Here’s the truth your teachers won’t say to your face: they already know when PD is going to be a waste of their time. They can feel it in the invite. And the ones who stopped engaging with summer professional development didn’t stop because they don’t care about getting better. They stopped because they were tired of sessions that had nothing to do with what they face in their classrooms every single day.

This summer, you have a chance to do something different. Here are four categories of PD that actually change what happens in classrooms, and how to make each one work for your building.

Classroom management refresh, not from scratch.

Your veteran teachers don’t need Classroom Management 101. They need the updated version. The one that addresses post-pandemic behaviors, phone management, and the reality that students in 2026 are not the same students anyone trained for in ed school. Look for PD that builds on existing skills rather than insulting them by starting over. Your experienced teachers will actually show up for that.

Content-area deep dives with real materials.

Generic pedagogy sessions are fine in small doses, but your math teachers want math PD. Your ELA teachers want ELA PD. Invest in content-specific training where teachers walk away with materials they can open in August, not theory they’ll forget by July 4th. Ask your department chairs what they need. They already know.

SEL that doesn’t feel like SEL.

Your teachers are exhausted by the acronym. They’re not exhausted by actually building relationships with students. Find PD that teaches relationship-building and emotional regulation through practical classroom strategies, not through another slideshow about the wheel of emotions. The best SEL training doesn’t call itself SEL training. It just teaches you how to connect with the kid who won’t make eye contact.

Self-paced, teacher-choice options.

The single most powerful thing you can give your teachers this summer is autonomy. Offer a menu of PD options. Let them choose. Set a completion target and trust them to get there. When teachers pick their own professional development, completion rates go through the roof and the learning actually sticks. Because they chose it. Because it mattered to them.

Read more

So yesterday we announced… We built a platform.

Not another course marketplace. We didnt sign up for another LMS that feels like it was designed by people who have never set foot in a classroom.

We built (like coded from the ground up) something specifically for educators who are tired of professional development that wastes their time.

And if you are a paid subscriber here on Substack, you already have Essentials access - the full Quick Wins library, courses, and everything we have built. It is included in your subscription. No extra cost.

If you are a free subscriber, your free Hub account is ready too.

Just visit teachersdeserveit.com/hub and log in with this email address.

Explore the Hub

Here is what is inside:

• Quick Wins - downloadable tools you can use Monday morning. Not theory. Not a 47-slide presentation. Actual tools. We rotate 7 of them for free every week.

• Community Q&A - real educators sharing what is actually working in their classrooms. Not curated testimonials. Real conversations.

• Your own dashboard - tracking your growth, your PD hours, your progress. Evidence you can show your admin, print for your portfolio, or just keep for yourself on the tough days.

This is what we have been working toward.

The newsletter is still our weekly conversation.
The Hub is now the toolkit.
Together, they are what the TDI Movement was always supposed to be.

Go explore.

Tell me what you think.

Reply to this email - I read every one.

- Rae

P.S. If you have been in our community for a while, you might remember the TDI Vault. Everything from the Vault is now in the Hub, upgraded, and waiting for you.

We launched it on June 1 because we apparently have a flair for the dramatic.

Why we left Thinkific

The short answer: it wasn’t built for the way teachers actually learn.

The long answer: Thinkific is fine. It works. It has all the things a learning platform is supposed to have. But “supposed to have” isn’t the same as “designed for educators who are balancing 47 other things and need PD that respects their reality.”

We wanted something that felt like it was made by people who had actually been in classrooms - people who understood that professional development for teachers often happens at 10pm on a Wednesday, sometimes in 7-minute chunks, sometimes when you’re fully fresh and ready to go deep, and that all of those moments are valid.

So we built it. We’re so normal about how much we love you.

What’s actually different
(the part where we brag a little)

The Conversation Reframe

This is the feature we’re most excited about, and we think you’ll understand why.

Every other platform in this industry uses star ratings. Five stars. Four stars. “I guess three stars, I didn’t love it.” Star ratings tell us nothing except that you had feelings. They don’t tell the next teacher what happened in your classroom. They don’t tell us why something landed or didn’t. They’re a hotel review in a space that deserves a staff room conversation.

So we replaced them.

Instead of stars, every lesson on the Hub now has five response types:

• Tried it - you did the thing

• Adapted it - you made it your own (this one is our favorite)

• Still trying - it’s in progress, and that’s real

• Got stuck - honest data, and honestly useful

• Didn’t land - also data. Also valid.

“I tried this and adapted it for 2nd grade bilingual students” is infinitely more useful to the next teacher than four stars. We built the staff room conversation into the platform itself.

LIFT Filtering

Filter every piece of content by effort level: Low, Medium, or High. Because sometimes you have 45 minutes and a clear head. Sometimes you have 7 minutes and you’re in a parking lot between dismissal and pickup duty. The Hub meets you where you are - not where a course catalog assumes you’ll be.

Multi-language captions

Every lesson: English and Spanish. Because this community is bigger than one language, and it always has been.

Moment Mode

A 3-minute wellness pause built directly into the Hub. Not a separate app. Not a link to a YouTube video someone found once. Built in.

The tagline is “You deserve to pause without guilt” and we mean it with our whole chests. You don’t have to earn the right to breathe.

The tiers
(because this is a thing we have to talk about)

• Free - yep

• Essentials - $5/month

• Professional - $10/month

• All-Access - $25/month

Month-by-month. No annual lock-ins. On your timeline. We are not going to hold your credit card hostage until August.

And if you were a Thinkific OG - a legacy paid user who was already in there before we made the jump - you’re getting a free month comped automatically. You funded the dream before we knew exactly what the dream was going to look like. The free month is the smallest possible thank-you, and we know it.

We’re being cheeky on purpose.
The Hub itself is genuinely great.

We want to say that directly, because the tone of this post might have obscured it. We’re not casual about this. We’ve been building toward this for a long time and we’re proud of what’s here.

The cheeky part is a choice. We’re choosing it because the alternative - corporate PD-vendor launch copy that treats you like a target audience and not a person - felt wrong. The rest of the industry will send you something polished and forgettable. We’d rather be the one you actually read.

Some of this is jokes.

The Hub is not a joke.

The soft sell you were waiting for

Go to teachersdeserveit.com/learning and log in. Make an account if you don’t have one. Poke around. Try the Conversation Reframe on a lesson you’ve used before and see what it feels like to respond like a professional instead of a Yelp reviewer.

We’re not your principal.

We love you. Go be a person.

- Rae & The Teachers Deserve It Team

P.S. If you’re year-round and still in a classroom right now: we see you, we love you, and Moment Mode was built specifically with you in mind.

She was brilliant with kids. She could de-escalate a meltdown in seconds and hold a reading group together while I was across the room with another. And she was panicking about rent.

Every spring, paras across the country hit this wall. The last paycheck arrives, benefits may lapse, and the routine that held everything together for ten months disappears overnight. If you are heading into your first summer off contract, this is everything I wish someone had told her.

