This series spotlights some of the talented individuals on our amazing team. Interested in joining them? Check out our open positions here!
Meet Cassandra, Prodigy’s Educator Success Specialist! Cassandra joined Prodigy in the summer of 2024. She is a former 2nd grade teacher in the U.S. public school system. Today, her primary responsibilities include helping to train teachers on maximizing the impact of game-based learning in their classrooms.
Teaching goes back to my childhood. I have very strong memories of lining up my stuffed animals, making tests for them, grading them in red pen, and putting little smiley faces and check marks on them. I loved my teachers and so I felt very drawn to education. My dad is also an educator himself. He's always been a teacher and a role model. I achieved my education certificate and in 2014 landed my first job out of college in Connecticut. A year later I moved to Florida to teach second grade at an accelerated STEM school.
At my first school, I never had the opportunity to integrate computers into my teaching. This made it really difficult when trying to prepare the students for today’s world. In Florida, this was very much different. Another second grade teacher introduced me to Prodigy and I loved it right from the start. Firstly, it spoke to me, because I’m really into fantasy and Harry Potter - that kind of thing. But it was also the engagement piece for my students. It was never something I had to persuade them to use. I got cheering and clapping when it was time for Prodigy, whereas other resources would get huffing and puffing! It ultimately became part of the heart of my classroom. I loved it for academic reasons, but also because it was always free for teachers.
I was already really engaged with Prodigy - I was part of their advocacy program, and then began to apply to speak with them at conferences. That was how I first connected with Josh (Josh Prieur - Prodigy’s Director of Education Enablement). An opportunity came to speak with them at FETC and present alongside Josh and Prodigy’s Co-CEO, Rohan. That really was the high point of my teaching career and it really set me up to become the edtech leader at my school. It made me feel really valued, and it was very empowering to share how I was using Prodigy to help my students. Very soon after, Josh told me they were looking for someone to lead teacher training at Prodigy. While it was a hard decision to leave the classroom, it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I couldn’t say no to.
One of Prodigy’s cultural values is Radical Candor. As a former teacher, I really enjoy the freedom to provide candid feedback and serve as an in-house advocate for our teacher users. So, as we’re building out new features, I feel I can provide a very strong voice. There’s also nothing better when training teachers to hear, “Oh wow - I didn’t know we could do that!” Teachers do not have time to explore edtech resources in depth, so it’s incredibly rewarding to provide tips on maximizing everything Prodigy has to offer. It’s so much more than just a game, and my job is to show them that.
We offer free training as part of our partnerships program - which is also zero-cost. If admins want to book a demo, they can visit this page to learn more. At the same time, if teachers are simply interested in learning more about the basics, we also offer a lot of on-demand training content on our YouTube channel, which is also completely free to view. We are also launching a monthly webinar series in March, where teachers can attend one of my training sessions! You can register here to sign up for any of the upcoming dates.
