Learning Activities:
Four sideby sessions: Three peer-based sideby Sessions + one Solo Reflection Session (~20 minutes each)
Analyze AI as an adaptive change versus a technical shift, requiring a leadership emphasis on team learning and culture
Reflect on the impact of AI on professional identity, expertise, and learning in your organization
Design and implement a leadership move that supports team learning routines and culture
(Optionally) Post related Small Win stories about their practice in the sideby platform
(Optionally) Attend Office Hours with course facilitators
The Leading Teams in the AI Era Badge learning experience runs from July 21 - August 28, 2026.
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Session 1: Taking Stock of Learning Culture
Participants examine how their teams are currently learning with and about AI, both informally and formally, to illuminate bright spots and challenges in their team’s learning habits and mindsets. Participants will identify a leadership challenge related to team learning to explore during the rest of the badge.
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Session 2: Assessing Conditions for Team Learning
Using a team learning culture self-assessment aligned to AWSP’s leadership paradigm, participants diagnose the conditions operating underneath the leadership challenge they previously identified. They ideate leadership moves they might make to build a learning culture - especially in connection with AI– and commit to implementing one move before their next session.
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Session 3: Leadership Small Wins
Participants reflect on their experience so far with implementing a leadership move to strengthen their team learning routines and culture. They share successes and lessons learned with each other, and will consider their next leadership steps to take.
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Session 4: Presentation of Learning
Participants tell the story of their learning and progress toward leading team learning in the AI era. They share their leadership moves and take stock of their impact by reflecting on how they have influenced team learning routines and culture.
Enroll Today
AWSP Members get the discounted rate for the formal WA state clock hours.
Guiding Question & Description
How might we lead adult learning and team culture in a context where AI is already reshaping how educators think, work, and decide?
This learning experience equips school and district leaders to lead adult learning and team culture in a context where AI is already reshaping how educators think, work, and decide. Unlike previous shifts in tools or practices, AI represents a fundamentally different context for leadership—and traditional change-management approaches are insufficient when staff are already experimenting, avoiding, or quietly relying on new technologies.
Participants will move beyond seeing AI as a technical initiative to implement, and instead develop the leadership moves needed to create conditions for sustainable adult growth and team coherence. The badge centers adult learning, collective sensemaking, and adaptive leadership as the core competencies for this moment.
We have designed this learning experience so busy leaders can learn in the context of their actual work, rather than through disconnected tasks. The badge is practical, experiential, and peer-driven: participants learn from colleagues and from trying new approaches in real time, supported by curated resources and structured protocols for reflection and dialogue.
PSEL and CCDEI Standards Addressed
What past participants in badging have to say
Real educators, real results from sideby’s 2025 Impact Report
Your Learning Facilitators
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Erica Crane, EdD
Erica is a former teacher and high school founding principal. She is a current ceo and co-founder at sideby, a platform that connects educators for guided conversations along learning pathways to accelerate community-driven innovation at scale. She is also a faculty associate and course designer in Ed Leadership at ASU where she currently coaches principal interns. With an emphasis on liberatory practices, she has taught, coached, consulted, and led in schools and supported school systems across the United States since 2006, from the South Bronx to rural Northern California.
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Mike Mendelson
Mike brings deep experience at the intersection of teaching, learning design, and applied AI in education. He began his career as a high school math and technology educator and later served in a district-level role supporting the implementation of personalized, competency-based learning systems. Across these roles, he focused on designing structures that support educator practice, student agency, and coherent learning pathways at scale.
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Kippy Smith
Over the last 20 years, Kippy has held roles on all sides of professional learning—from classroom teacher, to programs designer and facilitator, leadership coach, and organizational leader. Kippy has spent her career at the intersection of school design, edtech innovation, and educator collaboration. Her work is grounded in the belief that transformational learning isn’t top-down — it’s co-created in schools, classrooms, and teams. As SVP of Learning at sideby, Kippy continues to lead SWD while influencing how we grow sideby’s learning network.
Limited Enrollment
Limited Enrollment
✺ Frequently Asked Questions ✺
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No. This is a peer-driven learning experience designed to fit into the real work of education professionals. You’ll spend short, focused time learning with a peer. Then, you’ll apply what you’re learning directly to your practice through authentic challenges and reflection.
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The synchronous commitment is light: a 20-minute guided peer session every two weeks. Asynchronous work is flexible and embedded in your day-to-day work — not through extra homework or long written assignments. The total time spent on this course is equivalent to 3 hours all together.
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Peers! We have education leaders from across the state of Washington and the country who engage in our sideby badges. Past badge participants have appreciated the chance to engage in learning with peers who understand the real work in schools and educational organizations.
Why sideby?
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We’re real educators too who designed sideby for transformational professional learning. We’ve taught, led, and facilitated great PD in real schools.
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AWSP and sideby have partnered to bring exciting new learning opportunities for education leaders to earn official clock hours.
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AWSP heard from ed leaders that they wanted clock hours through authentic learning opportunities and connection with peers.
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Education leaders should learn how they’d teach. Our approach to more personalized, peer-driven, application-based experiences models deeper learning in action
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Our learning experiences offer an opportunity for collaboration and cross-pollination across leadership contexts. They are first offered to AWSP members first. Then registration opens to the 12 state School Leader Collaborative before it becomes nationally available.
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Leaders deserve the best learning, just like students do.
✺ Contact Information ✺
For questions about the learning experience or technical support within sideby, reach out to: team@sideby.ai
For questions about your clock hours issued through AWSP or for info about registration in AWSP’s Learning Lab, reach out to: dameon@awsp.org