The UC Davis School of Education has been awarded a $1 million grant to help small teams of K-12 teachers develop projects that enhance teaching and learning in the classrooms.

The grant from the California Postsecondary Education Commission provides funding for a three-year project headed by Joanne Bookmyer, director of teacher research at the Cooperative Research and Extension Services for Schools (CRESS) Center. The funds will enable the center, working with partners from Humboldt State University and West Sacramento Early College Prep, to manage what it has dubbed the Pacific Coast Teacher Innovation Network.

Through the program, faculty from the schools of education and other departments at both universities will work with teams of teachers at public, private and charter schools to improve their teaching skills and mastery of the subjects they teach.

Humboldt State University has a history of providing high-quality professional development to teachers across northern California. West Sacramento Early College Prep is a charter school developed by the UC Davis School of Education, West Sacramento’s Washington Unified School District and Sacramento City College.

With the grant, UC Davis and Humboldt State will run a competitive local grant program for schools in the coastal region from Ventura County to Del Norte County and inland to Yolo County. Teams of three to five teachers will be eligible for 24 grants of up to $30,000 each.

“Ultimately, we hope that teachers in this project will be better able to engage their students,” Bookmyer said. “We want them to be better teachers.”

The project will encourage innovation, and will be “teacher driven,” she said.

“The teachers will decide what it is they would like to do that they think will have an impact in their classrooms,” Bookmyer explained. “We’re going to say to them, ‘You have this pot of money, you figure out what your school needs to engage your students and go out and get that training. Then, come back and put that training into practice in your classroom and schools.’”

Researchers will assess the efficacy of the project, with the measure of success determined ultimately by the level of student engagement and achievement at participating school sites, Bookmyer said.