I'm thrilled that I got to catch up with Rebekah Kim as conversation #16 for this series. Rebekah is the Associate Superintendent of Teaching & Learning in the Kent School District, a 25,000 student district just outside of Seattle, WA where she leads a team of 20 teaching and learning specialists across several departments.

I first met Rebekah at Throughline Learning (formerly Highlander Institute)'s Blended & Personalized Learning Conference (BPLC) in 2016 when she was a building principal at Midway Elementary School. It was incredible to catch up with her for #100DistrictConversations!

"We're a richly diverse district, and I'm deeply committed to ensuring that equity and students are at the heart of everything we do.

One of my top priorities as a leader is creating a cohesive and impactful professional learning program. We're actively exploring ways to integrate our professional learning offerings, ensuring they're relevant, manageable, and address the diverse needs of our educators. I’ve launched the idea of our leadership team members bringing their own professional learning ideas to the table to pitch for the 2025-2026 school year, searching for opportunities for alignment and collaboration.

We know that too many professional learning initiatives at once can be overwhelming for teachers so we're always asking ourselves: How can we streamline PD and leverage technology to support interdisciplinary learning?

We're also working to align our internal professional learning priorities with state mandates in Washington. For example, we've integrated equity modules into the principal-directed PD days, layering them with content from our Teaching & Learning leaders. We're also exploring ways to integrate social emotional learning curriculum, building on existing programs like Second Step and considering the incorporation of frameworks that are part of a daily culture of the classroom and school.

Meaningful partnerships are essential. Our collaboration with the The Center for Educational Leadership has been invaluable; we’ve adopted their evaluation tool as the backbone of our learning walks. We've invested in shared learning experiences, including having principals complete Measures of Instructional Leadership Expertise (MILE) assessments. This approach has been well-received by our leaders.

I'm also passionate about incorporating student voice and 'street data' that is more qualitative and experiential into our improvement processes. Our ongoing collaboration with Jamila Dugan, co-author of the book Street Data, will help us develop a system-wide design for collecting and using this type of data to inform our strategic plan and school improvement plans. We're committed to authentic engagement with street data, ensuring our school leaders can effectively use it to drive sustainable change in their buildings around culture and climate."