A veteran edtech leader who hires shares his inside look and why he’s hopeful.
GUEST COLUMN | by Jason Wilmot
Current college seniors have certainly faced a challenging journey. They enrolled in higher education during the pandemic, just after their high school years were abruptly interrupted by school shutdowns. They likely spent a significant portion of their college experience engaging in remote learning. Now, they are getting ready to step into the professional world in a time of deep uncertainty. Alongside worries about the economy, the impending influence of artificial intelligence on numerous sectors raises questions about the future of work and job security.
However, there is reason for optimism. I’ve been an edtech leader for two decades and frequently hire candidates who are early in their career. I believe that recent college graduates may be much better prepared for the workforce than they think they are.
‘However, there is reason for optimism. I’ve been an edtech leader for two decades and frequently hire candidates who are early in their career. I believe that recent college graduates may be much better prepared for the workforce than they think they are.‘
Yes, the professional landscape is changing quickly. However, the experiences that these soon-to-be college graduates have had, while challenging, may not necessarily be a disadvantage. If they embrace the positives of those experiences and commit to learning and working hard, they can still find success. Here are some of the characteristics I look for when hiring:
Structured Independence. The ability to operate independently is a huge strength and a key trait that recent graduates bring to the table. They’re entering the professional world with a wealth of experience in remote work. They’ve shown the capacity to maintain motivation and complete tasks without immediate supervision. They’ve tackled problems in a structured way, independently and in collaborative groups. Staying on task, managing school projects, engaging in group assignments and presentations, they’ve collaborated using technology to complete a task. All these experiences hold significant value in the professional realm.
I also appreciate candidates who have a diverse set of passions and interests that they pursue independently. I believe that broad experiences and knowledge lead to stronger teams and better ideas. It’s easy to think that the best way to prepare for a role in tech is to focus narrowly on internships and other experiences in the industry. These certainly can help, but great candidates who exhibit a more holistic range of experiences can often be more successful. Did you learn a new programming language during the pandemic lockdown? Do you volunteer with a local organization? Did you start a club? Do you play sports? Did you drive a hot dog-shaped truck around the country as part of a job for a meat company, as one of my recent new hires did? Don’t overlook the value of those experiences on your communication and collaboration skills.
Curiosity. A common question I get asked is whether I consider proficiency in AI skills as a prerequisite for hiring. The reality is, right now, there’s no definitive measure of AI proficiency. The technology is evolving at such a rapid pace that we’re all in a constant state of learning and adapting.
However, it’s a huge positive when a candidate has used AI tools. It demonstrates curiosity. When working in tech, it’s important to stay on the cutting edge – but that doesn’t always mean formal courses or training. Instead, I want to hire folks who are genuinely curious about new technology and see its potential. How can it make me more efficient? How can it improve the quality of my work? How can it help me prioritize and stay organized? Especially for recent graduates, I’m more interested in their mindset than their skills. After all, when it comes to technologies like AI, we’re all still students.
Visual Communication. In a visual world where so much of our communication happens remotely, the ability to present your ideas in a compelling and creative way is increasingly crucial. At Canva, the final step in our hiring process involves candidates completing a project and presenting it. We’re on the lookout for creativity and authenticity; we encourage you to take risks and let your personality shine. Animations, videos, and engaging graphics to tell a story with data are all welcome.
Recent graduates are in a prime position to excel in this area. They are constantly communicating through visuals – not only in their classes, but also through social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. If they can intentionally refine their design skills and enhance their visual communication abilities, it’s a significant advantage.
The process of applying for that first job after college can seem daunting. However, recent graduates should not be disheartened. Their experiences and the challenges they’ve overcome have helped them to develop many skills that are extremely valuable in tech. If they lean into those skills while still being open to learning and adapting, they will find that they are not just ready, but well-prepared to make their mark in the tech world.
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Jason Wilmot is Canva’s Head of Education. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.
It’s the topic on everyone’s mind: Are Gen Z workers actually different? TechCrunch sought to find out at this year’s Disrupt 2024. We sat down with SignalFire’s Heather Doshay, Comprehensive.io’s Roger Lee, and CapitalG’s Lauren Illovsky to chat about how to hire and retain talent. One topic that came up was how younger workers are […]
New federal survey data on the education workforce shows that a majority of schools had a tough time filling at least one fully certified teaching position this fall.
Parsing education data into snack-sized servings.
Public schools reported having six teacher vacancies on average in August, based on responses to the School Pulse Panel by the National Center for Education Statistics. About 20 percent of those positions remained unfilled when the school year started.
The two most common challenges schools said they faced in hiring were a lack of qualified candidates and too few applicants. Special education, physical science and English as a second language were some of the most difficult areas to fill.
NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr said in a news release that while the percentage of schools saying it was difficult to fill positions decreased — down 5 percentage points from 79 percent last year — “there’s still room for improvement.” Nearly 1,400 public K-12 schools from across the country responded to the survey.
While the comparison to previous years suggests that hiring is getting a bit easier, Megan Boren of the Southern Regional Education Board says the country is still mired in a teacher shortage.
Boren, who leads the organization’s teacher workforce data and policy work, says it would be a mistake to think of teacher shortages only in terms of positions filled versus vacant. Other factors to consider include the geographic regions of schools, academic subjects and student age groups where shortages are prevalent.
The organization also takes into account teacher demographics, the number of candidates graduating from teacher prep programs, alternative certification programs and their level of preparedness.
