Giving Compass' Take:

• The Learning Accelerator recently created new onboarding resources for teachers who may need help with innovative learning models such as blended or personalized learning. 

• What learning models are educators using in your local school system? Do schools have adequate resources to support teachers?

• Read about how to support teachers in the digital age. 


August is here, and in education that means one thing: the first day of school is near! With the start of school on the horizon, school and system leaders around the country are working to design and plan content and experiences that will prepare, engage, and inspire new and novice teachers alike for the year ahead.

Each year, schools, districts, and networks across the country welcome new teachers – both new to the profession and new to their district or network. A critical task they face is ensuring these professionals are ready to begin work within their innovative teaching and learning models.

Time is limited, and teachers may only have a few short weeks or days before they’re asked to kick off the year. Couple this with the fact that many teachers often lack exposure to and experience with teaching in innovative models such as blended and personalized learning, which can lead to periods of stumbling and challenge. And so, schools, districts, and networks are faced with the complex task of designing effective onboarding, often needing to build resources from scratch to get new professionals up to speed.

The Learning Accelerator (TLA) has been working with our Innovation Directors Network (IDN), a group of leaders and practitioners from 18 districts and networks across the country, to identify, capture, codify, and share best practices to both increase efficiency and prevent leaders from “reinventing the wheel” as they onboard new teachers.

We’ve compiled these resources into TLA’s new Problem of Practice series, titled “Teacher Onboarding.” These practices provide professional development (PD) designers (anyone who spearheads PD design, including administrators, teacher leaders, system-level leaders, and everyone in between) a way to learn from and lean on the knowledge, approaches, and design decisions made by IDN members and other partner schools around three focus areas.

Read the full article about new onboarding tools for teachers by Juilana Finegan at The Learning Accelerator.