As school districts continue to adopt new digital tools, a key challenge of implementation often lies in professional learning: how to ensure teachers across dozens — even hundreds — of schools have the skills to use technology effectively.
In Fulton County Schools, a large and geographically spread out district in Georgia, the IT team has leaned on a “train-the-trainer” model to scale technology professional development (PD) in a way they feel is both sustainable and responsive to educators’ needs. Rather than attempting to train staff at every building directly, the district’s IT team focuses on building internal expertise. By training a small group of educators from each school and supporting them to redeliver professional development locally, the district aims to balance consistency with flexibility, particularly when introducing emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.
The Georgia district serves approximately 95 school buildings, according to its Director of Instructional Technology Heather Van Looy, and has an IT team of three professionals. That reality, Van Looy said, has shaped how professional learning is designed.
“We are a small team, and so we have to rely on other ways to extend our reach in our district,” she said.
One of those methods is the district’s Vanguard program, a volunteer cohort of roughly 350 educators who are interested in instructional technology. The group is largely made up of teachers, along with instructional coaches and assistant principals, Van Looy said.
“They’re all people who have a full-time job, but they love instructional technology,” she said. “Those are volunteer members. They do not get paid [extra] in their paycheck.”
The district also relies on media and educational technology instructors, or MEDIs, who support both literacy and technology in their schools.
“They’re also doing all the things that a normal media specialist or librarian does to run the media center and support literacy in the district,” Van Looy said.
While Fulton County has not adopted many new ed-tech products in recent years, Van Looy said the district consistently uses a train-the-trainer approach when it does.
“We provide training to one or two people in every building, and then those people redeliver that training to their school’s local staff,” she said.
This year, the district adopted SchoolAI software, a move Van Looy said was driven by a broader interest in AI and digital equity.
“We have a really strong belief in Fulton that AI is the biggest disruption since the invention of the Internet ... We really believe strongly that our students need to know how to operate and have the AI literacy skills in order to be proficient with using AI ethically, responsibly and safely,” she said, framing the decision as an equity issue. “It’s our moral imperative to make sure kids have those skills so that we don’t widen the digital divide.”
District leaders selected SchoolAI after determining it met privacy requirements and offered what Van Looy described as “a really effective way to start to develop AI literacy.” One of the main drivers in adopting the software, she added, was that it allowed educators to provide more comprehensive, prompt, actionable feedback to students.
“Feedback, we know, has a huge effect on student achievement ... The problem with feedback is that it takes a lot of time to give feedback,” she said, adding that with SchoolAI, teachers can incorporate AI-generated feedback into lessons while maintaining their central role. “We’re not advocating that AI replace something that the teacher does, but that it layers on and adds value.”
To roll out the tool, Van Looy asked each principal to nominate two representatives for training.
“I recommended that it be the MEDI and one Vanguard member,” she said, while noting that principals could choose whoever they felt was best suited.
Van Looy said the district conducted six full-day trainings focused on building deep expertise, and participants were also trained on how to lead professional development themselves. As well, the IT team created internal resources such as facilitator guides, speaker notes and handouts.
“We’re training them both on SchoolAI as a product, and also on how to lead effective PD around that topic,” she said.
To support ongoing collaboration, the district set up a Microsoft Teams space with shared resources and discussion channels. Van Looy said the team also tracks usage metrics and follows up with schools to ensure trainings are redelivered.
“We’re following up with those people, seeing, like, ‘How’s it going? Have you redelivered your training?’” she said.
Van Looy said the model depends on a few non-negotiables: leadership buy-in, thoughtful selection of trainers, and protected time for professional learning.
“It’s not just coming from me, it’s coming from district leadership,” she said, adding that the work is grounded in the district’s strategic plan.
Consistency and accountability also matter.
“You don’t want to just have 95 people all creating their own materials,” Van Looy said. “You want there to be consistency of the training.”
For educators tasked with leading the trainings, the structure mattered. Genevieve Johnson, a Vanguard member and a librarian at the district’s Sandy Springs Middle School, said buy-in was easy.
“Teachers will use your program and learn it if they can see the benefits of it immediately,” she said.
Johnson also emphasized that local context shapes how training looks once it reaches individual buildings.
“Every media specialist is unique to their school, where we have to adjust to what the principal wants, to what our faculty needs. Everything is personalized to the needs of our staff and our students,” she said. “I want it to be visible that I’m working with our students and our teachers, and we’re just a good one-stop shop.”
Nichole McIntosh, a media specialist at Brookview Elementary School and former classroom teacher, echoed that sentiment, emphasizing the value of peer-led training.
“That’s my peer. I’m going to my peer, my media specialist, my co-worker,” she said. “We understand them.”
For Johnson and McIntosh both, the biggest takeaway was the importance of meeting teachers where they are.
“I’m gonna be here to hand-hold that teacher so that they’re gonna get it right,” Johnson said.
