Year-round, school-wide access to Jim Knight's research, a new peer network of instructional leaders, the GroweLab platform, and AI coaching agent.
AUSTIN, TX, Aug. 10, 2026 – engage2learn today opened enrollment for the Jim Knight Impact Network, a national membership for schools built on the research and methodology of Dr. Jim Knight. It is the first offering to come out of engage2learn's new partnership with Instructional Coaching Group (ICG), the organization Knight founded.
Bringing ICG into the engage2learn family brought Knight himself, his team of expert facilitators, the annual Teaching, Leading, and Coaching (TLC) Conference, eight national practitioner events a year, and one of the largest assembled communities of instructional coaches in the country. engage2learn brought GroweLab, the platform its partner districts use to run classroom visits, coaching cycles, and professional learning, along with an AI coaching agent trained by educators. The Jim Knight Impact Network puts both within a single membership.
Schools have already decided coaching matters. A 2024 federal survey found 59 percent of U.S. public schools have at least one instructional coach on staff. What has been missing is anything that holds the practice up across a full school year. Professional learning arrives as an August institute and then stops, principals get pulled into running buildings, coaches cover classes when a substitute does not show, and the only coach in a building often has no peer doing the same job.
“This brings a solution to the complex problem we have been trying to solve since we introduced the concept of instructional coaching: now school leaders finally have the infrastructure to actually execute it,” said Dr. Knight, founder of Instructional Coaching Group. “We cannot ask school principals to be transformative instructional guides if they aren’t given the tools to make it feasible in the time they actually have. By joining engage2learn, we are giving leaders the systems they need to make a massive impact through quick, strategic moves. Principals didn’t get into this work to be managers. This gives them a path back to the reason they chose this noble profession.”
One membership, every educator in the building
The Jim Knight Impact Network names the school as the member rather than an individual, which turns on access for every adult in the building, from the principal to a first-year teacher. A full staff works from the same methodology at the same time, and the instructional leadership team shares one renewal instead of assembling coverage role-by-role.
What membership in the Jim Knight Impact Network includes
- Monthly deep-dive workshops. Live sessions led by Knight and other expert facilitators on Impact Cycle methodology and instructional leadership practice, with recordings available on demand.
- Quarterly job-alike collaboratives. Facilitated working groups, organized by role, where principals take up real problems of practice with other principals and coaches with other coaches.
- A school-wide GroweLab license. Observation tracking, coaching logs, professional learning management, and the full resource library for every staff member.
- An AI coaching agent trained on the Impact Cycle. Available to any educator at any hour to draft feedback after a classroom visit, work through a coaching conversation before it happens, or analyze the video afterwards.
- A members-only community. A bi-weekly newsletter, curated resources, peer question and answer, and content from Knight and the engage2learn team.
- An on-demand video library. Searchable workshops and classroom modeling content.
- Members-only TLC Conference discounts. Discounted access for school leaders, plus a members-only Impact Network gathering on site.
The live programming and the technology do different work, and the Network depends on both. Workshops and collaboratives are where instructional leaders learn the methodology and practice it with people who hold the same job. GroweLab and the AI agent are what make it survive an ordinary school day, giving every educator support on demand and putting the principal, assistant principal, and coach in the same data with the same language for what good teaching looks like. Schools have historically bought these pieces separately, an institute for the methodology and a platform for tracking the work, and gotten partial results from each.
“Jim Knight has pioneered instructional coaching which has the power to transform professional learning. When we started talking three years ago, we found we were aligned in our mission to impact the daily practice of principals and teachers. Principals have never had a system that lets them drive real results, treat teachers as the professionals they are, and still have a life,” said Shannon Buerk, founder and CEO of engage2learn. “That’s what this delivers. Not a tradeoff. All three. For years, leaders have known they needed to implement Jim Knight’s groundbreaking feedback mechanisms to fuel teacher, and subsequently, student growth, but bandwidth has been the barrier. Now, by integrating his 30 years of research into our educator-trained AI, we are excited to empower the entire instructional leadership triad to be able to focus on the human connections that preserve dignity and drive student success.”
Enrollment and availability
Enrollment for the inaugural cohort is open now, with workshop programming beginning in October. Members who enroll before the TLC Conference, held Oct. 26-28 in Dallas, will have access to the members-only Impact Network gathering there. School and district leaders can review details and enroll at https://www.instructionalcoaching.com/jim-knight-impact-network/.
About Instructional Coaching Group
Instructional Coaching Group is a specialized educational professional development organization built on more than three decades of research on instructional coaching, peer-led educator support, and instructional refinement. Founded by author and researcher Jim Knight, Instructional Coaching Group equips educational institutions with the systemic tools, objective data-gathering techniques, and communication strategies necessary to foster long-term, self-sustaining professional growth. Instructional Coaching Group is part of the engage2learn family of brands.
About engage2learn
engage2learn partners with public school districts to design, build, and implement customized, comprehensive educator support development solutions. Through experienced educator-coaches, evidence-based implementation support, and the GroweLab platform, engage2learn helps districts improve instructional leadership, teacher retention, student outcomes, and overall school culture. For more information, visit engage2learn.org.
