Summit Goals

The goals of the 2026 Summit explicitly emphasized movement from alignment to action, including a deeper dive into programs, practices, and policies to advance teacher preparation pipelines. 

Participants engaged in learning, reflection, and planning to:

• Deepen understanding of current and emerging teacher preparation pathways

• Identify high‑impact strategies to strengthen recruitment, development, and retention

• Collaborate across sectors to build a sustainable, diverse educator workforce

• Leave with actionable next steps to advance a locally grounded teacher pipeline

Key Ideas

The 2026 Summit surfaced several critical insights about what it will take to build a sustainable educator workforce in Southern Maryland. These learnings highlight the importance of alignment, flexibility, teacher voice, and system‑level coherence. 

Strengthen Mentoring and Wrap‑Around Supports.

Differentiated supports for each stage of licensure, especially new, conditionally-licensed teachers, and better alignment between LEA and IHE coursework.

Pathways must be flexible, job‑embedded, and competency‑based.

IHEs are redesigning coursework to align with LEA needs and statewide competencies, and there are footholds for strong, continuously aligned programs.

 Working conditions are now central to pipeline strategy.

Retention cannot be solved without addressing working conditions.

Teacher voice is essential.

Teachers must help shape the systems designed to support them.

Collaboration is the region’s greatest strength -  and greatest need.

Tri‑county alignment is the key to sustainability. 

Next steps from the SOMD summit

1. Continue the work of Tri‑County Workgroups for 2026–2027

• Conditional Teacher Supports

• High School to Teacher Pathways

• Support Personnel to Teacher Pathways

2. Develop a Regional Pathway Navigation System

• Clear, accessible maps of all pathways from high school to apprenticeships to program completion

• Direct billing programs to alleviate out-of-pocket costs for potential teachers

• Transfer and credit policies

• Financial supports

3. Strengthen Mentoring and Induction

• Mentor training and ongoing support across LEAs

• Individualized learning plans for conditionals

• Shared mentor resources

4. Expand Early College and Apprenticeship Pathways

• Increase seats in Early College AAT

• Support LEAs in joining the statewide RTAP

• Align competencies with LEA expectations and MSDE standards

5. Address Workload and Retention

• Explore differentiated schedules

• Reduce out‑of‑contract expectations

• Strengthen school‑based supports

6. Elevate Teacher Voice

• Include teachers on panels, committees, and design teams

• Gather regular feedback from conditionals, apprentices, and TAM students

7. Build Shared Competency and Assessment Systems

• Align job-embedded competencies with regional evaluation models (e.g., Denielson)

• Co-develop shared rubrics for LEAs and IHEs

• Engage in range finding for artifacts to ensure inter‑rater reliability across institutions