Through our core and most comprehensive network of schools, RISE has piloted many promising practices that have led to improved student outcomes. As our strategies have proven to have a measurable and lasting positive impact on our core network over the past few years, our Engagement team has led the charge of scaling our approach to more schools and districts in new communities in exciting ways.
Get to know this innovative and collaborative team and learn more about how they are partnering with an ever-growing number of schools in Connecticut and beyond.
Q: When did you join the RISE team and what is your position in Engagement? Which school(s)/districts do you primarily work with and/or which partnerships do you currently manage?
Sam: I joined RISE in the summer of 2017. I am now the Director of Engagement and I have the privilege of leading our Engagement Team.
Peter: I joined RISE in 2018 as a Network Facilitator, supporting and coaching schools. In my sixth school year with RISE, I’m now part of RISE’s Engagement team, and I lead the design and development of the Freshman Focus Network (FFN, 18 schools), and I coach 10 schools within that partnership (three in Portland, M.E.; five in Worcester, M.A.; Salem H.S. in M.A., and New London, CT). I also manage our partnership with Portland Public Schools and their Grade 8/9 Working Group.
Samantha: I joined RISE in August 2022. I am an Engagement Manager on the team. I work with Meriden Middle Schools (Lincoln, Washington, Edison); the Freshman Focus Network (Stamford H.S.), and Stamford H.S. (Grade 9, postsecondary, and district work).
Erin: I joined the team at the end of July as an Engagement Specialist. Within the Freshman Focus Network I support the two New Haven schools – Hillhouse and Wilbur Cross – as well as Danbury. I also support the Hartford partnership, along with Sam.
Valerie: I joined RISE in November 2020 as a “founding” member of our postsecondary team. In July 2022, I made the switch to the Engagement team in order to spread the work and best practices from our core schools to additional high schools. This year, I am a bit of a RISE “unicorn” in that I am providing both Grade 9 on-track and postsecondary support coaching to Norwalk High, Center for Global Studies and P-TECH. I also facilitate monthly community of practice spaces for the four Norwalk high schools. Lastly, I get to work with the 3 comprehensive high schools in Waterbury as a part of the Freshmen Focus Network.
Q: What’s your favorite part of working at RISE or on the Engagement team?
Sam: I love the wide variety of forms our work at RISE, and especially on the Engagement team, can take. Sometimes we are planning or running coaching sessions with school administrators, counselors, or team leaders. Sometimes we are planning or facilitating cross-school professional learning gatherings for groups ranging from a dozen to over 100 educators. Sometimes we collaborate with district leaders to design a partnership or to monitor the progress of an existing partnership. And sometimes we are just working as an internal team, reflecting on data to push ourselves to do better work with our partners, giving feedback to keep each other honest or refine something we’re working on, or simply learning together. All of this is exciting, and all of it helps us pursue our important mission.
Peter: Our Engagement team gets to work with all kinds of educators from different schools. I enjoy the opportunity to work directly with educators, learning about their schools – what they want, need, and what they’re struggling with – and helping make positive changes, whether it’s through coaching or professional development. When we provide school and district staff the space to have “aha!” moments or when I can provide a resource to meet a stated need, that’s when I really enjoy my job.
Samantha: My favorite part is being able to work with educators across multiple districts and schools. Seeing the impact of what our organization provides motivates me to want to support more and more schools and students. My favorite aspect of my role is providing professional development to key stakeholders across schools.
Erin: The team! Everyone has been so warm and welcoming as I started in my role. There have been so many times when either the Engagement team or the larger RISE team have stopped what they were doing to help me to better understand an aspect of this work. I’m so grateful to be working with a team that is supportive and truly embodies a team spirit.
Valerie: I love my team! We’re each from different backgrounds in education but we all have profound ties to the importance of coaching and professional development for educators. I also love the unique challenges of our work. Each high school I work with has its own needs and “personality” so it allows me to be creative in how I provide meaningful coaching or dynamic professional development. It’s also really helpful to be able to bounce ideas off of each other and share approaches (even if they think some of my P.D. themes are off the wall!)
Q: How do you collaborate with other teams within RISE?
