How we design professional development that works
This page is for the curriculum directors, instructional coaches, and district leaders who want to understand what's behind our work. It's not a sales pitch. It's a look at how we think.
Why most PD doesn't work
The dominant model of professional development in American schools is the single-day workshop: a presenter with slides, teachers in rows, and a binder that goes on a shelf. Research has consistently shown that this model produces minimal lasting change in classroom practice.
The reasons are well understood. Generic content doesn't connect to specific teaching contexts. Passive delivery doesn't build usable skills. One-shot sessions don't provide the sustained support needed for real implementation. And presenters who haven't been in a classroom recently lack credibility with the teachers they're trying to reach.
Districts spend significant resources on professional development each year. When that investment goes toward sit-and-get sessions that don't transfer to practice, it's not just a waste of money — it erodes teacher trust in the entire concept of PD.
What we do differently
1. Audience-specific design
Every engagement starts with a needs assessment. We learn about your teachers, your students, your standards landscape, and your institutional goals before we design a single slide. The content your elementary STEM coaches receive is fundamentally different from what your high school CS teachers get — even when the underlying topic is the same.
2. Active participation ratios
We track the ratio of participant activity to presenter delivery in every session we design. Our target is at least 60% active time — building, testing, discussing in small groups of three or more, iterating on artifacts, and reflecting on application to their own practice. This isn't aspirational; it's structural. The session agenda is built around it.
3. Research grounding
Both founders maintain active research programs. The content we deliver reflects current evidence about how people learn, how technology is actually being used in classrooms, and what pedagogical approaches produce measurable outcomes. We don't rely on trends, vendor materials, or secondhand summaries of research.
4. Forward-looking content selection
We prioritize topics that will matter in 2–3 years, not topics that are already commoditized. Our clients engage with AI literacy, computational modeling, and integrated STEM approaches before these become mandated — giving their teachers a head start and their districts a strategic advantage.
Informed by CRAFT
Our approach is informed by CRAFT (Contextualize, Reframe, Assemble, Fortify, Transfer), a peer-reviewed instructional design framework developed through the founders' research. CRAFT provides a structured process for designing learning experiences that connect to participants' existing knowledge, build through active construction, and transfer to real-world application.
We don't sell CRAFT as a product or build our brand around it. It's the engine under the hood — the research-validated thinking that shapes how we sequence activities, design scaffolding, and structure reflection. When participants leave a Freyja Labs session with concrete plans they can actually implement, that's CRAFT at work.
Ahead of the curve, by design
We were building CS integration workshops before most states had CS mandates. We were designing AI literacy modules before ChatGPT made AI a household word. We were teaching computational modeling before it appeared in updated science standards.
This isn't luck — it's a function of maintaining active research programs while simultaneously doing applied PD work. We see what's coming in the research literature and in policy discussions, and we build capacity in schools before the mandates arrive.
Our clients don't scramble to comply with new requirements. They're already there.