Supporting Teaching Practice With AI-Powered Instructional Feedback
Teacher recruitment and retention are at crisis levels. The challenges we face weren’t created by the pandemic – they were compounding for decades. The solutions will require us to explore and embrace new ways of thinking, new ways of teaching, and new ways of supporting our teachers.
The status quo is not sustainable for our students, our teachers, or our education leaders.
Teachers are leaving the profession. Since 2020, we’ve seen a net loss of 600k teachers. Record numbers of teachers plan to leave the profession – more than 50% according to EdWeek and the NEA.
Interest in entering the profession, even among what parents report wanting for their children, has never been lower.
Rather than benefiting from mentorship and connection with more seasoned teachers, many new teachers must depend on each other to learn and grow in the profession.
In order to ensure there are enough teachers in front of our students, a record numbers of professionals are entering the classroom with emergency credentials, having received less traditional training than their peers.
Though alarming, these reflect a reality created by challenges that have compounded for decades. Principals and instructional leaders are left trying to support every teacher in their building, facing increased complexities but being given the same old approaches – assessment data, classroom observations, sit and get PD.
The causes that brought K-12 education to this moment are complex and long-standing.
Manifold and complex, the challenges that brought us here include teacher pay, policies like No Child Left Behind that created a culture of “teaching to the test” that removed autonomy for how teachers engage in their practice, and the myriad challenges associated with pandemic and post-pandemic teaching.
Teacher mental and emotional well-being, student social-emotional needs, learning gaps widened in recent years alongside widened and shifting variations of academic needs, and changes to assessment criteria…are just a few issues created by COVID-19.
Add to all of that, an increasingly charged political climate and ever-evolving community pressures.
These factors have conspired to create and accelerate the de-professionalization of teaching overall.
Teachers are “being micromanaged by rigid curricula that turn them into little more than data collectors” (Greenblat, 2022).
This rigidity creates a disconnect between the deep and meaningful purpose that brought teachers into the classroom – to unlock the brilliance in each student – and the expectations they feel they’re compelled to meet.
While committed to supporting teachers as the skilled and passionate professionals they are, principals and instructional leaders feel torn between creating the space for teachers to pursue their own mastery of their profession, ensuring that instructional priorities are pursued consistently, seeing that learning outcomes improve, and seeing that each teacher is sufficiently supported.
The old approaches will not bring us new solutions.
Improving teaching and learning – and our teacher talent pipeline – require us to support teachers in new, more effective ways.
Teacher pay is one of the biggest challenges facing education. (Teachers should be making 10x what they do now!) But…teachers need support!
Educator burnout is at an all-time high, with 90% of teachers calling it somewhat or very serious according to the NEA.
The same study finds 76% of teachers name student behavior issues as somewhat or very serious.
This can’t be oversimplified as being solely about pay. It’s about supporting teachers in their practice as professionals.
There are three universal elements of human performance - autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
These are as true in teaching as they are in any other profession. And yet, they are lacking in the teaching profession. This is something to consider when teaching has nearly double the turnover rates than other professions.
Teachers need autonomy over their practice, clear and consistent pursuit of mastery of their practice, and a deep connection to their core purpose – connecting with their students and igniting a love of learning.
One-size-fits-all and “sit-and-get” PD does not connect with teachers’ autonomy, mastery, or purpose.
A staggering 71% of teachers are dissatisfied with the Professional Development they’re receiving despite schools spending $18 billion on that PD (Gates Foundation, 2016).
Though TNTP and Digital Promise report the only effective PD requires frequent, objective feedback, very few teachers get that. Some teachers experience walkthroughs where an administrator might observe 5 or 10 minutes of their class but majority of teachers aren’t observed at all – and many teachers don’t want to be.
The data shows it. The science of human behavior supports it. We owe our teachers more than simply continuing to provide non-transformative PD.
Here’s how TeachFX supports teachers and connect with their unique autonomy, mastery, and purpose
Teachers need constant connection with their purpose.
We must intentionally help teachers reconnect and remain connected to their purpose, with simple practices designed into their daily routine.
