I Pretended to Read the Books in High School #Accessibility #AIinEDU

Writing is hard. It is really hard for me. I am dyslexic. I didn't know that until college. Tools were not really available to support me, I was just happy to have a name for what was going on in my brain other than "dumb". 

I never thought I would be able to read or write like my peers. I was shocked to learn that most people do not read the same line 3-4 times before going to the next one. It was such a tiring process. I preferred comics. Self-contained stories that allowed me to see the action instead of struggling to put it together from paragraphs of text. Imagine my surprise when I decided to become an ELA teacher in college. Once I knew how to read and could utilize supports, I loved to read. I read all of the books I pretended to read in high school and I loved them. It was like an entire world opened up to me later in life than others and I wanted to do everything in my power to make sure every student had this opportunity. I didn't have the name for it at the time, accessibility, but I knew it mattered. There had to be students like me in classrooms and I didn't want them to feel stupid like I did for all those years. 

This is all coming back to me because my son is in high school and he just finished reading The Great Gatsby. It was so much fun talking to him about the chapters and knowing he was going to be surprised in Chapter 8 (Spoilers: Gatsby is murdered!). The conversations that we had were so much fun. He told me he would have to write an essay on it after they watch the movie in class. I had left the ELA classroom before AI swept into the classroom and I wonder about the stress it might be causing ELA teachers. 

I talk to plenty in the SchoolAI community and it is a mixed bag of reactions. Some teachers are having students write more in class essays. Other are finding ways to allow students to use AI as a writing partner. Others tell students AI should not be part of their writing process at all. Like most things, a combination of all of these feelings is probably best. Writing in class to to communicate ideas on the spot is a good skill, using AI in deliberate ways to support your writing is a valid use, and sometimes, we just do not need AI to be part of the process. I worry about the students that are going to miss out on supports as part of these wide ranging bans that are starting to be enacted in districts around the country. 

My son is in a very lucky position. He has two writers at home that will happily look over his essay, provide feedback, and help him craft an essay that represents his ideas and hits all of the benchmarks laid out in the assignment and rubric. As a teacher, I would encourage students to have multiple people look at an essay before it lands on my desk. My son's situation would be viewed as the gold standard of supporting student learning at home. However, that is not an option for all of the students. 

There are people that view AI support in any part of the writing process as cheating. I struggle to see how having parents at home review a student's work and provide feedback is different than having AI provide the same feedback for a student who does not have parents at home that can provide equitable feedback compared to other parents. I think there needs to be more conversations about the equity issue of AI when people talk about district wide bans. Who is hurt when we decide to ban things in schools? Does banning schools from using various tools mean that all students will not have access to them, or only the students who can't afford to get them on their on. 

Let's no pretend that the parents that can afford to purchase premium versions of LLMs are not doing so and sharing it with their children. Those students will have access to the ever growing suite of tools that these LLMs provide and those students who do not have the money for access will be left behind. Banning access to these tools ensures that the digital divide will continue to grow. Students who struggle and lack resources will continue to do so as they wait for districts to form their committees, put together roadmaps, and have public hearings, etc. That entire process could take over a year. That student who just wanted access to help with college essays misses out. The teachers who are overburdened already will not be able to use school approved tools to process data more quickly and give them insights on their students. Real time support will become impossible. More students will get lost in the process. It is not equitable for anyone. 

I think there is something important about taking a thoughtful, measured approach to implementing any technology in the classroom. However, it needs to move faster than the speed of bureaucracy if students and teachers are going to actually get the support they deserve. 

Working in the community side of a company is a chance to help share these ideas with as many people as possible and provide a platform for the teachers that are doing the hard work each and every day. I get to hear stories from teachers all the time about how they have helped open up AI in their school to support student learning. I think that is so wonderful and is why I love working in community. Getting to be able to connect with educators all over the world to hear their stories and provide them with the tools to tell their stories is a wonderful thing. I hope this post helps other think about equity and access as they explore how AI impacts the learning environment at their schools. 

Hugs and high fives, 

TNT

What My English Classroom Taught Me About Building Community

As a former HS ELA teacher, one of the things I was most proud of was the community I built in my classroom and it is one of the things I miss most. Each class would bond over the stories we read and the stories we shared. Each time opening up a little piece of ourselves to the 30 other humans in the room. That is a very vulnerable thing to do. Especially for teenagers. 

