Core Competencies and Expertise

CTL’s central focus is improving K-16 classroom practice.  Our approach to helping teachers reach and teach all learners has at its core the belief that teachers must first experience the kind of instruction that helps all students learn, and then receive positive, ongoing support as they transform their teaching.  Pre-packaged solutions, recipes and checklists don’t work; a commitment to co-creating instructional approaches,  building teacher knowledge, and increasing the capacity for informed decision making does. 

Based on the belief that all involved in the educational endeavor must make the improvement of instruction and student learning a priority, CTL’s work includes school and district administrators as well as state leaders.  CTL’s unique approach to engaging adult learners in new ways includes infusing the arts into all professional development activities.  We know through research and our own experience that the arts provide a unique means for connecting students to their learning, besides having value on their own as critical disciplines.  The arts give students multiple ways to learn and express learning, and promote creative and original thinking.

CTL organizes its work and continues to build capacity around three areas of competency: Literacy, Leadership, The Arts.  Following are competencies in each area:

Literacy

• Supporting teachers to apply literacy strategies across disciplines, so that students have the skills to master challenging content
• Developing in teachers specialized knowledge of reading, writing, listening, speaking and observing so that they can support their students’ literacy development
• Deepening teachers’ understanding of mathematics and science content and processes to increase student achievement and preparation for higher learning
• Engaging teachers in active, hands-on learning aimed at having them construct new meaning, so that they, in turn, can engage their students in the same way
• Helping teachers embed student skills for learning so they can transition successfully across levels—elementary to middle school, middle to high school, and high school to college 
• Encouraging teachers to adopt a continuous improvement stance, where they continually gather evidence of student learning and make decisions based on that evidence

Leadership 

• Building instructional knowledge on the part of school and district leaders, including how their efforts can support instructional improvement
• Equipping leaders with tools and processes for fostering improved instruction and student learning, including data-based decision making and ways to assess school and classroom culture
• Helping school leaders forge a school culture of high expectations for staff and students, and of collaboration to achieve instructional improvement
• Supporting schools in developing leadership teams that distribute leadership among teachers and increase the likelihood that improvement efforts will be implemented and sustained

The Arts

• Recognizing learning in and through the arts as a form of literacy that engages students and increases learning in all disciplines
• Helping teachers infuse the arts into their instruction to help students gain access to prior knowledge, integrate new learning, and demonstrate what they’ve learned
• Engaging teachers and administrators in the arts disciplines—visual art, dance, drama and music—so they understand the role of the arts in fostering critical thinking and creativity
• Supporting arts and humanities teachers in deepening their content knowledge and expanding their pedagogy to foster higher levels of student learning and performance