“When we think of it as merely a body count, we are not looking at the whole entire problem and to be honest, we're doing a disservice to our students and our educators themselves,” Boren says. “Of the utmost importance is the quality and the preparedness with which we are filling some of these vacancies, or that we have leading our classrooms, and the distribution of that talent.”
Boren expressed concern over schools turning to uncertified teachers to fill the staffing gaps, be they candidates with emergency certifications or long-term substitute teachers. Their inexperience can put strain on the more experienced teachers and administrators who support them, she explains, at a time when both administrators and traditional teacher prep graduates say even new fully certified teachers feel less prepared than those in years past.
Schools in high-poverty neighborhoods or with a student body that is mostly — 75 percent or more — students of color filled a lower percentage of their vacancies with fully certified teachers, according to the NCES data.
“It's a firestorm where folks are going, ‘What can we do to put out the fire and then rebuild?’” Boren says, “and unfortunately, we're seeing in some cases that the measures and strategies being taken to put out the fire are actually making it worse, and causing an exacerbation of the issues for our educators and leaders.”
She says there’s no single factor that has led to teacher shortages, but rather interplaying issues that include pandemic-related mental health strain, the pressure of filling in for vacant staff positions, and a lack of time for collaboration and planning.
Teacher shortages didn’t start with the pandemic, Boren explains, as her organization tracked a teacher turnover rate that hovered between 7 percent and 9 percent prior to 2020. But she says the pandemic did accelerate turnover, with some regions of the South now experiencing 18 percent turnover among teachers.
“Certain regions of states started to stem the tide, but by and large the turnover is increasing,” Boren says.
On the spectrum of professional experience for K-12 teachers, I am decidedly on the greener side. Although I knew I had a passion for teaching before entering college, I always had this idea in my head that teaching K-12 education wasn’t a real or appropriate profession for an Ivy League, engineering graduate like myself.
Instead of industry or academia, however, I joined the stream of my peers entering the world of business management consulting. I stayed in this role for only three years before going back to school to teach, but my short stint in the corporate world carried me to the classroom with a perspective that allowed me to see all the ways teaching is treated as a calling rather than a career, and how that impacts school teachers.
Teachers lack the structure and career development of other industry and professional jobs and this is important because it is one major factor in creating a broken public education system. Compared to what I experienced myself and have learned from colleagues and ex-classmates in consulting, finance and tech industries, it feels like this lack of opportunity for career progression within K-12 education disincentivizes a talented, driven and diverse workforce, which in turn inhibits the long term success of the education system.
Put more pointedly, teachers being perceived as saints and martyrs due to the realities of their working conditions, instead of serious professionals, is one of the more glaring issues facing K-12 education in the United States.
We’re Not in Consulting Anymore, Toto…
In my short time in the consulting world, I got a glimpse behind the curtain of how different industries operate. I learned about the massive scale of labor, human capital and strategic investment that go into making a successful organization. As a new college grad, I was lucky to work at a company that held an “up or out” culture and provided clear structures and routines for continuous professional feedback, networking and skill development. I also had great mentors who pushed me to think about what I wanted in a career and shared their experiences and advice to foster my professional growth.
Within public education, growth options are almost entirely outside the classroom, either through administration, teacher education or curriculum development. One common path that some teachers will take to advance is to go back to school and pursue an administrative credential to become a principal or vice principal, but it is a significant pivot and career change.
While I also have incredible mentors in teaching, when I asked my closest mentor for constructive professional feedback before she went on a sabbatical, the only thing she did was implore me not to get pulled away from the classroom and into leadership, most likely due to the aforementioned ways teachers attempt to advance and move through the field of education.
Clearly, there is very little formal growth inherent or possible within teaching, which I believe impacts the retention of a highly skilled and diverse educational workforce. Bringing my perspective as a young professional to a high school, I have been endlessly frustrated with the disparity between what I want and am inspired to accomplish and what the system allows me to reasonably get out of any effort I put in.
Feeling Stuck
Another thing I’ve found difficult about this issue is that simply being a teacher doesn’t really say much about your job description; it doesn’t give any information about your particular working conditions, responsibilities, expectations or compensation because these vary so much from school to school, not to mention across the country.
Though I’ve only worked at one school, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with math and science teachers nationwide. From the poorest rural schools to the most elite boarding schools, I have become increasingly vexed by the lack of incentive structure or clear avenues of professional growth within the teaching profession that I could verbalize in a meaningful way in a resume or cover letter.
Other fields offer structured opportunities for career growth in several ways, including but not limited to some sort of organizational hierarchy in which promotions lead to increased compensation and different responsibilities. While this sort of promoting-from-within and workforce investment and development is not the case for every corporation or industry, in the teaching career, it is practically nonexistent.
Public school teachers are often limited geographically by pensions, so moving across state lines means forfeiting your hard-earned retirement benefits. In some states, there are required portfolios or observations teachers must complete to receive tenure, but pay bumps are not always a guarantee. Once you have taught for a certain number of years, eager teachers can work incredibly hard for at least a full year to receive National Boards Certification, but first, they have to pass the test — and, yet again, the reward may differ by state. California has a stipend for those who achieve this distinction but not an actual raise; in many states, it is a purely symbolic title with no financial compensation.
Meanwhile, in my previous job industry, many of my colleagues were able to seek out a more supportive environment where they could be competitively compensated and grow in their careers. Clearly, not all companies or other jobs have these opportunities, but even the ability to switch employers for upward career mobility is complicated for teachers. All of these hidden factors baked into the decentralized educational system can prevent teachers from the same level of fluid movement between schools and districts that their similarly educated peers in professional industries are used to. Ultimately, this hinders educators' ability to navigate an employment landscape in a way that promotes their overall career growth and professional development.
