Build Stronger Teachers
Professional Development
Building a Community of Growth Summer is an amazing time for teachers to hone their craft and build a strong community of learning alongside expert educators. At the heart of our model is an intensive investment in professional development.
Before the program launches, every teacher participates in a 2- to 3-day institute that equips them with the pedagogies, curricula, and teaching methods needed to implement our curriculum successfully. Throughout the program, teachers reconnect weekly with their peers and mentor teachers for ongoing professional development. These sessions focus on refining two cornerstone practices: intellectual preparation and student work analysis.
Our approach prioritizes meaning-making over rote procedures, empowering teachers to deliver engaging, transferable learning experiences that resonate with students.
Turnkey programming
"Best-designed summer program I have taught thus far."
For many partners, NSSI serves as an extension of their team. With high quality curriculum, best-in-class professional learning, and meticulous operational support, NSSI helps its partners to plan, launch, manage, and evaluate a rigorous summer academic program at scale.
Each year, this gets better and better. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into helping us launch and run successful summer programs with great opportunities for teacher growth and great student outcomes.
—Laurie Wolfe, Chief Academic Officer, Gem Prep
Program-wide, teachers and leaders appreciated NSSI’s ease-of-use. Respondents to our end-of-session surveys gave the statement “I am happy that I taught/led summer school in partnership with NSSI” an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 possible points.
Learn more about why partners choose NSSI to eliminate the complexity and capacity challenges of scaling high quality summer academic programming.
Growing together
A professional learning community
In our program, teachers meet colleagues from across the country and are welcomed into a dynamic new community of educators.
Intellectual Preparation: Teaching with Purpose
Intellectual preparation means deeply understanding the concepts and skills in each lesson, anticipating student challenges, crafting questions to clarify confusion, and addressing tricky vocabulary upfront. At NSSI, we focus on this essential practice to help teachers deliver rigorous, engaging lessons with confidence.
The result? Polished, purposeful instruction that ensures every student receives the best possible learning experience.
The Power of Analyzing Student Work
Analyzing student work is about uncovering what students truly understand, identifying misconceptions, and leveraging their strengths. At NSSI, we focus on this practice because it gives teachers the insights needed to adapt instruction and provide targeted support.
The impact is clear: using rubrics and success criteria, teachers deliver precise feedback that builds confidence, deepens understanding, and accelerates student learning. By focusing on what students produce, we empower teachers to help every student reach their full potential.
It works.
This past summer, students were given 30-minute pre-tests in both literature and math on the first day of the program, and post-tests as the program ended, both constructed of released state exam items. In just five weeks, students made major gains in proficiency across grades and subjects. On average, math students with NSSI improved more than 15 percentage points (from pre-test to post-test), and literature students improved 10 percentage points.
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