The Educating All Learners Alliance Community of Action (CoA) brings together a diverse group of professionals twice a year to solve shared challenges affecting students with disabilities or learning differences.
Each Community of Action convening centers on selected promising practices. By the end of each event (within 36 hours), participants team up and present group ideas to their peers. Convening participants select one to three proposed solutions from their peers for implementation funding through participatory grantmaking.
Equally as influential as our participants are the coaches who volunteer their time and expertise. Sarah Bishop-Root, Partner of Policy Leadership at Education Reimagined, served as a coach for the December 4th-5th CoA convening.
“The opportunity to serve as an EALA Community of Action coach was a highlight of my year,” said Root. “I had the honor of holding space for an inspiring team that focused on generating a solution that was reflective of a collective challenge their orgs shared, to support learners with differences. It provided an opportunity for fun, authentic connection, deep listening, and to put into practice mindful and emergent coaching skills.”
Having reliable and thoughtful coaches for this event is what makes the experience for their attendees that much more impactful. Ben Solomon from AVID Center and Marissa Wicklund from Getting Smart were selected by community members for their project, the “Amplify Excellence Initiative.” This initiative plans to host a contest and communications to recognize educators demonstrating excellence in inclusive career exploration and development. Additionally, community members Jessi Brunken and Sergio Jara Arroyos from Blue Engine, Brooke Allen and Justine Katzenbach from Diverse Learners Cooperative, Tim Villegas and Brittni Sammons from Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education (MCIE), and Cindy Camp from The Described and Captioned Media Program were selected by community members for their project. Together, they are launching “Inclusion Today,” a nationwide awareness campaign to encourage school and district leaders to commit to inclusive practices and provide a “starter kit” for inclusive action.
Access this video to learn more about EALA’s Community of Action and go to educatingalllearners.org/community-of-action to sign up to stay in the loop on future convenings and updates.
“The EALA team created a very thoughtful framework for the competition process and brought a wonderful group of organizations together. Thank you, EALA team.”