Our History
The Southern Oregon Regional Educator Network (SOREN) was formed in 2019 as a result of Oregon Senate Bill 182 (2017) and the creation of the Educator Advancement Council (EAC); a public-nonprofit partnership intended to significantly improve professional support for Oregon’s public educators. SOREN is one of 10 Regional Educator Networks (RENs) across Oregon. All of the RENs are called to facilitate a process that centers the voices of educators at the local level to create meaningful, systemic changes that will improve recruitment, retention, and professional learning for educators. While the call of each REN is the same, the approach is unique to each region in response to the needs of educators in their region. SOREN is a networked improvement community; that innovates and improves on traditional continuous improvement models and is seeing positive results; SOREN focuses on finding solutions through a systems lens and supports educators at every level (classified, licensed, and administrators) and at every part of the career continuum from pathways to novice and experienced to leading). Our aim is to increase safety, significance, and belonging in the school environment and we are creating the conditions for more people to thrive in the school environment. Through our laser-like focus on our aim and our wrap around inclusive and inviting approach to support systems change, we are witnessing improvement in experiences and outcomes that are showing up in lots of ways – academic outcomes, attendance, student engagement, staff and student wellbeing, and teacher retention are improving – and behavior referrals, exclusionary practices, and behavior that disrupts learning are on the decline. Five years into our journey, we have a lot to celebrate and a lot of work to do. We’re making a difference in the lives of educators who are showing up. And, continue to invite educators who may not know us yet, to come and join us.
