WASHINGTON – Six Indiana teachers spent June 4-7 in New Orleans participating in TeachFest, a professional development event focused on creating high-quality Common Core curricular resources. One of those teachers was Kristi Harris, Wawasee Community School Corp. The educators attended the event as part of LearnZillion’s national Dream Team of 200 talented math and English language arts teachers, according to a press release from LearnZillion. At TeachFest, the Dream Team kicked-off a summer-long collaboration with educators from around the country – deepening their understanding of the Common Core State Standards and gathering best practices as input for their work with LearnZillion. Dream Team members have now returned to their respective districts to continue their work as part of a LearnZillion-facilitated digital professional learning community. Participants from Indiana included: Bradley Mitchell, Archdiocese of Indianapolis; Sarah Smith, Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation; Natalie Hines, Indianapolis Public Schools; Cory Howard, Maconaquah School Corporation; Ronald Shaffer, Maconaquah School Corporation; and Harris. “Like every member of our Dream Team, these educators embraced this challenging professional learning opportunity because they are passionate about developing their practice and scaling their impact for the benefit of teachers and students around the world,” said Eric Westendorf, LearnZillion CEO. “It is an honor to work with and to champion talented, impact-oriented educators like this group from Indiana.” The diverse 2014 Dream Team members were selected from a competitive pool of 4,000 applicants. They represent 42 states, three countries (U.S., Singapore and Tunisia) and over 2,300 years of teaching experience, ranging from two to 42 years in the classroom. According to the press release, “LearnZillion champions teachers and provides schools and districts with an effective bridge to the Common Core. LearnZillion Premium’s math curricular resources and close reading/writing program are built by a dream team of top educators directly from the standards to unlock the instructional potential of teachers and prepare every student for the rigorous new assessments. A flexible learning platform allows schools and districts to develop teacher leaders as they customize a high-quality curriculum for every building. “Over 400,000 teachers now use the LearnZillion platform. Customers include District of Columbia Public Schools, Syracuse City Public Schools, the Delaware Department of Education, the Connecticut State Department of Education and various school consortia throughout the United States. Founded in 2011 by two former teachers, LearnZillion is on Fast Company's World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Education.” For more information visit online at www.LearnZillion.com