Sam: There are so many ways that I work with colleagues on other teams. One recent and exciting collaboration has been with members of our Data team as we aim to bring the RISE Data Hub to new audiences in support of our work with schools across Connecticut and beyond.
Peter: The Engagement team’s portfolio primarily exists due to the success we’ve witnessed within our core network of nine schools. As the majority of my job revolves around Grade 9 initiatives, I closely monitor all the innovative efforts led by our Freshman Success Team. I seize every opportunity to highlight their work and the educators leading these efforts in the Freshman Focus Network. We’ve had educators present at conferences, participate in coaching meetings, share resources, and collaborate as thought partners as an increasing number of schools aim to enhance their Grade 9 practices.
Samantha: Leading our Grade 9 Summer Symposium this past year gave me the opportunity to work with almost every team in our organization. Members from every team truly supported the efforts of providing a high-quality professional development event for over 120 educators across Connecticut and beyond. It was an incredible experience. Currently, I am working closely with the Data Engineering and Product teams as we partner to launch use of the Data Hub in more partner schools.
Erin: Most of my collaboration with other teams has been to support my learning and growth. Other teams have been so generous in having me come and observe at the schools they support. I was able to observe on-track data team meetings with our Freshman Success team and this team also shared insight into their P.D. work. Our Postsecondary Success team invited me to observe their summer bridge work in East Hartford.
Valerie: I get to collaborate with Freshman and Postsecondary Success coaches, who coach Brien McMahon in Norwalk, in order to prepare my coaching for the other three Norwalk high schools, as well as monthly community of practice spaces for all four high schools. It’s awesome because I can hear about the priorities and coaching they’re each providing, and then ask them for feedback on my approaches to coaching and P.D. In the end, I learn so much from them, and I am a better coach because of them!
Q: How do you use the RISE Data Hub? How has your use of the Hub changed your daily practice and how does it help you achieve your student outcome goals?
Sam: I find the Hub to be incredibly useful in my work to coach and advise administrators, but the most powerful validation comes from the educators I work with who use the Hub, especially the assistant principals I have coached in Hartford over the past several years. The Hub helps them keep tabs on their students and be strategic with their teams, making sure that no one gets lost – whether for celebration or for intervention – and that everyone’s eyes stay on the ultimate goals.
Erin: I’ve been using the Data Hub to support my work with the Hartford schools. I use the Hub to pull data to support coaching calls with the Hartford administrators. It is helpful to have the Hub to be able to ground my coaching in data. We are able to start our coaching calls by looking at the data and reflecting on how things are going, then plan from there. It is also helpful to be able to see the data in real time to know how things are progressing, leading up to coaching meetings or other scheduled events within Hartford, so that we can align our focus to what the areas of success and challenges are, given the data we see.
Valerie: The RISE Data Hub has been an integral part of my Grade 9 on-track and postsecondary support coaching in Norwalk. It’s awesome to see teacher teams pull up lists of real-time student data and discuss students in a solutions-oriented way or plan celebrations and interventions based on the data they’re seeing. I’m very excited for all of the Norwalk high schools to have postsecondary data in the Hub for the first time – I think it will make it much easier for them to plan support and district-wide events based on the pathways students plan to pursue.
Q: What’s something you’ve achieved recently with one of your partnerships that you’re proud of?
Sam: I take immense pride in the gains we are seeing in many of the districts our team supports. The partnership between Hartford and RISE has led to 20 points of growth in Freshman Academy students passing 6+ courses in the high schools we work with over the past four years and a reduction in first-time Grade 9 student chronic absenteeism to its lowest levels this past school year since 2017-18. Growth in on-track rates in Norwalk’s high schools in the first year of the district-wide partnership is also very exciting and motivating. And through our new Meriden partnership, we are helping leaders in the district’s three middle schools make significant changes to how their teams help students understand the meaning of on-track and support them in achieving that important goal. This is just to name a few!