Putting Your Money Where Your Labor Is
Many industries operate on the basic principles of rewarding talent for positive, sustained performance. In the many fractured systems that make up the overall U.S. education system, talent and effort often only lead to heartwarming notes, the occasional staff pizza party and more responsibilities with an ever-shrinking margin of effective compensation. With the lack of growth opportunities in this career, is it any wonder that recruiting and maintaining a diverse teaching workforce is an issue for our schools today?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to addressing this issue. Districts and schools, whether public, private or charter, are all funded differently and have different methods for allocating their budgets. But in considering how to fix schools or taking stock of the current state and future of public education in the US, policymakers and stakeholders with any ability to make a change in their schools or districts should not discount the effect of developing a stronger route of professional advancement for teachers.
If we don't build a better system, one that rewards extra labor and additional roles that come with being a teacher, we risk further creating the feeling that being a teacher feels like a dead-end job, and while some educators have come to this conclusion and left the field, I hope myself and other colleagues can feel the growth and necessary support we need in our careers to stay in the classroom.
Despite the historic funding that was funneled into the field in the wake of the pandemic, early care and education continues to be one of the most beleaguered occupations in the United States.
Early childhood educators earn, on average, $13.07 per hour, a wage that puts them in the bottom 3 percent of workers nationally. (Elementary and middle school teachers, by comparison, earn an average of $31.80 per hour, and U.S. workers, across occupations, earn about $23 an hour.)
That’s according to findings from the 2024 Early Childhood Workforce Index, a report that typically comes out every two years and is produced and authored by a team of researchers at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley.
The U.S. early care and education system was broken long before the pandemic, thanks to a dynamic where families can’t afford to pay more while providers can’t afford to charge less. Those costs are, in effect, subsidized by the paltry wages earned by early childhood educators — the teachers and staff in these programs, about 98 percent of whom are women and half of whom are women of color — even though they are entrusted with one of the most important jobs that exists, said Caitlin McLean, lead author of the report and director of multi-state programs at CSCCE.
“Our child care workforce — the majority of whom have some higher education — are building our children’s brains in the most critical period of their development,” McLean said during a press call last week. “[Yet] early educators are paid so little that many worry where their next meal will come from.”
In early care and education programs, employer-sponsored benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans are rare. Close to half (43 percent) of early educators rely on public assistance, such as Medicaid and food stamps, to make ends meet, which the report estimates is costing taxpayers $4.7 billion a year.
The billions of federal dollars pumped into the field in recent years — including $39 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act — are widely seen as having been successful in helping stabilize programs and prevent massive waves of closures. However, most of those dollars expired in September 2023, while the remainder expired about two weeks ago.
Absent ongoing funding and a more permanent solution for the field, ARPA dollars seem not to have meaningfully moved the needle. New data in the Workforce Index underscores that reality.
“The funding was not about making the ideal child care system,” McLean said. “It was about preventing the utter collapse of the system we had.”
Corrine Hendrickson’s situation illustrates why the funding stopped short of transforming the field and the lives of those who work in it.
Right now, it does not feel like a sustainable career, and it really isn’t.
— Corrine Hendrickson
Direct-to-provider payments from ARPA allowed Hendrickson to make changes to her licensed home-based child care program in rural Wisconsin and spend money that she’d never had. She hired an employee for the first time, allowing her to step away for personal appointments. She made repairs and improvements to the building. She increased her own wages from $8 an hour to $12, which she said gave her enough extra money to buy her own kids clothes and pay monthly bills on time.
“Without the ARPA funding, I would’ve closed and never reopened,” she said, adding that as a home-based provider, “if I closed, I would’ve lost my home.”
But then ARPA funding expired last year, and she was forced to make hard decisions just to maintain her new hourly rate of $12. She has raised tuition rates on families three times in the past year, she shared, for a total increase of $70 per week. Some families, she added, have reached out to inquire about her program but then backed off when they learn she charges $259 to $281 per week, depending on the child’s age. It’s just too expensive, they tell her.
“Right now, it does not feel like a sustainable career,” Hendrickson said, “and it really isn’t.”
Nationally, wages for early childhood educators have increased by 4.6 percent in the last few years, after adjusting for inflation, according to the Index. That’s still less than the overall workforce, whose wages have increased by an average of 4.9 percent, as well as those of fast food workers (5.2 percent) and retail workers (6.8 percent). The latter two occupations are relevant because many educators have left their positions in recent years for jobs in food and retail, where wages are similar or higher and stress is much lower.
The national average, though, is just an average. About a dozen states have stepped in with their own investments in early care and education since ARPA dollars expired, helping programs and staff to avoid the so-called “child care cliff” that others have endured.
Some states have seen much bigger wage increases for early educators; in nine states, plus Washington, D.C., early educators experienced wage increases of more than 10 percent. The highest gains were in D.C., with an average 27.1 percent wage increase for educators.
‘This Is a Serious Job’
Lida Barthol is an infant and toddler teacher in Washington, D.C., where her salary has soared in the last few years.
Barthol entered the field in 2016, when she was earning about $11 an hour. Now a lead teacher with a bachelor’s degree, and with help from the District of Columbia’s targeted compensation program for early childhood educators, she is making the equivalent of about $36 an hour.
In 2021, after the DC Council approved a tax increase on the city’s highest-income residents, the District launched the Pay Equity Fund, an effort to increase the compensation of early childhood educators so that it better aligned with that of K-12 teachers with similar qualifications and experience.