Your last paycheck is not your last option

Most school districts will not walk you through what happens after your contract ends. So you need to ask questions now, before you leave the building.

Find out exactly when your insurance ends. Some districts carry benefits through the summer. Others cut them on your last work day. Others offer COBRA continuation at a higher rate. Your HR office has the answer, but they will not volunteer it. Ask this week.

Check whether you qualify for unemployment. This varies by state, but in many states, school support staff on 10-month contracts can file for unemployment benefits during the summer months. The rules are specific. Some states require that you do not have “reasonable assurance” of returning in the fall. If your position is not guaranteed, you may qualify. Your state’s unemployment office or website will have the details. File early. Do not wait until July.

If your paycheck is not spread over 12 months, start budgeting now. Sit down with your actual numbers. What is your last check? When does it arrive? What are your fixed expenses through August? If there is a gap, knowing the exact size of it now gives you time to plan.

The identity shift is real

For ten months, you were the person kids looked for in the hallway. You had a role, a schedule, a team. Then the building closes, and the structure that held your days together goes with it.

This is something experienced paras talk about openly. The first summer off contract feels like a loss, even when you are exhausted. It helps to name it. You are allowed to miss the work and need the break at the same time.

If you are coming back in the fall, stay connected to at least one colleague over the summer. Not for school business. For your own sanity. A text thread, a coffee every few weeks, anything that reminds you that you belong to the team you will return to.

Three things experienced paras wish someone had told them

I asked paras who have been through this more than once what they would tell a first-year para heading into summer. Three things came up over and over.

1. Get your return paperwork handled before you leave. If you have reasonable assurance of returning, get it in writing. If your position depends on enrollment or funding, ask your administrator what the timeline is for confirmation. Waiting until August for an answer you could have gotten in May creates unnecessary stress.

2. Summer is a good time to get trained. Many districts offer summer training opportunities for paras, sometimes with a stipend. CPI training, behavior intervention certifications, literacy program training. These build your skill set and, in some districts, can move you up the pay scale. Ask your supervisor what is available before you leave.

3. Write down what worked this year. The strategies that made your toughest student trust you. The routine that made mornings manageable. The thing your teacher did that made the classroom better for both of you. Put it somewhere you will find it in August. You will be glad you did.

(If you want help building a professional growth plan around what you learned this year, start here.)

If you are a teacher or leader reading this

You probably work alongside paras every day. And you probably know that many of them are heading into summer with less financial security, fewer resources, and almost no institutional guidance. If you have the relationship, ask them this week if they have questions about the summer transition. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is help someone find the right HR phone number.

You made it through the year

If this is your first year as a para, you already know how hard the job is. You also know how much it matters. The students who relied on you this year relied on you for a reason.

Take the summer to rest, regroup, and figure out the logistics. You have earned all of it. And if you are coming back in the fall, you will come back sharper for having gone through this once.

Rae

Rae Hughart is the CEO of Teachers Deserve It. She taught for over a decade before building TDI to give educators what she never had: professional development that actually respects their time and intelligence.

Chat with Rae

You look at it and think: this tells part of the story. Maybe a small part.

Because the patterns you actually noticed this year, the ones that changed how you taught, those never showed up on any report. They showed up in your classroom. In the hallway. In the moments between lessons.

And if you do not capture them now, they will fade by August.

This post is about holding onto those patterns before they disappear. It is a framework for turning what you observed this year into something you can actually use next year.

What counts as classroom data

When people talk about data in education, they usually mean assessment results. That is one kind of data. Here are the other kinds you have been collecting all year, whether you realized it or not:

Engagement patterns. Which units made students lean in? Which ones made them check out? You know the difference. You saw it in body language, in the quality of discussion, in the number of students who came to class early versus the ones who drifted in late.

Attendance rhythms. Were there weeks when absences spiked? Were certain days of the week consistently harder? Did you notice specific students whose attendance shifted at predictable points in the semester?

Relationship signals. Which students responded to one-on-one check-ins? Which ones shut down when called on publicly? Where did peer dynamics create energy, and where did they create friction?

Your own energy map. When did you feel most effective this year? When did you feel like you were just getting through the day? Those patterns matter too, because they tell you something about the conditions you need to do your best work.

None of this lives in a gradebook. All of it is real.

A framework for capturing what you noticed

Before the year ends, set aside thirty minutes. That is it. Use the structure below to turn scattered observations into organized insight.

Step 1: List your top five classroom moments.

These are the moments you would describe to a colleague over coffee. The lesson that worked better than you expected. The conversation that shifted a student’s trajectory. The week that fell apart. The unit you would teach completely differently next time.

Write them down. Do not filter. Do not rank. Just list.

Step 2: Name the pattern under each moment.

For each moment, ask: what was happening around it? Was it the time of year? The content? The pacing? The student groupings? The way you set it up the day before?

You are looking for the condition that made the moment possible, or the condition that made it go sideways.

Step 3: Sort into three categories.

Take your patterns and put each one into one of these buckets:

• Protect: This worked. I need to keep doing this. (Example: starting Monday classes with a low-stakes partner warm-up kept engagement higher all week.)

• Adjust: This had potential, but something was off. (Example: the research project had good energy in week one, then stalled because the timeline was too compressed.)

• Release: This cost me energy and gave little back. (Example: the weekly vocabulary quiz format that students dreaded and I dreaded grading.)

Step 4: Write three sentences about next year.

Based on your protect/adjust/release sort, write three sentences that start with:

• “Next year, I will keep...”

• “Next year, I will change...”

• “Next year, I will stop...”

That is your personal planning document. It is more useful than any PD binder because it came from your own classroom, your own students, and your own professional judgment.

Why this matters more than you think

Here is what tends to happen in education. The school year ends. Summer arrives. By August, the specific details of what you noticed in March have blurred. You start the new year with good intentions and general impressions, but the precise patterns that could have informed your planning are gone.

This framework is a hedge against that. Thirty minutes now saves you from reinventing in the fall.

And if your school offers professional development over the summer or in the fall, this document becomes your anchor. You can walk into a PD session knowing exactly what you want to work on, because you already did the reflection. (If you want to see what professional development built around your actual goals looks like, start here.)

The data that matters most is yours

Test scores tell a system-level story. They are useful for some purposes. But the patterns you noticed in your classroom this year, the engagement dips, the relationship shifts, the energy rhythms, those tell a teaching-level story. And that story is the one that will make next year better.

Do not let it disappear into summer.

Take thirty minutes. Write it down. Keep it somewhere you will find it in August.

Your classroom data is the most honest data you have.

Rae

Teachers Deserve It partners with schools and educators to build professional development that starts with what teachers actually need. If the patterns you captured this year point to something your whole school needs, nominate your school for better PD and let’s make next year the one that changes things.

Not the stuff on your to-do list. Not the grades you still need to enter or the checkout procedures you need to follow. The other stuff. The real stuff. The things you figured out this year about how to teach, how to survive, and what actually worked inside your classroom.

