Case Studies
Proof, Not Promies
School leaders buy transformations, not workshops. Here's what changed in the districts and organizations Concept Academy has worked with.
Boston University Project GLACIER (NSF GK-12 Program)
Situation & Task
Project GLACIER, a $2.9M NSF-funded Boston University program, paired research fellows with grades 5–8 teachers across Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, and Somerville, MA, to bring real global-change science into the classroom. I was asked to serve as lead teacher to train graduate fellows for classroom teaching and facilitate curriculum design for the science units designed from program research opportunities.
Action
Co-authored two NGSS-aligned, NSF/BU-credited curriculum guides built from Belize field research: From Forest to Sea (2013), forest and marine carbon-sequestration units where students run real field sampling and build their own carbon models — led graphics and layout; and A Fragile Balance (2016), six case-study lessons on ecosystem restoration, from howler-monkey conservation to coral bleaching data, each built around a claim-evidence-reasoning argument.
Result
Both guides remain publicly available under BU and NSF credit, — built on real field methods and evidence-based argument writing, the same core moves behind every workshop I design today.
Lynwood Unified School District — AI for Instructional Leads
Situation & Task
Lynwood's instructional leads had uneven comfort with AI — some didn't know they already had access to tools like Adobe Express and Canva Edu. The district needed them upskilled fast, but wanted training that built judgment, not just tool familiarity.
Action
Designed and delivered a full-day, protocol-driven workshop built around a Three Lenses ethics framework (Accuracy, Privacy, Professionalism) and a custom G-A-P prompting tool. Leads drafted a real parent communication, analyzed anonymized district data with AI, then mapped their own work into what AI can support and where human judgment has to lead.
Result
Delivered November 2025. Every lead left with a completed data analysis, a usable parent communication draft, and a working line between AI-assisted and human-only leadership tasks.
Wilson School District — Science Department Training
Situation & Task
Wilson's science teachers, grades 6–12, needed shared discussion, thinking, and assessment routines that made student reasoning visible and held together across the middle-to-high-school transition.
Action
Designed and delivered two full-day trainings for the district's entire high school and middle school science faculty: Strategies & Protocols in a Student-Centered Science Classroom (Oct. 13, 2025), nine discussion and thinking routines anchored to the concept of energy; and Surfacing Student Brilliance: Designing Meaningful Assessments (Nov. 4, 2025), pairing human and AI approaches to assessment design aligned to NGSS/PA STEELS. Each morning workshop was followed by an afternoon of open workshop and consulting time.
Result
Trained the full science faculty across three buildings — Wilson High School, Wilson West Middle School, and Wilson Southern Middle School — roughly 3,670 students' worth of science classrooms. Every teacher left Strategies & Protocols with a signed Implementation Commitment Card naming a strategy, a date, and a way to measure it, and left the Assessment workshop with a shared "Assessment Bridge" artifact and a 30-Day Assessment Challenge to pilot and report back on.