What We Do
WHO IS NEB?
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NEB was founded with a “Why Not Us?” spirit and a vision of changing education one teacher, one classroom at a time. We were all teachers (some of us for a really long time) and we knew the industrial strength, commercialized professional development training was not working! The training was usually too impersonal or unrealistic or prescriptive or hurried. Education was not really changing even after millions of hours and, worse yet, millions of dollars spent on traditional professional development solutions. We knew we could do better.
Early in 2015, with a giant leap of faith, a few entrepreneurial teachers started NEB because we knew real change could only happen if educators had the support they needed, where and when they needed it. Real support. Support that lifts people, motivates people, respects people, and challenges people to think differently. Support that helps teachers to dream up instructional changes that will prepare students for success in the world beyond a classroom. We believed we could make education better by supporting educators to reimagine teaching!
We were also realistic. We knew that training educators costs money, funding that most districts just don’t have, so we got scrappy and hunted for funding sources. We wrote grants (lots of grants) so that school districts could afford our high-quality professional development solutions. Remarkably, NEB managed to secure over $1M the first year to offset the cost of our service to districts and we opened our doors for business in September 2015.
Starting small, one program in three schools, we worked closely with each teacher. We showed up in their classrooms, in real-time with real students, and with real school stuff going on. We followed up with timely customized professional development solutions that helped them drive their own change in practice. We were learning from and with each other, building trusting relationships, and there was traction! Teachers were implementing high impact, sustainable instructional practices that increased student achievement.
In three short years our simple idea of changing education one teacher, one classroom at a time, grew to over 37 schools contracting multi-year professional development solutions with NEB in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
We are making education better. Are you ready to reimagine teaching?
