Mount Vernon School in Atlanta, Georgia, has grown from a small preschool into a thriving PreK-12 institution, now serving over 1,250 students. The school is deeply committed to shaping future leaders through a competency-based education (CBE) model, where students engage in real-world problem-solving.
However, implementing CBE using multiple disconnected tech platforms quickly became a challenge for the school.
With a fragmented tech stack of four or five different platforms, the teaching-learning process became disjointed. Katie Cain, Director of Instructional Technology, explained, “We were using a mix of Seesaw, Google Docs, and Google Sheets, and it became increasingly hard to get a cohesive view of student growth when everything was so disconnected.”
“We needed a solution that allowed us to plan in alignment with specific competencies, assess students on those competencies, track their progress, and share it all with families—all consolidated within a single, cohesive platform. And, Toddle became that platform for us.”
CHALLENGE – Disconnected systems quadrupled teachers’ work and obscured student progress
The teachers at Mount Vernon School found themselves juggling four different platforms just to plan and track student work—spending more time but still having very limited visibility into student growth.
Katie Cain explains ”Our teachers were planning with one tool, tracking student learning through another, and sending home photos and videos with yet another. While tools like Seesaw helped us capture and share videos and announcements with families, they didn’t give us the full picture of student progress. We weren’t getting meaningful assessment data from those photos and videos, so we had to use Google Sheets to track every single assessment and send communications via email. Manually updating these sheets only added to the burden.
There was constant back and forth between multiple tabs and documents, and it all still felt so disconnected. It felt like we were quadrupling the workload just to manage all these different systems.”
SOLUTION & IMPACT: Toddle’s interconnectedness empowered the entire school community to work together towards personalized student learning
Discussing their school’s vision, Katie explained “We have a bold, ambitious 10-year plan aimed at embracing competency-based education, focusing on building students’ knowledge, skills, and attributes. A crucial part of this plan is creating personalized, contextualized portfolios for each student and using them to shape planning and teaching.
We want student work to be central to our planning and reporting, and that’s where Toddle became the perfect fit.”
Impact 1: The full picture of student learning came together seamlessly — without overworking their teachers
“What I love about Toddle is how it seamlessly brings everything together, making student work truly stand out” Katie explains, “Within weeks of using Toddle, we could see the connections across every aspect of teaching and learning. Our teachers could plan units with customized standards, create engaging learning experiences and assessments, and tag the specific standards they were targeting. This seamless integration between planning and assessment was game changing in helping us implement the CBE effectively.”
“Once assessments were graded, they automatically fed into student portfolios, flowed into the Gradebook, and ultimately into progress reports. It felt like magic—everything just worked, and our teachers no longer had to juggle multiple platforms. They could finally spend less time behind their screens, and more time with students.”
Impact 2: Students expressed learning in creative ways and boosted active learning
Reflecting on Toddle’s role in showcasing learning, Katie shared: “It wasn’t just the teachers who felt the difference—the real impact was on our students.
Toddle provided so many ways for them to demonstrate their learning. First graders recorded themselves reading to highlight their fluency, while second graders solved math problems on a virtual whiteboard, narrating their thought process. Some even caught their own mistakes and reflected on what they had learned.
This flexibility excited our students and encouraged more active learning. Teachers were able to capture personalized learning for each student, aligning perfectly with our competency-based approach. What’s truly powerful is that these demonstrations are directly connected to our grading system, making Toddle much more than just a platform for sharing pictures and videos—it became fully integrated into our framework.”
Impact 3: Reporting season was no longer stressful for teachers
Katie explains, “Toddle’s magic came alive for the teachers during their first progress reports at the end of the trimester. Instead of scrambling to pull reports together from different sources, all the necessary information was already built into Toddle, with much of the work nearly complete before teachers even began. Grades from the Toddle Gradebook were automatically displayed as graphs within the report, providing a clear visual of each student’s progress aligned with individual competencies. This allowed teachers to easily track student growth and assign final grades as they compiled the reports.
With just a click, photos and videos from our students’ portfolios could be attached, adding a much richer dimension to the reports.
What used to take hours now happens in minutes, with far greater depth and meaning.”
Impact 4: Families had richer conversations about their child’s growth
Before Toddle, the school relied on their SIS to send progress reports and announcements via email, which often felt disconnected. “Parents were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and struggled to make sense of it all,” Katie explained.
“Toddle completely changed that. Communication with parents has improved dramatically. Now, they can view demonstrations, photos, and videos of classroom activities through student portfolios, along with detailed progress reports. It’s amazing for parents to scroll through a social media-like feed and see their child’s learning journey unfold. This shift has sparked richer conversations at home, moving from ‘How was your day?’ to ‘Tell me more about the book you’re reading’ or ‘How did you feel about your presentation?’
This not only reinforces learning at home but also gives parents a clear, comprehensive view of their child’s growth throughout the year. As a Toddle parent myself, I find this feature truly extraordinary.”
Reflecting on the overall impact that Toddle has had on the school, Katie concluded, “When I think about the benefits of having a single platform for planning, teaching, learning, assessment, reporting, and communication, I can’t help but be grateful to Toddle. The more you use it the more magic you find in its interconnected pieces. Toddle is unlike any other that I’ve seen in my 16 years in education.”