You know which unit landed and which one fell flat. You know the moment you lost a kid and the moment you got one back. You know what your morning routine was missing in September that you finally nailed by February.

That knowledge is worth more than anything in your plan book. And if you do not write it down before you leave, it will be gone by August.

The Summer Forgetting Problem

Every teacher has had this experience. You come back in the fall, open your files, and think: why did I do it this way? What was I going to change? There was something I wanted to try differently, but you cannot remember what it was.

It is not a memory problem. It is a timing problem. The school year ends in a sprint, and nobody builds in time to stop and think before the finish line. So the insights you earned over ten months disappear in the chaos of the last ten days.

This is not a small loss. You paid for those lessons with long nights, hard conversations, and the kind of trial-and-error that only happens when you are in it every day. Losing them to summer is like running a marathon and forgetting your split times.

Ten Minutes That Will Change Your September

Before you pack up your classroom, take ten minutes with a blank page. Not a formal reflection template. Not a department form. Just you and what you actually know right now.

Here are five prompts. Answer whichever ones pull at you.

1. What is one thing I did this year that I will absolutely do again?

Not a unit. Not a lesson plan. A practice. Something you started doing, maybe without even thinking about it, that made your days better. Maybe it was how you opened class. Maybe it was how you handled the first five minutes after lunch. Name it so you do not lose it.

2. What is one thing I kept doing that I need to stop?

You already know what this is. The thing that drained your time or energy without giving anything back. You kept doing it because it was familiar, or because you did not have the bandwidth to change it mid-year. Now you do. Write it down so September-you has permission to let it go.

3. Which students surprised me, and what did that teach me about my assumptions?

There was at least one kid this year who showed you something you did not expect. That moment is data. It is telling you something about where your instincts are right and where they need adjusting.

4. When did I feel most effective, and what conditions made that possible?

Not your best lesson. Your best version of yourself as a teacher. What was happening around you that made it possible? Were you rested? Did you have planning time that week? Was there a colleague who helped? The conditions matter as much as the performance.

5. What do I wish someone had told me last August?

This is the one that matters most. Whatever your answer is, write it on a sticky note and put it inside the first folder you will open in the fall. Future-you will thank present-you.

Why This Works

Reflection is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between ten years of experience and one year of experience repeated ten times. The teachers who get better every year are not the ones who work harder. They are the ones who pause long enough to learn from what already happened.

You do not need a full afternoon. You do not need a journaling habit. You need ten minutes and a willingness to be honest with yourself about what this year actually was.

(If you want help building a professional growth plan around what you discover, start here.)

One More Thing

If you are a teacher reading this on your phone during the last staff meeting of the year, here is what I want you to hear. You made it. Not just through the year, but through everything the year threw at you that was never part of the job description. That counts.

Now take ten minutes before you leave the building. Write down what you learned. Your September self is already counting on it.

Rae

Rae Hughart is the CEO of Teachers Deserve It. She taught for over a decade before building TDI to give educators what she never had: professional development that actually respects their time and intelligence.

Chat with Rae

That is not the full picture. Private schools do not receive federal education dollars directly. But under federal law, eligible students at nonprofit private schools can receive services funded by certain federal programs. The key word is “eligible.” Not every school qualifies, and the process is more nuanced than most people realize.

Here is what we have learned working with school leaders who are navigating this for the first time.

The equitable services framework, briefly

Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, reauthorized as ESSA), public school districts that receive Title I, Title II-A, Title III, and Title IV-A funding are required to consult with nonprofit private schools in their boundaries about providing equitable services to eligible students.

In plain language: your local public school district is supposed to reach out to you and ask what services your students might need. If they are not doing that, it is worth a conversation with them about their obligations under federal law.

How the funding actually flows

This is where it gets important, and where the confusion usually starts.

Your local public school district (the LEA, or Local Education Agency) holds the federal funds. They procure the services. They issue the contracts. They manage the budget.

Your private school does not receive a check. Instead, the LEA uses federal dollars to provide services to eligible students at your school. That could look like professional development for your teachers, supplemental instruction, technology resources, or instructional materials.

You do not control the procurement. But you do have a voice in what services your school requests during the consultation process.

Who is actually eligible?

This is where it pays to be precise, because each program has its own rules.

Title I: Students must reside in a public school attendance area that receives Title I funds. They must also be identified by the LEA as failing, or most at risk of failing, academically. Living in the right attendance area and being from a low-income family does not automatically qualify a student. The LEA determines the proportional share of its existing Title I allocation based on the number of eligible private school students in participating attendance areas.

Title II-A: Services can include professional development for teachers and can apply more broadly across the school.

Title III: Focused on English learners. If your school serves English learners, they may be eligible for services under this title.

Title IV-A: Covers a range of supports including technology, well-rounded education programs, and safe school initiatives.

Each program has its own eligibility criteria, and the details matter. Getting clarity from your LEA on what applies to your school is an important first step.

Subscribe now

How the consultation process works

Every year, your local public school district should initiate a consultation meeting with nonprofit private schools in their area. During that meeting, you discuss:

1. Which students may be eligible based on each program’s criteria.

2. What services your school would like to request. You can request specific types of professional development, instructional support, technology, or materials. If you do not participate in this conversation, the district will make those decisions without your input.

3. How the services will be delivered. The LEA can provide services directly or contract with a third-party provider. You can suggest the type of service you are looking for, though the LEA makes the final procurement decision.

What we see private schools getting wrong

The most common mistake is treating the annual consultation as a formality, or not participating at all. When that happens, the district allocates your share of services without knowing what your school actually needs.

The second is assuming eligibility where it may not exist. Not every student at a private school qualifies under every program. Understanding the specific criteria for each title helps you have a more productive conversation with your LEA and set realistic expectations.

Three questions worth asking your local public school district

If you are not sure where your school stands, these are good starting points:

1. “When is our next equitable services consultation meeting?” If one is not scheduled, ask about it. Federal law requires this consultation for nonprofit private schools.

2. “How is our school’s proportional share calculated for each applicable title?” Understanding the formula helps you understand what services might be available.

3. “Can we request a specific type of professional development or service provider?” You can make requests and suggestions during consultation. The LEA makes the final decision on procurement, but your input shapes what gets funded.

Share

The bigger picture

Federal professional development funding was designed to reach students, not just schools. If your nonprofit private school serves students who meet the eligibility criteria, there is a framework in place for your school to access services. But it only works if you participate in the process.

If you want help thinking through how your school fits into the equitable services framework, we are happy to talk it through. Book a conversation with our team and we will help you figure out the right questions to bring to your next consultation meeting.

Rae

They get a PDF.
Maybe a list of grant opportunities.
A few links. A “good luck.”

And then you, the principal or curriculum director who already has 47 things on your plate, are expected to write the grant yourself. On top of everything else. By a deadline you did not know about until last Tuesday.

That is not support. That is a homework assignment.

Here is what TDI actually does

When we sit down with a district to build a professional development plan, funding is part of the conversation from the start.
Not as an afterthought.
Not as a “here are some options you could look into.”
As a real, concrete part of how this gets done.

