Introduction
CAAASA, the California Association of African-American Superintendents and Administrators, is a group of educational leaders identifying and addressing the critical issues that impact the status and performance of African- American students in California. For over a decade, they have worked with school leaders and administrators to improve conditions of equity, social justice, and school climate across the state.
Each March, educators and school leaders from across the state come together for CAAASA’s annual professional development conference, a three-day gathering that addresses issues of equity and social justice and the impact of these issues on students in California schools.
Thanks to the support of the California Endowment, CAAASA is continuing this conversation, enabling leading superintendents and policy leaders from across the state to take part in an ongoing dialog that picks up where the in-person gathering ends. For two years in a row, these online sessions consider the broader context of the recently introduced California School Dashboard, and give leaders the opportunity to share the strategies that they’re finding most successfully promote student outcomes in their schools and their communities.
In a series of free, hour-long sessions that take place throughout the academic calendar year, online attendees have the chance to learn directly from these educators and to discover proven school strategies they can employ to support their own students’ achievement.
When each session concludes, the free video archive continues CAAASA’s commitment, providing an ongoing resource available to like-minded school leaders and educators across the state, and across the country.
Case Study
The CAAASA Online Professional Development Conference
Keeping an important conversation going after an in-person gathering concludes
AGENDA
We’re helping CAAASA extend the success of their in-person professional learning gatherings, developing an ongoing online agenda that furthers the themes and concerns established each year at their annual conference.
We’re presenting extended sessions in ways that underscore CAAASA’s commitment to furthering equity and social justice in our schools, and working in advance of each session to secure speakers and to prepare them to host entirely new, engaging online conversations.
COMMUNICATIONS
We have developed and we’re managing a new email campaign for CAAASA to promote these ongoing online sessions—one that helps spread the word among CAAASA’s existing membership while at the same time introducing the organization to like minded educators and school leaders across the state and across the country.
We’re sharing these materials across CAAASA’s partner network. And, we’re introducing each session and the organization itself to a new network of potential partners via social media.
PLATFORM
We’re providing the digital conference platform upon which each of these ongoing sessions are presented and shared. Our ExtendedSession Online Conference platform makes it easy to register participants, to enroll them in individual conference sessions, and to engage them live, as each session happens.
Our session facilitators ensure that each speaker feels prepared in advance of the conversation; that once things get started all the technology functions just as it should; and that a video archive of each conversation is available immediately so that even people who miss a session can easily keep connected—all on their own schedule.
COMMUNITY
Throughout, we’re making it possible for CAAASA to continue to cultivate a growing network of like-minded educators, school leaders, and teachers as committed to improving outcomes for young people, and to track and measure their interest and engagement in specific topics and speakers.
We’re also helping to provide these essential professional development resources to school districts across the state, so that they can integrate these best practices in their schools and classrooms.
