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The lilyPD blog turns research on effective teaching into strategies educators can use tomorrow. Each post pairs a classroom-ready idea — a routine, an activity, a scaffold — with the evidence behind it, trusting teachers to adapt it to their own students. Written by and for practitioners, it treats teaching as a craft worth studying together.
All blog posts (18)
Strategy Spotlight: Supporting Multilingual Learners in Civil Discourse
There is a lot happening in a classroom discussion. Students are listening to someone else’s ideas, deciding whether they agree or disagree, connecting those ideas to what they already know, looking for evidence, and figuring out what they want to say next, all while the conversation keeps moving. For multilingual learners (MLs), there may be […]
4 Tools to Transform Your School’s PD Culture
Over this course of his blog series, Dr. Derek Porter shared four tools that can change how school leaders create a school culture that prevents burnout and encourages meaningful professional growth! If you missed any of, you can find all four posts here. You can also grab each of the tools Derek provides for school […]
How Healthy Schools Protect People’s Capacity
This is the final installment of our four-part leadership series with Dr. Derek Porter. You can get caught up on the rest of the series here: post 1, post 2, post 3. How Healthy Schools Protect People’s Capacity The Seven Institutional Commitments of Sustainable Leadership “Culture is not built by what leaders believe. It is […]
The Decisions Exhausting Every School
This is the third installment in our lilyPD X leadership series! Check out post 1, post 2, and post 4! The Decisions Exhausting Every School “The quality of a school is often determined not by its biggest decisions, but by the thousands of smaller ones that quietly shape people’s days.” Professional learning asks educators to […]
Why Good Professional Learning Doesn’t Change Practice
This is the second installment in a four-part leadership series! Get caught up on post 1, post 3, and post 4! Why Good Professional Learning Doesn’t Change Practice Professional learning is designed to help teachers grow. Every year, school leaders, like you, invest countless hours selecting meaningful topics, organizing coaching cycles, planning PLCs, and creating […]
Before You Plan Your Next PD Day, Ask This
Before You Plan Your Next PD Day, Ask This This post is the first installment of a four-part leadership series. Check out part 2, part 3, and part 4! “People don’t rise or fall to the level of their motivation. They rise or fall to the level of the systems they work within.” Professional development […]
Teaching Takeaway: The Benefits of Elaboration
Teaching Takeaway: The Benefits of Elaboration by Patrick Hussey As a student, I constantly learned by analogy. For example, as an anthropology student, when I was first learning about the concept of cultural relativism, I understood it (and remembered it!) by thinking about fish: A fish that’s only ever known one pond thinks its water […]
Nurturing New Teacher Growth All Year Long with lilyPD
Nurturing New Teacher Growth All Year Long with lilyPD If you’ve ever been a new classroom teacher, you probably remember the mix of excitement and uncertainty that came with those first few weeks. There was the anticipation of decorating your classroom, meeting your students, and putting your ideas into practice… AND also the reality that […]
See It, Name It, Prove It: Making Primary Sources Click for Multilingual Learners
Let’s be honest. Social studies is one of the hardest content areas for Multilingual Learners (MLLs). It is not just the vocabulary, though there is a lot of it. It is everything at once: dense texts, abstract concepts like democracy and citizenship, multiple perspectives to hold in your head, and then on top of all […]
We Asked. Teachers Answered. Here’s What They Say About lilyPD.
When lilyPD launched in March 2026, it launched with a dream of changing the way teachers receive professional development. We wanted it to be research-backed and fun. Practical and engaging. Flexible and immediately applicable to your classroom. We are so thankful for the community that has already gathered here and for the generous, overwhelmingly positive […]
5 Ways to Weave lilyPD into Your School’s PD Ecosystem
5 Ways to Weave lilyPD into Your School’s PD Ecosystem As a school leader, you already know the challenge: professional development time is precious, schedules are packed, and the needs of your teachers vary. Resources that can adapt to different contexts give you something rare: real options for supporting your teachers’ growth. lilyPD: Professional Development […]
Strategy Spotlight: Silent Round Tables
Today’s Strategy Spotlight, Silent Round Tables, comes from our microcourse Civil Discourse in the Classroom, which introduces educators to a research-backed framework for facilitating productive, respectful dialogue in classrooms of all levels. You can enroll in the course here or browse our library of related resources! The Challenge We all want our classrooms to buzz […]
A Reflection on Teaching the American Revolution at 250
Patriotism cannot be taught. What we can do is teach American history with fidelity and trust that, as students examine both the ideals expressed in our founding documents and the ways Americans have struggled to fulfill those ideals, they will develop a deeper appreciation for the nation’s enduring promises—and perhaps an even greater sense of responsibility for preserving and extending them.
If lilyPD Courses Were New York Times Bestsellers…
Every school year, I save a million tasks (house projects, doctor’s appointments, car maintenance, large-scale clean-outs of overloaded closets) and designate them as Problems for My Summer Self. I can’t possibly manage these tasks during the sprint of the school year. But in the summer, I know it will get done. Mostly, this is delusional. […]
Teaching Takeaway: Found Poems for Higher-Order Thinking
Poet Kate Baer has made a game of taking online hate-mail and transforming it into erasure poetry, a type of found poem. In a found poem, a writer takes key words from another text, arranges and rearranges them, and creates a completely new, original work. In her erasure poems, Baer takes something meant to attack […]
3 Ways to Use lilyPD to Super-Charge Your Summer Learning
Let’s be honest: you need a break this summer. A true break. Time to sleep in, read a silly book, and soak up the long, slow evenings. You have had a school year that I bet was both challenging and rewarding. You have earned some rest. But time away can also be clarifying; it helps […]
Stop Rushing Past Artifacts: Why Slowing Down Changes Everything
Engaging with artifacts in the classroom can be used as a tool to move from surface‑level observations to deeper questions and reasoned interpretations, and it can be fun too!
Explore Word Gaps for an Instant Reading Comprehension Boost
A “word gap” is a word or phrase that a student doesn’t know (Beers and Probst, 2015). A word gap might represent a brand new word the student has never seen before or a word they can understand from context but can’t define. The Collect and Explore Word Gaps strategy asks students to bring together the word gaps they find in a text and then explore them. This strategy is about more than simply learning new language, though. Collecting and exploring not only these individual words but the patterns they form can also help readers understand the big ideas of a text.
All blog posts (18)
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