“Which is insane,” Barthol said. “It’s unheard of.”
In the program’s first year, educators received one-time payments of up to $14,000. Barthol remembers calling her friend, another early childhood educator, in disbelief over the state of her bank account. “We just sat there and cried,” she said. “It was a really big moment.”
Now, the District funnels Barthol’s wage supplement through her employer, so it is reflected in her regular paychecks. The program — which has led to higher recruitment and retention in the field — shows what is possible if early childhood educators are paid a livable wage.
“It really changed everything about my life,” Barthol said. It gave her and her partner of seven years the financial security to get engaged and plan a small wedding, which is set to take place next month. It’s a “cultural milestone,” she said, that she didn’t feel stable enough to have before.
It has also made her feel that her work — her career path — is valued.
“I used to say, ‘There’s no reason to get a master’s degree in early education because you’ll never earn that money back.’ But really, I love this field. I love learning. I love thinking deeply about the work I’m doing,” said Barthol, who graduated in the spring with her master’s degree in human development.
“It gave me the confidence to be like, ‘This is a serious job,’” she said. “You don’t need a degree to do an amazing job, but it is just that affirmation that this is serious work, and [with] young children, there’s complexity there.”
With federal pandemic relief now gone and a new presidential administration set to begin in a few months, the field is at a “crossroads,” the authors of the report wrote.
Barthol has been attuned to the candidates this election cycle, she said. The nominees of both major parties have mentioned child care at a number of campaign events and even during the recent vice presidential debate.
They’re not always getting it right, Barthol noted. She cited a recent interview with Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who argued that the solution to sky-high child care costs for families was, first, to lean more on “grandma and grandpa” for care, and then, if that option isn’t available, to reduce regulations and lower qualifications for entering the workforce.
Vance suggested that the problem with the field is that the barrier to entry is too high, Barthol said, and that plenty of people want to work in early childhood education but can’t get a degree.
“What barrier to entry? You don’t need a degree,” Barthol said. “The issue is the pay being so low and the unpredictability of benefits.”
She’s seen many young people enter the field, enthusiastic about working with kids, only to realize how “physically, mentally and emotionally demanding it is,” then receive that first paycheck and decide, nope, this isn’t going to work for them.
“It’s not that the barrier to entry is so high,” Barthol reiterated. “It’s that the system is not built to support young families and the people who care for their children.”
Already positioned at the center of the global semiconductor industry, Taiwan now wants to make itself a hub for innovation in advanced artificial intelligence. The island nation’s new leadership, in place since May 2024, has taken a number of steps to help the country take better advantage of the AI that its chips enable.
The fruits of the effort are starting to show. Electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn is building the country’s biggest AI supercomputer ever, using Nvidia’s latest chips. But Taiwan’s AI effort hinges on it finding enough skilled workers to do the job.
The island nation is confronting some pressing challenges—a declining birth rate of approximately 5.81 births per 1,000 people, an aging population, and rising geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific. So leveraging AI for economic growth and sustainability has become increasingly vital, according to vice president Bi-khim Hsiao.
“AI can help us develop new solutions more quickly and efficiently, becoming another key engine for economic growth,” Hsiao said at an AI and sustainability forum in July.
President Lai Ching-te’s government is rolling out new measures designed to build robust infrastructure, promote AI adoption across various sectors, invest in data centers, establish supercomputers, and advance Taiwan’s control over its own AI systems.
It’s part of a strategic plan Lai’s Cabinet approved to strengthen its “Five Trusted Industry Sectors”: semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), defense, security, and next-generation communications. In the AI sector, Taiwan aims to leverage its hardware industry to drive growth in high-value AI applications‑targeting an output of over NT$1 trillion (US$31 billion) by 2026, from the current approximately NT$800 billion dollars, and train 200,000 AI and related professionals over the next four years.
To support these ambitions, the country will enhance the National Development Fund’s investments in AI-related companies and collaborate with the Ministry of Digital Affairs on a NT$10 billion initiative focused on the AI industry.
Furthermore, Taiwan is bolstering its technological infrastructure by improving computing power and developing energy-efficient data centers. Foxconn’s future supercomputer is an example. The system, which should be capable of 90 billion operations per second (90 exaflops), will be powered by 6,902 of Nvidia’s new GB200 (Grace-Blackwell) CPUs and GPUs.
Meanwhile, the government is also actively pursuing international partnerships while inviting U.S. AI startups to set up operations in Taiwan.
Workforce Issues
Taiwan’s small, 23.4 million population, its aging demographic, and its low birth rate make achieving its AI goals difficult. In a Cabinet meeting last month, Premier Cho Jung-tai underscored the necessity cultivating domestic expertise while attracting international professionals.
Although not exclusive to AI workers, Taiwan’s National Development Council (NDC) outlined a plan to educate and train 450,000 skilled professionals by 2028. The initiative also seeks to attract 120,000 foreign experts and 80,000 foreign technicians to fill a gap 200,000-person gap projected for Taiwan’s workforce by that date.
“This will ensure a sufficient supply of talent needed for the next phase of national development and build Taiwan’s competitive advantage,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee told reporters.
But the domestic workforce likely won’t be enough, and Taiwan is competing with many other nations for AI talent. “To bring in international talents, Taiwan really needs to highlight its incentives, since there’s a huge global demand for top-tier AI professionals,” says Ming-Shun Tsai, Provost of Taiwan AIA.
