Designing Up: Emergence to Develop Equity Impact Communities Within and Across K-12 Urban Schools

Abstract In this article, we present an ongoing researcher practitioner partnership (RPP) that, among other goals, is aimed at better navigating top-down oversight from the ground up by leveraging critical connections between teachers. The Teacher Leadership Institute for Equity (TLI) works to support the development and sustained efforts of teacher leaders to ameliorate inequities within their local school communities. By centering teachers as leaders, TLI allows for sustained and scalable change to occur through the creation of equity impact communities (EICs) within individual schools. Over time, the goal is for the development of EICs within multiple schools to create ripples of change throughout our district—designing upwardly to scale that results in site specific equity-based solutions across a multitude of school communities.