By Larissa Martins, LSI Communications Intern

Since joining the Learning Systems Institute in 2015, Carrie Meyers has dedicated her career to advancing and innovating education to support teachers. After a 20-year career in the classroom, Meyers knew she wanted to continue her work as an educator when she joined LSI. Her experience with students at various grade levels has been critical to her success as the Math Content Specialist and Curriculum Coordinator for CPALMS.

“My background has heavily influenced everything I do because I always try to keep in mind what teachers in the field really need or want,” said Meyers.

Meyers works with the CPALMS team at LSI. CPALMS is the State of Florida’s official source for standards information and course descriptions. It provides access to thousands of standards-aligned, free, and high-quality instructional/educational resources developed specifically for the standards and vetted through a rigorous review process. CPALMS also provides several state-of-the-art curriculum planning and professional development apps/tools to help educators effectively implement the standards.

Meyers enjoys how each day comes with a different challenge as she juggles various tasks for domestic and international projects. She also loves how LSI allows her to investigate opportunities and grants that interest her. 

One of her current projects is a PreK-2 assessment, in which she is helping train teachers on how to write assessment items. For the past year and a half, she has also been working on the Integrated Civics project by training teachers to integrate the new Florida civics standards with other content areas.

The LSI staff and CPALMS team have been training teachers to understand integration and curriculum writing methods to be published on CPALMS. Meyers has played an essential role in this project by co-running various teams to ensure they are all working in tandem, eventually resulting in hundreds of new resources for CPALMS, benefitting any teacher who accesses the platform. 

“That’s probably the most joy and the most important piece of what I do— helping other teachers expand their repertoire and knowledge and show them how their expertise can be used to support other teachers,” said Meyers. “It’s also really important to have everybody feel like they have learned something new and have grown professionally.”

Additionally, Meyers plays a big part in leading Professional Development (PD) workshops for Florida’s teachers. She notes how inspiring it is to see teachers with decades of experience attend these PD’s and realize there’s still room to grow.

“I hope that the PD plays two-fold. It provides teachers the means or the time to step back from their day-to-day classroom lives to hear some research, to hear some best practices, and use their expertise perhaps in a new way,” said Meyers.

The PD workshops are designed to teach educators about the publication writing process and allow them to utilize what they learned and turn that into publishable resources on CPALMS. Therefore, the impact of these PDs is continuously multiplying and reaching teachers via the platform. 

Although Meyers spends a majority of her time working on CPALMS and other domestic projects, she also has experience contributing to international endeavors, such as helping develop Uzbekistan’s first-ever math standards.

“LSI listens to the stakeholders. When working internationally, we’re listening to their expertise and challenges; domestically, we’re listening to the teachers,” said Meyers. “We listen to feedback and try to help solve problems the best we can.”

Her favorite aspect of working at LSI is seeing the direct impact of supporting teachers. She loves how her job constantly has new challenges that enable her to continuously increase her professional experiences.

“My main goal in education is for teachers to understand that they are to inspire their kids to be independent thinkers, learners, and problem-solvers,” said Meyers.