New Teacher Center and Nearpod Partner to Set Gold Standard in New Teacher Professional Development

Today, Nearpod and New Teacher Center announce a new partnership that will bring teachers -- specifically new teachers and early learning teachers -- research-based professional learning opportunities to advance their teaching practice. This new approach aims to provide live, connected learning experiences to teachers through a digital platform and is the first of its kind. Site and district leaders will now have real-time access to a collection of world-class workshops that can be directly presented to their teachers.

After building over 6,500 standards aligned student lessons, Nearpod quickly recognized the need for meaningful and engaging professional development on instructional strategies. This gap in the market prompted the partnership between Nearpod and New Teacher Center (NTC). The combination of NTC’s rich content with the innovative instructional design delivered on Nearpod’s award-winning platform allows high-quality professional development (PD) for teachers to scale in a way that was otherwise impossible. 

Workshops are organized into series, some of which are: Creating Equitable Learning Environments, Fundamentals of Play and  Foundations of Social Emotional Learning. New Teacher Center content is a critical part of Nearpod’s PD collection, which continues to grow monthly.

“Professional development opportunities are central to improving not only individual teachers’ skills in the classroom, but they help to elevate the profession as a whole,” says New Teacher Center founder and former CEO, Ellen Moir. “When teachers are equipped with information on how to improve their instruction, students are, ultimately, the ones who benefit. It’s our job to ensure that teachers across the country have access to the resources that will foster this type of understanding and improvement, and our new partnership with Nearpod is the first step toward that goal.”

New Teacher Center, a national nonprofit focused on improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders, has partnered with states, school districts, and policymakers for over 20 years to design and implement programs that create sustainable, high-quality mentoring and professional development. Nearpod’s PD compliments this evidence-based programming by providing teachers with access to high-quality professional growth opportunities. The PD can then be expanded upon with ongoing mentoring and coaching from New Teacher Center which is proven to increase teacher retention and student achievement. 

“Teachers already have the most important and challenging jobs, where resources like money and time are often hard to come by. We created our Ready to Run PD content to provide equitable access to professional development for all teachers, regardless of their zip code,” said Guido Kovalskys, CEO and co-founder of Nearpod. “Combining New Teacher Center’s long history of partnering with districts to implement effective mentoring and coaching with Nearpod’s experience guiding districts and schools through transforming their instruction makes it easier for teachers to find success in the classroom on day one of instruction.”

“The New Teacher Center content on Nearpod offers our mentors a variety of new opportunities to support first and second-year teachers,” said Dr. Ann Addison, New Educator Induction Coordinator at Olathe Public Schools. “Mentors now have access to just-in-time new teacher content that is research-based and from partners we trust.”

NTC and Nearpod are looking forward to a continued partnership in service of ensuring teachers have access to high-quality and actionable professional learning.

About New Teacher Center (NTC) http://www.newteachercenter.org/ is a national nonprofit focused on improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders. NTC partners with states, school districts, and policymakers to design and implement programs that create sustainable, high-quality mentoring and professional development; build leadership capacity; work to enhance teaching conditions; improve retention; and transform schools into vibrant learning communities where all students succeed.
 

Media Contact: 
Lauren Empson, 
Director of Communications, 
lempson@newteachercenter.org

About Nearpod
Nearpod is an award-winning education technology company that is empowering teachers to transform instruction and is used in over 60 percent of school districts across the US. Through the combination of software that merges multimedia with real-time student feedback, ready-to-teach digital content designed in partnership with respected publishers like Common Sense Education, PhET and Readworks, and unparalleled educator support, Nearpod is changing how teachers are integrating technology into the classroom.

Media Contact
Maggie Philbin
VSC for Nearpod
nearpod@vscpr.com 
203.394.1818
 

Contact Information

Maggie Philbin

Associate Director

VSC for Nearpod

nearpod@vscpr.com