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Let’s build schools that bring their values to their everyday practices.

What if your school’s values weren’t just words on your website but the driving force behind learning?

The way we design instruction doesn’t just determine how well students understand the material. Instructional design shapes the relationships students form with the content, each other, themselves, and the wider world. The qualities we say we value — things like curiosity, creativity, empathy, equity — emerge in the learning itself.

​Let’s go, nerds. ​Let’s design learning for what matters most.

nerdy offerings

If schools want their values to show up in classrooms, we have to design for it. I help nerdy educators and leaders build learning environments where their values aren’t just ideals; they emerge as a natural result of how students interact with the content and each other. Here’s how we can work together.

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Conferences:
Empowering Siloed and Disenfranchised Educators

Every school has brilliant faculty and staff members who are stuck in silos or whose voices go unheard—and who end up feeling frustrated, overworked, and underutilized. My sessions help them see how instructional design can be the missing piece that leverages their expertise and expands their impact without expanding their workload.

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School Professional Days:
Aligning Instructional Practices with School Values

Your school cares about engagement, equity, belonging, and purpose — but is instruction designed to get students there? I lead dynamic workshops that show teachers and leaders how to structure students’ interactions with the content and each other to evoke the qualities their school claims to value.

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Consultations:
Helping Leaders Build the Infrastructure for Lasting Change

Workshops are great, but without the systems to support continuous learning, nothing sticks. I work with school leaders to make sure instructional design isn’t just a one-day conversation — it becomes the foundation for how the school puts its values into action every day.

If you’re ready to start designing for the values you believe in, let’s talk.

why to nerd out with me

  • My expertise comes from experience.

I know what it’s like to be a teacher trying to do meaningful work inside a system that fights it at every turn. Informed by 18 years in the classroom and evidence-based psychological science, I’ve written 7 books about how to design instruction so that school becomes a source of meaning, vitality, and community in students’ lives — and in teachers’ lives, too.

  • My work is process-based, collaborative, sometimes fun, and always meaningful.

You might draw, play a game, or make a focus sticker in one of my workshops, but you’ll never get tricks, gimmicks, or pointless busywork. You’ll get instructional design principles that work across subjects and grade levels to foster engagement, belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of self.

  • I help schools embed their values into their most fundamental practices. Like, actually.

It’s not hard to say you value equity, empathy, or creativity. It’s not even that hard to organize programs and initiatives to display those values. What’s more of a challenge is to design instruction so your values emerge from the ways students interact with the content and each other. That’s what I help schools do.

WORKSHOP

nerdy books

These books explore the same instructional design principles I bring to schools. If you want a preview of my approach, start here.

meet the teacher nerd

  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon

I‘m Lauren Porosoff. I help schools design learning environments where community values like equity, empathy, and creativity emerge from the instruction itself. I was a teacher for 18 years, most recently at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. I‘ve taught the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, mostly in English and history, and I‘ve also served as what was then called a diversity coordinator, a grade dean, and a leader of curricular initiatives.

Now that I no longer have a classroom or a student roster, I don‘t know what to call my job. I usually say “educational consultant,” but that never sounds right for someone introverted and awkward who doesn‘t even own a hairdryer. (That photo over there? That‘s so totally AI enhanced.) But regardless of what I call my job, I see a difference between our JOBS in education and our WORK—and my WORK in education has always been about making school a source of meaning and vitality and community in the lives of students and teachers.

Informed by my classroom experience and evidence-based psychological science, I develop tools and protocols that transform the psychological experience of school for teachers and students. I‘ve developed applications in instructional design, social-emotional learning, professional development, and anti-bias action. I‘ve chosen to focus on instructional design, because meaningful learning is an ideal context for students to figure out how they want to relate to themselves, each other, and the systems in which they participate.

This is starting to make me sound cooler than I am. I am not cool. I‘m a suburban Gen-X mom who likes gardening, cooking, hiking, bingeing high-concept sci-fi shows, and ordering the weirdest thing on the menu. Most of all, I like hanging out with my friend Laurie or my friend Tas or my husband Jonathan and talking about teaching. More specifically, talking about designing instruction so students connect with the content, their work, and each other. That makes me a teacher nerd, and if you’re still here, you might be one too.

let’s nerd out together

Ready to transform your school‘s learning environment? Contact me to schedule a time to discover how we can align your instructional practices with your values.

Looking forward to the nerdery!

© Lauren Porosoff, 2025. All rights reserved.

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