Transform Curriculum from Overwhelm to Clarity

As a classroom teacher, I appreciated the opportunity to plan and receive feedback from Allison on ways to design personalized learning experiences for my students. Allison utilizes probing questions to get to the heart of the concept, idea, or goal you want to put into practice and provides guidance on the next steps in the process. I love that I walk away with additional perspectives and approaches to problems-always keeping learners at the center.

Working alongside Allison has been one of life’s great joys for me. The insights, honesty, creative nature, and depth of experiences that she brings to the table have been some of the most enriching in my career and for the on-going work at our school. I am humbled and blessed to learn from her, and I am always intrigued by her curious nature and how she tunes me in towards a deeper reflection of what I say, do, and think.

I have worked with Allison for over 15 years. What she brings to the table is an ability to take your idea and translate it into what others can understand; she brings vision, clarity, and kindness. Allison treats all with whom she works as colleagues and fellow travelers on the road. As a result, she creates a community of learners that last a lifetime. She has a particular strength and centering students and personalizing learning to them.

A valued thought partner, collaborator, and connector, Allison has been an instrumental part of our district's personalized learning journey. She is grounded in a deep respect for our educators' expertise and insights, and lives out the principles of personalized learning in all of our interactions. I know that each time we connect, I will leave with new insights, valuable resources, and informed plans that strengthen our ability to support our educators and students.

Allison has worked with our district for several years.  I have called upon her talent and knowledge for a variety of curricular projects.  She understands our district values and aspirations and works with a variety of professionals to bring us to our next level of work.  I count on Allison’s commitment to improving our impact on every student, every day.  She has moved us to enhanced vertical outcomes in various disciplines, facilitated all content areas to adopted curricula, built performance based assessments and lifted personalized learning. She is a sounding board, a bridge builder and a cheerleader for our toughest work. 

Allison possesses an invaluable amount of content and pedagogical knowledge.  As a teacher, I appreciate that Allison understands the reality of the classroom and the demands that come with it.  She was there to help my department along each step of the curriculum renewal process - from imagining the ideal curriculum all the way down to the development of learning activities for units of study.  Thanks to Allison, we created an incredibly engaging and rigorous middle school curriculum.

Inventure Academy is committed to building the key tenets of our Definition of Learning that includes building ‘Critical Thinking’ and developing ‘Intrinsically Motivated learners.’ In this context, it has been wonderful to work with Allison Zmuda online, as she motivated our team to ideate on parameters that could feed into the learner progressions for these key facets. Allison’s ability to elicit responses and collaboratively develop the learner progressions have helped us forge stronger bonds as a learning community committed to reaching shared goals. Thinking about our practice and incorporating the pedagogy to support the learner progressions have further strengthened our teaching and learning across different sections of school. It has been very helpful for students as well, as they have been able to reflect and track their progress, using the learner's progressions, and they have begun to see their learning as a journey and not a destination. 

Our partnership with Allison Zmuda has profoundly transformed our school’s curricular efforts. Allison is keenly knowledgeable about curricular design and best practices in pedagogy. A student-centered educator, she deeply understands the importance of designing meaningful and relevant learning experiences. She possesses the unique ability of focusing on the big picture work while also connecting with our teachers on a personal level. Allison is creative, thoughtful, and collaborative in her approach to consulting. I always appreciate the time we share brainstorming, designing, and developing the plans for curriculum and pedagogy we are implementing. Collaborating with Allison is a learning experience in itself as she always pushes my thinking in new and exciting ways. Quite simply put, Allison rocks!

Allison's work is a gold mine for educators! The strategies she shared at our recent teachers' institute will be invaluable as we streamline curriculum strategically and consider how to authentically engage our students in it. We loved that she is a speaker who is "real" and approachable, sharing her wealth of experience as she responded to questions, offering classroom examples for different grade levels, and providing links to her slides plus online resources and articles that we can tap into in the year to come. 

Working with Allison has been a breath of fresh air for schools in our association. She is masterful in helping schools take complex ideas and structures and transform them into achievable goals that are meaningful and make sense. We always appreciate her insight and thought-partnering to help us become better educators.