Hey folks! John here with some exciting news from the teaching front.
After a few months away from all the action on paternity leave (my daughter is amazing, by the way), I’m FINALLY stepping back into the classroom! Next week, I start work in a hybrid role as a Staff Development Teacher and 7th Grade ELA teacher at an International Middle School about 15 minutes from my home just outside Washington, D.C. I’ll be working directly with teachers — planning, coaching, supporting instruction, and spending my days in the place where all of this work ultimately lives: classrooms.
Good news / bad news? This isn’t a proper “recharge for the summer, start the new school year off right” kind of reset. It’s March. The year is in full swing. The students know one another, and the staff most certainly has their routines down long before I set foot in the building. Without question, the energy will be different now than it would have been in August. The patterns are set, the stakes are clearer, and the work is real. That’s exactly why this felt like the right time to say, in the most competitive sense possible: “put me in, coach.”
One of the things that has quietly defined EMC² Learning from the very beginning is that Michael and I have never positioned ourselves as former teachers reflecting on what used to work. To be honest, we’ve all been subject to that sort of “sage on the stage” keynote from a quote-unquote “Former Teacher” who’s been on the speaking circuit for more years than they actually spent in an actual classroom. And that same rule goes double for all those (respectfully?) “consultants” who swoop into schools with all sorts of pomp, circumstances, and edtech solutions only to repeat the same worn-out self-help maxims that simply don’t help to move the needle once the rubber hits the road.
That’s not how we do things around here.
Michael is celebrating his 20th year in the classroom this year as a sixth-grade history teacher. We’re talking day in, day out, twenty full years of daily reps. Twenty years of adapting to new standards, new students, new realities (and yes, all sorts of new tech while we’re at it). For me? It’s been 12 years in the classroom, followed by three hard at work behind the scenes developing PD and teacher trainings at the County level.
And now, as I step back into a classroom and school-based coaching role of my own, we’re both fully embedded in the work of honest-to-goodness, day-to-day instruction again: not observing it from a distance, but living it.
Somehow along the way (gah, where does the time go!?), we’ve written four books between us. We’re continuing to add more than 100 new classroom-ready resources to the EMC² Learning library each year. We’re still traveling, speaking, and training in schools and districts across the country, with upcoming trips to Orlando, Nashville, Long Island, and more. The platform is strong. The mission is strong. And the community around it keeps growing.
But here’s what matters most to us: everything we design is shaped by what actually happens in classrooms.
There are plenty of organizations in our space that promise to help you become a better version of yourself. Not surprisingly, many of those promises are paired with a product or service positioned as the solution. Others have built their brand on high-energy social media, AI-generated content streams, or steady reminders that teachers deserve more than what we’re given.
(And to be clear, teachers absolutely do deserve more. That’s not the issue.)
The issue, at least for us, is proximity. It’s one thing to talk about classrooms. It’s another thing to still be in them: planning, adjusting, responding to students, navigating constraints. We’ve always believed the strongest professional learning grows out of that proximity, not alongside it.
There’s a line often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that I sort of hold as my own professional mantra. It says: “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” The way I see it? This isn’t just a warm sentiment. It’s a performance standard. If we’re going to talk about engagement, UDL, gamification, or instructional design, we want to be doing that work ourselves — adjusting in real time, collaborating with colleagues, responding to the same pressures every educator feels.
From my early years teaching in Washington, D.C., in the heart of the achievement gap, to public and private Catholic schools, to district-level coaching, to conference stages and back again, the throughline has always been the same: credibility comes from lived experience. Not from branding. Not from volume. From doing the work.
So what does this mean for EMC² Learning moving forward?
It means the laboratory gets sharper.
It means the ideas we share continue to be field-tested in our own classrooms and coaching cycles before they ever reach yours. It means the frameworks we design are shaped by real conversations with teachers navigating pacing guides, testing windows, multilingual learners, staffing shifts, and everything else that defines modern schools. It means we remain committed to building content-agnostic, human-centered frameworks that teachers can adapt to their own expertise and context.
Teachers everywhere are changing the game in their classrooms every single day. Our commitment is simple: we’re right there with you — building, refining, experimenting, and learning alongside you.
March is not the beginning of the season. It’s the middle of all the action.
But that’s exactly where we want to be.
Game on, y’all.
The design philosophy outlined in this blog entry help inform each of the 1,100+ resources available and on their way to arrive shortly in the EMC² Learning library. This entire library is available to all members with an active Engagement Engineer or Engagement Engineer PLUS account, and is included with your annual site membership. We hope you’ll consider joining us as an Engagement Engineer to unlock a full year of site access. For complete details including our exclusive limited time offer for annual site membership, click here.
