In this Issue
The new school year is underway, and the pace is picking up quickly. It is important to take the time to expand our own learning and build capacity in our teams to set ourselves up for a year of progress.
This month, we explore opportunities to step into meaningful learning, strengthen how we collaborate and create the conditions for others to grow. From an immersive Fall Meeting experience centered on student learning to Facilitator Training that helps teams share leadership, this issue invites you to consider how the learning experiences you choose can shape your practice and your impact on students.
Learning in Action
- Step Into Immersive Learning at Fall Meeting
- Fall Meeting Experiences to Improve Student Learning
- Better Meetings Start With Better Facilitation
Reminders
- In Memory of Judith “Judy” D’Antuono
- Make Room for What’s Next: Resource & Protocol Book Sale
- From our Partner: Eagle Rock Changemaker Cohort
- CLEE Community of Practice
- Facilitator Training
- Leadership in Practice
- Emerging Leader Professional Learning Series
How do your own learning experiences shape the way you create learning experiences for others?
Step Into Immersive Learning at Fall Meeting
October 8–9, 2026, Norwood, Massachusetts
Your time is valuable, and when you step away from your classroom, school, or organization for professional learning, it needs to be worth it.
Join us for an immersive learning experience at Fall Meeting. Over two days you will learn the tools, skills and strategies you can use immediately to improve student outcomes.
Step Into the Learning
Bring your questions, challenges and experiences into the room. Practice protocols, explore authentic dilemmas, examine student work and give and receive feedback. Take on roles as a participant, presenter and facilitator.
Meaningful learning requires participation. You will not just hear about how to improve collaboration, reflection and facilitation. You will practice each of them.
Learn From the Experience
Fall Meeting creates space to pay attention not only to what you are learning but also to how you are learning.
Experience skilled facilitation. Practice the structures that build trust and encourage thoughtful participation. Then reflect on the experience and how you can bring those practices back to your own work.
This is professional learning that you can immediately connect to your own practice and to the learning experiences you create for students, educators, and stakeholders.
Leave Connected and Reenergized
Meaningful learning does not happen in isolation. You will learn alongside educators who bring different experiences, perspectives and questions into the room. You will have opportunities to challenge your assumptions, think beyond your usual context and reconnect with colleagues who understand both the complexity and possibility of this work.
Past participants have described Fall Meeting as an experience that left them “energized,” “joyful and inspired” and ready to return to their students and communities with renewed purpose.
Many attendees find a lasting network of support. As one past participant shared, “The whole process allowed us to start as strangers and leave as trusted colleagues.”
Fall Meeting is a chance to experience the kind of learning we want to create for others.
Join us October 8–9 in Norwood, Massachusetts to improve your impact on student outcomes.
Fall Meeting Experiences to Improve Student Learning
Fall Meeting is more than a series of sessions. It is an immersive learning experience with multiple opportunities to participate, explore and connect. Here are a few experiences waiting for you at Fall Meeting.
Start with Student Work
This year, Fall Meeting returns to one of CLEE’s foundational practices: Learning from Student Work. Examine authentic student work alongside colleagues and dig deeper into what it reveals about student thinking, engagement and the instructional choices that shape learning.
Find Your Learning Community
Learning happens in collaboration. You will build connections with colleagues, challenge your thinking and explore questions that matter to your practice in Home Group experiences. Past participants have described arriving as strangers and leaving as trusted colleagues.
Learn from New, Young Voices
This year’s Fall Meeting will feature learning experiences with youth facilitators from ARISE and Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center. Rather than simply sitting back and listening to traditional keynotes, participants will engage with new perspectives, ideas and experiences that invite us to think differently about schools and learning.
Discover a New Resource
Fall Meeting will also serve as the advance release of CLEE’s new version of the Resource Book, Transformational Protocols: An Educator’s Toolkit for Leveling Up Learning, Teaching, and Leading. Every Fall Meeting participant will receive an advance copy.
The book brings together more than 75 ready-to-use protocols developed and refined through decades of practice.
Program Information Sessions
Participants will also have the opportunity to join informational sessions to learn more about Plan, Lead, Act, Network, and Sustain (PLANS), CLEE’s grant-funded professional learning program serving educators in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Principal Residency Network (PRN), CLEE’s principal certification program in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Get a Preview Before You Arrive
Want to experience CLEE’s approach to collaborative learning before October? Join us for a no-cost virtual workshop on September 24.
Analyzing Student Work to Drive Improvement in the Instructional Core gives educators the opportunity to engage in structured dialogue around authentic student work and explore how student learning can inform adult instructional practice.
This highly interactive session offers a preview of the kind of active, collaborative learning that makes Fall Meeting different. You will contribute your perspective, learn alongside colleagues and experience a student-focused protocol in action.
Join us October 8–9 in Norwood, Massachusetts for an experience designed to challenge your thinking, strengthen your practice and reconnect you with a community of learners.
Better Meetings Start With Better Facilitation
You know the feeling. In some meetings, you hear the same voices in discussions. A few people carry the responsibility for moving the work forward. The meeting ends, but there is little clarity about what happens next.
Effective facilitation can change that.
Facilitator Training helps educators build the skills to design and lead meetings where colleagues participate, think deeply and share responsibility for the work. Participants learn how to listen actively, ask questions that deepen thinking, select and facilitate protocols and create the conditions for productive collaboration.
The goal is not simply to run a better meeting. It is to build ownership and leadership capacity with your team.
