What we do
Sustaining the Next Generation of Community-Connected Educators
Early-career teachers are leaving the profession at alarming rates — especially teachers of color and those committed to equity.
Nearly half of new teachers leave the profession within five years, with the highest attrition rates in high-poverty and high-minority schools. Teachers of color and those committed to equity face even greater challenges: racial isolation, cultural taxation, burnout, and inadequate support. Even when teachers enter the field with strong preparation in Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT), their ability to sustain equity-focused practice is shaped by their early teaching environments. When school cultures marginalize student voice and community knowledge, new teachers often lose the very practices they came in to champion. These patterns are structural—and they harm both educators and students.
Hello, World!
Hello, World!
Hello, World!
We equip early-career educators with the support and community they need to teach in alignment with their values.
We develop and sustain community-connected educators through a three-part learning and support model designed to build expertise, belonging, and longevity in the profession.
Develop Community Knowledge
Educators engage in immersive, place-based learning experiences that deepen their understanding of the histories, identities, and cultural ways of knowing and being connected to the communities they serve.
Through guided work with community elders, knowledge holders, leaders, and organizations, participants learn to recognize the wisdom and significance of community knowledges. Over time, they build the relationships and understanding necessary to teach through community-based ways of knowing and being, rather than about them.
This work begins with local history, place, and identity and expands to sustained engagement with community cultures different from one’s own.
Learn How to Use Community Knowledge in the Classroom
Community knowledge becomes transformative when educators know how to translate it into practice.
Participants receive structured support to incorporate community-based ways of knowing and being into curriculum, instruction, assessment, and classroom culture. This includes developing culturally relevant teaching practices, adapting existing lessons, and designing new learning experiences grounded in community knowledge.
Learning is supported through summer institutes, inservice workshops, coaching, and collaborative problem-solving with peers who are engaged in similar work.
Sustain Educators Through Relationships, Wellbeing, and Radical Joy
Retention is not a matter of individual resilience. It is a matter of relational support, collective care, and joy in both teaching and life.
TEECH intentionally creates time and space for educators to build supportive relationships with one another, practice wellbeing strategies, and experience radical joy as a sustaining force in their professional lives.
These structures are designed to reduce isolation, interrupt burnout, and help educators remain in the profession with a sense of purpose, connection, and humanity.
Who is this Program for?
We develop and sustain community-connected educators through a three-part learning and support model designed to build expertise, belonging, and longevity in the profession.
Contact us
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