The Fund Celebrates Its First Full Year

By Barbara Bellissimo, Executive Director

On January 1, I celebrated my first anniversary as the executive director of The Fund, and The Fund celebrated its first full year of operation. I am so proud to share with you some of our accomplishments over the last year.

We continued our Common Assignment initiative, bringing together a group of Kentucky teachers with a group of teachers in Colorado to develop common units of study aligned to Kentucky’s Core Academic Standards (KCAS). During 2014, we more than doubled the number of teachers and districts participating in this work. And we continue to get requests from others wanting to participate. In 2015, we’ll expand the work even further, into new grade levels and content areas.

We joined the extended team and advisory council for the Kentucky Network to Transform Teaching (KYNT3) on both the extended work group and advisory council. The goal of this work is twofold:  increase the number of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in Kentucky and to innovate and improve teacher leadership opportunities for existing NBCTs. This project is key to the success of our Transforming the Teaching Profession initiative.

Our work in this area involves an expanded network of state and national partners:  Kentucky Education Association, Hope Street Group, the Center for Teaching Quality, Bluegrass Center for Teacher Quality, the Kentucky Network to Transform Teaching, the Kentucky Department of Education, the Education Professional Standards Board, the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence and many individual teachers and superintendents to engage Kentucky teachers to design, execute and continuously improve policies, practice and the profession so that students reach their maximum potential. During 2014 we developed our strategic vision for our work together, and are now focused on defining our Five-Year Goal and Implementation Plans.

On January 25, 2014, we facilitated the first statewide Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers (ECET2). 45 teachers braved a snowstorm to meet in Lexington to inspire, motivate and celebrate each other. This event was so successful, that we have since facilitated four regional ECET2s (Green River, Ohio Valley, Central KY and Northern KY), and are expecting 300 teachers to join us at the second annual ECET2 KY this January 30-31 in Louisville.

In August 2014, we awarded the initial round of Innovation Fund grants to six different individuals and organizations, to pilot and scale innovative tools and practices across Kentucky. Our interim report on these projects will be available in early February and we are currently fundraising for our 2015 grant cycle.

We grew our team from three to five in 2014, and have already added two more in the first month of 2015! While we were growing our team, we grew our social media and online presence as well. Our Facebook page and Twitter handle (@TheFundKY) now have hundreds of followers. We also redesigned our website so that it’s easier to find information and keep our stakeholders informed about our work, and redesigned our blog to match the new site.

I’m so excited and proud of our work in 2014, and hope you will stay tuned to this blog as we announce even greater accomplishments for our students in 2015!