Author: madelynvictoria

By Mary Matthews, Special Education Program Specialist Teachers: you’ve made it. You’ve survived those critical first weeks of the school year. At this point, you have approximately one hundred items on your to-do list, you feel like your classroom needs to be cleaned up again, you have lessons to plan for that evaluation coming up, and…

By Mary Rakes, Director of EL Strategy One of the biggest questions I get as I work with EL teachers is: How do I know I am giving my students the right supports? I love this question for so many reasons. It is honest, humble and heartfelt. Teachers of ELs often are afraid they are going to…

By Mary Rakes, Director of EL Strategy and the DLC Teacher Leader Fellowship “Thank you for providing a much needed avenue that supports us, as EE and EL teachers. We often are the overlooked or last to be thought about teachers in a building. Having the opportunity to share, learn and grow with a group…

By Justine Katzenbach, Director of Special Education Strategy Wouldn’t you rather have two teachers in the classroom than one? Co-teaching is a commonly used educational practice in which two certified teachers collaborate to jointly support a group of students receiving general, special, and/or English language educational services. But wait, not so fast! Just because you…

By Cristina Villarreal Smith, DLC Engagement Specialist As soon as you walk into Mrs. Giamanco’s room, you get the feeling that learning happens here. There are quotes from texts dissected on the walls with student thoughts scrawled on sticky notes around them. There are sentence and conversation starters posted for students to use as they…

By Cristina Villarreal Smith, DLC Engagement Specialist It is well known that the job title “special education teacher” means much more than just that. As a teacher, you may often act as a social worker, advocate, guide, and more for your students and their families. The beginning of the school year can be especially overwhelming,…

Welcome back to our series on the DLC Teacher Leader Fellowship! For an overview of the DLC Teacher Leader Fellowship, see here. One thing that has been important for us to define in regards to the Fellowship is the Impact Project. As a teacher, I might read those words and think, “No time for that!” We…

Over three hundred professional development participants, thousands of Slack messages, sixteen member schools, hundreds of coaching meetings over countless cups of coffee has taught us a few things this year. For one, Nashville has some stellar teachers and leaders. Two, those teachers and leaders are asking for more: After asking tons of questions, listening to…

In 2017, a Nashville non-profit commissioned me to conduct a needs assessment around special education in Nashville’s charter schools. The aim was to determine primary strengths and challenges of local charters in meeting the needs of students with disabilities and propose a potential mode of support to grow best practice in this regard. The needs…