And when we identify a grant that fits, we do not hand you a link and walk away.

We write it.

TDI writes the grant narrative.
We align it to the funder’s priorities.
We connect it to the PD plan we have already built together.
We handle the language, the formatting, the budget justification.

All you have to do is review it and submit the documents through your district’s process.

That is it.

Why this matters

Grant writing is a skill. It takes time most school leaders do not have. It takes knowledge of funder language that most educators were never trained in. And it takes a level of alignment between the proposed work and the grant’s priorities that is nearly impossible to achieve if the PD provider and the grant writer are not the same team.

When TDI writes your grant, the alignment is already built in. The PD plan and the grant narrative are the same story, because the same people wrote both.

Subscribe now

What this looks like in practice

A district comes to TDI with a goal: they want to build a two-year sustainability plan for their teachers. They have some budget, but not enough to cover the full scope.

We look at what is available. Title II-A funds for teacher quality. Title IV-A for well-rounded education. State-level grants for educator retention. Sometimes local foundation grants that most districts do not even know exist.

We find the fit. We write the application. We make sure the budget narrative matches the scope of work. The district submits it. And when the grant comes through, the PD plan is already in place and ready to launch.

No scramble. No “now what do we do with this money.” The plan was built first. The funding followed. (If you want to see what a PD plan with built-in funding looks like, start here.)

The question most districts never think to ask

Here is what I wish more school leaders knew: you do not have to figure out the funding piece alone. And you definitely do not have to write the grant alone.

Most districts assume that finding and securing funding is their job and the PD provider’s job is just to show up and deliver. But if your PD partner is not helping you fund the work, they are leaving you to do the hardest part by yourself.

Ask TDI one question:
“What funding can you help me secure, and will you write the grant?”

The answer might surprise you. We have helped districts unlock funding they did not know was available, and we handled the paperwork so they could focus on their schools.

Rae

Chat with Rae to get your grant conversation started.

June 1 is coming. And when your fiscal year resets, those dollars are gone.

Not rolled over. Not saved for next year. Gone.

Here is what I see happen every single spring. A principal or curriculum director realizes they still have $5,000, $15,000, sometimes $40,000 in unspent professional development funds. They scramble. They book a one-day workshop that checks a box but changes nothing. Or worse, they let the money disappear because there was not enough time to find something meaningful.

That is not a plan. That is a pattern.

What you can do right now

You have roughly two and a half weeks before June 1. That is enough time to do something that actually matters, if you move with intention.

• Step 1: Call your business office today. Ask one question: “How much PD funding do we have left in the 2025-2026 budget that has not been obligated?” Get the number. Write it down.

• Step 2: Think about next year, not this year. The smartest move is not to spend those dollars on a last-minute May workshop. It is to use them to fund the first phase of your 2026-2027 professional development plan. A plan that is already built. One that starts on day one of the new school year, not in October when everyone finally “settles in.” (If you want to see what a fully built PD plan looks like, start here)

• Step 3: Get the invoice before June 1. If you can obligate those funds before the fiscal year resets, the money stays working for your school. The key is having a partner who can move fast enough to get you a scope of work and an invoice in time.

Why this matters more than you think

Every year, districts lose thousands of dollars in PD funding. Not because the money was not there. Because nobody had a plan ready when the clock ran out.

That is what TDI does differently. We do not just deliver professional development. We help you build the plan first, so when the budget window opens, you are ready. And when the budget window is about to close, like right now, we can fast-track the process.

We have done this with districts in the final two weeks of their fiscal year. We build the scope. We align it to your goals. We get you the paperwork before the deadline. You keep the money. Your teachers get what they actually need next year.

The real cost of doing nothing

If those dollars expire, you do not just lose money. You lose the easiest funding path you had for next year’s PD. You will spend the fall trying to justify a new line item instead of already being in motion.

Your teachers cannot afford to wait until October for support. And your budget cannot afford to let this window close.

Rae

Book a 15-minute call with TDI this week.

We will tell you exactly what we can scope, build, and invoice before June 1 so nothing goes to waste. Your 2026-2027 school year starts with a plan, not a scramble.

Chat with Me

Not test scores. Not performance ratings. Not accountability dashboards. Lives.

And if you lead a Title I school, you know exactly what that means. The students who walk through your doors carry more than backpacks. They carry the weight of circumstances outside your control and inside your responsibility. You carry the weight of knowing that what happens in your building might be the most powerful intervention standing between a student and a trajectory they may not have had access to otherwise.

The pressure that comes with that weight is real, and it almost always points the same direction: focus on the students. Improve student outcomes. Close the student gap. Double down on the student metrics.

Focus on your teachers.

When schools invest in meaningful, targeted professional development, student outcomes follow. Not occasionally. Consistently.

Teacher effectiveness is the single most influential school-based factor in student achievement, more influential than class size, more influential than curriculum, more influential than almost any student-facing intervention you can name.

Compound that across three consecutive years with strong teachers and you are looking at closing achievement gaps that districts have spent decades trying to close by every other means without success.

But generic PD does not produce those results.

One-size-fits-all workshops, mandatory modules, and disconnected one-day trainings treat your teachers the same way we have too often treated students: as a monolith instead of as individuals with distinct strengths, gaps, and contexts.

Your teachers need professional development that is actually built for them.
Their specific areas of growth. Their students. Their building culture. Their goals.

This is especially true in Title I schools, where the demands on educators are higher, the margin is smaller, and the impact of a well-supported teacher is amplified precisely because the students they serve have less buffering outside the school day.

So here is the leadership question worth
sitting with this week:

• If you shifted your professional development investment from broad compliance training to targeted, teacher-specific growth plans, what would that change look like?

• Which teachers on your staff would be the first to feel the difference?

You do not need every answer right now. But asking the question is where it starts.

At TDI, we built our custom PD plans around this exact problem.

Not a catalog of training options, but a plan built around your teachers’ actual development needs, mapped to your school’s goals, and designed to create the conditions that lead to the student outcomes you are already working so hard to achieve.

If this resonates with where your school is right now, we would love to talk.

Schedule a Conversation with our Team

Teachers Deserve It supports building leaders and educators with professional development resources that are practical, research-informed, and built for real schools.

Teaching is already emotionally demanding work. Add in a resentful colleague (someone who feels threatened, overlooked, or embittered) and the workplace can quickly turn hostile. What makes this situation especially devastating is when you are not the aggressor, yet you become the one absorbing the fallout. And worse, the blame.

If you’ve found yourself on the receiving end of a colleague’s resentment (eye rolls, passive-aggressive comments, exclusion, gossip, or outright hostility) you’re not imagining it. And if administration minimizes it, excuses it, or allows it to escalate until you are accused of creating a hostile work environment, the emotional toll can be overwhelming.

Take it from me: it can create such an emotional scar that it takes years to overcome. I was in this exact situation over five years ago, and I still carry that fear of being worked against behind the scenes. Those scars run deep, even though I’m far removed from that environment now.

