Ashleigh Phillis | August 2024 Perfectly arranged desks. Whiteboard markers that still had their tips. Icebreaker exercises with my grade team. As a teacher, these were the details that signaled a new school year for me. Once everything was set up, my classroom became a place of hope for all that could be accomplished. Time with my colleagues sparked energy … Read More

Rachel Nozari | July 2024 Effective onboarding isn’t just about paperwork; it’s about making new team members feel like they belong from day one. At EdFuel, we have supported numerous education organizations in transforming their onboarding and retention processes. By partnering with single-site charter schools, multi-state charter networks, traditional districts, and nonprofits, we’ve helped create supportive environments where all team … Read More

Nicole Pratt| June 2024 I love performance management. This declaration often draws a confused look from whomever I’m talking to, but it’s true. At its heart, performance management, when done well, is all about coaching and development. I know that is not everyone’s, or even most people’s experience, but it can and should be. A strong performance management system can … Read More

Marguerite Thibodeaux| May 2024 “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates “We know ESSER funds are going away. We’re trying to continue growing enrollment while our funding is changing. How do we know where we need to move folks to meet our goals and … Read More

Rachel Nozari | July 2022 As a society, we’ve experienced immense ambiguity in the last two-plus years. We lived through a global pandemic and managed day in and day out uncertainty with fast-changing needs to respond to. We grappled with personal and family health concerns, sustained disruption to schooling and childcare, “the great resignation”, and likely a general feeling of … Read More

Cortney Graham Ameckson, Manager | June 2022 I became a high school civics and economics teacher the semester after I graduated from college. As a former educator, I have lots of memories of spending hours in professional development sessions intended to help prepare myself and colleagues for the school year, only for the learnings to be inapplicable to me or … Read More

Ashleigh Phillis, Director | April 2022 For most of us, the start of spring signals the return of warmer weather and blossoming flowers. For some, spring simply means that baseball is back. I should note that I am not a baseball fan. Unfortunately, my husband is an avid Cleveland fan. And Cleveland baseball has had an anxious off-season. This is … Read More

Saima Zaman, Director | March 2022 In a study shared by the Harvard Business Review in 2019, 40% of employees feel isolated at work despite 8 billion dollars being spent by US companies on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives1. In addition, studies around belonging have shown that feelings of belonging vary across identity groups, with Black and Asian women … Read More

Melany Justice, Associate | February 2022 In April of 2020, the CDC recommended mask-wearing in public to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. In the weeks that followed, I often pondered the metaphoric similarity between the “new” precaution of wearing a mask to remain safe in public and the long-standing precaution of wearing a “mask” while navigating professional workspaces given the … Read More

Update on Our Commitment as Education Support Partners Over the past few months, EdFuel has made strides to live out commitments to ourselves, our team, and our partners as outlined in our Anti-Racist Pledge. Each day as we navigate our work relative to the ever-changing landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are actively working to keep our goal to be … Read More