Writing Pathways Initiative and Podsie Initiative Are First to Join
New Nonprofit M&A Model
WASHINGTON, D.C.– Teaching Lab announces the launch of a transformative innovation model aimed at accelerating learning science and improving education. Through its new Innovation Studio, nonprofit Teaching Lab will support other nonprofit ed tech organizations to amplify and support their work.
Teaching Lab, which specializes in curriculum-based professional learning (PL), is working to fundamentally shift the paradigm of teacher PL for educational equity. The organization already works with a vast array of teachers, districts, and school systems. Its new Innovation Studio will better advance timely learning science and address the diverse education challenges still posed by COVID. The initiative will also position learning engineers to more fully collaborate and optimize opportunities to be found via ChatGPT and other generative AI.
This effort was “inspired by the fact that there are many small organizations that were getting funded, had really great leadership, and great technology and algorithms but they needed to be better positioned,” said Teaching Lab CEO Sarah Johnson. “Each one had a piece of the puzzle but not the whole picture. Additionally, many of these small organizations were struggling to get funding, business or the number of users they needed to improve their product.”
A venture like the Innovation Studio – which will soon hire its first Chief Innovation Officer and staff – is able to step into the void, offer support, and accelerate the development and coherent implementation of products that will benefit students and teachers on a large scale.
Writing Pathways Initiative, the first to join the Studio in July 2022, has already seen additional funding support at a time when their initial grant was set to expire. The support has enabled them to continue doing direct research with teachers aimed at providing better guidance and professional learning for educators teaching children how to write.
“Teaching Lab is demonstrating real courage by doing this,” said Phil Weinberg of Writing Pathways. “Too often solutions can be sold to schools that are produced quickly in order to stay alive. Teaching Lab is recognizing that things need to be developed carefully and they need to be developed with research and with teacher feedback. This takes an investment of time.”
Podsie recently joined the Studio and is gaining not only the collaborative and operational expertise of Writing Pathways’ team, but also Studio funding and access to educators to further develop its tool, which utilizes retrieval practice, spacing and interleaving to help students remember information better.
The Studio’s goal is to add three to five new organizations to its accelerator each year.
“Ed tech organizations have the moral responsibility to make sure that whatever they’re building is truly teacher and student-centered and actually improves student outcomes,” said Joshua Ling, senior director of Podsie at Teaching Lab’s Innovation Studio. “I’m excited about the Innovation Studio because I think we have the opportunity to start something that’s harnessing powerful new technology and doing it under a nonprofit, mission-driven oriented organization where our bottom lines are literally student outcomes and teacher empowerment.”
At Teaching Lab, our mission is to fundamentally shift the paradigm of teacher professional learning for educational equity. We specialize in curriculum-based professional learning, using our evidence-based model of professional learning, coined Head, Heart, Habits, and Equity. We envision a world where teachers and students thrive together in communities that enable lifelong learning and meaningful lives. In partnership with teachers, we transform professional learning from the ground up to dramatically improve student outcomes. We also work with school, district, and state leaders to create the instructional systems necessary to support these changes..
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
