How We Bring the Anchor Competencies to Life

Partnership as Practice

As I’ve reflected lately on what makes a partnership effective, I keep returning to a few questions: How do we choose the right partners to move important work forward? How do we ensure alignment, meaningful communication, and trust?

As I ponder these questions, I keep coming back to the Anchor Competencies Framework as a lens for approaching partnerships. To work together effectively, we need to be aligned around shared goals—in our case, the goals at the heart of the Framework. We also need to understand the contexts that shape our collective work, recognizing the individual, communal, cultural, and socio-political factors that influence our decisions and actions. And we need to bring a social, emotional, and cultural lens to our interactions and embody anchor competencies such as building trusting relationships, promoting collaborative learning, and responding across differences. Over the last four years, our Center has had the privilege of partnering with Dr. Dawn White and Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to support their Grow-Your-Own teacher preparation pathway for special education teachers. Throughout this partnership, we have not only taught the Framework—we have lived it alongside our partners.

Together, we have remained optimistic and persevered through uncertainty. There were moments when we were unsure whether our collaboration could continue due to district budget cuts, school closures, a return to remote learning following heightened unrest and public safety concerns, and frequent leadership and staffing changes. Yet we continued to show up with persistence, flexibility, and care. We communicated consistently to better understand our partners’ context and needs, adjusting our approach as circumstances changed. We built trusting relationships by listening deeply to faculty and responding to what we heard from them as we developed resources to support their work of preparing educators for the work of reaching and teaching the whole child. Through office hours, coaching conversations, and one-on-one Zoom meetings, we shared materials in progress, gathered feedback, and refined our work together. This past week, we had the chance to spend a day in Minneapolis with the MPS Academy faculty, mentors, and administrators. We shared resources that we have been developing this past year thanks to incredible support from both the district and the Sauer Family Foundation.

Final Resource Sharing Event with Faculty, Mentors, and Administrators from MPS Academy, June 2026

When we asked how people were feeling about the resources that the Center developed and the impact of the partnership, the K–12 Content Lead for Special Education shared: “I feel satisfied. I look around and see the materials that have been developed, the people in this room, and all the work that has been done. The work you have done has really enriched our program. The idea of giving people the opportunity for a career, a profession, and a way to support their family—and ultimately helping prepare teachers who make everything better—it feels meaningful to be a part of that. Today just feels really satisfying. Good work is being done.” Other faculty shared that they felt seen and heard through our partnership and process. One faculty member shared, “I just want to acknowledge that I can see the feedback that was taken, and how it has shaped the current iterations (of the resources), and so I just want to say I appreciate you not only asking for feedback, but actually responding to it. So, thank you for that.”

Partnership Is Inspirational

Together, we have developed a suite of resources designed to help faculty cultivate a social, emotional, and cultural lens within teacher candidates. While there is still work to do to ensure these resources continue to live on and evolve, it was inspiring to watch faculty members explore them and imagine how they might bring this work to life in their teaching and support of candidates.

We at the Center are deeply grateful for this partnership and hopeful that we can continue building relationships like this with other Grow-Your-Own programs and alternative teacher preparation pathways.

As you reflect on your own work, I invite you to consider: What are some of your strongest partnerships? How have you cultivated those relationships? What practices have helped them grow and thrive?

Too often, educational change can feel like work we must carry out on our own. We can become siloed within our classrooms, schools, organizations, or institutions. What this partnership has reminded me is that meaningful change happens when we listen to one another, honor our contexts, and dream together.

In Joy for the Work,

Rebecca

For a great resource that encourages us to lead from a place of curiosity over comfort, check out this article from Brerné Brown and Adam Grant or for the longer version, check out this interview.

These resources underscore the importance of living out the Framework by embracing lifelong learning, cultivating a growth mindset, and practicing vulnerability. When leaders embody these qualities and provide an environment for others to do so, they build psychological safety and the conditions for thriving.

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