Ednovate, a network of innovative public charter schools, has partnered again with the University of Southern California (USC) Rossier School of Education to establish a groundbreaking teacher training residency program. This program, which will be called the USC Ednovate Teaching Fellows program, is supported in part by a $250,000 grant from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

When I first found out about personalized learning, I was intimidated. After all, I’m a teacher, not a techie. Personalized learning relies heavily on technology; students use a Chromebook that is assigned to them for the majority of their coursework. This was not my forte! However, once I saw it in action, I knew this was the type of teacher I wanted to become. 

Three years in, and I continue to be a believer in the power of personalizing the learning experience. After 10+ years working in traditional environments, I would never go back. However, not all things are sticking; in fact, some things aren’t, but that is for another blog post.

As the leader of various instructional and non-instructional teams for the past eight years, I thought I had things figured out when it came to onboarding PD. People generally had a good time getting to know one another, my PD laid the foundation for healthy, high-functioning teams, and we saw strong results at the end of each year. I was also conscious to ensure that my PD modeled strong instructional practices, doing my best to complete the traditional lesson cycle for each topic and modeling what I expected from teachers.