participants will leave with a practical blueprint to build depth, strengthen succession planning, and develop leadership capacity before vacancies arise.

In this intermediate-level interactive workshop, participants will explore OSSE’s educator workforce data tools and reports to better understand the data available to support their work. Through guided activities, they will learn how to formulate practical research questions and evaluate their quality. The session includes an overview of OSSE’s educator workforce data, hands‑on independent practice, and peer review, allowing participants to collaborate with other LEA and EPP leaders and leave with questions they can investigate using OSSE data.

This session is meant to build upon lessons from OSSE's Guided Data Analysis: Leveraging OSSE Data Tools and Resources session.

Our work includes but is not limited to: collecting and publishing DC educator workforce and EPP data, the OSSE Apprenticeship in Teaching program, EPP and SAP approval and reporting, school culture and climate, and restorative justice.

See our webpage here for more information: OSSE Educator Pipelines, Preparation and Supports | osse