“In semiconductor manufacturing, machine learning and deep learning are increasingly being used to speed up product development and improve yield rates. This trend is growing fast.” —anonymous semiconductor manager
The government shares this view. Last month, NDC Deputy Minister Kao Shien-quey announced plans to enhance the Taiwan Gold Card program by introducing what it’s calling ‘Global Elite’ cards. The employment gold card currently serves as an open work permit, allowing foreign professionals with monthly salary exceeding NT$160,000 (about US $4,956, or $59,472 per year) to work in Taiwan for up to three years. The Global Elite card is targeted toward top-tier professionals who will work for local companies that offer annual salaries surpassing NT$6 million (around US $188,306). Recipients will be eligible for permanent residency after just one year of employment and will gain access to social benefits, including long-term care and disability services for their families. Additionally, their spouses will qualify for work permits.
Naturally, NDC views international students at Taiwanese universities as a vital source of future talent. Earlier this year, a new program was launched to attract students from nearby ASEAN countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with a focus on AI, semiconductors, and other fields. Participants will receive a full tuition and fee waiver for up to two years, along with a monthly stipend of at least NT$10,000 paid by local companies. In return, graduates must work in Taiwan for at least two years after finishing their studies.
AI Industry Heads South
The AI industry is starting to cluster in southern Taiwan. The Foxconn AI supercomputer is to be constructed in Kaohsiung, and in August, Nvidia-rival Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) announced plans to establish R&D hubs there and in Tainan, both of which host science parks.
“With major players like TSMC and global tech giant Nvidia setting up operations in Kaohsiung, it’s essential for the government to invest enough resources in universities in southern Taiwan. This will help us nurture the talents that’s urgently needed in the island’s key industries,” says Yue-Min Wan, a professor of electronics engineering at I-Shou University in southern Kaohsiung City.
TSMC itself, which has advanced fabs in the Tainan area, is in need of more AI talent. “In semiconductor manufacturing, machine learning and deep learning are increasingly being used to speed up product development and improve yield rates. This trend is growing fast,” says a senior manager in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry who did not want to be named.
The manager notes that companies are increasingly investing in AI training programs and service subscriptions to upskill their workforce. This has led to a rising demand for experts capable of integrating AI with environmental and sustainability initiatives, in an effort to drive both risk management and innovation, he says.
Miguel Quinteros spent over a decade as something of a tech-savvy teacher — one not afraid to try new things in the classroom, in hopes that they would make learning more interesting, more intuitive and more engaging for his students.
He took that proclivity to the next level a few years ago, when he accepted a position as a K-12 technology coach in a small school district in western Michigan.
Quinteros loves the work he gets to do, trying to solve problems for teachers, students and administrators in his rural farming community, removing obstacles that come their way and generally continuing in his pursuit of looking for ways to make learning more fun and approachable to students.
And he hasn’t had to abandon teaching. In 2022, Quinteros’ district, Mason County Central School District, opened a first-of-its-kind immersive room that, with augmented and virtual reality advanced technology, allows students to deepen their learning with interactive, sensory-oriented lessons — from the World War I trenches to erupting volcanoes to ancient Greece. Quinteros manages the immersive room for the district and helps bring lessons to life for children of all ages.
“I just get to do the fun part now: teach,” he shares. “I don't do the grading and the discipline anymore.”
In any given school, a robust school staff is quietly working behind the scenes to help shape the day for kids. In our Role Call series, we spotlight staff members who sometimes go unnoticed, but whose work is integral in transforming a school into a lively community. For this installment, we’re featuring Miguel Quinteros.
The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Name: Miguel Quinteros
Age: 51
Location: Scottville, Michigan
Role: K-12 technology coach
Years in the field: Three in current role, after 11 as a teacher
EdSurge: How did you get here? What brought you to your role as a technology coach?
Miguel Quinteros: Well, I'm originally from El Salvador. I came when I was 25 for medical treatment, and then I had to stay in the country and find something to do. So I became a youth minister with the Catholic Church. Then I thought, ‘Oh, I like to work with young people,’ so I decided to become a teacher. When I was studying to become a teacher, I had to choose a major and a minor, and I picked social studies as my major and computer science as my minor. With my minor being computer science, I focused a lot on how to use technology in the classroom, how to do things that we would not be able to do otherwise.
Once I became a teacher, even though I was teaching Spanish, computer science and social studies to middle and high school students, I was always using technology in the classroom. It was a small town, and word got out. After the pandemic, I think a lot of school districts realized that teachers needed more support with technology, and a lot of tech coach positions came up. So then the district where I work now actually recruited me to come take this position.
When people outside of school ask you what you do, like at a social event, how do you describe your work to them?
Most of the time, I don't like to tell people what I do. I feel like, especially being Hispanic, when people see me in social [settings], they assume that I work in the fields doing migrant work, agriculture. And the moment they know what I do, it’s almost like they give me more importance. I like people to see me for who I am as a person, not for what I do.
But if I meet somebody, and I can see that they genuinely accept me for who I am, then I open up more with them. Otherwise, I guess I'm kind of guarded with this topic. It's sad, but that's the reality, and I have to live in my skin every day.
Let’s say you met someone who was genuinely interested in you. How would you describe to them what your work entails, if you were feeling really talkative and generous that day?
I’d tell them I am a technology coach, and most people are like, ‘What is that?’ Because these are kind of new positions that have emerged. And then I explain that I go into classrooms and help teachers use technology, to make classrooms more engaging. I also order technology for the teachers and for the students — physical technology as well as learning apps. I provide teachers with training on how to use that technology.
