The Learning Accelerator Blog/Innovating Teaching and Learning This School Year? Find the Right Experts with ILEx!

innovation professional development

Innovating Teaching and Learning This School Year? Find the Right Experts with ILEx!

by Nithi Thomas, Rachel Klein on August 13 2019

August has arrived, and school leaders are busy planning for a strong launch to the school year. Many are focused on implementing innovative approaches to make learning more personalized, mastery-based, and supportive of whole child development. Doing this work is complex, and there is no one right “pathway” or model for implementation. So how can leaders find the right expert at the right time (and for the right price) to make their visions for learning and teaching a reality?

Find custom support at the Innovative Learning Expert Hub

The Innovative Learning Expert Hub (ILEx) is a new pilot project developed in partnership between our organizations, The Learning Accelerator (TLA) and Catalyst:Ed, two national nonprofits working to unlock collective expertise to help the education sector innovate, improve, and scale. In our respective work with education leaders and professional service experts, we’ve learned that access to quality external consultants and supports can be a common, critical component to success. This is especially true for smaller projects, where schools might be taking the first steps toward their vision for innovative learning, breathing new life into a stalled effort, or shifting into continuous improvement mode after a multi-year implementation. The ILEx will offer education leaders committed to exploring and scaling innovative learning models a way to find high-quality consultants to work with and learn together.

Learn how an outside expert can help propel your innovation efforts – no matter the size

If you are a leader ready to get support for your innovative learning journey, please visit the ILEx. There, you can see sample projects or request a conversation with the Catalyst:Ed team who will work to understand your needs and develop a customized project scope to address your challenges on your timeline and at a reasonable budget. After approval, Catalyst:Ed will reach out to its network of vetted innovative learning implementation experts and work with you to select a partner to help you reach your goals. TLA will work alongside the partnership and help leaders aggregate their lessons and improvements to share with the broader field.

Where does your project fit?

TLA has identified, through field research and exploration of existing approaches and tools, a set of common implementation components that support planning, adoption, and scaling of innovative initiatives. These components make up TLA’s Innovative Learning Implementation Framework, which describes and explores the conditions needed to successfully establish, improve, and scale work over time.

Not sure how to get involved but have ideas or thoughts you’d like to share? Contact TLA’s project lead, Nithi Thomas (nithi@learningaccelerator.org). We’re excited to hear from you!

About Us: The Learning Accelerator is making the “potential” possible for every teacher and learner. We connect teachers and leaders with the knowledge, tools, and networks they need to enact personalized and mastery-based practices to transform K-12 education. Catalyst:Ed unlocks the collective expertise of the education sector to help organizations innovate, excel and scale. We inform and connect education leaders - the change makers - with the top management and education talent they need for their short-term, mission-critical needs.

About the Author

Nithi Thomas is Partner at The Learning Accelerator leading work on professional services. She is an expert in school design, implementation, professional development, and coaching in new learning models.

Rachel Klein passionately believes that public schools should be a path to success for every student. For over 20 years, she has worked to achieve equitable outcomes in schools and school systems as a District Administrator in Highline Public Schools, a Vice President for Code.org leading professional learning efforts, a Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and as a Board President for Bike Works, an innovative nonprofit in South Seattle. Rachel has also worked in Seattle, Boston, and Chicago Public Schools. Rachel currently serves on the advisory boards of Techbridge Girls PNW and Threshold Podcast.