Professional Development Specialist

📋 Description

• • Drive the future of literacy education as a Professional Development Specialist at CommonLit, the nonprofit EdTech leader whose free reading program now reaches more than 90,000 U.S. schools and 20 million students annually. In this high-impact, remote-first role you will design and deliver the professional learning experiences that turn CommonLit’s award-winning digital platform into measurable gains in reading, writing, and critical-thinking skills for students in Title I schools nationwide.
• • Own the end-to-end quality of CommonLit’s live professional development. You will create facilitator guides, slide decks, and interactive resources that translate adult-learning theory into engaging, classroom-ready sessions. You will continuously refine these assets using feedback from the field, A/B testing, and data on student outcomes so that every PD hour translates into stronger teacher practice and higher student achievement.
• • Train and certify a growing network of contract facilitators. You will run multi-day “train-the-trainer” institutes, model best-practice facilitation, and provide individualized coaching that ensures every external partner delivers sessions that are consistent with CommonLit’s pedagogy and brand promise. Your coaching notes and rubrics will become the gold standard against which excellence is measured.
• • Step into the spotlight when high-stakes districts need the “A-team.” Up to 20 days each year you will travel to schools and regional convenings to deliver keynote workshops, model lessons, and leadership seminars. Whether you are in a rural Mississippi library or a Los Angeles convention center, you will adapt content in real time to meet the contextual needs of educators serving historically marginalized communities.
• • Serve as the critical bridge between our users and our product. You will sit at the nexus of Sales, District Success, Curriculum, and Engineering—translating educator pain points into feature requests and new PD offerings. Your voice in sprint reviews and quarterly roadmap planning will ensure that CommonLit’s product evolution is grounded in authentic classroom needs.
• • Build and maintain knowledge-management systems that scale. You will curate a living repository of session recordings, exemplar artifacts, and impact stories that allow any new facilitator to ramp up in days, not months. Your documentation will reduce onboarding time by 30 % and become the backbone of our certification program.
• • Contribute to strategic growth initiatives. From piloting micro-credential pathways to co-authoring white papers on literacy acceleration, you will have a seat at the table where the next generation of CommonLit services is conceived, tested, and launched.
• • Champion diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our work. You will ensure that PD materials reflect culturally responsive pedagogy, that case studies highlight schools like those we serve, and that every facilitator is equipped to lead courageous conversations about race, language, and identity in the classroom.
• • Model the entrepreneurial spirit that defines CommonLit. You will juggle multiple complex workstreams—sometimes designing a new virtual workshop while simultaneously coaching facilitators and analyzing survey data—without losing sight of the details that make an experience feel seamless to participants.
• • Measure what matters. You will design pre/post surveys, classroom walkthrough rubrics, and student-growth dashboards that provide clear evidence of PD impact. Your quarterly impact briefs will be shared with funders, board members, and district partners to demonstrate ROI and secure renewals.