KickUp brought together two Texas district leaders to talk about how they've built Bluebonnet walk practices that actually move instruction. They shared the culture, systems, and data practices behind their work.

Three patterns keep coming up in our conversations with district PD leaders this summer. Each one points back to a single question about what holds your professional learning system together.

Instructional leaders didn't get into this work to spend their evenings transcribing notes and sorting evidence into rubric domains. The right use of AI doesn't replace their judgment; it clears the administrative weight so they can finally get to the part that matters.

Most PD feedback forms confirm that sessions went well. Few help you decide what to do next. Five years of data on 700,000+ feedback responses point to five swaps that fix that — without making your form any longer.

Principals shouldn't spend their evenings categorizing notes against the framework line by line. KickUp's AI-enabled scripting tool clears that work.

A letter from KickUp co-founder Jeremy Rogoff introducing Instructional Leader Intelligence. On the documentation burden weighing down principals, coaches, and PD leaders — and the conviction behind a new direction for instructional leadership.

Averages make PD look healthier than it is. Inside the same district, some staff get a week of structured learning a year — others get almost none. The question isn't how much PD you're offering. It's who's getting it.

KickUp and Learning Forward Academy hosted a conversation on what's working in New Teacher Mentorship programs. Here are some of the key moments and takeaways.

Before you recruit next year's mentors, pause. These three questions will determine whether your program actually works or just checks boxes.