September 11, 2025

Dear Educator,

Personalized learning has long been a powerful vision in education: meeting each student where they are, honoring their unique strengths, and helping them grow at their own pace.

Yet in practice, too many efforts have been overly tech-driven and underwhelming in impact. Instead of unlocking human potential, many models reduced personalization to software dashboards and adaptive quizzes—leaving teachers sidelined and students disengaged.

The promise is still there, but realizing it requires us to move beyond tools alone and reimagine how people, practices, and technology can work together.

This week’s Bright Spot comes from a model that has garnered a lot of attention lately, Alpha School, where AI is being used to personalize learning, free up time, and redefine the role of the educator. Let's dive in.

With Gratitude,

Personalized Learning That Elevates Teachers

At Alpha, students work at their own pace with AI tools that adapt to their needs—identifying gaps, suggesting practice, and accelerating progress. Teachers aren’t replaced by this system; they’re elevated. Redesigning the structures allows learners to get what they need, and teachers have more time to coach, mentor, and build meaningful relationships with their students. The result is a classroom where learners take ownership and teachers lean into the deeply human side of education.

For many of us in public schools, this model may feel out of reach. But Alpha’s example can serve as a provocation of what’s possible. It raises important questions:

• What would it look like if all students—not just those in private schools—had access to personalized pathways?
• How might we thoughtfully integrate AI tools into public institutions to reduce inequities rather than widen them?
• In what ways could freeing teachers from routine tasks create more space for authentic connection, creativity, and care?

Bright Spots like Alpha remind us that innovation is not about replacing teachers or chasing shiny tech. It’s about reimagining structures so that every learner can thrive. The challenge and opportunity for public education is to adapt models in ways that serve all students, not just a select few.

What role is AI playing in your school or district? At Learner-Centered Collaborative, we've been working with partners to integrate AI in a way that centers their Framework for the Future (vision, mission, values, portrait of a learner, and learning model) and empowers educators to design personalized learning experiences (learn more about these case studies here). You can explore an example of these learning experience design tools by downloading our Durable Skills LEA Application here!

Whether you are new to teaching or have a deep practice of designing personalized learning experiences, this course will provide you with the strategies you need to take your next step in your learner-centered journey. Learn how to co-design learning experiences that elevate learner voice and align with each student’s strengths, interests, and goals. Enroll today.

Resources to advance your learner-centered practice

📖 What if a Road Trip was the Learning Experience? "My school runs a seminar called “Project Block,” a space designed to provide time for students to develop a project rooted in something that they are passionate about. Armed with our passion for adventure and fishing, my friend and I designed a project full of deep learning and community connections." Dive into Everest's story.

📊 The Competency-Based Playbook "In many school-centered grading systems, learners are ranked, sorted, and seen as a number in a gradebook. But there's a Competency-Based world in which learners can be valued for who they are and how they are growing as individuals." Learn more about this world in our rich and detailed playbook.

🤝 Provide Learners With Tools to Prioritize Their Time. "Educators can scaffold these skills by providing tools such as blank planners, schedule templates, timers, and frameworks for prioritization. Along with explicit modeling, time for practice combined with coaching and support, can empower learners to manage their time and build their own learner agency." Explore real examples of this classroom strategy.