NextGen WA Implementation Team Retreat

On Monday-Tuesday, June 24-25 2019, 62 educators from around Washington state participated in the NextGen STEM Teacher Preparation retreat at SMATE on the campus of Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.

Attendees included teams dedicated to improving STEM teacher preparation at 7 colleges/universities:

• Eastern Washington University,
• Central Washington University,
• Pacific Lutheran University,
• Washington State University,
• Seattle University,
• Seattle Pacific University,
• Western Washington University.

Joining those Teacher Preparation Teams were individuals from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Pacific Northwest National Labs, the non-profit Zeno Math, Whatcom Community College, Bellingham School District, Educational Service Districts, University of Washington Seattle, and University of Washington Tacoma. Advisory Board Member Tammy Sumner (University of Colorado, Boulder) was able to join us as well.

This NextGen retreat was "all about Implementation". The goals of the retreat were:

• Celebrate the accomplishments and connections made during the first three years of the NextGen project, and maintain and build momentum for attaining the NextGen vision.
• Leverage the resources and services of the Working Groups to help Implementation Teams improve their teacher preparation programs.
• Agree on and support individual STEM teacher-preparation program "change" priorities
• Foster conversations around what resources teacher preparation programs need
• Refine the decisions around what specific work will be done, by whom, and when.
• Discuss the types and purposes of data to collect: data to motivate, data to understand, and data to measure impact.

Another key outcome was the networking, connecting and mutual learning from each other within and across university teams. Those connections will help us all grow together see and feel the deeper value of a statewide collegial effort. All in all it was a great success!

By the end of the second day, each Implementation Team had specific commitments. These commitments will be summarized on the Implementation Team websites (if not already there).