The Professional Advancement Institutes were beneficial in many ways. I enjoyed being able to collaborate with Kenan Fellows that were from other projects in addition to my Students Discover cohort. The PAI’s were well structured and offered a variety of trainings from personality assessments, to leadership beyond the classroom as well as how to communicate effectively with policy makers.

I felt all the sessions were valuable, but I especially enjoyed the session where we listened to the NC SPIN debate. This is an area I feel I’ve grown in since becoming a Kenan Fellow, and because of this session I feel much more comfortable discussing. I feel I am now better equipped in approaching legislators about issues in education.

I also enjoyed the session that taught us how to better compose abstracts for conferences. I liked that our presenter gave many examples of abstracts and we were able to sort through them as a team.

The PAI’s are very different from professional development I have received in the past because we had the opportunity to deepen our knowledge on topics most of us have worked with before. I also enjoyed working with a variety of teachers of different content. We were able to collaborate with many different perspectives in mind.