For nearly 60 years, Education Northwest has been delivering technical assistance that makes a tangible difference in schools and communities. These projects give us the opportunity to work side by side with states, districts, schools, Tribes, educators, policymakers, families, community and organizational leaders, and students to address implementation challenges and build stronger systems for all learners.

Although we learn something new from every project, after six decades we have a solid understanding of what makes technical assistance effective. Drawing on our years of experience as well as the best available evidence, we developed a four-phase approach to technical assistance which guides all our work. These phases happen fluidly, and sometimes simultaneously, depending on the project timeline and context. The four phases include:

1. Build trusting relationships and co-develop
2. Collaboratively implement
3. Collaboratively engage in continuous improvement and feedback cycles
4. Scale and sustain

In this blog series, we will take a deep dive into each phase to explain how each looks in practice. We will explore what it means to partner with our team and explain how our values shape our work. We’ll start with the first phase: build trusting relationships and co-develop.

Build Trusting Relationships and Co-Develop

The first phase of our technical assistance approach is to build trusting relationships and co-develop. Our goal in this phase is to establish a solid foundation for the entire project. With trust and collaboration, we can implement high-quality, evidence-based strategies, tools, and solutions that prioritize students and families.

Trusting Relationships

Trust is the foundation of effective partnerships. Trusting partners understand one another’s context, motivations, and ways of being that inform decisions and actions. At Education Northwest, we build trust with our partners through open and honest communication, integrity, and reliability. We start by listening and never assume we have all the answers. We take time to understand our partners’ goals and context using local data and wisdom from the community, including students and families.

We also build trust by showing up in authentic ways and sharing our lived experiences. Many of our team members have worked as educators in diverse settings: classrooms and district offices, rural and urban districts, small schools and large ones. We have firsthand experience with the challenges facing teachers, administrators, and education leaders. Our mutual understanding builds trust and confidence that we can develop practical solutions, together.

Co-Develop

Every community has a unique context and a deep personal investment in their students’ success. Local insight and buy-in are critical for effective and sustainable solutions, and local context matters for setting and measuring goals. We leverage our partners’ local wisdom and resources (ranging from physical assets to human capital to cultural and social strengths), then weave in our knowledge of education research and practice. Using that information, we co-develop plans and goals for improving systems and programs so every student can access a high-quality education. The process of co-development extends capacity, creates a shared support system, and allows us to accomplish far more together than is possible aloneZ. We strive to honor the knowledge, skills, values, and lived experiences of the communities we serve to make positive change happen.

In Action: Trust and Co-Development in North Thurston Public Schools

Over the past year, I have been part of an Education Northwest team partnering with North Thurston Public Schools (in Washington state) to review three district programs: the multilingual learner program, the Title I/Learning Assistance Program, and the special education program. Our goal is to collect and analyze data to assess each program’s current practices, strengths, and areas for growth so we can develop recommendations that align to evidence-based practices.

North Thurston was a new partner for our team, so we knew that it was essential to establish trust in the beginning. We spent our initial meeting getting to know each other by sharing our professional backgrounds, discussing the district context, listening for common experiences, setting norms, and sharing how we wanted to work together.

Co-developing the project was also especially important, considering the logistics: We had an ambitious timeline, aiming to collect data in time to help the district plan for the next school year. A key method in our program evaluations is classroom observation, which allows us to gather real-time student learning data. Clarifying the timeline with North Thurston from the get-go meant we could establish a realistic plan to conduct observations in the time allotted. We also collaborated with the district’s project team to adapt a classroom observation tool for each of the three programs. Each tool included scaled items aligned to evidence-based practices and incorporated language and elements specific to each program. For example, our multilingual learner classroom observations collected data on students’ use of language in the four domains, and our Title/LAP classroom observations collected data on students’ independent practice and opportunities to apply introduced skills. Using tools, resources, and artifacts that are evidence based, culturally responsive, and aligned to the context in which we work is essential for building and sustaining trust with partners.

We made sure to build trust not only with North Thurston’s project team, but also with educators in the three programs we reviewed. As a former teacher with experience in each of the programs, I knew that if we wanted reliable data, we needed the educators to trust us as observers. We set up meetings with educators to share about the project and answer questions. (After trying the first meeting online, we realized that building trust with this community really needed to happen in person! For the next meeting, we adjusted to meet with teachers face to face.) In those meetings, I was able to share my background as a teacher and a district administrator. I could tell them, “I have done what you do” and “I experienced that challenge, and here’s how I dealt with it.” They saw that I understood the work and, more importantly, the challenges they were facing.

Collaboration and co-design with North Thurston evolved throughout the project, building on the foundation of trust established in our initial meeting. Any time our team created a draft of a document, we shared it with North Thurston to get feedback. We said, “Here’s what we thought and observed. Does this make sense? Did we miss any important context?” When we prepared data visualizations, we asked if the information would resonate with the right audiences. In one instance, one district-level director shared the district’s lens for analyzing data so we could put our findings in a context that made sense to teachers. Throughout the project, we used North Thurston’s feedback to refine the final products to be meaningful and immediately useful for North Thurston teachers, administrators, and the community.

In recent months, North Thurston has shared the concrete ways they are using our findings and project deliverables to support practitioners and achieve district goals. For example, they initiated work on their multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) based on our recommendations and are planning professional learning for educators. The district has used our reports and slide decks as communication and planning tools with teachers, administrators, directors, and the school board. By taking time to build trust and co-develop a plan with North Thurston, we know that our work has an impact. And most importantly, we created something that will actually benefit students in North Thurston schools for years to come.

Setting the Stage for Successful Projects

Trusting relationships and co-development shape every interaction with our partners and our approach to technical assistance. By listening deeply, honoring our partners’ lived experiences, and embracing a shared commitment to educational access, we build relationships that are authentic, meaningful, and transformative. Through co-development, we not only provide solutions but actively work alongside our partners to build capacity with a focus on shared responsibility and sustainability.

Once trust and collaboration are established, we can collaboratively implement solutions, assess our work and our progress, and ultimately scale and sustain the work for lasting impact. When trust is at the heart of our work, we create stronger, more resilient systems that can better serve all students and families.

Stay tuned for the next blog in this series highlighting phase two of our technical assistance approach: collaborative implementation.

Jennifer Johnson has worked in public education for over 25 years, with a focus on supporting diverse multilingual populations in underserved schools. Prior to joining Education Northwest, she was a dual language teacher, bilingual instructional coach, building principal, district-level multilingual director, state dual language task force member, and WIDA professional development trainer.