And then they ask more questions. If they said, ‘So you don't teach kids anymore?’ then I tell them about what I do with teaching young kids, too. My position is really unique because we have, in our district, an AR/VR immersive room, which I run and I create content for when I have downtime. It’s the first of its kind in a K-12 building in the whole country, and it's open for our K-12 students. It’s this room with three big walls with projectors that become interactive to the touch and with surround sound. The floor is also interactive. It's like virtual reality without the goggles.
If I didn’t have that immersive room, I would probably miss being in the classroom, because I went to school to be a teacher. And I like that part, the teaching aspect.
When did the immersive room open in your district? And what are you teaching kids in that setting? What does that look like?
The immersive room was an initiative for the district right after the pandemic. They were brainstorming ideas on how to get kids to come back to school after such a long period of time away.
So far it has accomplished that goal. We’re a rural community. We don't have that much funding, and our kids come from very poor homes and backgrounds. A lot of children have never been to a museum, never been to cool places in the big city. With the immersive room, basically we can recreate any of that.
We can take a field trip to the deepest part of the ocean, for example. I have this one immersive experience that starts on the surface of the ocean and then lowers depending on what part of the ocean you want to visit. If you want to go to the part where the coral reefs are, or if you want to go to the deep part of the ocean where it's dark and no light gets through, you can do that. And then once we are there, in the ocean, the buttons are interactive in the walls and the children take turns touching those buttons, which gives them information about the specific aspect of the ocean. So the kids come and they get to touch the walls and interact and learn that way. And the room also has this four-dimensional aspect. If I want to bring a seashore scent into this experience, I can upload that so they can smell like they're right there in the ocean. And there's also fans that can activate and recreate different wind variance.
So that's what makes the lesson more interactive. We have other lessons to go to the moon, where we play with the gravity of the moon. There's bricks that they pull with their hands, and they fall and it simulates gravity. And then we talk about gravity. ‘What happens if we throw this brick right here on earth? How fast would that go? And look what happens if we throw this brick on the moon and how much slower it goes down.’ Then we’ll learn about the phases of the moon, how the moon interacts with the oceans and how that influences us and our daily lives on earth. This is what makes it really cool for the students.
That sounds incredible. I've never heard of anything like that. And you’re saying you teach all grade levels in the immersive room?
Yes, right now, but the way it works is the teachers schedule time with me and they bring the kids. The teachers are there in the classroom with me also. When they sign up, they give me an idea of what they expect to see in the immersive room. And then when they come, I have the lesson ready and the moment they walk in, boom, they are immersed in the lesson. That's what I like about the system.
What does a hard day look like in your role?
Sometimes, I have to make sure that rostering is OK. That means I have to spend the whole day fixing data and correcting names of students and making sure that everything is properly entered in the system and that students have access to their devices. And I have literally spent days repetitively deleting duplicate students. I guess that would be a hard day, just the monotonous work. I like variety.
What does a really good day look like?
A great day for me is when I get to do a little bit of everything: when I get to see the students, when I get to teach at least one class, when I get to interact with the teachers, helping them brainstorm ideas on how can we include students in this learning process with an app, and when I get to do some purchases too on that day, for some things that the teachers really need.
It just fills my heart when I am able to advocate for them because I tell them, ‘I like to do for you what nobody did for me when I was a teacher.’ Nobody will come and say, ‘What do you need? How are things going?’ I like to do that on a daily basis. If I find myself with the downtime, I don't stay here at my desk. I walk and I go to the other buildings, and it’s like, ‘Oh, Miguel, by the way,’ and then they need me for something. I get to interact with the principal. I get lots of hugs when I go to the lower elementary with the younger kids, like kindergarten to second grade.
So I guess a fulfilling day for me would be when I get to serve all of my clients — and in my job, my clients are students, teachers, admin, and anyone who is walking through this building — and when I get to make their lives better, a little bit lighter.
What is an unexpected way that your role shapes the day for kids?
One way is all the educational apps that they use on a daily basis. If something goes wrong with it, they call me. But if everything is running smoothly, it’s because of the job I do. I guess that's where my job gets taken for granted, when everything is running smoothly, everything is in place. We use tons of different learning apps — from Google Classroom to Clever — and I'm the person responsible for rostering them and then training the teachers.
What do you wish you could change about your school or the education system today?
I wish that the teaching profession would be more respected, that teachers would be able to get all the resources they need and the support that they need. I wish the politicians would put more money where their mouth is. Teachers are underappreciated. I wish that our society would realize that without teachers, there are no other careers. There's no doctors, there's no lawyers, there's no politicians — without teachers.
Also one of the things that I wish we could change is that we expect all students to have the same credits. In Michigan, if you want to graduate high school, you have to have three science credits, four social studies credits, four ELA. Everyone has to have the same. And I think that's seriously wrong because not all kids are the same. Everybody has different needs, everybody has different dreams, everybody has different backgrounds. We should provide students with a variety of choices.
Like OK, imagine this kid who is terrible at reading and he hates social studies, but he's a hands-on kind of kid and he likes to take things apart. Why not provide a path for this kid where he will get to graduate with a high school diploma and with skills on how to do the particular job that the kid wants?
Your role gives you unique access and insight to today's young people. What's one thing you've learned about them through your work?
I’ve learned about how life is a lot simpler in a kid’s mind, and they know the joy of living day to day. When a kid comes and gives you a hug, they really mean it. When they give you a high five, it's because they want to do that. I am touched by the sincerity of the kids and how many times they teach us that life can be fun, life is fun.