Let’s talk about what’s really happening and how to protect yourself.

Share

Understanding Where Colleague Resentment Comes From

Resentment in teaching environments often stems from differences in experience, effectiveness, and personal insecurities masked as professionalism. This is exactly what happened in my situation.

I was hired as an Instructional Coach for a campus that had been scored as failing for two consecutive years. The campus had an Academic Dean who’d been in position for a few years, and this is where our problems began.

Resentful colleagues rarely say, “I feel threatened.” Instead, it comes out as professional observations. It may begin with undermining comments that question your credibility. In my situation, I was not “administration,” therefore I had no real voice. Your colleague may publicly question your decisions. They may withhold information that would support your actions, and if you don’t have all the information, your decisions can seem ineffective.

After these patterns have gone on long enough, they may begin framing themselves as the victim.

This behavior isn’t about collaboration. It’s about control and narrative.

When You’re the Target, Not the Cause

One of the most disorienting parts of this experience is realizing: You are trying to keep the peace while the other person is building a case.

My situation started almost immediately. The Academic Dean would be loud and seem to have a grasp on all that was going on with campus academics. My experience came from working at a very structured and goal-driven district. With continued interaction, it became clear that key expectations of the campus Academic Dean were either unmet or left unaddressed.

And then her games began.

Many educators respond by over-explaining, apologizing unnecessarily, taking on emotional labor that isn’t theirs, and staying quiet “to avoid drama.” Unfortunately, silence is often interpreted as guilt or cockiness, not professionalism.

I addressed it by completing tasks and stepping in when the district office requested. You can imagine how well that went over. But there was no time to waste. The students’ needs had to be addressed.

Subscribe now

Protecting Yourself When Administration Won’t

When leadership fails to intervene (or worse, enables the behavior) you have to shift from resolution mode to self-protection mode.

Document everything objectively. Keep a private log that includes dates, times, locations, direct quotes (no interpretations), and witnesses. Stick to facts. Avoid emotional language. Assume everything you write may one day be read aloud.

Always communicate in writing. If that’s not possible, immediately follow up verbal conversations with email summaries. No matter who the person is, CC appropriate parties, including administration. Use neutral, professional language. This isn’t passive-aggressive. It’s smart.

Stop trying to “fix” the relationship alone. You cannot resolve resentment you didn’t create. Repeated attempts to smooth things over can later be reframed as harassment or over-involvement.

The lack of support from administration was a major factor in my ordeal. Because of it, I ultimately lost my job. I was retaliated against by other colleagues because the initial complaint was determined to be unfounded. Even though I had all my documentation, it did not end well for me.

I never, in a million years, thought I would lose my job because I was good at my job.

Professional distance is not unkind. It is strategic.

When the Narrative Turns Against You

What do you do now?

If you are accused of creating a “hostile work environment,” pause and breathe. This is often their own insecurities talking, not a reflection of reality.

Here’s what you should do next: Ask for specifics, in writing. They more than likely won’t divulge the accuser, as if you wouldn’t already know. Request specific incidents, dates, witnesses, and a clear explanation of the alleged behavior. Vague accusations don’t hold up well under scrutiny.

Now is the time to provide all your notes and documentation. Respond calmly and factually. Do not speculate about motives. Do not retaliate. And above all else, do not defend your character. Defend your actions.

Your character will speak for itself. Let your consistency speak.

Know your rights. Depending on your district, the claim will likely come through HR. You may want to involve your union representative. You may request mediation with clear boundaries, though based on previous actions, I wouldn’t feel confident that would change anything.

Support is not a favor. It’s what you deserve.

Share

The Emotional Cost No One Talks About

Being falsely framed as the problem can lead to anxiety, loss of confidence, burnout, self-doubt, and a constant fear that you’re going to be targeted again. My experience left me with all of the above. It has taken me years to rise above the actions of others.

Please hear this clearly:

Being targeted does not mean you are difficult, arrogant, or unsafe. It often means you are visible, competent, or unwilling to shrink.

I was targeted, falsely accused, and ultimately lost my job. But I know I did nothing wrong, and my character is intact.

You Are Allowed to Protect Yourself

Teaching culture often glorifies endurance and silence. But professionalism does not require you to absorb mistreatment.

You are allowed to set boundaries. You are allowed to ask for accountability. You are allowed to refuse to carry someone else’s resentment.

And you are allowed to leave an environment that refuses to protect you. Sometimes the most ethical choice is not staying. It’s surviving intact.

If this post resonates with you, know this: you are not alone, and you are not imagining it. The system doesn’t always get it right, but your experience is valid.

And your voice matters.

Want to Share Your Story?

Kimberelle connected with us through our Creator Studio, and we’re so glad she did. Her experience is one that thousands of teachers are living right now but rarely see reflected back to them.

That’s what we’re building here. Real stories from real educators. No fluff, no theory. Just strategies and truths from people who’ve been in the trenches.

If you’ve got something you wish someone had told you earlier in your career (a strategy that works, a hard lesson learned, a perspective that needs to be heard) we want to help you share it. You don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need a platform. You just need something real.

Learn More about Creating with Us

There is a window between now and the last day of school that most building leaders underestimate. It is not about test scores. It is not about filing final reports. It is about the conversations you have, or do not have, with the teachers who are quietly deciding whether to return.

Teacher retention is not a summer problem. It is an end-of-year problem that reveals itself in the summer. By the time a resignation letter lands on your desk in July, the decision was made in May. Often earlier.

The research on this is clear.

So here is the question: what are you doing in the next few weeks to change that equation?

Three conversations worth having before June

These are not formal sit-downs. They are not evaluation meetings. They are intentional, human moments that signal to your teachers that you see them, you value them, and you are invested in where they are going.

1. The growth conversation

Ask: “What is one area you want to grow in next year, and what would help you get there?”

This is not a performance review. It is the opposite. You are asking a teacher to name what they care about professionally, and you are signaling that you intend to support it. When a teacher hears that question from their building leader in May, it changes how they think about September.

Most teachers have never been asked this by an administrator. That fact alone tells you how much room there is to stand out.

2. The honest feedback conversation

Ask: “What is one thing about how we run PD, or how I support your work, that you would change if you could?”

This one takes courage. You are inviting criticism. But the leaders who ask this

Read more

The principal who has a difficult parent conversation at 7:45am, covers a classroom at 10, attends a district meeting at 1, and still needs to be present for a teacher who is struggling at 3pm - that is not a leadership failure. That is a structural reality that most leadership frameworks do not even acknowledge.

The Octopus Mindset: A Framework for Educational Leadership by David Aderhold does.

Grab your own copy here

We have been working through it with our team, and we want to share three ideas from the book that you can put to work this week.

1. Stop trying to simplify the complexity. Learn to navigate it.

Most leadership advice tells you to prioritize, focus, eliminate. But Aderhold’s argument is different: great educational leaders do not succeed by narrowing their scope. They succeed by building the capacity to extend in multiple directions without losing their center.

