SPARK Teacher Fellowships

Rigorous professional learning that produces evidence, not just hours.

Your teachers have ideas that could strengthen community partnerships, deepen student engagement, and showcase what's possible in your classrooms. SPARK Fellowships give them the structure, accountability, and support to make those ideas real—with documentation every step of the way.

Why Districts Choose SPARK

⚡ Proof over paperwork.
Every fellow designs and implements a community-connected classroom project with their students, documenting both the process and the impact. Students engage in authentic, community-based learning—reflecting deeply, completing performance assessments, and publicly presenting their work. No theoretical worksheets. No compliance checklists. Just authentic evidence of teacher growth tied to student outcomes.

🔥 Competency-based rigor.
Teachers advance by demonstrating their learning, not clocking seat time. They design projects grounded in personalized, competency-based pedagogy—the same principles your district is working to scale—and experience the same transformative learning process as their students.

🤝 Community-connected learning.
Fellows build projects that extend beyond classroom walls—partnering with local organizations, addressing community needs, and creating learning experiences students can't get from a textbook. These aren't add-ons. They're the work.

🌱 Teacher leadership and pedagogy development.
SPARK Fellowships cultivate teachers who are instructional and cultural leaders. We align our work to district-priorities in tandem with evidence-backed frameworks for innovative pedagogy and leadership like PBLWorks’ Gold-Standard Project-Based Learning Design and KnowledgeWorks’ Portrait of a Leader. Fellows learning the teaching skills to deliver personalized, competency-based learning while developing learner-centered leadership grounded in vision-setting, collaboration, adaptability, and continuous learning.

What You Get

📋 Documented teacher growth.
Teachers build professional portfolios capturing their instructional decisions, student work, student learning outcomes, and reflective practice throughout the fellowship. We partner with Unrulr to house our community of practice—where teachers document their work, reflect on their learning, and engage with fellow educators.

🎤 Public presentations of learning.
The fellowship culminates in a showcase where teachers present their projects to colleagues, administrators, and community partners. Both teachers and students share their learning journeys—proof of concept and professional celebration in one.

📸 PR-ready assets.
Every project generates stories, images, and documentation you can use immediately. Want to show families what innovative teaching looks like? Want to share evidence of teacher leadership with your board? You'll have it—authentic, high-quality, already captured.

🚀 A network effect.
When 10–20 teachers go through SPARK together, they do more than complete a fellowship. They become a professional learning community that continues collaborating, sharing practice, and raising expectations for what's possible.

The Structure

• Six sessions (5 full cohort, 1 coaching call) facilitating exploration, design, implementation, and reflection

• Asynchronous support via facilitated discussions and documentation prompts on Unrulr

• 1:1 coaching to push thinking and troubleshoot challenges

• 20 PD hours of personalized, competency-based professional learning

• A portfolio and public presentation demonstrating teacher growth and student impact

• Via Zoom—no subs needed

Investment

$1,000 per teacher | Cohort of 10–20 educators