Letter from Lisa Haney, Incoming Executive Director
Dear CATDC Community,
I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year, and to express my great excitement about taking over as the next Executive Director of the California Teacher Development Collaborative come July 1, 2017. I look forward to leading and growing the organization, building upon the great work that Janet McGarvey has done. I am deeply passionate about the potential of the CATDC. My hope is to create a statewide community of learners and leaders, administrators and teachers collaborating to spark innovation and foster excellent education for California students.
For the last decade, the CATDC has been central to my own professional development. I remember vividly the first workshop I attended—Mastering Group Facilitation with David Barkan. It was early August and I had just been appointed Dean of Faculty at the Athenian School; the new faculty orientation was days away, and there were meeting agendas to set and classes to plan. As I drove over the Bay Bridge on my way to the workshop, I thought to myself, this had better be good. In fact, this three-day experience was excellent—engaging, dynamic, empowering and motivating; well worth my time. These have been qualities central to every CATDC experience I have participated in since.
Just about as soon as I truly found my feet as an educator, I became involved in teacher education: teaching cross-cultural communication at UC Berkeley Extension and later developing trainings for elementary school teachers in East Africa, as well as coaching faculty and leading reflective inquiry groups at Athenian. I think I took this path partly because I understood intuitively what research has borne out: providing well-designed professional development opportunities for educators leads to a higher quality of experience for students. I also appreciated how busy teachers and school leaders themselves need dedicated time to connect and collaborate, to learn and to grow. It is no wonder I am so passionate about the CATDC, as it provides just these kinds of opportunities, and does it so well!
I believe in the power of education to transform young people, to help them become more thoughtful, skillful and creative, and better able to build a more just and harmonious world. Independent school teachers and administrators are uniquely positioned to provide this kind of transformative education; their work is more important than ever, and thus so is the charge to support their own development. Having experienced firsthand the power of the CATDC’s programs, I am eager to deepen and extend its reach.
I look forward to meeting many of you in the coming months at workshops and other events. Feel free to reach out to me to introduce yourself and offer your own ideas about the CATDC’s future.
Sincerely,
Lisa Haney
Incoming Executive Director, CATDC
Lisa Haney: Lisa Haney is a lifelong educator of youth and adults whose career has taken her to Japan, Mexico, Martinique and Tanzania. During her 25-year tenure at the Athenian School in Danville, California, she has served in many roles, including International Program Director, Humanities Teacher, Department Chair, and Dean of Faculty Development. Beyond Athenian, Lisa has engaged in teacher education through UC Berkeley Extension; the San Francisco Unified School District; The Center for Teacher Education, Training and Research; and the Tanzania Ministry of Education. She has a BA in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and a MAT from the School for International Training. Lisa lives in Oakland with her husband, Mark Friedman, and has one daughter, Kaia Haney, now a senior at Duke University.