The Residency Partnership Series™

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A Multi-Year System for Literacy Growth, Teacher Development, and Data-Driven Instruction

Professional learning works best when it happens with teachers, not for them.

The Residency Partnership Series™ is a modular, inquiry-based professional learning system designed for school districts ready to make a meaningful, lasting investment in educator growth and student literacy outcomes. Grounded in PhD research and built around what teachers actually need, this framework brings expert facilitation directly into classrooms and creates the conditions for real, lasting change.

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What Is a Residency Partnership?

A residency partnership is a year-long commitment to deep, job-embedded professional learning. Rather than a one-day workshop, this is a sustained collaborative relationship designed to help educators connect theory to practice in their own classrooms, with their own students.

Research consistently shows that teachers value professional learning most when it is collaborative, job-embedded, and ongoing. The Residency Partnership Series™ was built on exactly these principles.

Format

Each residency runs across three consecutive days, three times throughout the school year, for a total of nine days of focused professional learning annually. Sessions include demonstration lessons in participants' own classrooms, small-group coaching and debriefs, facilitated workshops connecting research to practice, leadership planning conversations, a resource package with lesson plans, and three Zoom check-ins between in-person visits.

This structure creates a rhythm of learn, observe, try, and reflect, giving educators time to implement new strategies and return to the group with real questions from real classrooms.

Who Is This For?

The Residency Partnership Series™ is designed for school districts, schools, and educational organizations committed to improving literacy outcomes through educator development. It's a strong fit if your district is:

Expanding use of Universal Early Literacy Screening tools
Supporting beginning teachers beyond their university degree
Working with students who aren't yet reading proficiently but don't require intensive intervention
Looking for professional learning tailored to specific roles, including Educational Assistants, Early Childhood Educators, Instructional Leaders, and Intervention Teachers

Each module can be tailored to your district's highest-leverage needs.

The Residency Modules

EduStart Residency

Building the Next Generation of Educators

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Beginning teachers are entering classrooms without the preparation they need to teach reading and writing with confidence. EduStart is a year-long mentorship experience that fills that gap. New teachers learn how to teach foundational literacy, differentiate for a range of learners, and use early screening data to make responsive instructional decisions, all within a supported, inquiry-based learning community alongside an expert facilitator.

ALIGN Residency

Using Data to Guide Instruction

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Many provinces now require primary teachers to use Universal Early Literacy Screening tools, but collecting data is only the first step. ALIGN supports teachers in doing the harder and more important work: understanding what the data is telling them, and changing their instruction in response. Through three data-review cycles across the school year, teachers learn to analyze student results, identify gaps in literacy development, and build progress monitoring into their everyday practice.

Lift Literacy Residency

Accelerating Students to Proficiency

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Some students have many literacy skills but still aren't reading or writing at grade level. They don't need intensive intervention; they need targeted, explicit instruction in the specific areas where they haven't yet reached mastery. Lift Literacy helps teachers identify exactly what those students need, design responsive learning experiences, and track whether their instruction is making a difference. It's inquiry-based, evidence-informed, and grounded in the real strengths and stretches of each classroom.

FLEX Residency

Built Around Your Educators' Needs

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Not all professional learning needs are the same. FLEX is a fully customizable residency model for districts whose priorities don't fit neatly into one of the above modules. Whether the focus is on a specific educator group, a particular instructional challenge, or a unique school context, FLEX delivers the same inquiry-based, facilitated, classroom-embedded experience, shaped entirely around what your educators need most.

It was a pleasure working with Jen Kelly as she supported our school district’s literacy goals. She listened carefully to our needs, joined our leadership team seamlessly, and contributed insightful ideas. Her deep literacy knowledge, collaborative spirit, and confident, relatable presentations make her an exceptional literacy resource consultant for any district.

What Changes When Teachers Have the Right Support?

Participating educators come away with practical skills and confidence they can use right away.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

Gathering and using literacy screening data to make smarter instructional decisions.

Differentiating instruction to meet the specific needs of every student in the room.

Monitoring progress over time to track measurable, meaningful growth.

For school districts, the result is a more skilled teaching workforce, stronger student literacy outcomes, and a data-informed culture of continuous improvement.

Our school district has worked with Jen Kelly for two years... Educators in our district have been thrilled to learn with Jen as she is gentle and open in how she presents and responds to adult learners while at the same time helping them learn new literacy strategies that attend to current research. She provides clear and easy to understand explanations of the research that empower educators to want to learn more while infusing practical ideas using children’s literature and scaffolded steps for different learners. Jen fosters the joy of learning in both students and adults in her work with them.

Data That Shows What's Working

Every residency partnership includes access to an online data tracking system, so you can see in real terms how students' literacy skills are growing over time.

Universal Early Literacy Screeners are used across much of North America to benchmark student readiness and progress. Within the Residency Partnership Series™, that data becomes a living tool.

Classroom teachers use individual student results to make informed instructional decisions and provide responsive teaching day to day. School principals use school-wide trends to identify where teachers need additional support, resources, or targeted professional learning. Superintendents use district-wide data to guide resource allocation, staffing decisions, and strategic planning at the board level.

This isn't data for data's sake. It's a shared commitment to knowing whether students are learning and doing something about it when they're not.

Ready to Bring the Residency to Your District?

The Residency Partnership Series™ is available as a one-year or three-year engagement, with the flexibility to cancel after each year. Customization is available to fit your context, your educators, and your goals.

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