2. Your influence should extend - not fragment.

One of the most practical reframes in the book: there is a difference between a leader whose energy is spread thin and a leader whose influence reaches far. The octopus does not lose itself when it extends. It stays rooted while it reaches.

3. Sustainable leadership is built around stress, not despite it.

This is the one that stopped us. Aderhold is not promising that you can eliminate the hard parts of the job. He is offering something more honest and more useful: a structure that holds even when things are hard.

These three practices are just the entry point. The full framework is worth your time.

Grab the book

And one more thing:

If you read it and want to go deeper, we are exploring a book study with the author. Reply or drop a comment if that is something you want in on - we will make it happen if there is interest.

Rae

That’s the standard. I want to talk about it.

YouTube · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

Amy Storer: Done Before You Leave

Tech Tools, Teacher Efficiency, and the Art of Not Overwhelming Educators | Sustainable Teaching

The One-Topic Model

Amy is the Innovative Learning Specialist for Montgomery ISD in Montgomery, Texas. Her team of two covers all twelve campuses in the district. Every month she picks one topic, holds it loosely, and shows up asking what’s actually causing stress before she even gets to her agenda.

“It’s a hey, this is here if you would like to learn about it,” she said. “But we can also chat about anything else.”

That’s not a soft opening. That’s what trust actually looks like. Amy’s been in the classroom. She hasn’t forgotten what it costs to show up and hear one more thing on top of everything else. So she gives teachers a choice, meets them where they are, and then, if they’re ready, gets them to the done line before the visit is over.

DOWNLOAD TOOL

Canva Bulk Create [click here]

The End-of-Year Crunch

This month Amy’s topic across all twelve campuses is Canva Bulk Create. Specifically for end-of-year awards and certificates.

You might already be using Canva. Bulk Create is the part that connects a spreadsheet to a template and generates personalized certificates for every student in one run. It’s been around. But Amy’s point is that timing matters as much as the tool. Right now, at the end of the school year, this is the one that lands.

“Every campus that I’ve visited so far, teachers have left with it done,” she said.

That’s her benchmark. Not learned something. Done. If you’re staring at an awards ceremony on the calendar and thinking about all the personalization ahead of you, this is worth thirty minutes now.

Gemini Gems: The Chatbot You Keep in Your Pocket

Amy’s also been deep in Gemini Gems. If you’re not familiar, a Gem is a personalized AI chatbot you build once around a specific prompt or workflow. You don’t re-enter the context every time. You don’t search through old chats. You just open the Gem and go.

Amy uses hers for things she finds herself doing over and over. And it’s on her list to bring to campus visits next month. If you’ve got a task you run on repeat, it’s worth ten minutes to build a Gem for it.

Subscribe now

Three Questions from the Community

This episode included community Q&A, and all three questions were worth sitting with.

The first one hit close to home. An educator wrote in: “Is it bad that I like my classroom better when certain kids are absent?”

Amy didn’t hesitate. Some students take more energy. That’s not a character flaw, it’s the reality of doing this work. If a particular kid is draining your capacity, Amy’s advice is to look at what additional support might help them, and you, rather than sitting in the guilt spiral. Teachers carry a lot. What they don’t need is one more thing to feel bad about.

The second question came from a kindergarten teacher dealing with a parent who shows up every morning and stays for ten to fifteen minutes. Twenty-one other kids are arriving. The teacher’s tried hinting. Nothing’s worked. Amy’s suggestion: bring a leader in. It’s not a conversation failure on the teacher’s part. It’s a policy question, and having a leader set or reinforce that boundary takes the relational weight off the teacher.

The third question was from a tenth grade biology teacher who just found out one of their students is experiencing homelessness. The student comes every day, does the work, doesn’t complain. The teacher found out through the counselor and now can’t stop thinking about it. Amy’s take: loop back with the counselor and ask what the next step actually looks like. The teacher clearly wants to help. That conversation just wasn’t finished. Knowing the student sees that the teacher cares might make a difference on its own, and the counselor can open that door.

Connect with Amy

You can find Amy everywhere at @techamys on social media. You can also reach her directly at techamy24@gmail.com. She loves connecting with educators wherever they are.

Resources

We created a free resource to go along with this episode: the Canva Bulk Create Step-by-Step Guide. Grab it Now!

Download your Copy

• Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts

• Listen to the episode on Spotify

• Watch the episode on YouTube

Your Gut Check

What’s one thing you’re doing over and over again that a tool could probably handle? You don’t need a new workflow. You just need Amy’s rule: pick one thing, do it now, leave with it done.

Rae

Share

Teachers Deserve It sponsors the Sustainable Teaching Podcast hosted by Rae Hughart exploring what happens when educators are given the support, tools, and trust they deserve.

Not because you have nothing to say. Because you have too much. Report card timelines. Final project deadlines. The field day permission slip that never came back. And underneath all of that, something genuine you actually want families to know before the year ends.

So you stare.
You write three versions.
You delete all of them.
You send something that reads like a school newsletter.

Here is a script that works…

Fill in the brackets, personalize the one sentence that matters, and send it.

The Script

Subject: The final stretch: what to expect from us in [Month]

Hi [families],

We are [X weeks / X days] from the end of a genuinely full year. I wanted to give you a clear look at what is coming so nothing sneaks up on us.

What is coming up:

• [Final project or assessment] on [Date]: [one sentence on what students need to bring or do]

• Report cards on [Date]: [mailed home / posted to the parent portal]

• [Event, field trip, or celebration] on [Date]: [one sentence on what to know]

• Last day of school: [Date]

Read more

It’s not the same as February tired, which is gray and heavy and makes you question your career choices. May tired is different. It has a finish line. You can see the end of the year from here.

But that actually makes it harder, not easier.

Because you still have to teach. For real, every day, with everything you’ve got. For another four weeks. Or six. Or seven, depending on your district.

And here’s what nobody ever says out loud…

When your reserves are lowest and the tests are wrapped up and the building is starting to smell like sunscreen and checked-out energy.

Share

Nobody prepares you for this part.

Not in August when you’re setting intentions and telling yourself this year will be different. Not in your credential program. Not anywhere.

So I want to say what I wish someone had said to me when I was still in the classroom:

The goal for May isn’t to replicate September… The goal is to finish in a way you can live with.

That means something different for every teacher, every class, every year. But here’s what I’ve seen work, both in my own experience and in the thousands of teacher conversations I’ve been part of:

Give yourself permission to be honest with your students.

Not dramatically honest. Not performatively exhausted. But real. “We’re in the final stretch together. Let’s be honest about what that means.”

Kids know when something is off. They always know. When you pretend everything is fine when it clearly isn’t, you’re teaching them something you don’t mean to teach them. Be the adult in the room who can name the truth without falling apart.

Pick three things that actually still matter.

Not thirty. Three. What are the non-negotiables between now and the last day? What would you regret skipping? What can be released entirely?

