Professional development
Professional learning built on what your staff already does.
AI literacy
Deciding what responsible use looks like, and what changes in the work teachers already assign.
The science of learning
Retrieval, spacing, and the demands a task places on working memory, applied to units already being taught.
PLC and common language
Protocols a team can run in the time it actually has, and agreement on the words everyone uses.
Where schools start, and what makes learning stick
Many schools come to ECS describing needs related to AI. Strategy, existing norms and expectations, and current research typically enter the conversation as major components of realistic solutions that move learners together, collaboratively, over time.
That is why these three areas travel together. A school asks about AI because the question is urgent and the available guidance is thin. Deciding whether a new practice earns the instructional time it costs is what the science of learning prepares teachers to do. A professional learning community is where a practice either becomes standard work or quietly disappears. We work across all three because the third determines what becomes of the first.
In the building
What an engagement looks like in practice.
AI literacy
Schools are being asked to define responsible AI use faster than good guidance arrives. We have been in this work since 2023, beginning with a district’s first structured exploration of AI in teaching, including a hands-on session that placed the tools in front of a board curriculum committee and connected them to a goal that board already held. Adoption followed in that same meeting, and teacher training followed within weeks.
What we bring to a school:
- Policy and procedure, including acceptable-use language and handbook revision that holds new practice against existing policy and community norms
- Tool evaluation and adoption, selected against a real instructional problem rather than the appeal of the tool
- Faculty learning, built around the assignments teachers already give
- Student and community literacy, covering what the technology does, what it does not, and where judgment stays with a person
The tools change constantly. The process of deciding well does not, and that process is what we facilitate.
The science of learning
Teachers decide quickly whether a new strategy is worth the minutes it takes. We work with staff on retrieval practice, spacing, and the demands a task places on working memory, using the units they already teach. Nothing gets rebuilt to make the strategy fit.
PLC and common language
A professional learning community is where a new practice becomes the normal way a department works, or where it quietly stops. We help teams build protocols they can run inside the time they actually have, and agree on the words everyone uses for the same thing, so that a classroom record and a planning conversation are about the same practice.
Our focus sits here today, though the work we take on is broader. If you are planning something that falls outside these areas, start the conversation anyway. The network behind ECS reaches well past any one practitioner.
What an engagement can include
Most work begins on an in-service day and continues across the school year.
Workshops
Focused sessions for a faculty or a team. Sometimes a single day, more often a short series so ideas get tried between sessions. Each one is planned around what the school is already working on.
Coaching cycles
Ongoing work with individual teachers and coaches: visit a classroom, talk through what happened, agree on a next step, and return to see how it went. Cycles run as recurring visits across the school year.
Project planning
Help for leaders shaping a year of professional learning: setting priorities, sequencing the work, and deciding what evidence to watch. Plans stay adjustable as the year unfolds.
The work runs inside the framework and vocabulary your staff already uses, so nothing has to be renamed or relearned when an engagement ends.
Tools that leave the decision with a person
Common Ground is the coaching workspace we are developing within the ECS practice. A person reviews every suggestion before it becomes a decision.
Planning professional development for the coming year?
Tell us what you have in mind. A first conversation covers your priorities and your calendar.