Leadership
Build the collective capacity of school leaders and leadership teams.
Keeping the Teachers We Have
Creating Schools Where Educators Choose to Stay, Grow & Thrive
An Invitation to Philadelphia Elementary Schools
What becomes possible when talented educators feel deeply connected to their schools—and supported to stay, grow, and lead?
The Opportunity
Every school is filled with people, relationships, knowledge, strengths, and possibilities worth building upon.
And every school is navigating the ongoing work of creating an environment where educators can do their best work and students can thrive.
Keeping the Teachers We Have invites Philadelphia elementary schools into a two-year partnership to explore a powerful question:
How do we create the conditions where educators choose to stay?
Together, participating schools will explore that question within their own communities—learning from educators, building upon existing strengths, strengthening leadership and culture, and designing approaches to educator retention that make sense for their unique context.
This isn't about bringing schools a predetermined solution.
It's about you discovering and building on what works for you and your school community.
Why Educator Retention Matters
Keeping talented educators creates benefits that extend throughout an entire school community.
When educators experience belonging, trust, meaningful collaboration, opportunities to grow, supportive leadership, and healthy working environments, schools are better positioned to cultivate stability and continuity.
Students
Benefit from sustained relationships.
Educators
Have greater opportunities to grow together.
Leadership Teams
Build collective capacity.
Families & Communities
Experience stronger connections with schools.
And as more educators choose to stay, schools grow stronger.
Educator retention is also essential to educator diversity. Strengthening pathways into the profession matters—and so does creating schools where talented educators from diverse backgrounds experience the belonging, support, opportunity, and leadership conditions that encourage them to stay, grow, and thrive.
That is the possibility at the heart of this work.
What Is Keeping the Teachers We Have?
Keeping the Teachers We Have: Catalyzing Philadelphia's Elementary Educator Workforce Through Culturally Relevant Leadership is the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium's (PEDC) School Transformation Model for Educator Retention and Cohort II of the CRSE Leadership Institute.
The two-year initiative will partner with eight Philadelphia elementary schools to support:
Culture & Belonging
Deepen trust, connection, wellness, and environments where educators feel valued.
Culturally Relevant & Sustaining Education
Strengthen CRSE, aligned with PDE's Common Ground Framework, as a foundation for leadership, relationships, decision-making, and school culture.
Educator Retention
Understand what influences educators' experiences and develop approaches that support educators to stay, grow, and lead.
Sustainable School Capacity
Build practices and systems that schools can continue strengthening long after the formal partnership concludes.
Your School. Your Context. Your Journey.
There is no single solution to educator retention.
That's why participating schools won't receive a prescribed retention program.
Instead, your team will investigate your own school environment, listen to the people closest to the work, identify strengths and opportunities, learn alongside other schools, and design strategies responsive to your community.
Your educators' experiences matter.
Your school's strengths matter.
Your families and community matter.
Your context matters.
And your team will help determine where the journey leads.
How We'll Work Together
Four ways we'll work together
Investigate
Learn from your school.
Through Participatory Action Research, your team will explore the conditions influencing educators' experiences and retention, center educator voice, and use evidence and lived experience to inform decisions.
Learn
Grow as leaders.
Through the CRSE Leadership Institute, teams will deepen their practice in culturally relevant and sustaining education, human-centered leadership, organizational culture, belonging, wellness, and systems change.
Implement
Turn learning into action.
CRSE Implementation Partners will work alongside your team as you translate learning and inquiry into meaningful strategies, test approaches, reflect, adapt, and strengthen your work.
Connect
Learn with other schools.
Learning Exchanges will bring participating schools together to exchange ideas, explore promising practices, solve problems, celebrate progress, and build a community of colleagues committed to this work.
What Your School Gains
What will your school gain?
A Stronger Leadership Team
Develop shared leadership, collective ownership, and greater engagement and capacity to lead meaningful and sustainable change.
Deeper Understanding of Your Educators' Experiences
Use curiosity, inquiry, evidence, and educator voice to better understand what helps educators feel connected, supported, and able to thrive.
A School Educator Retention Plan
Develop a retention plan grounded in your school's own Participatory Action Research—not assumptions about what your school needs.
