Workshops

Coaching: the Eyes, Ears and Wise Guidance We Need

Education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads. It’s the habits we develop as we keep revising our drafts and the skills we build to keep learning. –Adam Grant, Think Again I began teaching in an independent school with no idea how to best support my students’ learning, despite having a Masters…
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A Letter to Teachers

I spent a good part of the summer (and the months leading up to it) planning and co-facilitating Teaching Foundations in Southern California and the Bay Area with a team of stellar facilitators and cohorts of inspiring participants. While I end each session feeling physically tired, my heart always is full, and from that fullness,…
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A Rising Tide Will Lift All Boats

My parents immigrated to the United States from Central America, and I began my school career as an English Language Learner. Having graduated from Saint Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Saint Mary’s Kalmanovitz School of Education, I understand what it means to…
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Cultivating the Leadership Seed: My Journey with the CATDC

Debbie Reed began the first meeting of the Leadership Fellows Program with a story of her journey, when she was a girl, cutting out pictures of mythological creatures from magazines, knowing that someday she would use those clippings when she became the teacher she aspired to be. That journey would take Debbie through numerous schools,…
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Applying CATDC Practices of Learning and Leading to your own School Community

Over the past decade we, Cathy Aragon, Meredith Landis and Sylvia Rodriguez Douglass, have individually learned from many workshops and conferences provided by the CATDC. In the last year we found ourselves drawn into conversation, reflecting on what we brought away from these professional learning opportunities and recognizing the major themes in our work that…
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So What Do White 4th Graders Have to Say About Race?

As it turns out, a lot. Twice a month I get to work with fourth graders at a local school. The district has a stated commitment to racial equity and has been considering culturally responsive strategies with faculty and staff. When some middle school students of color reported a series of racial microaggressions, the administration…
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