When we think about access in education, we often focus on students. We ask whether every learner has access to high-quality instruction, meaningful learning opportunities, and the support they need to thrive. Yet an equally important question often goes unexamined: Do all educators have equitable access to learning?
Professional learning is an access issue.
Every educator, teachers, coaches, principals, district leaders, and cabinet members, deserve ongoing, coherent, job-embedded professional learning that is specific to their role and connected to a shared vision for teaching and learning. If we believe that learning is a continuous process, then we must create systems that ensure everyone has opportunities to learn, not just those who can attend optional workshops after school or on weekends.
Learning Requires More Than Workshops or Watching Short Snippets of Information on Social Media
As we explored in an earlier post, people learn through collective sensemaking, not simply through receiving information. Learning is social, connected to the context of everyday work, and strengthened through opportunities to practice, reflect, and learn alongside others. This suggests that meaningful professional growth requires more than isolated workshops; it requires ongoing, job-embedded learning experiences where educators can collaboratively make sense of ideas and apply them in their practice.
This raises an important question for school systems: How do districts ensure learning opportunities for everyone from classroom to cabinet?
Creating Access Through Structures for Teacher Learning
Recognizing that teacher learning cannot be left to chance, we work with Tustin Unified to reorganize schedules across elementary schools to include 45 minutes of weekly Professional Learning Community (PLC) time during the school day. This structural commitment ensures that every teacher has access to high-quality collaborative learning as part of their contracted workday.
By embedding learning into the school day, districts can remove barriers that can unintentionally exclude educators from opportunities to grow their practice.
But Tustin’s commitment to equitable access extends beyond teachers.
Supporting Principals as Learners and Instructional Leaders
Research consistently points to the critical role of school leadership in improving student outcomes. In their landmark review, Leithwood and colleagues (2004) concluded that “leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school.” If leadership matters that much, then principals need opportunities to learn as well.
According to Maggie Villegas, Deputy Superintendent of Tustin Unified School District, the district is intentionally prioritizing principal learning during the implementation of new mathematics curriculum and instructional practices.
“We know how vital principal leadership is in terms of implementing new curriculum and making instructional change,” Villegas explained. “Together with our superintendent, we started by trying to build clarity for our principals.”
The district gave principals permission to focus their annual goals on mathematics instruction and established an expectation that principals would participate in weekly PLCs alongside teachers and instructional specialists.
“They sit alongside their teachers,” Villegas noted, “and they model learning with them. They share their vulnerability of maybe not understanding certain math concepts because we know that in order for them to have meaningful conversations around instruction, they have to understand the instruction to some degree.”
In addition to weekly PLC participation, principals engage in a monthly Principal Curriculum Leadership Academy. Villegas describes this structure:
“Our entire principal team along with our teachers on special assignment, meet together for three hours every month and unpack the Mathematical Standards of Practice. They do the math together. They talk about the actual leadership moves and the instructional moves that they need to make in order to move learning along at their sites and they collaborate with their peers.”
This investment reflects what Grissom et al. (2021) found in their research on effective school leadership: successful principals focus their practice on instructional interactions with teachers, fostering collaborative professional learning communities, building productive school climates, and strategically aligning resources to support teaching and learning.
Tustin’s investment in principal learning recognizes that instructional leaders require learning, too. By providing principals with dedicated opportunities to study mathematics, examine instructional practice, and collaborate with peers, the district builds leaders’ capacity to engage in meaningful conversations with teachers, support professional learning communities, and lead instructional change with greater confidence and clarity.
From Classroom to Cabinet: Building a Learning System
Equitable access to professional learning is not simply a matter of fairness for educators. It is a strategy for improving outcomes for students. When districts create coherent learning systems that support everyone—from classroom to cabinet—they build collective capacity to improve teaching and learning across the entire organization.
If we want equitable outcomes for students, we must also ensure equitable access to learning for the adults who serve them.
The Evolving Educator: 
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