Opportunities from Partnerships

Are you feeling inspired with new ideas for engaging your students? Want to create “beautiful work” and help “make learning irresistible”? Wondering about your next steps to make that happen? Let us partner with you!

We’re called Partnerships for Authentic Learning and Leadership because we don’t want teachers and leaders to feel alone in innovating their practice. Our team is ready to be in partnership with you as you advance authentic learning in your setting.

We provide professional learning opportunities all year long, not just at the Summer Institute. So we hope you’ll join us as additional information and registration forms become available for the options described here.

What We Offer

“When a student finishes her schooling and goes on to adult life, she will be judged for the rest of her life not by standardized test scores, but by two things . . . by the quality of her character and the quality of her work. Imagine what school would be if the focus of school . . . was creating meaningful, valuable, beautiful, important work. Work that matters in the world.”

– Ron Berger, EL Education

Connect, Collaborate, and Create!

Thought Partners

Just reach out! Sometimes all you need is a good listener/”thought partner” to get your idea moving forward. We can help you schedule a short, virtual meeting with a colleague or expert in authentic learning to ask your questions, brainstorm, identify new resources, and hear about the ways others have worked through a similar idea for an authentic learning project.

Want to connect with a "Thought Partner"? Click here to be contacted.

"Sharing the Journey" Podcast

Any interest in sharing your authentic learning journey on a podcast? Sign up (yourself or with a colleague) to be featured in a unique podcast episode that tells the story of your experience in introducing new strategies in your teaching and/or the curriculum. This podcast is simply a conversation between an innovator in education and a member of the Partnerships team, chatting about something relevant to you and your learners and of interest to our audience. Listeners will be inspired by the dialogue of two (or more) educators who love what they do and are passionate about authentic learning.

Please send me more information about the "Sharing the Journey" Podcast opportunity.

Innovation Design Incubators

Would having a little more structure than an I-Team be a better way to support you on your authentic learning journey? If so, consider joining an Innovation Design Incubator–a series of three facilitated professional days (6 hours each, scheduled across the school year). We believe that innovators need dedicated time, space, and expert guidance to bring a new teaching idea to life (e.g., integrate work-based learning into your high school class, develop a service-learning project with a community partner, create a PBL experience, etc.). By the end of the three days, you’ll have a project or curriculum plan that brings you and your learners joy, purpose, relevance, and deeper learning! Graduate/CEU credit will be available.

Our two design incubators are in progress. Please check back for additional dates.

Listen, Learn, and Share

Authentic Learning Grab and Go

If the “grab and go” idea works for coffee shops and grocery stores, why not, then, for Authentic Learning professional development, too? In these 45-minute, live virtual webinars, you’ll hear from our guest teachers and leaders who have transformed their practice and have stories to share about authentic learning. Our “Grab and Go” line-up may include: service-learning, shared leadership, instructional coaching, structured literacy, dialogic teaching, career awareness/workforce development, design thinking process, PBL, competency-based learning, co-teaching, mental health, and more! Complete this form to receive additional information. You can also check back often to know when additional “Grab and Go” offerings are added.

Please email Kristin@partnershipsforall.org with any questions.

Virtual Visits

Want a front-row seat to authentic learning and leadership in real time? Virtual Visits are FREE opportunities to “visit” innovative schools throughout the nation/world on Zoom. “Meet” teachers and leaders and hear their stories of transformation. Click here to let us know if you would like to be on the mailing list when new Virtual Visits are announced and if you would like your school/district to be considered as a future Virtual Visit site.

Previous "destinations” included:

Transformation in Tallmadge: A Journey in Progress. View the Tallmadge Virtual Visit here.
Virtual Visit to Eminence Independent Schools. View the Eminence Virtual Visit here.

Do a “Deep Dive” via Graduate/CEU Workshops

“Engaging Hearts and Minds”

A FREE and very popular online graduate/CEU workshop designed to engage participants in a series of informative and emotionally impactful films/videos that will inspire their own authentic learning journeys. Six Zoom sessions, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm, starting January 29, 2025. (Participants are responsible for the cost of Ashland graduate credit. CEU certificate is free.)

Please send me more information about “Engaging Hearts and Minds” graduate/CEU workshop.

“Making Learning Irresistible”

An online graduate/CEU workshop that helps participants design authentic learning experiences for their students. Service-learning, PBL, design thinking, STEM/STEAM, and other real-world approaches are incorporated. Six Zoom sessions, 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm—specific dates determined in collaboration with sponsoring schools/districts. Graduate/CEU credit will be available.

This deep dive experience just finished, so please check back for future dates.

POTENTIAL I-TEAMS FOR 2025-2026

Passion Projects for Personalized Learning

Imagine a classroom where students engage in learning and meet standards with passion projects and design challenges! This I-Team explores personalized learning through the lens of passion projects; and, too, they’ll explore the way passion projects align to portraits of graduates, competencies, and STEM design challenges.

Maximizing Team Collaboration: Brace for Impact!

Did you know a team’s sense of collective efficacy about their impact is the best way to elevate learning at any grade level? So . . . how should cross-functional teams collaborate? This team discusses the challenges and opportunities of teaming to build leadership capacity, elevate learning, and ensure impact! Whatever the team you’re on, you’ll get fresh ideas to maximize the time you spend collaborating with others.

Multi-Sensory Structured Literacy: Keeping it Real!

Innovative structured literacy approaches abound! This team explores ways to engage learners in multisensory, structured literacy activities in relevant, authentic ways.

Agents of Change in the Elementary Classroom

How do we prepare learners for a world that is constantly changing? How can we foster empathy and willingness to take action in order to make a difference in the world? This team explores the practical ways K-5 teachers promote voice, choice, and agency in student learning and advocates for more meaningful, relevant, practical learning that inspires students to make a difference in the world.

Maximizing AI for Authentic Learning: Tools, Prompting, and More!

Interested in learning more about how AI could complement or substitute for you for some of your work? Interested in the kinds of AI prompt engineering that support the design of authentic learning, such as PBL, personalized projects, historical inquiry, data literacy assignments, and more? What are the ways AI can help us reimagine assignments with learner agency and purpose at the center? This team explores and shares teacher-friendly generative AI tools, prompt engineering techniques, and tips to maximize AI for teachers and learning!

JOIN AN I-TEAM IN 2025-2026

Innovation is best done in partnership with others!

Innovation Teams (I-Teams) are small groups of like-minded educators from all over Ohio and beyond that meet virtually about once per month on a focused topic (see below for topics). Teachers facilitate them, but they really run on the power of collaboration, dialogue, and networking! Though participation in I-Teams is now closed for this school year, we hope you’ll consider joining one more teams during the 2025-2026 school year.

Benefits of I-Teams:

Gain new colleagues who want to dive into your interest
Casual learning! Meet virtually after school – 5ish times/school year
Share ideas and resources to build your teaching and learning toolkit
Engaging! Passionate teachers facilitate and organize the meetings
Contact hour certification available for participation.
Easy to do! Check back here in August/September, 2025 to view the topics and teams. Click here to be placed on the mailing list to learn when 2025-2026 I-Team information is available.

Clarifying questions? Please reach out to Kristin Bourdage at: kristin@partnershipsforall.org.