Empowering Growth: How TeachFX Impacts Teaching Practice
Teachers have the power to impact every student's learning. Even while managing a multitude of tasks, responsibilities, and changes brought on by the pandemic and many other factors, they remain dedicated to helping every student thrive. And we can’t expect them to work miracles alone.
TeachFX was built on the simple premise that everyone needs feedback and support to do their best work – and teachers are no exception. We equip teachers with the power to gather their own feedback. And that feedback helps them create classrooms where students learn and thrive through meaningful, equitable classroom conversations.
How TeachFX empowers teachers to grow their practice:
🗣 Inspiring student talk and celebrating classroom conversations.
🤔 Making reflection a quick and easy daily routine for teachers.
👩💻 Gaining a new level of awareness of teaching practice and students’ needs in the classroom.
🧰 Trying new techniques that elevate teaching practice and get students talking.
Teachers in classrooms nationwide are sharing how, with TeachFX, they’re adapting to students’ changing needs, sparking student engagement through student talk, and fueling students’ curiosity with better questions.
Student Talk
With TeachFX, teachers increase, improve, and celebrate classroom conversations.
“Increasing the amount of discourse for students in my classroom is my own personal goal. I think that whoever is doing the most talking…is doing the learning.”
These are the words of Anthony, a high school math teacher at Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware. For many teachers like Anthony, creating a classroom centered around students talking and engaging in meaningful discussions is a top priority for helping to increase student learning.
Students need to talk to learn. That’s especially true for historically marginalized groups who tend to get the least opportunity to participate in classroom conversation – including Black and Brown students, plurilingual learners, and students with learning differences.
And, students are brilliant! Teachers want and need to hear what their students have to say.
But, John Hattie has found that teachers talk, on average, 80% of the time. To get students talking more in the classroom, teachers first need to know how much student talk is actually happening. With TeachFX, teachers can see exactly that. Until now, it was simply impossible to gather this kind of data (without painstakingly doing so yourself using a stopwatch and pen and paper!).
Teachers self-reflect on objective data about how much student talk is happening, become more mindful in the moment about how they’re inviting and creating space for student talk, and they learn and see the impact of new teaching techniques as they increase student talk in their own classrooms.
Self-Reflection
Teachers use TeachFX to self-reflect & guide their own professional learning.
Tracy, a science teacher at Cantwell's Bridge Middle School in Middleton, Delaware, can see how well her students use their scientific inquiry skills during class.
Every time she uses TeachFX during a lesson, Tracy sees how much student talk is happening, how well student dialogue demonstrates mastery of the material, and how she can tailor subsequent lessons to meet her students’ needs based on what she sees and hears in her classroom data.
“TeachFX is great at helping me become a more reflective teacher, and continuing to build my lessons based on what students need.”
Similarly, 1st grade teacher Erin of An Achievable Dream Academy in Newport News, Virginia, uses TeachFX to reflect on how equitably her students are engaging in conversation during her lessons. By reflecting on which students’ voices are being heard in classroom conversation, Erin can reflect on how she might modify her teaching practices to engage every student’s voice.
“I am starting to pick on other students who don’t answer as much.”
By gathering consistent, objective, and private feedback with TeachFX, teachers like Tracy and Erin can analyze their own teaching strategies, reflecting on adjustments they’d like to make or new practices they’d like to learn to boost their students’ engagement and learning.
Research aligns with their experience. Researchers have found just one reliable path to changing teacher practice - objective feedback and regular coaching.
Teachers need feedback to reflect on their practice. And instructional leaders want to provide that feedback. But, it’s incredibly challenging. It takes time to get to each classroom, time to deliver feedback in quality coaching conversations, and the ability to deliver that feedback in a way that feels objective and effective.
TeachFX puts the power of feedback and reflection in teachers' hands. Our app lets educators gather their own feedback, as frequently as they want to, and reflect on that feedback on their own.
As busy as teachers are, reflecting on TeachFX feedback for less than 5 minutes reliably produces positive change in teacher practice.
Our AI-powered instructional insights provide teachers with objective insights that allow teachers to reflect on a whole new view of their classroom. When teachers see the amount of student talk happening, and moments that spark student dialogue, they also get a new view of their own teaching practice.
With TeachFX, teachers are the architects of their own professional development. Guided by data rather than guesswork, they identify for themselves how they want to grow as educators, and see the results of their progress in their students' engagement.
Self-Awareness
Heightened self-awareness in the classroom.
Heather, an online teacher at Davis Connect K-6 in Layton, Utah, has found that using TeachFX has helped her develop a new level of self-awareness. She’s able to better recognize her students’ needs, even as challenging as that can be in a virtual environment. TeachFX has been eye-opening for Heather.
“It has been eye opening to see how much I talk in class. I have started giving more wait time for students to think and respond. I have also thought through my questioning so that the questions are more than just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions.”
Teachers experience an amazing effect of using TeachFX,they become more mindful in the moment, monitoring their own talk time, questioning techniques, and the time and space they allow for student voices. This heightened awareness sparks a snowball effect that reshapes the dynamics of their classroom.
New Techniques
TeachFX helps teachers feel more willing to try new teaching techniques.
Tricia, a 2nd-grade teacher at Continental Colony Elementary School in Atlanta, appreciates how professional learning sessions with TeachFX have allowed her to add additional tools to her teaching toolkit. After a PL session focused on phonics instruction, Tricia shared that, "For me, if something is not working, I’m going to try something different. They shared a new strategy in our session that really connected with me and with several of my students who are almost there. So, tomorrow, I’m going to try it out.”
It can feel daunting, or even risky, to try new techniques in the classroom. And rather than effectively introducing new techniques, professional development can often feel like a one-size-fits-all, sit-and-get affair that’s disconnected from the reality of the classroom, as the Gates Foundation has found.
But with TeachFX, teachers confidently explore and try new methods. And they get to see the results of their efforts quickly. This feedback loop fosters a culture of continuous improvement, led by teachers themselves.
Here’s how it happens: Teachers bring their own TeachFX data and reflections into our professional development workshops. They learn and experience new techniques in our inquiry-based sessions. And when they try those new techniques in their classrooms, they actually see their progress in their TeachFX insights. That’s a true cycle of continuous improvement.
Teachers – and students – are brilliant. TeachFX is helping unlock that brilliance in every classroom.
A skilled teacher facilitating passionate discourse in their classroom is the key to advancing equity and unlocking deeper learning for students.
But teaching in post-pandemic classrooms is uniquely challenging. Teachers and students are all working to emerge from pandemic-era teaching and learning patterns.
The TeachFX instructional coaching app is empowering teachers with effective, supportive feedback on their practice – in minutes, and without relying on classroom observations from instructional leaders.
And the more teachers use TeachFX, the more they see student talk increase. At Continental Colony Elementary, teachers who used TeachFX in three or more lessons increased the average amount of student talk by 55%. And teachers who’ve used TeachFX in eight or more lessons have seen student talk nearly double!
Our approach celebrates and supports teachers as the trained, dedicated, talented, and skilled professionals they are, empowering them as architects of their own professional development.
Every teacher deserves to see and celebrate their students’ brilliance – and the progress they’re making as facilitators of deeper learning in their classrooms.
These teachers’ stories, the research our work is grounded in, and the data from the many schools and districts partnering with TeachFX, all illustrate the difference that the TeachFX approach is helping teachers make.
We envision a world where every teacher has access to the feedback TeachFX provides, and the self-reflection, self-awareness, professional development, and classroom conversations that our approach can help them foster.
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