How are we celebrating students' brilliance? How are we relishing those great classroom moments to boost our mood and outlook when they unfold during our teaching day?
Teachers become teachers because of those moments - but they are so fleeting.
Because most teachers are alone in the classroom with their students, they rarely hear “great job” after an amazing teacher moment. And they can be forgotten easily — it can feel much easier to remember when you had to [again] tell that one student to get off the desk … the moments of failure just stick with you. (Our brains are wired to focus on what didn’t go so well.)
Teachers use our app to collect those moments of student brilliance (the app uses AI to surface these moments for each teacher) as a way to celebrate and remind us why we got into the profession. Now, teachers can see and celebrate those moments when students shared their thinking, reasoned through a problem, or -- a-ha! -- have a brilliant new insight.
Connecting to purpose is no substitute for the much-needed pay increase teachers so obviously deserve. But all the money in the world doesn’t make teaching any easier a job. You can’t persist in this profession without continual reminders of the tremendous impact you are having on the lives of so many students.
Teachers using TeachFX get to see and celebrate moments of brilliance they create in their classrooms.
Teachers need and deserve autonomy in their practice.
It’s critical to put teachers in charge of their own learning. We do that by letting teachers decide how they want to grow instead of mandating it – whether that means mandating that they adopt a new curriculum or assessment program, or even what EdTech tools they use with their students.
Too many teachers receive professional development only in a one-size-fits-all, sit-and-get fashion. This approach is not connected to their purpose and gives teachers no sense of autonomy in what they learn, or what they’d like to change or improve about their practice..
What if teachers could take the lead?
Teachers use our app to see AI-generated instructional insights. They see objective, private, personalized information about high-leverage practices like questioning techniques, wait time, and conversational patterns. They can listen back to those moments in their classroom and reflect on how it aligns with their vision of the teacher they want to be. Teachers then choose what to work on, whether seeking guidance from an instructional coach in a more focused way, working with other teachers in data-informed PLC conversations, or on their own.
Teachers using TeachFX have autonomy over their teaching practice.
Teachers need and deserve ongoing opportunities to grow in their craft.
Everyone needs these three things to thrive: purpose, autonomy, and mastery.
Alongside connecting to their purpose in the classroom and having autonomy over their professional development, teachers need to know they are on a path towards mastery of their profession.
Without this, teachers can feel stagnant and unmotivated.
Let's revisit those 76% of teachers who name student behavioral issue. What are the root causes of behavior challenges? Often, it's a teacher who isn't getting the support they need to effectively engage a classroom.
When teachers struggle to engage students during class, consequently, students exhibit behavioral issues because of boredom, disinterest, or confusion.
The typical solution is to target the students’ behavior and not support teachers in their instructional pedagogy to create a classroom culture that helps change how students engage.
Ignoring professional growth, or, what we've seen happen recently, taking those growth opportunities away in the name of reducing workload, deprofessionalizes teaching and demotivates teachers.
Though teachers love the gift of time, human beings flourish and feel fulfilled only when they are learning, growing and mastering their craft.
When teachers exhibit greater teaching mastery, we must affirm that by providing positive feedback on a job well done. Everyone needs the chance to celebrate the bright spots.
But, it’s costly to truly support each teacher, to sit in the back of their classroom and observe, to collect data and take notes, to prepare those notes for a conversation with a teacher. Because it’s costly — in terms of time and human resources — it happens very infrequently, if at all.
At TeachFX, we strive to provide these opportunities for growth and positive feedback in a radically time-efficient way (because those workload problems are real!).
By leveraging technology to do something humans have traditionally done, we can provide those opportunities for ongoing mastery in a powerful way. Instead of teachers only getting feedback if instructional leaders are sitting in the back of classrooms and cataloging the interactions and learning dynamics of the lesson, teachers using TeachFX get AI-generated instructional insights whenever they want them.
What if every teacher had access to this kind of support?
We envision a world where every teacher has the personalized, insightful, accessible support they need to build their own practice with purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Thousands of educators are already seeing that this world is possible — with AI-powered instructional insights.
If you’d like to see how, we invite you to pilot TeachFX with your own teachers.
