The Introductory Call Every Case Manager Should Make
A Common Scenario We’ve all been there. It’s mid-October and the school year is in full swing. You’re co-teaching in 6th grade ELA, and Michael (a student on your caseload) raises his hand to answer a question. You hold your breath – this is a BIG deal. Michael is a struggling reader, making him very […]
Preparing Special Educators Through Practice, Coaching, and Community
Across Tennessee, and especially in Nashville, schools continue to face a critical shortage of qualified special educators. Meeting that need requires more than recruiting teachers. It requires preparing educators in ways that reflect the realities of today’s classrooms. That’s the vision behind the Special Education Job-Embedded Pathway, a partnership between Diverse Learners Cooperative (DLC) and […]
In Their Own Words: Two Fellows Reflect on a Year of Leading
The Teacher Leader Fellowship is a meaningful year of coaching and growth, school visits, mentor communities, and a culminating Impact Project. What actually happens to an educator over the course of a year in this program is harder to summarize. We asked two of our 2025-26 fellows to tell us themselves. Isormari Pozo is an […]
A Leadership Transition at the Diverse Learners Cooperative
DLC community, We’re writing to share an important update about the next chapter ahead for the Diverse Learners Cooperative. After founding and leading DLC over the last nine years, Brooke Allen will be closing her time with the organization this summer to begin a school founder role with the Nashville Incubator. DLC began when Brooke […]
What the Data Tells Us: Special Education in Nashville’s Charter Schools
The full program study is available now. Read it here! Nashville’s charter schools have changed significantly over the past decade. Most are fully grown now, with experienced leaders, stable communities, and students who have been with them for years. For many of those schools, the question has shifted from how do we build a special […]
Why Good Retention Strategies Don’t Always Stick and How to Address It
If you talk to almost any school leader who serves students with disabilities or multilingual learners, you’ll likely hear some version of the same teacher retention story. They tried a new onboarding process, stipend, or a restructured planning block. For a while it worked, or seemed to, but then the school year picked up, priorities […]
From Root Cause to Action: Building a Teacher Retention Model
Three years ago, the Diverse Learners Cooperative published a teacher retention report that named what many schools already felt: special educators and multilingual learner educators were leaving at rates the field couldn’t sustain. The report identified the conditions that made it possible for educators serving students with the most complex needs to stay, thrive, and […]
You Collected the Data. Now What? A Case Manager’s Guide to End-Of-Year IEP Progress
The final weeks of school are a lot between testing schedules, classroom celebrations, transition paperwork, and the general beautiful chaos of the end of a school year. For special education case managers, there’s one more thing that deserves a dedicated spot on your calendar before you close out: a purposeful review of your students’ IEP […]
No Gaps in Support: A Case Manager’s Guide to Student Year-End Handoffs
The end of the school year is a season of celebrations, closeouts, and chaos. For special education teachers, there’s one thing that can make or break how a student starts their next school year: what you hand off, and how. Every student is about to experience a transition. New teachers, classrooms, schools. For students with […]
When Co-Planning Is the System, Not the Exception: IGNITE Partnership
Most schools want general and special education teachers to collaborate, but fewer have built the systems to make it actually happen. The IGNITE Nashville Network exists to close this gap. Launched in summer 2024 through a national partnership between the DLC, TN SCORE, and Marshall CoLab, IGNITE Nashville supports co-planning implementation across ten Nashville charter […]