There is a particular kind of educator that I keep running into. They are not burned out in the way the headlines describe burnout. They are not shuffling through the motions or counting down to summer. They are restless. They have an idea they cannot shake, a problem in their school or their community that they keep turning over in their hands, and no clear path to do anything about it inside the system they work in.
They are not waiting to be inspired. They are waiting for a door to open.
That is what the Thinkering Collective fellowship model was built for. And right now, several of those doors are open at once.
NY Inspired: For Educators Across New York State
The NY Inspired Fellowship is a ten-week program for K-12 educators who want to design and launch projects that go beyond the classroom. Not projects that look good on a unit plan. Projects that move into communities, address real problems, and leave something behind that outlasts the school year.
The structure is honest about what it takes. Fellows spend roughly two to three hours a week in live sessions, workshops, and independent work. The first three weeks are about foundations — getting to know your cohort, setting personal learning intentions, figuring out what you actually care about and how it connects to where you teach. The middle stretch is where the real work happens: developing a capstone project with measurable outcomes, building in student voice, learning how to tell the story of what you are making and why it matters. The final two weeks are presentation and planning for scale. You do not graduate with a slide deck. You graduate with something you are already running.
You do not need a fully formed project to apply. You need a challenge you care about. The program is built to help you figure out the rest.
The five-year vision behind NY Inspired is worth sitting with. The goal is to activate at least one educator per school building across the entire state — one person per building who is leading change, whose work gets added to an open-access library that any other district can pick up and adapt. It is not a conference. It is not a workshop series. It is an attempt to build a living, human-first infrastructure for how good ideas travel through education.
If you are a New York educator, or if you know one who has been carrying an idea they cannot get off the ground, this is the program. Applications are open now.
To watch the recent live Q&A, check this out!
Thinkering x Early Childhood: A Human-Centered AI Fellowship
The second program is a collaboration between Thinkering Collective and the University of Chicago’s Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab. It is called the Human-Centered AI Implementation Lab, and the name is doing real work there.
This is not a fellowship about learning to use AI. It is a fellowship about learning to use a specific research-backed platform — Chat 2 Learn — in a way that keeps the teacher at the center of the room.
That distinction matters more than it might sound. Most of the conversation around AI in education right now is moving in one of two directions: either wholesale resistance or wholesale adoption, neither of which is especially useful to the person standing in front of thirty kids every morning. What Thinkering and the BIP Lab are building together is a third path — a model for human-centered technology implementation that treats AI as a reflective co-pilot rather than a replacement.
The fellowship runs eight weeks. Fellows work directly with Thinkering and BIP Lab to develop implementation use cases for Chat 2 Learn in their specific classroom contexts. The projects that emerge from this cohort will become the first case studies in what is intended to be an ongoing research partnership — a model that other educators and districts can adopt and build from over time.
AI is landing in classrooms right now whether educators feel ready for it or not. The question is not whether it shows up. The question is who shapes how it shows up. This fellowship is an answer built by people who believe student inquiry and teacher agency are non-negotiable, even when the technology is moving fast.
Loudoun County: Outdoor Learning and a District Built Differently
Thinkering Collective has partnered with Loudoun County Schools in Virginia on something that does not happen often enough — a district-level commitment to actually overhaul how learning is designed, starting with the outdoors.
Here is an awesome example of Thinkering in action!
This fellowship is specifically for Loudoun County educators and is built around outdoor learning as both a context and a catalyst. The premise is that the natural environment is not a field trip destination. It is a classroom, a laboratory, a community space, and a place where students who struggle inside four walls often find their footing. The fellowship asks educators to design projects rooted in that premise — work that uses outdoor learning as the engine for the kind of community-connected, student-driven experiences that Thinkering is known for building.
The partnership with Loudoun County is not a pilot. It is the beginning of a longer relationship between Thinkering and a district serious enough about change to invite people in to help redesign from the inside. If you are a Loudoun County educator, this is a rare and specific opportunity to be part of something at the ground floor.
Ten weeks. A cohort of colleagues working on the same problems in the same communities you are.
Apply here, Loudoun County Educators!
The Thinkering Collective Fellowship: Open to Any Educator, Anywhere
Every program described above is built for a specific place or focus. This one is not.
The Thinkering Collective Fellowship is open to educators from anywhere — any grade level, any subject, any state or country — who are ready to take an idea seriously for ten weeks. The structure is the same: foundations, design and development, capstone delivery. The mentorship, the cohort, the open-access library of projects that comes out the other side. All of it.
Seats are limited and they fill. If you have been reading this and thinking that none of the other programs quite fits where you teach or what you are working on, this is the one. You bring the problem. The fellowship helps you build toward something real.
The application takes a few minutes. The work takes ten weeks and will follow you long after that.
If you know an educator who belongs in a room like this — nominate them. Forward this. The people most likely to do something extraordinary with a fellowship like this are often the last ones to apply for anything.
Apply here, rockstar educator!
Thinkering Collective builds fellowship experiences, mentorship ecosystems, and learning programs that put educators and students at the center of real change. Learn more at thinkeringcollective.org
