Catalyst:Ed connects education leaders like you with a network of providers who bring the skills, experience, and tools you need to build your organization’s capacity to innovate, improve, and scale.
Here’s your chance to take your work to the next level. Regardless of your challenge, sometimes it helps to find a partner to help with your work. Let's talk and help match you to a provider.
You tell us what you’re looking for. We build out a custom project scope and share it with a curated list of providers.
You compare proposals from interested providers and decide who you want to interview. We manage the details for you.
You choose the right provider for your project and get started. We check-in during the project and capture your feedback once the project is completed.
Sometimes people come to us knowing they need help, but they aren’t sure exactly what they want help on. Or, they know there is room for improvement but don’t know where to start. Below are some examples of real-life projects our network of providers have helped organizations just like yours work through.
Collaborate with the equity team and CI-coaches to update all CI-related materials to put equity at the center of the work.
Coach team leads on how to identify the ways implicit bias can influence adult mindsets about goal setting and accountability.
Provide foundational training for the CI team for how to integrate DEI into all aspects of CI.
Offer additional coaching sessions with improvement team leaders and members using DEI concepts.
Provide CI team with coaching and feedback on facilitating equity-centered continuous improvement sessions with schools.
Build or identify a set of protocols (e.g., root cause analysis, empathy interviews) and a framework that guides how to choose which protocol to use for system exploration that intentionally centers equity.
Support teams to bring a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data sources, including practical measures, to the process, incorporating various vantage points and perspectives as well as historical and local contexts.
Develop a toolkit with resources your coaches can utilize while supporting their schools.
Set up a train-the-trainer model so your team is prepared to conduct CI trainings in the future.
Monthly coaching calls to continue training and assist with new needs.
Develop data-memos to guide inquiry cycles.
Create a metrics bank.
Lead school teams through a series of frequent and connected inquiry cycles.
Provide a set of tools (e.g. PDSA forms, quality rubrics) and processes to assist each school team in developing change ideas, assessing the effectiveness of their inquiry cycles, identifying system barriers (if any), and making measurable progress.
Work with your team to engage in some basic CI activities, like a root cause analysis or plan-do-study-act cycle.
Review your data to show how it can be utilized in your improvement work.
Assist in change management efforts to help make participants feel ready and comfortable as they begin using CI - ultimately helping staff realize that CI is not ‘another thing’ but instead a more systemic way to use the skills you already have.
If your team needs help starting to use continuous improvement.
A provider can assess what habits and routines your team is using to improve student outcomes, and make recommendations for how to get started with continuous improvement (CI).
Some activities in a project like this may include:
Work with your team to engage in some basic CI activities, like a root cause analysis or plan-do-study-act cycle
Review your data to show how it can be utilized in your improvement work
Assist in change management efforts to help make participants feel ready and comfortable as they begin using CI - ultimately helping staff realize that CI is not ‘another thing’ but instead a more systemic way to use the skills you already have
If your team needs help strengthening SEL practices in your school or district.
A provider can help you collect and use student and staff input to build and implement a strong plan.
Some activities in a project like this may include:
Conduct a landscape analysis of how similar schools/districts are strengthening their equity-oriented SEL practices
Interview stakeholders to understand the SEL needs they are seeing in their students and staff and build buy-in around implementation strategies
Facilitate SEL workshops to leaders and/or staff around equity-oriented SEL principles, skill-building opportunities, and implementation
Develop case studies of how teacher-leaders integrated SEL into their academic content and evaluation practices
Help you build a robust, systemwide SEL strategy and implementation plan
Collaborate with leaders to plan a cohesive program of team-wide and small group activities that allow for responsive conversations and learning between members.
Create communication structures and project management systems that are strong and support the team to achieve their goals.
Engage with team members (such as school leaders, teachers, students) to identify a team structure that promotes distributed leadership, implement improvement routines, and stay on track with their inquiry cycles.
Establish routines and structures for leaders to collect and analyze feedback from members about their network experience and the health of the work and group.
Evaluate an organization’s current processes, systems, tools, and approaches to get a clear picture of how data, lessons, and stories are collected, analyzed, reported, and shared.
Develop a framework for knowledge management to codify and capture strategies, tools, and key lessons from their work.
Build out or make recommendations to improve the routines, practices, and systems to support the knowledge management framework.
Assess current data practices to understand how your team uses data.
Gather functional business and technical requirements and create high-fidelity and low-fidelity wireframes.
Develop a data-dashboard in a system that your team has access to and is comfortable using.
Create a user-adoption plan to ensure that your improvement teams are utilizing this tool to its greatest capacity.
Train your team to manage the dashboard and add new data sources as the scope of your work changes.
Collaborate with the equity team and CI-coaches to update all CI-related materials to put equity at the center of the work.
Coach team leads on how to identify the ways implicit bias can influence adult mindsets about goal setting and accountability.
Provide foundational training for the CI team for how to integrate DEI into all aspects of CI.
Offer additional coaching sessions with improvement team leaders and members using DEI concepts.
Provide CI team with coaching and feedback on facilitating equity-centered continuous improvement sessions with schools.
Conduct an equity audit to determine where your team is on their equity journey and recommend steps for improvement.
Hold a series of trainings to educate your team on the historical context that led to inequities and biases present today.
Audit current practices to identify equity issues and recommend improvements.
Develop a DEI sustainability training plan that outlines different settings and topics to promote continued learning.
Lead a visioning exercise with students and educators to determine future desired state of student engagement.
Conduct a root cause analysis to understand the student experience and how they perceive their own agency at school.
Host restorative justice circles to allow students and teachers to heal from historical disconnects.
Co-develop a Student Engagement Plan with students and educators that includes key performance indicators aligned with visioning exercises and root cause analyses.
Provide ongoing coaching through the implementation of the Student Engagement Plan.
Conduct a landscape analysis of how similar schools/districts are strengthening their equity-oriented SEL practices.
Interview stakeholders to understand the SEL needs they are seeing in their students and staff and build buy-in around implementation strategies.
Facilitate SEL workshops to leaders and/or staff around equity-oriented SEL principles, skill-building opportunities, and implementation.
Develop case studies of how teacher-leaders integrated SEL into their academic content and evaluation practices.
Help you build a robust, systemwide SEL strategy and implementation plan.
If your team needs help strengthening SEL practices in your school or district.
A provider can help you collect and use student and staff input to build and implement a strong plan.
Some activities in a project like this may include:
Conduct a landscape analysis of how similar schools/districts are strengthening their equity-oriented SEL practices
Interview stakeholders to understand the SEL needs they are seeing in their students and staff and build buy-in around implementation strategies
Facilitate SEL workshops to leaders and/or staff around equity-oriented SEL principles, skill-building opportunities, and implementation
Develop case studies of how teacher-leaders integrated SEL into their academic content and evaluation practices
Help you build a robust, systemwide SEL strategy and implementation plan
Assess current improvement teams to identify if the right people are on the team.
Interview network members from all levels to identify misconceptions or confusion about roles, responsibility, or leadership that may exist.
Develop a roles and responsibilities handbook so all team members understand why they are part of this work and the impact they can have.
Coach team leads to help them maximize their impact.
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