Member Spotlight: Lead By LearningMember Spotlight: Lead By Learning

We’re delighted to welcome Lead By Learning to the OLC member network! Lead By Learning began as Mills Teacher Scholars, and since 2008 it has grown into a program that supports teams of teacher leaders, district leaders, and other educators from across school systems to improve their practice in service of equitable outcomes for students. Today, as a Center of Northeastern University, Oakland, Lead by Learning continues to improve students’ day-to-day experiences in the classroom by building the capacity of those best positioned to improve student learning experiences – the educators and leaders on the ground. 

We interviewed Nina Portugal, Director of Visibility and Community Engagement, about Lead By Learning’s role in supporting literacy and libraries: 

Oakland Literacy Coalition (OLC): How does your organization support literacy in Oakland?

Lead By Learning: ​​At Lead by Learning, we believe that the quality of adult learning is critical to a system’s ability to improve. We support Oakland education leaders and practitioners to prioritize and facilitate powerful adult learning spaces that focus on learners’ experiences, disrupt unjust practices, cultivate curiosity, and drive continuous improvement across the education system, including addressing urgent literacy needs.

OLC: What sets you apart from other organizations in your community? Or from other organizations with similar missions?

Lead By Learning: Educators and the environment they work in are the root system of all school communities and classrooms. When root systems are healthy, educators sustain school communities by scanning the health of their students and their school, creatively utilizing resources, and working together to problem solve. When root systems experience instability, educators burn out, instruction suffers, and schools struggle to prioritize or adapt, ultimately restricting students’ opportunity to grow.

What sets Lead by Learning apart is that we vigilantly attend to schools’ root systems. We create the conditions that deepen mindsets and practices that enable educators to collaboratively attend to students and families. We develop root systems that unearth problems of practice, build collective efficacy, distribute instructional leadership, and adapt instruction to support equitable student growth.

While many organizations support educators and students through important direct literacy-based instructional strategies, curriculum, or methodologies, we support educators to thoughtfully integrate and adapt promising instructional practices to meet the needs of the students they work with daily. By doing so, we improve student outcomes, deepen educators’ job satisfaction, and support sustainable change in schools.

OLC: What’s on the horizon? What community programming or events are coming up that your organization is most excited about and why?

Lead By Learning: Lead by Learning is excited about our annual Inquiry in Action Forum, Cultivating Hope: Building the Schools Kids Need, at Northeastern University, Oakland campus, on October 24th. The evening is a celebration of what is possible in public education when we place students at the center and a call to empower educators as agents of change, cultivate hope as resistance for educational justice, and center student voice and experience. While our field continues to face resistance to the change our students urgently need and deserve, we know that through community organizing, we can move forward together.

This fall, we are also launching adult learning, facilitation, and coaching skill-building workshops for individual educators and teacher leaders, as well as free Public Learning Live events as “pop-up” community of practice spaces for educators and education leaders to surface problems of practice in a caring community of colleagues and leave with immediate next steps to support students. (See upcoming events here.)

OLC: Is there anything that you wish more people knew about your organization or the issues you are trying to solve?

Equity and justice are at the center of our work to transform systems. Lead by Learning seeks to build collective efficacy in the pursuit of equity by encouraging individuals and teams to humanize inquiry, engage in critical discernment, and continuously commit to the work. Working together, these three elements generate the energy needed to disrupt harm and sustain anti-racist, equity-seeking action. We believe the work is both inward and outward, personal and collective, and must be continuously deepened over time.

OLC: What are you most looking forward to as a member of the Oakland Literacy Coalition?

Lead By Learning: As a center of Northeastern University, Oakland we see ourselves as an intellectual nexus bridging research and practice, passionate about bringing people together to engage in meaningful conversation about important topics so they can learn from one another, innovate, and reimagine education so it is more relevant and equitable. As a member of the Oakland Literacy Coalition, we look forward to cultivating partnerships and thoughtfully collaborating with those on the ground to support Oakland.

OLC: Could you share an anecdote/experience about working with a student or teacher that really stood out for you?

Lead By Learning: Since 2021, Lead by Learning has been a partner of the Oakland Unified School District Library Leadership Team to transform librarian professional learning to center student learning and build coherence district-wide. At the onset of our partnership, the district librarian position was recently eliminated, and four school-site librarians stepped up to fill the need. Knowing they wanted to break free from meetings bogged down by operations and shift to center learning, Lead by Learning worked with the librarians to not only assume leadership, but also create a sustainable model of librarian leadership and learning that created the conditions for inquiry, coherence, and collective efficacy to thrive. Today, librarian learning designed and facilitated by librarians continues, and librarians continuously report changes in practice that better center students through relationships, choice, and voice, and create more inclusive and inviting library environments. This school year, the librarians will be focusing on supporting students’ ability to know how to choose the books they want to read with the hope of increasing student excitement and joy in the library, as well as book circulation in print and on SORA.

OLC: What does Literacy & Justice for All mean to you?

Lead By Learning: To Lead by Learning, Literacy & Justice for All means a steadfast commitment to disrupt historic injustice by committing to shifting mental models and moving beyond default practices. All students can read and have the right to read. We envision a future where the transformative power of learning reshapes education systems and empowers students and educators to be agents of change in their lives and communities. 

Website: www.leadbylearning.org