I know teachers who spend two weeks of May executing units they planned in October, for students who were a different group back then, with different needs, different gaps. They do it because it’s on the plan. You have choices too.

Build in one thing you actually enjoy.

A book you’ve been saving for read-aloud. A project you always wanted to try. A conversation topic you never had time for. Not as an add-on. As a replacement for something that’s lost its purpose. This is about remembering why you came here.

Because May shouldn’t only be about survival.

If you spend the whole month in countdown mode, you miss it. The kids feel it. You feel it. And you cross the finish line hollowed out instead of proud.

Your students are finishing something real. You are finishing something real. That deserves more than just endurance.

You made it here. Finish in a way that means something to you.

Rooting for you,

Rae

Share

YouTube · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

Share

Ruth Poulsen

From Burnout to Regeneration

Burnout Recovery, Sabbaticals, and Sustainable Teaching Practices with Ruth Poulsen | Sustainable Teaching

FREE DOWNLOAD: Sustainable Teaching Reset Guide

The Epiphany That Changed Everything

Ruth looked like she had it all together. Every event planned. Every inbox at zero. But underneath, she was falling apart. Migraines. Exhaustion. The kind of burnout that creeps in slowly and then hits all at once.

Then she had a conversation with her father, a regenerative farmer. He was explaining how conventional farms dump chemicals on their soil and end up depleting it, while his farm uses no pesticides, no fertilizers, and produces healthier crops because the systems are completely different. That word, “depleting,” stopped her cold.

“That’s what’s happened to me,” Ruth said. And from that moment, she started researching burnout in education. What she found was staggering: “For every teacher that retires this year, we will lose four teachers who quit.” Our profession is churning through people, and the way most schools are built is part of the problem.

There’s Not Just One Way to Run a School

Ruth’s regenerative farming metaphor is not just a nice analogy. It’s a framework. On her dad’s farm, they run a nine-year crop rotation. Four of those nine years are rest, with cattle roaming and naturally fertilizing the soil. The result? Higher yields. Healthier food. A system that actually sustains itself.

Now think about your day. If a day is twenty-four hours, roughly forty percent of it should be rest, connection, exercise, and recovery. That’s not laziness. That’s how you keep producing your best work for years instead of burning out in three.

Ruth’s point is clear: schools can work differently. A regenerative school doesn’t lower standards for kids by investing in teacher well-being. It raises them. “The best way to create a whole community of exhausted, stressed out kids,” Ruth said, “is to surround them with exhausted, stressed out adults.”

Subscribe now

The Digital Sunset

If you take one thing from this episode, let it be this: set a digital sunset.

Ruth implemented this at her last school. No work emails after five o’clock. Not six, not “when you get to it.” Five. And the bar for what counts as an emergency? High.

“We’re not an emergency room,” Ruth said. “Nobody should be getting that little ding, that little notification when they’re having supper or walking their dog or putting their kids to bed.”

Here’s why this matters at a physiological level. That notification sound raises your cortisol. Your stress hormones jump into action. Maybe it’s an angry parent email. Maybe it’s nothing. But your body doesn’t know the difference, and now your evening is shot.

If you’re a leader, this needs to come from you. Model it. Make it policy. And if you’re a teacher, turn off your notifications tonight. Seriously. The email will still be there in the morning, and you’ll handle it better after a full night of sleep.

Saying No to Good Things

One of Ruth’s most powerful ideas is this: the difference between an okay leader and a great leader is the willingness to say no, even to good things.

Not just no to bad ideas. No to the good idea that would tip everyone over the edge. No to the extra initiative, the additional committee, the one more thing that sounds wonderful but would make everybody overloaded if you added that one more piece.

This is where the regenerative mindset really kicks in. Industrial farming grows corn on the same field year after year and dumps fertilizer to compensate. Regenerative farming rotates, rests, and trusts the process. Great school leadership does the same thing.

You Matter Beyond What You Produce

Ruth said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“You can’t pour from an empty cup. That’s true. But also you matter, no matter whether you can pour or not. Your health matters and your well-being matters. You’re a person, not a machine.”

We’re in a profession built on caring, and that caring can become a trap. The martyr mindset, the “just one more thing for the kids” thinking, pushes educators in caring professions to harm themselves to keep giving. Doctors and nurses experience it too. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not noble. It’s just depleting.

Ruth’s challenge is simple: play the long game. Take care of yourself now so you can be the educator you want to be in year five, year ten, year fifteen. “It’s not worth it to burn yourself out now to be there for the kids today, to not be there for the kids in ten years.”

Share

Resources

We created a free resource to go along with this episode: the Sustainable Teaching Reset Guide.

• Listen on Apple Podcasts

• Listen on Spotify

• Watch on YouTube

Connect with Ruth

You can find Ruth at regenerativeschools.substack.com. She posts about every two weeks, mixing stories from her classroom and leadership experience with practical strategies for building schools that don’t burn people out. She’s also on LinkedIn for shorter-form content. And keep an eye out for her book, dropping January 2027, which goes deeper into everything she writes about on the blog.

Rae

One of those nights I finally did something I’d never done before.

I wrote down every single thing that had taken energy from me that day. Not the big stuff - I knew about the big stuff. The small stuff. The stuff I’d stopped noticing because I’d been white-knuckling through it since February.

That list changed how I finished the year. Not because the problems went away. Because I could finally see which ones were actually mine to solve, and which ones I’d been carrying for no reason.

This is the exercise I wish someone had handed me years earlier.
So I’m handing it to you.

How this works

Below are three energy drains that hit almost every teacher in the last six weeks of school. For each one, I’ll name what’s actually happening (not the surface-level version), why it’s costing you more than you think, and a 15-minute fix you can do this week.

These aren’t inspiration. They’re tools. Screenshot them, calendar them, do them.

Energy Drain #1: Decision fatigue from schedule chaos

What’s actually happening

The master schedule is falling apart. Testing blocks, field trips, assemblies, early releases, makeup sessions - every day looks different from the one before it. You’re not just teaching. You’re re-planning your day every morning before the first bell.

The problem isn’t that the schedule changes. It’s that each change requires you to make fifteen micro-decisions: Do I keep the original lesson or cut it? Which group do I prioritize? What do I tell the kid who missed yesterday’s adjusted plan? Do I eat lunch or use that time to reset?

By 10am, you’ve made more decisions than most professionals make by noon. And none of them were about actual teaching.

Why it costs more than you think

Decision fatigue doesn’t feel like exhaustion. It feels like apathy. You stop caring which option you pick because you’ve picked too many times already. That’s when the shortcuts start - the worksheet you swore you’d never use, the “just read silently” block that used to be your best lesson of the week.

You’re not getting lazy. Your brain is out of decisions.

Subscribe now

The 15-minute fix: The Non-Negotiable Three

Time needed: 15 minutes, Sunday night or Monday morning before contract hours.

Do this:

1. Open a blank note on your phone or a sticky note. Write down the three things that MUST happen in your classroom this week, no matter what the schedule does. Not five. Not seven. Three.

