Educators gather at the CCW Regional Gathering is ESD 189 to hear students' thoughts. This helps center student voice in the conversation about career pathways. | |
Culturally Responsive Education Alignment and Sustainability Conference. Register Now! | |
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For years we’ve been working across the state to deepen our learning and implementation of Culturally Responsive Education. Now is the time to join us in a continued conversation about how we can leverage this momentum moving forward! Come to the Culturally Responsive Education Alignment & Sustainability Conference to hear from Dr. Adeyemi Stembridge, District and Building Administrators about how they are building upon their residency experiences and scaling the CRE work building and district wide. Hear about new practices and shifting conversations to better meet their growth goals and changing needs of teachers and students.
Who Should Attend: District Administrators, Principals, Instructional Coaches, PLC Leads, Teachers and Educational Leaders who have participated in a CRE residency or are interested in continuing to be in community with this work.
LOCATION: Hilton Seattle Airport
WHEN: May 14, 2025, 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
COST: $25
CLOCK HOURS AVAILABLE: 5 clock hours
Register for the CREAASC here!
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Washington's 2025 Legislative Session Continues | |
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CSTP continues to give updates on the current session. Every Friday, our Legislative Update Coordinator, Samantha Miller, will recap the week's events and what bills are still in play.
You can stay updated and catch up on past weeks (and even updates from past years) here on our Stories From Schools blog! We will also be sending out updates via email.
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Partner with CSTP to Offer Clock Hours at Your Next Training | |
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Are you running a course, professional development or book study and want to offer Washington State clock hours? CSTP is an approved Washington State clock hour provider and can approve your courses for clock hours. It is free for the instructor to apply for the course with participants paying a nominal fee.
Learn More and Apply for Clock Hours
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Career Connected Learning with CSTP | |
CCW is a statewide network of business, labor, education, and community leaders creating work-based and academic programs for young people in Washington to explore, prepare, and launch themselves into college and careers. CSTP is the designated Sector Lead for Education supporting this work at the state level. Here are our monthly updates. To find out more about Career Connect Washington you can to careerconnectwa.org.
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Regional Gatherings!
This past month saw the CSTP team heading up to NWESD 189 to co-host and facilitate our FIFTH Regional Gathering for Educator Pathways. It was cupfilling to be in the room with so many amazing, dedicated, and passionate educators to engage with our driving question about "What does an equitable and accessible pathway into a career in education require of us?"
This regional gathering highlighted and centered a developing project for the region, Teachers for the People, which aims to create a co-designed pathway for Indigenous high school students to enter into the teaching profession that is rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
By leveraging collective expertise in our community and identifying pathway options as well as gaps, this event aimed to foster a collaborative space to address regional needs and expand impact.
Round 13 Presentations!
The presentations for the Education Sector were also this month. The committee was able to hear about the amazing work from the Washington Educator Association (WEA), The Alliance for Education Seattle Teacher Residency Program, Foundation for Academic Endeavors, Education Service District 123's ELAP program, and Northwest Education Service District 189's Teachers for the People.
Hearing from colleagues about their work and dedication towards more pathways and opportunities within our sector was inspiring.
If you have questions please contact Saara Kamal at saara@cstp-wa.org.
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NBCT Stipend: Legislative Updates | |
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If you missed it, the Governor's current budget proposals include pausing the National Board Stipend for four years. CSTP has been working with WEA to advocate against this teacher salary cut. Read on for updates and suggestions for how you can get involved. This week is critical as the House and Senate finalize their proposed budget.
WEA: Take Action
The WEA has ways for you to take your advocacy to the next level. When you have downtime this week – before or after school, evenings and weekends (make sure you’re not on the work clock!), call legislators in Olympia and leave messages about the importance of maintaining the stipends in the state budget. Here are resources to help:
WEA's email portal is still up for those who would prefer that method of contacting legislators. Any messaging is important and helpful! Click here for messaging tips.
CSTP: Advocacy Session Summary
CSTP ran three advocacy sessions in the in the first two weeks of February for National Board Certified Teachers to hone their messages to the legislature about the importance of maintaining the stipends. More than 24 teachers from across the state attended to work on their messages about how the stipend impacts longevity in the classroom, provides confidence in their craft, offers security for their financial futures and stands as an ongoing reward for the personal growth and sacrifices teachers make to continue to better themselves through the process, just to name a few.
