The National Education Association (NEA) and Catalyst for Educational Change (CEC) have developed an innovative program for supporting early career educators and propelling them into new leadership opportunities. The NEA/CEC Early Career Leadership Fellow (ECLF) Collaborative is a yearlong experience designed to:
engage early career educators to grow as leaders
provide them skills and resources to engage other early career educators and identify and plan for a change
activate them to become formal and informal leaders in their local, state and national unions
The ECLF Collaborative is grounded in the Teacher Leadership Institute competencies, with a focus on overarching, instructional, policy and association leadership.
Three national cohorts, each with six local associations, have been successfully implemented between 2015 and 2018. Four states in the Midwest (IA, IL, MN, WI) launched state-level ECLF programs in 2017-18 with support from an NEA Great Public Schools (GPS) grant. To date, 279 Fellows have participated in the program, engaging 1,395 early career educator “Sounding Board” participants. Approximately 50% of Fellows are educators of color.
Program review data shows the ECLF Collaborative has been very successful in meeting its goals; furthermore, data suggests some additional positive impacts on educator satisfaction and retention.