America’s teachers face immense pressures, from high workloads to increasingly complex student needs, fueling a narrative of burnout and dissatisfaction. But what if we could change the story?
Through our Teaching Reimagined portfolio, we’re investing in a variety of solutions to a shared problem: how to make teaching a role where educators thrive – all in service of better outcomes for students furthest from opportunity.
From better scheduling to AI-driven coaching to new roles for teachers and communities, we’re working with innovators and educators to make the profession more sustainable, joyful, and effective. Here’s a closer look at some of the emerging ideas in our Teaching Reimagined cohort.
Reimagining how we organize time and talent in schools
Master scheduling might not seem like a top priority for reimagining teaching, but Timely Schools recognizes its transformative potential. Using AI, Timely’s platform optimizes master schedules to meet school and district priorities, such as increasing collaborative planning time, balancing class sizes, and making staffing models more flexible. For teachers, this can mean more manageable schedules and greater collaboration, paving the way for dynamic roles and more effective teaching. The platform allows school-based teams to map out different scheduling scenarios – One early adopter of Timely’s platform generated 17 options before selecting the schedule best aligned to school priorities. This facilitates more creativity around use of teacher and student time, a critical building block for new school staffing designs.
While Timely offers educators a tool, Teacher-Powered Schools is launching a coaching initiative to give educators a stronger voice in decision-making. In this “teacher-powered” model, school decision-making is distributed. Teachers shape school culture and instructional priorities, an approach that has shown promise: a 2023 analysis of 45 schools in the Teacher-Powered Schools network found that teacher retention rates exceeded 90%, notably higher than the national average. Now, Teacher-Powered Schools’ new coaching initiative will help more schools transition to this model with new teacher job descriptions, org charts, and teacher leadership roles. Coaches are experienced teachers in hybrid roles; many support other schools 20%-30% of the time while continuing to serve their own students and school community. This creates new roles for expert teachers while ensuring they spread their expertise to more schools.
Engaging caregivers and community experts in new school roles
CommunityShare is rethinking what it means to support teachers by bridging the gap between schools and local experts. Through a digital platform, teachers who need support designing real-world projects are matched with community members whose skills fit the bill — think of it as a “library of human books” that teachers can access. CommunityShare has already had a positive impact: in the past year, 98% of participating educators noted an increase in student engagement and problem-solving skills, while 92% saw improved social-emotional outcomes. Our reinvestment in CommunityShare will help them to offer their platform and services to individual schools. By broadening the definition of an educator, CommunityShare is empowering teachers to create meaningful, real-world learning opportunities without taking on every task themselves.
Supporting teachers’ instructional practice with Generative AI
Teachers want roles that are sustainable; they also want to feel supported and to grow professionally. To meet these needs, Urban Assembly and the Relay Graduate School of Education are designing tools with educators to make high-quality instructional coaching and professional learning more accessible. Urban Assembly’s Classroom Automated Feedback Environment (CAFE) uses AI to analyze teacher-student interactions and classroom dialogue, generating data and insights to enrich teachers’ coaching sessions. This is especially valuable in schools where traditional instructional coaching can be cost-prohibitive and time-consuming.
Relay Graduate School of Education, in partnership with UnboundEd, is designing an AI-enabled teaching simulator to enhance professional development. Rather than sitting through one-size-fits-all training sessions, teachers will be able to use this tool to practice responding to simulated classroom scenarios anytime, anywhere. Like Urban Assembly’s effort, Relay’s is in the early stages of development, co-designing with educators to ensure it addresses real needs and protects teacher and student data and privacy. By offering targeted, flexible professional learning, the simulator holds promise for improving teacher effectiveness and making better use of teachers’ time.
Creating a New Reality
Over the coming years, we aim to build on these efforts, catalyze new approaches, and leverage generative AI to reimagine teaching. If you have an idea to reimagine teaching, we invite you to explore our funding opportunity. We’re especially interested in solutions led by educators — those who understand firsthand what it takes to make teaching empowering and impactful.
The challenges facing the teaching profession are real and multi-faceted, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. By supporting innovative efforts to reimagine teaching like those in our portfolio, we can create a new reality — one of hope, progress, and support. Teachers are the backbone of our education system, and when we invest in their well-being and professional growth, we invest in the future of our students and society as a whole.
Featured Photo Credit: CommunityShare
