Grow Your Own Illinois is charged with providing many different ways for current and developing projects to share strategies and build capacity. One of the most popular and successful of these methods has been periodic meetings of representatives of all communities that are developing and/or exploring the possibility of Grow Your Own Teachers projects.
Bookmark this page for info about upcoming meetings!
Here are reports from the most recent meetings:
This two-day session provided an opportunity for the 13 continuing projects and 3 new projects to share substantive models and experiences from the process of implementing Grow Your Own Teachers projects - this was an extremely "nuts and bolts" session, with all the expertise coming from within the "GYO family", including excellent presentations by candidates.
This meeting gave us the opportunity to greet and thank our friends in state government, to hear from the new Springfield project and candidates from a variety of programs, and to explore possibilities of collaboration with state agencies and statewide education associations and unions.
The all-day session on December 7th was highlighted by two extended breakout sessions where organizations shared the successes they have achieved and the barriers encountered in developing programs and recruiting committed candidates. Charles Payne of Duke University returned to end the day with a provocative analysis of the real skills needed to teach effectively in low-income communities. The December 8th Organizer Training focused on how the tools of community organizing strengthen the capacity of programs to accomplish their goals.
The third annual summit was an extraordinary two-day meeting celebrating the first planning grants under the Grow Your Own Teachers program and the passage of a state budget including $3,000,000 for program implementation, and looking at the tough tasks ahead as the projects carried out their substantive planning.
