What we DO

In the United States, the education system isn’t designed to center student experiences.

 For Black students and students of color especially, this leads to persistent inequities in the ways they experience school. CEL partners with leaders — from the classroom to the central office — to disrupt this by facilitating contextualized professional learning and coaching.
 
We work side-by-side with central office, school, and teacher leaders. Tapping into existing expertise and elevating the experiences of students, we co-create school communities where all students, particularly those furthest from justice, can be happy and proud. Through our highly collaborative professional learning opportunities, we lean into deep listening, job-embedded learning, and humble cooperation to support equity-driven leaders.

Our approach.

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RESEARCH-BASED

By linking research to practice, we help leaders establish a shared vision and language to ground practice.

SIDE-BY-SIDE

We work alongside leaders to understand root causes, track outcomes, and tackle problems of practice in classrooms and across schools.
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CONTEXTUALIZED

We listen to what leaders are trying to accomplish and their why, and then we support their specific goals.

STRENGTHS-BASED

We build from strengths because leader expertise and experience matters as much as ours.
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INQUIRY-BASED

We help leaders reflect on the impact of their practice, deepen their own learning, and translate insights into actions.

COLLECTIVE

Learning is social. By tapping into the team's existing expertise, we help you foster a community of deep learners committed to action.

Why we take this approach.

We understand that educational inequities are the logical outcome of policies, practices and systems designed primarily by those with privilege. In order to live in a world where a child’s ability to realize a limitless future for themselves is not predetermined by their race, we recognize the need for deep listening, focused learning and humble cooperation. We are committed to learning, teaching and leading alongside our colleagues and students of color as partners and allies to raise up and amplify their voices, cultures and experiences in order to co-create communities that uphold the fundamental values of human rights and racial equity.

 

Who are our partners?

CEL partners with leaders eager to improve and who consider learning to lead for equitable student outcomes to be their most important professional and personal work.

We work with school districts across the country, helping leaders build a shared vision and mission for schools where all students are happy and proud. By providing contextualize professional learning, we’re able to meet the needs of a wide variety of school systems in terms of size, geography and demographics. Our partners are large and small districts, rural, urban, and suburban. Working system-wide — from central offices to classrooms — we help districts get smarter about quality instruction to maximize their impact.

 

Other partners include: 
  • AASA The School Superintendents Association (AASA) – CEL partners with AASA for programs like the AASA National Principal Supervisor Academy to increase access to professional learning for instructional leadership
  • Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals (MASSP) – MASSP provides professional development and Pivot, a technology tool, for use of the 5D+ Rubric for Instructional Growth and Teacher Evaluation™
  • San Diego County Office of Education – Through its partnership with CEL, SDCOE makes professional learning available to California school districts for Targeted Feedback for Teacher Growth
  • Stuart Foundation – Through a partnership with the Stuart Foundation, CEL explores programming and tools to support the development of school and district leadership capacity across the state of California