In 2020, educators faced a unique problem during the Covid-19 pandemic. Without warning, many teachers, professors, students, etc. were forced into a remote workspace for the first time. Unfortunately, there was no existing playbook for teaching or learning remotely. In addition, the pandemic magnified existing structural inequities in education. Dr. Molly Buckley-Marudas and Dr. Shelley Rose found a solution to these new and unique issues.

Starting as notes in the margin of Dr. Rose’s notebook, Dr. Buckley-Marudas and Dr. Rose, associate professors at Cleveland State University, created the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative in May 2020. This working group includes research, reflection, and support during the Covid-19 pandemic. When most schools went into emergency remote learning. Dr. Buckley-Marudas and Dr. Rose realized that the collaborative efforts of educators could overcome the isolation necessitated by the pandemic.

“The way we think about the collaborative is that it has three arms,” explains Dr. Buckley-Marudas. “The first component is the case studies, which is what we started with.” These case studies became a place where authors could reflect on their practices and learn from each other. In the summer of 2020, the CTC had 24 case study authors. “It is really important to us that the educators see themselves as knowledge generators.”

“The second component is the Resource Referatory,” says Dr. Buckley-Marudas. The referatory is a crowdsourced toolkit, a research database intended to support educators. It serves as a central place to find the tools teachers need to be successful in the classroom, whether they are online or face-to-face. “[The referatory] has grown to over 1,200 resources. It has taken on a life of its own.”

Dr. Rose, a historian obsessed with archiving and digital methods, finds that this is a unique product of the collaborative as well. “In a way, this has become an archive of pandemic teaching and learning,” explains Dr. Rose.

The third component and the central core to the collaborative, is peer-to-peer learning. “That third core element really harnesses low stakes and light opportunities, and more significant opportunities as peers learn from one another,” explains Dr. Buckley-Marudas. This peer-to-peer learning includes monthly discussions, a pilot called the “peering in program” which allows educators to drop-in on classes, and even “assignment design cafes” every second Friday. “It brings together not only collaborators and instructors, but even staff members, like instructional technologists, to sit in these zoom rooms with us. We have this group all in one place, solving these universal problems and sharing knowledge, and it’s really quite special,” says Dr. Rose.

“In our first cohort, we kept talking about meeting the students where they are. But one of the takeaways we’ve had, is to meet our educators where they are as well. And that’s how we ended up with all these ‘arms’ of the project,” describes Dr. Rose. Together, these arms create a space where educators with different roles and purposes, from all over the world, found a common resource. Elementary teachers want to talk with university professors, and thanks to the pandemic, a space was created for that where it hadn’t been before. “We want to maintain that, because there are such divisions that exist between higher ed, and pre-k through 12. That’s really important to us too, to recognize that all of these teachers have something to share with each other and learn from one another,” explains Dr. Buckley-Marudas.

Dr. Rose and Dr. Buckley-Marudas hope the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative can forever be a place where those walls don’t exist. By continuing to collaborate, educators can leverage what they know, and stop perpetuating silos in education. Bringing educators together and honoring all the voices of collaboration really helps to create these spaces. Dr. Buckley-Marudas and Dr. Rose believe the demand for the collaborative will continue, as well as the conversations.

“One thing we’ve become hyper aware of in this project is that the pandemic magnified the structural inequities of education at all levels. How we address those issues has been an ongoing conversation,” describes Dr. Rose. During those first months of the pandemic, many educators were faced with emergency remote learning. Now, educators must navigate these same magnified issues, while the push to go back to normal becomes more intense. “Normal puts us back to the inequities, and now that we’ve seen them- we can’t unsee them,” says Dr. Rose. “We need to change moving forward, and I think the collaboratives’ life will continue to address how we change as educators, and how to bring those changes to our own classrooms.”

In April 2021, the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative received the Divergent Award for Excellence in Implementation of Literacy in a Digital Age. This award recognizes PK-12 schools, community programs, and university programs in their implementation of literacy practices that embrace the ideals of equity, diversity, access, and creativity. The Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age, established in 2014, recognizes the importance of literacy in a digital age, those who diverge from traditional pedagogies and research approaches, and the indelible contributions of educators and scholars who have dedicated their careers to the theoretical and practical study of 21st century literacies. This award, given by the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age, generates some excitement around the collaborative. It shows there is additional recognition, and a strong foundation and reputation for this type of work. “It was really a moment of affirmation,” says Dr. Buckley-Marudas. “It’s a peer review process, which is unusual for a digital project,” added Dr. Rose.

The Cleveland Teaching Collaborative continues to recruit and overcome the issues collaborators face. In addition, they invite all collaborators to any of their spaces. “I hope as the intensity of the pandemic subsides, we can keep taking up big educational issues that we all face,” says Dr. Buckley-Marudas. As the collaborative evolves overtime, Dr. Buckley-Marudas and Dr. Rose remain excited with the space they have helped create, and want to remind us that anyone can become a collaborator. “You don’t have to be an educator on a schools’ roster to be a part of this work,” explains Dr. Buckley-Marudas. “We are pleasantly surprised that it keeps growing.”

You can join the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative’s Spring 2022 cohort by visiting cleteaching.org.