California Department of Education Announces First of its Kind Statewide Online Community of Practice and Collaboration Network for Educators

SACRAMENTO—The California Department of Education (CDE) wants educators to know there is an exciting and new way to connect with colleagues statewide. The CDE, in collaboration with the Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, has launched California Educators Together, an online platform designed to streamline communication between educators and allow them to access and share a vast library of content, resources, strategies, and supports.

“During the pandemic, just like our students, educators were no longer able to collaborate in person with their peers. We saw this as a challenge that needed to be solved,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.“Certainly, one silver lining of this global pandemic is that CDE, through the generous support of the AT&T Foundation and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, invested in building this one-of-a-kind, web-based community of practice where educators can engage and share their learning resources and best practices with one another. No other state has as comprehensive a platform to respond in real-time to all of these needs and to ensure that all of their districts, all of their schools, and every educator has equitable access to a high-quality digital environment with a comprehensive and growing collection of diverse, open digital resources and to one another for collaborative sharing without ongoing costs to local agencies.”

When a teacher joins California Educators Together, the site organizes them in relation to their job assignment and roles and places them within their education agency (site/district/county). A personalized dashboard based on this profile helps users see communication from teams and their selected subject and grade level groups. Users can share lesson plans, curriculum, and other resources with each other in addition to accessing resources for such topics as literacy and mental health and event updates from their respective school districts.

According to Barbara Murchison, Director of the CDE Educator Excellence and Equity Division, California Educators Together is designed to be the “one-stop shop” for teachers, administrators, and staff working in schools and expanded learning programs looking to improve student outcomes. “We’ve developed robust collections of resources—vetted by CDE staff—to support literacy and social emotional learning and are continuously building out new collections to support instruction across the content areas,” she said.

California Educators Together website

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Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100