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Gain the creative skills to make lesson planning easier, connect with today’s learners, and enjoy teaching again.
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BRANDON
GRAVES
Do you feel overwhelmed trying to plan engaging lessons while juggling everything else—grading, meetings, curriculum requirements, and life?
You're not alone. Many educators are burnt out trying to keep up with standards, tech tools, and student needs, all while managing their own time and energy.
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About the Institute
Created by an educator, the Transform Your Teaching Institute was built to help. Instead of adding more to your plate, you’ll learn how to streamline your process using creative tools and strategies that make planning faster and more enjoyable—and learning more effective.
This 3-day professional development series helps educators enhance and elevate their lessons with creativity, visuals, and innovative tools that connect with today’s learners. You'll learn how to use Canva, multimedia, and AI to make teaching easier, more visual, effective, and student-centered.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a designer, you’ll discover how simple it can be to enrich your current materials with engaging, polished visuals that deepen understanding. Along the way, you'll receive step-by-step time-saving tools, design tips, and visual storytelling techniques that can bring your lessons to life—without extra work or technical experience.
Creativity wasn’t just another task—it became my most powerful tool for planning faster, teaching more effectively, and truly connecting with my students.
-Brandon Graves
Creative Design
How to bring your ideas to life visually—even without design experience using Canva’s intuitive tools
Student Learning
Create lessons that match how students learn today by using visuals and storytelling techniques that support focus, accessibility, and understanding.
Media Integration
Hands-on experience using media, graphics, and creative layouts to support diverse learners
Planning Tools
Smart strategies for streamlining your lesson planning using Canva templates and AI features
Designed by a digital media professor and award winning storyteller for educators and faculty looking to make learning more engaging and effective through visuals, media, and creative tools.
Day 1: Time-Saving Teaching
Discover smarter planning strategies using Canva and AI to go from curriculum to materials—faster and with less stress.
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Build confidence using creativity to support your instruction
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Learn how to simplify lesson planning using AI and Canva
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Explore time-saving templates and workflows
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Create materials that meet standards without starting from scratch
Day 2: Engage Your Students with Visuals
Use foundational design strategies to boost attention, participation, and learning through engaging visuals.
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Learn design basics to create with clarity and confidence
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Explore Canva’s essential tools, layouts, and design tricks
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Understand visual learning principles in plain language
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Create media-rich slides and handouts that students respond to
Day 3: Convert Content to Materials
Transform instruction and standards into ready-to-teach slides, visuals, and learning activities.
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Turn written content into visual materials students understand
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Use plug-and-play templates to speed up lesson creation
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Build student-ready resources like worksheets, decks, and handouts
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Repurpose your existing content into more dynamic learning tools
Join the Institute
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CreatED Lab
Join Free
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CreatED Lab
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Lesson exchange
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Real-time feedback
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Shared experiences and Community
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Classroom Innovation Discussion
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Join the Next Virtual Event
$297/per person
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(3)90-minute live sessions
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Step-by-step demos of Canva tools and lesson planning strategies
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Real examples to model and adapt for your classroom
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Practical strategies to use immediately
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Creative Teacher Lab
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Access to session recordings
NEXT EVENT
10/7/25-10/9/25
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Join as a School/Team
$8,900/school
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Tailored for your school/org
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(2) 30-minute Transform Your Lesson coaching calls for live feedback and lesson upgrades
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(1) Strategy Call with Administrators for school-wide implementation
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(3) 90-minute live sessions
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Module: Getting Started with Canva
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Step-by-step demos and walkthroughs
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Access to session recordings
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Virtual Teaching Video and Guide
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Creative Teacher Lab
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Lesson Library
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Story-Driven Teaching Strategies
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From Content to Materials Toolkit
Included Benefits
✅ Plan Smarter
Break down overwhelming curriculum into lessons that flow and make sense to students.
✅ AI Teacher Assistant
Use AI to generate examples, prompts, summaries, and ideas that save time and reduce prep stress.
✅ From Content to Materials Toolkit
Turn standards, notes, and curriculum into slides, visuals, and student-ready materials.
✅ Design for Learning
Create beautiful, effective materials using layout, contrast, color, and other strategies—even if you're not techy.
✅ Story-Driven Teaching Strategies
Engage students through structured storytelling and relatable visuals that increase retention.
✅ Teach with Media
Use images, video, audio, and design to help students better understand and interact with your content.
✅ The Lesson Library
Access a growing library of sample lessons and plug-and-play templates built by other educators in your school or district.
✅ Creative Teacher Lab
Share and swap ideas, templates, and feedback with fellow educators in the Transform Your Teaching community.
✅ Time-Saving Tools
Simplify your workflow with plug-and-play templates, creative shortcuts, and lesson structures that save hours.
Student Impact
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Priscilla Lopez
College Advisor & UC Berkeley Graduate
Brandon’s teaching presentation had a strong impact on my learning and motivation, especially as someone who works as a college advisor to high school students. His use of slides, media elements, and clear visual storytelling reinforced how important it is to keep an audience engaged—whether in a classroom or a professional setting.
Devin Battle, M.Ed, CCM
High School Teacher & Former Student
Brandon is great at connecting the “why” to whatever it is that you’re teaching. Oftentimes, students wonder “why am I even being taught or talked to about this?"
Ariana Matthews
University of Maryland Eastern Shore Student
His teaching style is creative and unique, as I haven't had a teacher teach like him before....I knew he was teaching in a way that I knew I was going to learn the information other than worrying if I was going to understand what was going on in each class.
Irene Hsu
UC, Berkeley Student & Taiwanese Student Association President
The teaching style helped me gain hands-on experience in a short period of time. This approach allows me to retain the skills long-term, as I’m actively engaging rather than just listening to lectures.
Amber Royal
University of California Berkeley Graduate
Professor Graves' teaching presentations had a big impact on my learning and motivation. His slide decks were clear, well-organized, and visually engaging, which made it easier to absorb the material and stay focused. He effectively utilized media elements, including videos, audio clips, and real-world examples, that brought concepts to life and made the lessons feel relevant and exciting.
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An Educator's Story
When I started teaching, I worked a full-time 9–5 job and drove two hours each way to my first adjunct position. I crammed in lesson plans during lunch, taught from 5 to 8 p.m., then drove home late.
Exhausted, I had to rethink how I planned and delivered lessons.
That’s when I realized creativity wasn’t another task—it was my greatest tool I wasn’t fully utilizing to plan lessons faster, work more efficiently, and actually reach students. Creativity is a mindset, but it also involves using the right set of creative tools.
I began using Canva, AI, and other apps to create visuals that brought complex points to life. I saw a noticeable shift in engagement when I began incorporating creative slides and media into my lessons. My students, both online and in-person at UC Berkeley and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, started lifting their heads from their phones and paying closer attention. Visuals made the material clearer and more engaging, which led to stronger learning outcomes.
That’s why I created this professional development series. I've combined my background as an award-winning visual journalist with my real-world experience in the classroom teaching 100s of students from across the world. I'm committed to helping educators become more creative and engage students through the mediums they consume most.