Here is what took me the longest to realize. In the classroom, I was the storyteller. I picked the books, I set the tone, I told the first story so the class could feel safe to tell theirs. In community work, I am not the storyteller anymore. I am the editor. My job is to create the conditions where other people want to tell their stories, and then get out of the when they do. The webinars, social posts, Champion conversations, conference presentations, and so much more is designed for the community to tell their story. The minute I am the center of the community all the time, I'm doing it wrong. It's not about me. 

This is where trust comes in. Students trusted each other because they knew each other's stories. The books were just the excuse to gather around something together. 

It is the same with a product. Nobody trusts a platform because marketing told them to. They trust it because someone they recognize, someone who teaches kids like theirs, told a story about what happened when they used it. The product is the excuse to gather. The stories are the community. 

I miss the classroom more than I can say. The laughter, the arguments about endings, the quiet kid who finally spoke up. But now, the work is the same work. People still need a reason to open up to strangers. 

And the reason is still the same: A story worth telling, and someone willing to tell the first one. 

Being Coachable When You Have No Idea What You're Doing #EdTech

In my last post, I wrote about feeling like an imposter and how that is something many people feel at one point or another in their career journey. Leaving the classroom after over 20 years was scary. I finally felt like I knew what I was doing and I had crushed most of those imposter feelings. Then I decided to leave the classroom and start all over again.

Now I'm a rookie and those feelings are back.

The good news is that I've been a rookie before. If I take the same approach I did as a teacher and surround myself with amazing people who are willing to mentor me, ask lots of questions, and be willing to learn, I should be in a good spot.

Since I started my corporate life, I've gone from Curriculum Manager, to Community Manager, to Senior Manager of Advocate and Champions Program, and some new duties this past month will likely lead to another title change. I have been surrounded by amazing mentors who have been helping me grow along the way without it ever really feeling like I was being taught or mentored. I'm invited into meetings to see how things work, I have been given parts of projects to manage, and the next thing I know, I'm managing entire projects.

Looking back at it now, I can see the scaffolding.

As a teacher, this is something I did with students all the time. You don't just hand a student something completely new and complicated and tell them to figure it out. You give them some support, see what they can do, and slowly pull back as they become more comfortable.

It turns out that is exactly what people have been doing with me.

The key to this growth has been being coachable.

One of my managers said I am one of the most coachable people he has worked with. I thought that was funny because it was said as if being coachable is an option.

Apparently, it is.

Maybe that is the teacher mentality in me. There are things I do not know and I want to know them. I have to figure out how to learn them and go from there. That just seems normal to me.

As a teacher, things didn't work all the time. Lessons bombed. Students didn't understand something that I thought was perfectly clear. A new tool came along that I needed to figure out. I would ask questions, get feedback, make some changes, and try again.

That's the job.

I didn't realize until entering the business world that being willing to do those things is actually a valuable professional skill.

I've also started to realize that being coachable means you have to be willing to admit that you don't know things.

That is tough when imposter syndrome is hanging around.

Imposter syndrome tells you to hide the things you don't know because someone might figure out you don't belong.

Being coachable requires you to admit you don't know something because that is the only way you are going to learn it.

I'm trying really hard to listen to the second one.

The business world is interesting in that upward mobility is an expectation for many people. Teaching is different. Once you have your classroom, you are pretty much set. Unless you want to become an administrator or move into another position, you can be a teacher for the next 30 years. You can get better and better at what you do without your title ever changing.

That was one of the biggest adjustments for me.

I was so happy to start as a Curriculum Manager. I'm good at building curriculum. I had been doing some version of that for years, so it felt comfortable.

Then there was a chance to manage the community. I've spent years being part of different education and edtech communities, so it made sense to take that experience and leverage it into building out a community.

Every step along the way, there was someone offering little nuggets of advice and opportunities for growth.

Sit in on this meeting.

Take this part of the project.

What do you think about this?

Can you handle this?

As a textbook people pleaser, my answer was usually yes.

Then I would do everything I could to make sure it was done to the very best of my abilities.

The important part, though, was what happened next. Someone would give me another little nugget of feedback. I would take that feedback and use it on the next project. Then the next project would be a little bigger. I would get more feedback and use that on the project after that.

It was basically the same cycle over and over again.

Opportunity. Try. Feedback. Learn. Bigger opportunity. Repeat.

