The Academy is The CTTL’s professional development conference that focuses on translating Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) Science strategies, providing educators an opportunity to invest in understanding how the brain learns and how to create learning experiences that help all students of all ages flourish in their schools, districts, or programs.

Launched in 2017 with an EE Ford Educational Leadership Grant, with a one-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,  the Academy was designed using the Science of Teaching and Learning to teach the Science of Teaching and Learning. From its inception, the Academy has brought together teachers and school leaders from all educational ecosystems, public, charter, private, and international schools and districts, growing to 58 partner schools since 2017.

“To meet the CTTL's vision, ‘a world where every teacher understands how every student’s brain learns,’ and on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CTTL sought to pilot the idea of a few of its CTTL Academy Partner Schools being in-person satellite sites,” Dreyfuss Family Director of the CTTL, Glenn Whitman, said. “Public and private schools and district sites in the U.S. and Mexico reduced geographic barriers to Academy participation and elevated in-person connections to the Science of Teaching and School Leadership Academy professional development experience.”

Since 2017 the CTTL Academy has supported the professional learning and growth of more than 2000 educators who work directly or indirectly with more than 200,000 students. 

“The most unique and kind of valuable element of the academy is the translation group,” CTTL Chief Operating Officer Chavonne Primus said. “We're really big on promoting not just learning about the research, but putting it into action. What is applying that research going to look like in the classroom? And the translation groups are the way that we try to start that process right away. And so for an hour each day during the Academy, the attendees are participating in their translation groups. And if you're at a satellite site, you're having those meetings in person.”

Satellite sites had veteran Academy attendees facilitate in-person conversations, along with an audio/visual team to produce and provide a live feed of presenters to satellite campuses, which led to a record number of 580 teachers attending this year’s Academy either in-person or virtually. This uniquely delivered, evidence-informed professional development experience for teachers and school leaders from all educational ecosystems included Frederick County Public Schools (Maryland), Detroit Country Day School (Michigan), Metairie Park Country Day School (Louisiana), Miami Country Day School (Florida), Kimball Union Academy (New Hampshire), Wilson Hall School (South Carolina), Breck School (Minnesota) and Colegio Merici (Mexico City). 

Along with 12 student interns helping set up and run the event, nine St. Andrew’s students provided insight to the hundreds of teachers and school leaders worldwide during the “Student Voices” session. Teachers were able to hear the perspective of students from first through twelfth grade on how their schools and teachers shape their learning experiences and motivation for learning. The teachers were able to connect then the MBE strategies they’d learned throughout the Academy on topics such as curriculum and pedagogy, the learning environment, and well-being, with what they heard from the students before taking a deeper dive into the MBE topic of their choice.

“They were able to sit and talk with attendees during the deep dive sessions and during the MBE strategy sessions and there were teachers who were asking them questions like, ‘okay, so like, what does this sound like to you?’ Or ‘If I were going to try this in my classroom how do you think that might work?’” Primus said. “Having them be actively participating was a benefit to everybody who is here.”

Now that this year’s Academy is over, the goal remains to continually make the Academy, the CTTL's annual signature event, bigger and better next year.

“We're excited about seeing the Academy grow. We want to be able to reach as many teachers and school leaders as we can support,” Primus said. “We're going to keep working on the model until we get it just right.“