The training is based on the CSTP Teacher Leadership framework as well as these guidelines and principles of messaging and message development organizer. A few takeaways from our sessions if you are working on your own messaging for legislatures are:
- Remember that the best the message is your own. What do you have to share that is personal and powerful?
- Look into the issues that your representative cares about and connects with.
- Find out, if you can, how they already feel about the NBCT stipend and tailor your message accordingly. Are you working to change their mind, or are you providing them with more reasons and personal connections for them to share with others?
You can find WEA's portal to send messaging to your legislators here.
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WEA National Board Certification Resources | |
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National Board Information Session Series: Registration Now Open!
Audience: Certificated Educators. Our Certification Trainings are conducted online through Zoom, as a Member Benefit, free of charge to WEA Members only.
National Board Certification — Overview: Session 1 (2 Clock Hours)
National Board Certification — Standards & Process: Session 2 (2 Clock Hours)
National Board Certification — Support & Next Steps: Session 3 (2 Clock Hours)
See here for more trainings and details from WEA!
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National Board Writing Webinars | |
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Who: Any National Board candidate working toward National Board Certification in 2024-2025
What: These one-hour webinars are designed to support writing for the National Board portfolio. Candidates should expect to examine their own writing and work with peers on the selected topic. These sessions DO NOT replace cohorts nor conditional loan requirements.
When: Twice monthly, always Tuesdays, 4:30 PM-5:30 PM (choose Series B for upcoming dates). The last two, March 18 and April 8, are coming up soon!
See here for 2024-25 dates and registration.
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OSPI: Graduation Toolkit 2025 | |
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The League of Education Voters has created a Youth Advocacy Hub, a growing and evolving resource designed to make Washington state education policy more understandable and actionable for young people. The hub provides clear, student-friendly summaries of key bills from the Washington legislative session, along with relevant context and discussion points to help students critically analyze policy proposals. The goal is to remove barriers to advocacy by equipping young people with the tools they need to be informed, develop their own perspectives, and take action on the issues that matter most to them.
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Join us for fun facts, obscure knowledge, and exploration of physics, genetics, etymology, art, and more!
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A 9V By Any Other Name Would Charge As Sweet | |
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Battery names in the United States come from a few different sources: the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC); the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); and plain old consumer-focused tradition.
The IEC uses a coded nomenclature for most batteries, to indicate shape, size, and chemical composition. The ANSI uses numerical codes. Both systems have been “harmonized” over the last century so that different names refer to the same battery. For example, the battery sold in stores as a lithium D-cell carries the ANSI code “13” and the IEC designation “R20’--different names, same battery.
These standards are important for tracking and regulating batteries, but to consumers, the most important part of the battery is the size and corresponding voltage. Thus, they are usually marketed under simpler names that only indicate what battery slots they might fit in: AA, AAA, D, and 9V are common examples you might find in your household.
Meanwhile, button cell batteries–those disc-shaped cells found in watches, kitchen scales, and other thin devices–are marketed under an amalgam of codes. The battery sold in stores as a CR2032, for example, takes its name straight from the IEC: C is lithium, R is round, and 2032 indicates that it is 20 mm by 3.2 mm in size. Something marketed as an R44 uses a modified IEC name, omitting the chemical composition code; the full code could be LR44 (alkaline) or SR44 (silver). The two compositions need to be made and tracked differently, but both would work nicely in your laser pointer.
When electronics and batteries were becoming more common and standardized in the early 1900s, the ANSI used letter codes A (smallest size) through J (largest) to identify cylindrical batteries. A and B batteries were the most common on the market in the 1920s and 30s. During World War II, a battery smaller in dimension than the A was created. As there is no letter before A, the AA was born This was followed by the even slimmer triple-A and quadruple-A. The standard A and B batteries fell out of favor as they were too big to be useful for their lower voltage. The AA replaced the A in practically every use case, and the B cell was supplanted by its higher-voltage cousins D and C.
We haven’t even gotten into rectangular batteries, retired chemicals, and specialized or industrial batteries. The entire naming system is an ad hoc hodge-podge of a mess. This is because the enterprise was founded not on scientific basis or patterns, but on what batteries are useful, at what voltage, in what environment. Can they fit in the thing that needs a charge? The battery naming systems feel so arbitrary because the system only exists so you can buy the correct battery in the simplest way possible.
So, next time you get frustrated when you try to find a weird button battery and wonder where that strange code came from, take heart! None of the other codes make much sense, either. They’re just shorter.
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