Welcome to the Western Regional Educator Network
The Western Regional Educator Network (WREN) serves Oregon educators in Lane, Linn, Benton, and Lincoln Counties, offering professional learning opportunities, continuous improvement coaching, and improvement project funding to support educators in every stage of their career.
WREN Mission & Aim
MISSION
The WREN is an educator-led, improvement-focused network that elevates and embraces teachers' voices by emphasizing the Oregon Equity Lens to interrupt historical patterns of inequities and support educators through every stage of their career, from recruitment through retirement, by creating more inclusive and empowering school cultures.
AIM
We will create more inclusive and equitable school cultures in order to increase the percentage of teachers of color in the region from 9.8% to 14.3%.
Regional Problems of Practice
The Focus of Our Efforts
In Summer 2023, the Oregon Educator Advancement Council directed the Regional Educator Networks to identify three to five regional problems of practice in order to guide their work with educators. Over several work sessions, WREN staff and the Coordinating Body identified, developed, and adopted, in October 2023, the following problems of practice for the region:
-
Educator morale is declining.
-
There are high rates of attrition among BIPOC educators and novice educators.
-
Equity work is not consistently reducing disproportionality and disparity in our region.
Background and History
With the passage of Senate Bill 182 in 2017, Oregon committed to centering educators' voices and experiences through the Educator Advancement Council (EAC) as a way to better support them through their professional lives. The EAC became a product of a bill that aimed to rethink the way we support educators from recruitment to retirement.
In Fall 2019, the EAC launched 10 Regional Educator Networks (RENs) to facilitate a networked continuous improvement process; the RENs do not organize around a solution, but rather around improving systems of support for educators along the educator advancement continuum.
Established in 2019, Region C became the Western Regional Educator Network (WREN), serving 28 school districts and two education service districts located throughout Lane, Linn, Benton, and Lincoln Counties.
The WREN uses a continuous improvement model to improve the processes, systems and projects that enhance the teaching experience. By prioritizing teacher voice, the WREN supports projects, or change ideas, that will increase the recruitment and retention of qualified teachers who reflect the faces of our students. WREN support includes continuous improvement coaching, professional development opportunities, change project funding, and networked improvement.