Practical Strategies You Can Use
Move from professional learning to implementation with ongoing partnership and support.
Space for Wellness, Reflection & Renewal
Participate in experiences intentionally designed to support the health and wellness of leaders and educators.
A Community You Don't Have to Leave Behind
Build relationships with other participating schools and become part of PEDC's broader learning community beyond the two-year initiative.
An Opportunity to Tell Your Story
Share your school's learning, innovations, and promising practices through a culminating School Transformation Magazine and broader PEDC community.
The Journey
The two-year journey
Year One
Investigate. Learn. Design.
Understand your school. Listen deeply. Discover possibilities.
Your team will conduct Participatory Action Research, engage educators and community members, participate in the CRSE Leadership Institute and Learning Exchanges, and begin identifying and implementing strategies informed by what you learn.
Year One culminates in: Your School Educator Retention Plan + Health & Wellness Retreat
Year Two
Implement. Strengthen. Sustain.
Put ideas into practice. Learn from what happens. Build for the future.
Your team will implement and refine its retention plan, work alongside CRSE Implementation Partners, continue learning with other schools, and develop approaches that can be sustained beyond the initiative.
The journey culminates in
A School Transformation Magazine + Final Learning Exchange
Celebrating what participating schools have learned and created together.
The Heart of the Model
Grounded in Culturally Relevant & Sustaining Education
CRSE
- Human-Centered Leadership
- Health & Wellness
- Authentic Relationships & Trust
- Shared Leadership
- Inquiry & Evidence
- Educator, Family & Community Voice
- Collective Learning
- Continuous Improvement
- Sustainability
These aren't additional initiatives for schools to manage.
They are principles woven throughout how we learn, partner, lead, and create together.
Who Should Join?
We are seeking eight Philadelphia elementary schools ready to explore educator retention through inquiry, collaboration, learning, and action.
Participating schools will establish a School Transformation Leadership Team representing multiple perspectives from across their community, potentially including:
- principals and assistant principals
- teachers and teacher leaders
- instructional support staff
- family representatives
- other appropriate school or district partners
You don't need to have all the answers.
You need curiosity, commitment, and a willingness to learn alongside your school community.
What Will Participation Ask of Your School?
This is a partnership—and meaningful partnership grows through shared commitment.
Participating schools will be invited to:
Establish a School Transformation Leadership Team representing multiple perspectives.
Make space for team members to participate in learning, inquiry, and collaboration throughout the two-year journey.
Listen to and learn from educators, families, and other members of the school community.
Explore new ideas, test possibilities, and reflect on what you are learning.
Share experiences and promising practices with other schools in the cohort.
And you won't be doing this alone.
PEDC will be alongside you throughout the journey—with learning, tools, partnership, implementation support, and a community of schools learning together.
About PEDC
Why PEDC?
The Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium (PEDC) is a statewide convener, catalyst, capacity-builder, advocate, and thought leader committed to strengthening educator diversity and advancing culturally relevant and sustaining education.
PEDC brings together educators, students, families, school districts, institutions of higher education, policymakers, researchers, and community organizations to learn, collaborate, create resources, and advance change together.
Our work is grounded in a simple belief:
Lasting transformation happens with people, not to them.
Through leadership development, innovation, research, policy, and collective action, PEDC works alongside communities to create the conditions where educators and students can thrive.
Keeping the Teachers We Have brings PEDC's statewide experience, relationships, and commitment to human-centered and culturally relevant and sustaining education into deep partnership with Philadelphia's elementary schools.
We won't ask you to transform your school alone. We'll learn, investigate, create, and grow together.
Imagine What We Could Build Together
Imagine a school where educators feel known.
Where belonging isn't left to chance.
Where leaders have space to learn and grow.
Where educator voice shapes decisions.
Where wellness matters.
Where CRSE lives in the school's culture.
Where educators see opportunities to grow, contribute, and lead.
And where talented educators choose not only to come—
but to stay.
Keeping the Teachers We Have is an invitation to help create those conditions, together.
Join Us
Is your school ready to join us?
If this vision resonates with you and your school community, we invite you to take the next step.
Expressing interest is the beginning of a conversation. Tell us a little about your school, your hopes for educator retention, and why this opportunity speaks to you.