Coaching & Professional Learning

Cross-school learning
Cross-school learning
Cross-school learning

RISE is excited to work with districts in Connecticut and beyond as we expand our impact and ensure all students graduate with a plan and the skills and confidence to achieve college and career success. The RISE team works to adapt its evidence-based approach in response to each partner’s needs and goals, tailoring our services to meet the most pressing needs of the schools, districts, and organizations. We also seek to understand each partner’s unique context so that we are building on existing efforts and assets. Our services include:

  • Improvement Coaching: We provide focused coaching sessions for school and district leaders to form targeted goals, chart a roadmap for improvement, support implementation efforts, strengthen school systems and structures, and monitor progress. Coaching can help leaders to implement new strategies, such as On-Track Data Teams.
  • Continuous Improvement/Cross-School Collaboration and Facilitation: We design and facilitate gatherings of educators and school teams pursuing similar goals within and across schools, enabling productive collaboration and supporting innovative approaches.
  • Professional Development: We design and deliver engaging school-based sessions focused on topics including the importance of the Grade 9 transition, specific strategies for promoting an on-track culture, improvement science, postsecondary access strategies, and more.

Interested in partnering with RISE? Contact us at engagements@ctrise.org.

Learn more about upcoming and past professional development events and opportunities here.

Our current and former partners include:

  • Baltimore City Public Schools
  • Bridgeport Public Schools
  • Bristol Public Schools
  • Connecticut State Department of Education
  • Denver Public Schools
  • Hartford Public Schools
  • Malden Public Schools
  • Meriden Public Schools
  • Next Generation Learning Challenges
  • New London Public Schools
  • Norwalk Public Schools
  • Office of the Governor of Connecticut
  • Portland Public Schools
  • Vernon Public Schools
  • Waterbury Public Schools
  • Worcester Public Schools

Learn More About RISE Network
Coaching & Professional Learning

Participant feedback from an attendee of RISE’s 2022 Grade 9 Summer Symposium: “I learned about the importance of 9th grade and had a chance to reflect on strategies that have worked for other schools and districts, before working with my team to plan for the next academic year. I had a TON of fun, and found that I was more present and engaged than I have been during any other PD/conference since I started my role.”

At the end of the second year of RISE’s partnership with Hartford Public Schools to expand the Freshman Academy teaming model to the district’s comprehensive high schools, 100% of the nearly four dozen Hartford Grade 9 educators surveyed agreed with the statements “I’m proud to be a member of the Freshman Academy team” and “Our team is doing important work.”

In 2021-22, RISE supported 40 high schools across 19 Connecticut districts participating in the statewide FAFSA Challenge. On average, participating schools improved their year-over-year FAFSA completion rates by 8 percentage points from 2020-21 to 2021-22 — significantly higher than the average of 1.5 points of improvement statewide over the same period.

Participant feedback from an attendee of RISE’s 2022 Grade 9 Summer Symposium: “It was a great opportunity to look at the different ways to improve on the Freshman Academy and the ninth-grade experience not only for students but also for us as teachers. It gave us the ability to think about what we wanted the Freshman Academy to look like and plan how we were going to get there.”