Before I became a teacher, I was doing youth ministry and I was recruiting this kid, this young man, and I was like, ‘Hey, I have some fun programs at the church. Come and join us.’ He looked at me and said, ‘What kind of fun? Your kind of fun, or my kind of fun?’ I said, ‘That is an absolutely great question.’
That kid kind of changed my life because when I became a teacher, I always kept that in mind. Still to this day, that echoes in my head: ‘What kind of fun? Is it your kind of fun, or my kind of fun?’ Learning does not have to be boring. It should be fun. And that was my passion, to make learning fun for the students, to the point that they don't realize that they are learning because they're having too much fun.
That's what I like about students. Sometimes they can challenge you, they can ask you questions, and if you listen to them, we can learn a lot from young kids. I have learned a lot from them.
A school district in Brighton, in the Denver metro area of Colorado, was having a hard time keeping teachers. The salaries in the district, 27J Schools, were low for the region. And in Colorado, voters have to approve higher property taxes to send additional dollars to schools, including for salary bumps, but by 2018 voters had refused six straight times.
So, strapped for cash, the district decided to switch to a four-day school week.
Chris Fiedler, then the superintendent of 27J Schools, had previously worked in a rural district on a shortened schedule, and he hoped it would help attract teachers in the absence of better pay. Frustrated and eager for solutions, everyone seemed ready to try a new approach, Fiedler says.
“You just get tired of being kind of the minor league team in the Denver metro area, in terms of teacher and adult talent, working with kids — and not just teachers, but administrators as well. So how do you find a way to encourage them to stay and encourage them to join you in the first place?” he says.
In his eyes, the experiment was a success. The district now punches above its weight in teacher retention and the policy has proven consistently popular with students and teachers in the years since it was introduced, he argues.
Fiedler isn’t solitary in his enthusiasm for this model of schooling, and the four-day school week has, in some ways, taken off. When many schools are suffering staffing shortages and tight budgets, districts like 27J Schools have turned to shorter school weeks to attract and retain teachers. As many as 900 districts have embraced these abridged weeks, according to a 2023 estimate from the Associated Press. (There are about 13,000 districts in the country.) Colorado, where 27J is located, has proven a particularly fertile ground for four-day school weeks, and more districts in the state have moved to a four-day school week than any other state except Missouri, according to one estimate.
But though educators like Fiedler trumpet these shortened weeks, others worry that they do little to attract teachers — and may even harm students and voters.
‘Slightly Negative’
Interest in four-day weeks usually stems from the need to recruit or retain teachers in the absence of funding. Supporters also value it for giving students and teachers time that enables a better school-life balance. But the evidence paints an ambiguous to slightly negative picture, according to researchers like Van Schoales, senior policy director for the nonprofit Keystone Policy Center, which published a recent report on the four-day school week in Colorado. In fact, the data from the state doesn’t give supporters or detractors a clear victory, according to the report.
Schoales says he became interested in four-day weeks after noting that his colleagues from within Colorado were talking about it more post-pandemic. While there was some national research, there wasn’t much within the state yet, he says.
Some national studies link four-day school weeks to slumping academic performance for students. For instance, one analysis from the Annenberg Institute found that the available data shows a “relatively small, negative average” in standardized test scores for reading and math in districts that adopt four-day policies. The Annenberg analysis also noted that the negative effects of four-day weeks are disproportionately larger in non-rural schools and may compound over time.
Still, the Colorado Department of Education was “rubber-stamping” all of the proposals from districts looking to change over to a four-day school week, even though some superintendents and school board members were “quietly raising concerns,” Schoales says.
What did the Keystone researchers learn? Universally, superintendents report that they are motivated to try this because they don't have enough money to pay teachers, Schoales says. But even if some districts were bullish on the policy, the Keystone study found that truncated school weeks were not effective for keeping teachers. It may have worked for some districts, Schoales says, but overall the districts that adopted these policies had higher turnover rates.
Previous studies show the effect of this policy ranges from neutral to negative on students, with most national studies showing it has a small but negative impact on learning, he says. If true, the differences could stack up over time academically, and many of the districts adopting these policies, at least within Colorado, are far from reaching state standards already, he adds.
So, he asks, why not figure out how to solve the pay issue rather than cut days of instruction?
What Are Students Doing?
Plus, there’s another possible problem. How are students spending that fifth day, if not in school?
By one estimate, more than 60 percent of districts in Colorado have a four-day schedule, though these tend to be small and rural districts, meaning they only account for around 14 percent of the state’s students. But four-day school weeks are spreading to larger and more urban areas. It’s not clear how well-attended after-school programs are in these regions, Schoales says, adding that it was difficult to perform a thorough analysis on attendance because these programs are being run outside of the district. But, he says, at least one person they interviewed for the report suggested they were having a hard time engaging lower-income families on the fifth day.
When asked, Schoales identified Brighton, which has more than 22,000 students and is comparatively large and urban, as the place with some of the most robust outside-of-school programming.
So what does it look like there?
Since adopting the four-day week, there are no classes on Mondays in the district, and the remaining days were lengthened to avoid lost instruction time. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t students at school even on Mondays, Fiedler, the former superintendent of 27J Schools, says: Extracurriculars such as athletics, students council meetings and choir practices still happen on Mondays. City and community programs including the Boys & Girls Club also pitched in when the district made the switch, beefing up staff to make programs more available on those days, he adds. An orchestra program started up as well.
But after the first year, the city stepped back from its expanded programs, in part because they were not being used, Fiedler says.