I get asked pretty often about how a person can make the transition out of the classroom and into the business world. The more I think about it, the more I believe being coachable is key.

Teachers who are thinking about leaving the classroom can get caught up thinking about all of the things they don't know.

I don't know business.

I don't know marketing.

I don't know sales.

I don't understand how corporate teams work.

I don't know what half of these acronyms mean.

I didn't either.

I still don't know plenty of them.

But I think teachers sometimes overlook one of the most valuable skills they bring with them when they leave the classroom.

We know how to learn.

Teachers are constantly learning, adjusting, trying new things, failing, getting feedback, and trying again. We do it so often that we might not even think of it as a skill.

It is.

Maybe the way through imposter syndrome isn't convincing yourself that you already know what you're doing. Maybe it's being comfortable admitting that you don't know what you're doing yet and finding people who are willing to help you figure it out.

That's what I did when I was a rookie teacher.

I asked questions. I watched people who were better than me. I tried things. I screwed things up. I listened to feedback. Then I tried again.

More than 20 years later, I'm a rookie again.

It turns out, I already know how to be one.

The Imposter Syndrome is Real #EdTech

"Pretty soon, everyone is going to see that I do not belong here."

Whether it was as a student, an athlete, a teacher, and now in the business world, some version of that sentence has always run through my head.

The feeling that you do not belong can hang over everything you do. Every meeting and every presentation feels like a performance where you are just waiting for someone in the audience to start booing because they have finally figured out that you have no idea what the heck you are doing.

It can be exhausting.

Despite accolades, top marks on evaluations, positive feedback from managers, and plenty of evidence that I might actually know what I'm doing, there is still this lingering feeling that it is all a show and someone is eventually going to figure me out.

I share all of this because I know there is someone else out there who feels the same way. Maybe you need to hear that those feelings are mostly a bunch of BS.

Take a moment and think about all of the people in your life who seem like they have their crap together.

Now think about how many of them are probably figuring things out as they go.

Are there people out there who actually have it all together? Possibly, but I've never met one.

I think most of us are doing our best with what we know today and hoping that is good enough until we know a little more tomorrow. Maybe we're not really "faking it until we make it." Maybe we're just learning as we go and hoping nobody notices how much learning is actually happening.

Teaching is a perfect example of this.

Those first five years are basically spent treading water. Everyone knows the new teacher is going to struggle in a bunch of different ways. You are surrounded by veteran teachers who seem like they have it all together, and you assume they were probably like that on their first day in the classroom.

They weren't.

They struggled too.

The good ones help and mentor you when they can. If it is done right, you might not even realize they are helping you grow. They share a lesson. They give you a suggestion. They tell you how they handled a student. They stop by after a particularly terrible day and remind you that tomorrow is another one.

Then, somewhere around year five, something changes.

You realize you can actually do this.

You look back at some of those lessons from your first few years and realize they were terrible. Just absolutely terrible.

But they were the best you could do at the time because you were trying not to drown in the Education Ocean.

Eventually, you learned how to swim.

After more than 20 years in the classroom, I was pretty comfortable in that ocean. I knew what I was doing. I knew what I didn't know. More importantly, I had enough experience to know that I could probably figure out the things I didn't know.

Then I left the classroom and jumped into an entirely different ocean.

I'm a rookie again.

Of course I feel like an imposter sometimes.

I'm new at this.

Maybe that is the part of imposter syndrome I need to get more comfortable with. Feeling like I don't know what I'm doing doesn't necessarily mean I don't belong. Sometimes it just means I'm doing something I've never done before.

Maybe I'm not an imposter.

Maybe I'm just a beginner again.

I also think there is a healthy amount of imposter syndrome that can be good for us. A little bit of self-doubt keeps you honest. It makes you ask questions. It pushes you to learn. It reminds you that there are people in the room who know things you don't, and maybe you should listen to them.

The problem is when you feel like a fraud but refuse to do anything to level up your learning.

After a while, that isn't imposter syndrome.

That's a decision.

So, I'm trying to get comfortable being a rookie again.

I don't need to know everything right now. I do need to keep learning. I need to ask questions. I need to surround myself with people who know more than I do and be willing to listen when they offer advice.

I did that when I was a new teacher, and eventually I learned how to swim.

Hopefully, I can do it again.

I think the key is being coachable and that will be the topic of my next post.