Reports & Publications

Using Improvement Science to Impact Educator Learning

(12/10/2024) Explore a collaboration between a large district and a teachers union that uses improvement science to structure professional learning driven by educator needs. Learn how this collaboration supports teachers to learn together and how leaders are building new ways to understand the impact of educator learning on practice and on students. Gain access to a tool kit of resources and examples. (Learning Forward 2024 Annual Conference Session 2405) 

Presenters: 

• Barbara Shreve, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Mark Lonergan, Boston Public Schools Telescope Network

• Alison Mosher, Boston Public Schools Telescope Network

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Learning Site Toolkit: Innovative Educator-Led PD for Continuous Improvement

(3/25/2024) How do you help spread effective practices across a district? In Boston, we use Learning Sites to share effective classroom practices and put educators in the driver's seat to implement improvements to their own practice. Come explore our Learning Site toolkit in this interactive presentation, a ready-to-use resource for implementing this professional learning model for classroom educators that links in-depth observation of an effective and reflective practitioner to individual PDSA cycles designed to address a contextualized problem of practice. The session will include video components of a Learning Site so that participants can see the model in action.

 (Carnegie Summit 2024) 

Presenters: 

• Alison Mosher, Lead Networker for the Telescope Network, Boston Public Schools

• Mark Lonergan, Lead Networker for the Telescope Network, Boston Public Schools

• Shakera Ford Walker, Asst Superintendent, Teacher Development and Leadership, Boston Public Schools

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Educator Interview: Alice Daly (Lee K-8)

(6/2025 Boston Union Teacher)  Part of the mission of the Telescope Network is to conduct a needs assessment where we ask educators across the district to share what they want and need to learn next in order to best serve the needs of their students. This month, we interviewed Alice Daly, an ABA classroom teacher at the Lee K-8... . . 

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Learning Site Debrief: Breaking Down the Invisible Moves

(4/2025 Boston Union Teacher)  On November 15, 2024 the Telescope Network hosted a Learning Site at the Dearborn STEM Academy on the topic ““How do we implement Illustrative Math (IM) in a high school classroom to create inclusive, student centered math learning experiences?” The session brought 11 teachers and instructional coaches from across BPS for an extended peer observation of host educator Cindy Nguyen, ESL paraeducator Luisa Pina, and their 10th grade math class at the. . . 

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Teachers and coaches learn together at Boston’s learning sites

(2/2025 The Learning Professional)  Biology teacher Sarah Benat stood at the front of her classroom at Brighton High School in Boston, moving her arm up and down to mimic the slope of an increasing, decreasing, or constant line on a graph.  Her twelve students, all in the early stages of learning English, responded to each arm movement with a. . . 

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Needs Assessment: Decoding Educator Voice

(11/2024 Boston Union Teacher)  After more than 15 years as a teacher, Mike Garland (Grew Elementary) knows good professional development when he sees it. Last spring, he attended a Telescope Network Learning Site at J.F. Kennedy Elementary and it was exactly what he needed. “I couldn't have designed that, even in my best efforts,” he said. “But that was what I had been asking for: this idea of being able to talk with other teachers and see it modeled efficiently, and to be able to ask questions, and a space to hash it out together.” For Garland, the session on . . . 

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One Teacher’s Journey to Peer Leadership

(10/2024 Boston Union Teacher) On a Tuesday morning back in April, Bang Pham’s fourth-grade students at the Edison Elementary School in Brighton were working to create narratives featuring characters and events that reflected their lived experiences. After an energetic transition, Bang stood in front of his class reading the end of a story he had written about a visit to the Frog Pond when he was about their age . . . 

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Effective Teaming for Inclusion Learning Site

(03/2024 Boston Union Teacher) “This is our first time doing partner reading so Mrs. Lezama and I are going to model it for you.” Ken Rosenthal was standing at the front of the third grade inclusion classroom at Clap Elementary. Sixteen pairs of eyes were trained on him as he began to read from a copy of More Than Anything Else, a fictionalized text about the life of Booker T. Washington. After reading a paragraph, he looked at his co-teacher, Dania Lezama. The students turned slightly to look at her as she said, “I’m Mr. Rosenthal’s partner, so I am going to tell him the gist of the paragraph he just read.”  After summarizing the excerpt, she restated the process of partner reading while Mr. Rosenthal wrote it on the board.  He began pairing the students while she gathered a small group of students to read with her, and paraprofessional Iram Akhtar circulated quickly around the room to. . . 

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EL in Action Learning Site: Host Teacher Profile

(06/2023 Boston Union Teacher) It was the Friday afternoon before April break, and Nia Reid-Patterson’s third-floor classroom at the Conley Elementary School in Roslindale was hot – really hot – thanks to some unusually warm spring weather. Outside the window, the sun was shining and vacation awaited. These were not the most conducive conditions for serious academic work, but Nia and her 6th-grade ELA inclusion students were unfazed. They were working in pairs to describe the main character’s point of view in Two Roads by Joseph Bruchac, a historical novel in which. . . 

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SLIFE Learning Cohort

(2023) Boston Union Teacher) One day in October, Ariana Sicairos-McCarthy taught an ESL mini-lesson to three of her students in the SLIFE (Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education) program at Frederick Pilot Middle School. During the twenty-five minute lesson, she led the students through saying a list of “s-blend” words like snip and swim, a card sort of the same words, a short story read-aloud featuring the target words, and a writing activity that challenged the students to summarize the story in their own words.  Her students . . 

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