2. For each one, write the minimum version. Not the ideal lesson — the version that still counts if you lose half your class to testing and your planning period gets taken. Example:

   Must-do: Intro to persuasive writing

   Minimum version: 12-minute mini-lesson + one shared example. Students write their hook. That’s it.

   Everything else this week is bonus. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, you still hit your three.

Why this works: You’re not reducing your standards. You’re pre-deciding so your morning brain doesn’t have to. The schedule can do whatever it wants. You already know what matters.

Screenshot this framework:

Energy Drain #2: The emotional weight of student behaviors you can’t fix

What’s actually happening

There’s a kid - maybe more than one - who has been escalating since March. You’ve tried everything in your toolkit. You’ve called home. You’ve adjusted seating, adjusted expectations, adjusted your tone. Nothing is sticking. And every day you walk in knowing that today might be the day it boils over again.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud: it’s not the behavior itself that’s draining you. It’s the guilt. The voice that says you should be able to reach this kid. The one that whispers that a better teacher would have figured it out by now.

That voice is lying. But it’s loud. And in April, it’s relentless.

Why it costs more than you think

When you carry guilt about one student, it bleeds into everything. You second-guess your response to the kid who was just being mildly annoying. You snap at the class that didn’t deserve it. You go home replaying the moment instead of being present with your own family.

The behavior is the student’s. The guilt is yours. And it’s borrowing energy from every other part of your day.

Read more

Not money you have to apply for. Not a grant with a six-month timeline. Money that was allocated to your school or district specifically to improve teacher quality and student outcomes. And across the country, schools are leaving it underused.

Title I and Title II funds were built for this moment. The question is whether you are using them with enough precision to see the results they were designed to create.

Share

Title I vs. Title II: Know the Difference

These two funding streams are not the same, and how you frame your spending matters.

Title I supports schools with high percentages of students from low-income families. Its purpose is to help those students reach grade-level academic standards. Teacher professional development qualifies under Title I when you can connect it directly to improved instruction for your highest-need students. If your PD investment makes teachers more effective in classrooms with significant achievement gaps, you have a clear case.

Title II Part A is the more direct fit for teacher-focused professional development. Its entire purpose is preparing, training, and supporting high-quality teachers and school leaders. You do not have to build a special case. That is the stated purpose of the fund.

Both streams share the same foundational logic: teacher quality is the most powerful school-based lever for student outcomes. Not curriculum. Not programs. Not assessments. The teacher.

Subscribe now

The Link Schools Keep Missing

Student outcomes are the priority. Every building, every district, every leader agrees on that.

But here is where the plan breaks down.

The conversation jumps from “student outcomes” to interventions, data platforms, and testing prep.

Teacher effectiveness is the single strongest school-based predictor of student achievement. And teacher effectiveness is not fixed. It is built. Through professional development that is actually relevant to what teachers are dealing with right now, not generic trainings that check a compliance box.

There is a second piece that school leaders often underweight: teacher retention is a student outcomes issue.

Every time a school loses a teacher and replaces them with someone new, students pay the price. Novice teachers, even talented ones, take two to three years to reach full effectiveness. The cost of turnover compounds every year. Your investment in retaining and developing your experienced teachers is not a budget line. It is a student achievement strategy.

Your PD program is either building teacher capacity in ways that show up in classrooms, or it is not. There is no middle ground here.

Get My Free PD Plan

What This Means If You Have Title I or Title II Funds

The case to your board, your superintendent, or your budget committee is straightforward:

• Student outcomes depend on teacher effectiveness. The research is not contested.

• Teacher effectiveness is built through high-quality, ongoing professional development.

• Title II Part A exists specifically to fund this. Title I can also support it when tied directly to outcomes for high-need students.

• The question is not whether you have the funding. You do. The question is whether your current PD investment is doing the job.

TDI works with schools and districts that are serious about this question. We provide professional development built around what teachers are actually dealing with, structured to support retention and real instructional improvement. Not workshops. Not passive resources. A professional community that supports teachers through the work they are already doing, right now.

If your school receives Title I or Title II funds and your current PD approach is not producing the teacher retention, instructional growth or student outcomes you need, that is worth a conversation.

Your students cannot wait for a better budget year. The funds are there. The research is clear. The only question is whether the investment matches the outcome.

- TDI Team

If you want this same thing for you and your school let’s jump on a quick call:

Chat with the Team

“Can you cover Room 214?”

So you went. Because that is what you do!

Late April is coverage season, and if you are a para, you already know it.

• Testing pulls teachers out of classrooms.

• Field trips pull them off campus.

• Sub shortages pull everyone in every direction.

And when there is a gap, they come find you.

You are not imagining it. It is worse right now than it was in February. And it will stay this way until the last day of school.

Here are three things you can do between now and June that will actually help.

1. Track where they send you.

Get a small notebook or open a note on your phone. Every time you get reassigned, write the date, where they sent you, and what you were pulled from.

This is not about complaining. This is about having data.

“I was reassigned 14 times in April” hits differently than “it feels like a lot.” When your supervisor asks how the year went, or when contract conversations start, you want specifics. You deserve specifics. Write them down now while you still remember.

2. Ask one question before you walk out the door.

Before you leave your regular assignment, stop and ask whoever is sending you: “What should I prioritize when I get there?”

That is it. One question. It does two things.

First, it protects you from walking into a room with no context and no plan, which is exhausting and unfair. Second, it sends a signal that someone should have thought about what you are walking into before they sent you.

You are not being difficult. You are being professional. There is a difference.

3. Protect five minutes at the end of each day.

Before you leave the building, write down one thing that went well. One sentence. It can be on your phone, on a sticky note, in the back of that same notebook.

“Helped a kid in Room 214 finish his math test. He said thank you.”

“Covered Ms. Garcia’s class for two hours. Got through the whole lesson without anyone losing it.”

That is your record. When June comes and the whole year blurs together, those notes are proof that you mattered in every room they sent you to. Because you did.

Share

The part nobody says out loud

Here is the truth about late April: you are the most flexible person in the building, and that flexibility comes at a cost. Every time you get pulled, your students lose you. The relationships you built, the routines you established, the trust a kid finally gave you in March. That all gets interrupted every time someone says “Can you cover...”

You are allowed to feel frustrated about that. You are allowed to wish it were different.

And you are also allowed to finish this year knowing that your ability to walk into any room and make it work is not a small thing. It is a rare thing. Most people cannot do what you do.

Six more weeks. You have got this.

Teachers: if your para has been pulled three times this week, ask them how they are doing. Not in passing. For real. And if there is something you can do to protect their time in your room, do it. They will not ask you to, but they will notice.

Leaders: if you are making the coverage assignments, look at who is absorbing the most pulls this month. It is almost always the same two or three people. That is worth a conversation, and maybe a thank you that is specific enough to prove you noticed.

TDI supports paraprofessionals, teachers, and school leaders with resources that reduce stress and save time. Period.

Rae

Subscribe now