Peter: The growth of our Freshman Focus Network has been particularly thrilling for me. When we launched our Grade 9 Symposium in the summer of 2022, our initial idea was to establish a mini-network of schools that would continue collaborating with us after the Symposium. This concept evolved into the inaugural year of the Freshman Focus Network, where we partnered with nine schools from three different states. After our 2023 Symposium, we set our sights on expanding the network. Remarkably, not only did all nine of our original cohort of schools renew their partnership with us, but we also welcomed 11 new schools into the network. Several of these schools have expanded their collaboration with us, including additional working groups, district partnerships, and some are on track to become Data Hub schools soon!
Samantha: In the second year of our partnership with Meriden Middle Schools, I am excited to have a clear structure for collecting data from each school twice a month. They do not have access to the Data Hub, but through coaching, I have been able to support their data visibility and use data to inform practices at each school. The on-track work is taking off at the middle school level, which is very exciting! Also, 100% of last year’s participants said they would recommend the Summer Symposium to other educators, schools, and districts interested in advancing Freshman Success. This data point makes me very proud!
Valerie: As a district, NPS had the highest Grade 9 on-track rates and semester 2 ADA since RISE started capturing data in 2017! Also, Brien McMahon H.S., Norwalk H.S., and P-TECH had their highest on-track rates since we’ve been capturing data in 2017!
Q: What’s coming up that has you particularly excited?
Sam: As of this writing, something right on the horizon is my trip to Norwich, NY, for a site visit to the high school that I am coaching through the Freshman Focus Network. We have had a wonderful partnership with the Norwich team for almost the past two years, and I love working with them in this capacity. We have made lots of strides together with a great deal of our work occurring virtually, but being together in person – especially with me getting to join them for team meetings and on-track conversations – is going to be fantastic.
Peter: On November 16, we will gather all 18 FFN schools for a visit to East Hartford H.S. This is exciting for me on two fronts. Firstly, during my first two years on the RISE staff, I provided coaching and support to East Hartford H.S. Therefore, it will be especially enjoyable to bring our new network of schools to a place where I have established many connections. Secondly, this marks the inaugural occasion when all of our new partner schools will convene in person. One of my mentors in this work talked about building a “network” and not a “wheel” when working with schools. By that, she meant to avoid a situation where “each team was strongly connected to the hub (RISE), but not to each other” and this school visit is a great opportunity for us to enhance and strengthen our network.
Valerie: The postsecondary support “launch” in Norwalk – [Postsecondary Success Coach] Sojin Park and I will be working to provide postsecondary coaching to all four high schools in Norwalk for the first time. They will also have three community of practice spaces centered on postsecondary support and their Class of 2025 postsecondary survey data in the Hub. I can’t wait to help Norwalk educators make connections between the academic on-track support they’ve been doing and the postsecondary support. It’s going to be awesome!
Q: What impact do you hope to see the Engagement team achieve in the future?
Sam: I would love to see us expand our work, but what I really hope – regardless of our number of partners or our geographic reach – is that each and every school and educator that we work with feels truly supported by their partnership with our team.
Peter: Ultimately, I hope to see our team effectively supporting our partner schools in enhancing their ability to meet the needs of their students. Each of our partnerships is unique and carefully crafted in collaboration with the school and district, ensuring that we address identified gaps or community needs. As we continue to learn from our current partners and the educators who engage with us, I hope that our team remains a key player in helping school systems establish the appropriate structures and supports required to offer each student a learning experience that makes them feel known, valued, and inspired. Sometimes, this may entail improving their data systems; other times, it may involve directly coaching school leaders, or it might even necessitate full-school or district professional development. Whatever the specific need may be, I believe we have a team that is well-prepared to take the lead on the task!
Samantha: Continuing to build on the mission of RISE and support as many educators as possible across CT and beyond!
Erin: For my scope of work I’m excited to see Hartford, New Haven, and Danbury make progress and achieve their on-track goals for the year so that more 9th graders have a “make-it” year. In terms of the larger Engagement team, I would like to see our impact grow to more schools and more students.
Valerie: My love for the postsecondary world runs deep, so it’s no secret that I am always looking for opportunities to make connections between our Grade 9 on-track work and the postsecondary support work. I fully plan to get my engagement teammates to “nerd out” as aggressively as I do about plan data and FAFSA data!