In the lead-up to our accreditation review at The American School in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a hard look at the systems teachers were relying on day to day.
Planning, communication, and documentation were happening in different places. Some classes used Seesaw, others Google Classroom, and much of the parent communication stayed in email. Teachers were constantly toggling between five different tools to keep learning visible and organised.
As accreditation moved from a distant milestone to an imminent reality, the limits of our approach became harder to ignore. We needed stronger consistency across grade levels. We needed clearer documentation of teaching and learning. We needed a way to bring everything together before the visiting team arrived.
So, we reached out to other international schools – curious about what systems they relied on during accreditation and why. Time and again, the same name surfaced: Toddle. It was built for the IB. It brought all teaching and learning workflows into one place. And it had built-in AI support every step of the way.
But as we soon discovered, it wasn’t just the platform that made the difference. It was the people behind it.
Co-creating an onboarding plan that fit our context
Once we chose Toddle, it quickly became clear why the platform’s support is so often praised. Mai, our Toddle Buddy and an experienced IB educator, worked with us every step of the way – understanding our school’s context, tailoring workflows, guiding onboarding and even helping implement feature requests.
She worked with us over multiple planning meetings to build our rollout plan. We sat down together and mapped out every detail – which modules to introduce in what order, when each training session would fit into our packed school calendar, and which teachers would lead each phase.
Whenever we hit a roadblock – a timing conflict or a step that just wouldn’t work for our context – Mai suggested adjustments right there in the meeting and updated the plan on the spot.
This level of hands-on support was unlike anything we’d seen. It felt like having a dedicated partner on our team, living and breathing our school’s needs. I know of other platforms where this kind of personalized support costs upwards of $200 per session requested. With Toddle, it’s baked in from day one at no additional cost. That tells you everything about their priorities. They truly are teachers first.
Teachers had complete freedom to learn Toddle their own way
Mai ran a two-hour orientation to get everyone started. After that, teachers chose their own path forward. Some joined her optional after-school sessions. Others worked through Toddle Academy at their own pace. We trained champion teachers in some departments and ran full team sessions in others.
It all came down to choice. Teachers picked what fit their schedule and how they actually like to learn. Questions came up, but most got answered quickly through the help center or a conversation with a colleague.
The flexibility made all the difference. Teachers weren’t stuck in training that didn’t suit them, and they could move at a pace that worked with everything else they had going on.
The data migration happened so smoothly, we barely noticed
One of the biggest worries when changing platforms is whether all the work teachers have already done will still be there. Unit plans, class lists, student information. The thought of having to rebuild everything from scratch is enough to make most teams push pause.
In our case, we didn’t hesitate. We’d heard consistently strong feedback about Toddle’s support, and that proved accurate. Within what felt like a day, teachers could log in and see their classes, students, and existing units ready to use.
Our teachers didn’t walk into a blank system wondering where to start. They walked into something that already felt like theirs.
A system we could rely on
By the time our verification visit arrived, Toddle was in steady use across planning, documentation and communication. Because teachers had been working in one shared system throughout the year, evidence was easy to trace.
Units, reflections, assessments and student work lived in one place, telling a coherent story over time. When we were asked to show how planning connected to learning and assessment, we could do so directly without stitching information together from different platforms.
Toddle arrived at a moment when we were reaching the limits of what patched-together systems could support. It didn’t just help us move through candidacy. It gave us a way of working that feels sustainable – for teachers, for leaders, and for the life of the school beyond verification.