When more people have the skills and confidence to facilitate meaningful conversations, leadership does not rest with one person. Teams can share responsibility, bring more voices into the work and build continuity that lasts.
Participants in a recent Facilitator Training cohort strengthened skills such as active listening, asking probing questions, holding space for reflection and choosing the right protocol for the purpose. One participant reflected, “I learned a lot about being a participant in and creating a safe space for the presenter.” Another shared that facilitating a new protocol felt like a growth opportunity because they felt “well supported.”
Start Where You Are
There is more than one way to build your facilitation practice.
Fall Meeting gives you an opportunity to experience meaningful facilitation firsthand alongside educators from across the country.
Dates: October 8–9, 2026
Cost: $890
Facilitator Training takes you deeper, helping you build the knowledge, skills and confidence to facilitate that kind of learning in your own team, classroom, and/or school.
Dates: 9/17, 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12/2026
Cost: $1200
Whether you are ready to step into an immersive learning experience or strengthen your ability to lead one, CLEE offers entry points to help you grow your practice.
Explore Fall Meeting and Facilitator Training and find the next step for your leadership.
In Memory of Judith “Judy” D’Antuono
CLEE remembers Judith “Judy” Elaine D’Antuono, a proud graduate of the 2010 Principal Residency Network cohort, who passed away on August 18, 2026, at the age of 59.
Judy devoted her 34-year career in the Providence Public Schools to educating, guiding and advocating for young people. As an assistant principal and leader, she also gave generously to the next generation of school leaders, mentoring multiple aspiring principals and sharing her experience, wisdom and commitment to students.
Above all, Judy believed deeply in young people and worked to ensure they had someone firmly in their corner. Her legacy lives on in the students she championed, the schools she strengthened and the leaders she helped prepare.
We extend our deepest condolences to Judy’s family, friends, colleagues and the many members of the PRN community who knew and learned from her
Make Room for What’s Next: Resource & Protocol Book Sale
We are making room on our shelves for something new. For a limited time, the CLEE Resource & Protocol Book is just $20 per copy with free shipping.
This collection brings together some of CLEE’s most popular protocols and resources in one easy-to-use spiral-bound book, making it a practical companion for facilitators, coaches and leaders looking to strengthen collaborative learning and professional practice.
What are we making room for? Transformational Protocols, An Educator’s Toolkit for Leveling Up Learning, Teaching, and Leading, CLEE’s newest book co-published with Teacher’s College Press designed to support meaningful learning, reflection and transformation. Pre-order your copy today and be among the first to bring these new tools into your practice.
From our Partner:
Eagle Rock Changemaker Cohort
Eagle Rock’s Professional Development Center is currently recruiting youth/adult pairs from public secondary schools nationwide for the SIXTH annual Changemaker Cohort, a year-long experience designed to tackle sticky challenges at schools using improvement science, asset-based community development, and youth/adult partnership as a tested change framework.
Program Highlights
- Perks: Fully covered travel, meals, and lodging, plus a $2,000 project stipend and ongoing coaching support, including a site visit to your learning community.
- Requirements: School leadership support and a committed & diverse adult-student pair (student should not graduate before February ‘28)
Required In-Person Dates in Estes Park, Colorado
- Launch Gathering: February 15–19, 2027
- Midyear Convening: September 30 – October 3, 2027
Learn more by watching our 2-minute overview video and apply at changemakercohort.org.
Facilitator Training builds your capacity to lead with purpose and to strengthen collaboration among colleagues. You will sharpen facilitation skills and practice using collaborative tools to share leadership, expand perspectives and generate improvements centered on student impact.
Fall Cohort
9/17, 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12/2026
All Sessions are 1-4pm (Eastern)
Spring Cohort
2/2, 2/25, 3/4, 3/25, 4/6, 4/29, 5/13, 5/27, 2027
All Sessions are 1-4pm (Eastern)
CLEE’s virtual Community of Practice connects educators and leaders across roles and contexts to learn from peers, exchange focused feedback and strengthen practice through real challenges shared in community.
Implementing High-Quality Curriculum for the Students Who Need It Most
9/24, 10/27, 11/10, 12/8, 2026 – 4-6pm Eastern
We know that having HQCM/HQIM is a starting point, and that successful curriculum implementation requires collective sense-making and ongoing collaboration. Come to this Community of Practice to work through your various implementation dilemmas and get clearer on ways to get impactful results sooner. Open to practitioners at any stage of curriculum implementation.
Scaling what Works for the Students Who Need it Most
1/27, 2/23, 3/24, 4/28, 2027 – 4-6pm Eastern
For those who are interested in scaling and sustaining promising practices in your organization. Many organizations struggle with initiative overload and are seeking ways to streamline, align, and keep the main thing the main thing. Come to this Community of Practice to share what’s working, what can use more eyes/ears/minds, and leave with some clear next steps you can implement right away.
Leadership in Practice provides formative support for Massachusetts educators completing the four Performance Assessment for Leaders (PAL) tasks required for initial principal and assistant principal licensure. Through a collaborative online cohort, participants apply structured inquiry to authentic leadership challenges while receiving facilitator guidance, peer feedback and practical tools that strengthen leadership practice and prepare them for successful PAL submission.
Designed for teacher leaders and other instructional leaders, this professional learning series helps participants develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to lead meaningful improvements for students. Through collaborative learning, practical application and optional personalized coaching, participants use continuous improvement processes, data informed decision making and facilitative leadership practices to strengthen instructional leadership and build lasting capacity within their teams.