The district also expanded a preexisting program — where parents pay a fee for day care — to cover Mondays, he says. Initially, around 1,000 parents expressed interest in the program. But when it actually started, there were more like 300 to 400 students enrolled, he says. Fiedler suspects that many families who had expressed interest in the program didn’t end up using it because they figured out ways to “share caregiver duties” — relying on neighborhood members, or older siblings or family members to step in and watch younger students on Mondays.
Because of the lower-than-expected interest, the district had to pivot from its plan to run these care programs in all elementary schools, instead running them in regional "centers" around the city.
‘The Second-Best Option’
When compared to other methods of attracting teachers, policy analysts recommend districts weigh their options for shortened school weeks carefully.
Some have suggested the practice may even be counterproductive for taxpayers reluctant to increase school budgets. For instance, voters in Brighton had shot down additional funding for schools repeatedly. But by denying the school district enough funding to adequately compensate teachers, voters ended up lowering their own property values, says Frank James Perrone, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington’s School of Education. That’s because the district felt backed into a corner, as if it really didn't have a choice but to embrace four-day school weeks, he says. An analysis, coauthored by Perrone, found that the four-day school week policy actually lowered property values there by 2 to 4 percent, purportedly showing that homebuyers preferred to avoid the area.
But 27J Schools, the Brighton school district, is one of the largest districts in Colorado to adopt a four-day week. And Fiedler, the superintendent of the district who retired this year, isn’t swayed by the arguments against the four-day school week.
The district lost staff the first year it moved over to the four-day schedule. But in the years since, Fiedler says, it hasn’t had the turnover rate one would expect for one of the lowest-paying districts in the area. Data that Fiedler sent to EdSurge suggests that 27J had a 13.61 percent turnover rate in 2023 to 2024 with a $52,002 base teacher salary. That puts it in the lower third for teacher turnover in the area, despite offering the sixth-lowest base salary.
Plus, Fiedler adds, the graduation rates have lifted, including for disadvantaged students. Data from Fiedler shows a steady incline in graduation rates for the district between 2017 and 2022. That increase may not be because of the shortened weeks specifically, but he says that it happened at the same time, meaning that the policy didn’t prevent the district from improving academically.
Twice per month, the district also uses those free Mondays for teacher training, which has been good for morale, he adds.
But even if he isn’t convinced shortened weeks are a bad policy, Fiedler seems to agree that it’s not the ideal situation.
And he rejects the notion that four-day weeks save substantial money. It saved the district around $800,000 or so during the first year, Fiedler estimates, mostly in transportation costs but also in salaries for food service and electricity. In his view, that's such a small amount when compared to the overall budget that it's "not worth the heartache."
The “mill levy” override — that would provide additional money to boost teacher salaries — finally passed for 27J Schools in 2022. They still offer salaries at the lower end of the range, and the district likely won’t transition back. “Nobody called my office and said, ‘Now that you have money, you have to go back to a five-day school week,’” Fiedler says.
Even so, he says it feels “like the second-best option.” If the district had been able to find enough money to pay teachers what they are worth, it would have never tried the four-day school week, he says: “But absent that, you've got to try something new and different to be competitive.”
Now, when other districts ask about four-day school weeks, he tells them that he doesn’t want them to change over, because he doesn’t want the district to lose its “competitive edge.”
Those were the words out of Dr. Richard DuFour’s mouth more than a decade ago as I was excitedly and passionately explaining how my district was going about our work.
DuFour and Dr. Robert Eaker are the two co-founders of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) at Work movement. Needless to say, I was taken aback, disappointed and a bit hurt.
And yet, he was right.
Approaching Professional Learning Communities — In Theory
Year One: What do we want students to know and be able to do?
We weren’t getting to action fast enough. We were taking too much time planning — too much time in the realm of theory instead of practice and too much time not directly impacting student learning through implementing all four critical questions of a professional learning community.
We had forms and processes to ensure that, over the course of the year, every teacher identified eight to 10 essentials per course, per semester. This meant teams would also have to come to a common understanding of what those essentials meant, when they would be taught and what resources they would be using to teach them.
Year Two: How will we know when they know or can do it?
We dubbed our summer training “PLC Q2 Boot Camp,” and the focus for the year was to develop high-quality end-of-unit or formative common assessments. Length didn’t matter, nor did assessment type. Student results on any of those assessments didn’t matter either. The emphasis was on simply creating assessments where the targets and evidence matched each other.
Then, after two years of work, we finally arrived at Critical Questions 3 and 4: “What will we do when students don’t know or can’t do it?” and “What will we do when students do know it or can do it?” Two full years later, with hours and hours of training and team meetings, the district began helping teams adjust their instructional practices.
DuFour quickly identified the problem with our plan: We weren’t getting to action fast enough. We were taking too much time planning — too much time in the realm of theory instead of practice and too much time not directly impacting student learning through implementing all four critical questions of a professional learning community.
While ultimately, the work we did led to significant improvements in student learning — five of seven school buildings were identified as Model PLC at Work schools — the results could have come faster, positively influencing even more students. The process would likely have gained momentum more quickly than what we experienced.
Moving Quickly to Action in a Professional Learning Community
What was DuFour’s alternative? Recurring cycles of inquiry and action research.
This means that educators should work on all four critical questions within the span of a single unit and that this cycle should repeat itself four or five times during the course of a single year.
As a fun example, in one district I was working with recently, the team was hesitant to jump into the work. You may be familiar with some of the common refrains: “Everything we teach is essential for students to know” and “We are dumbing down the curriculum if we eliminate content for students” were just a couple.
Despite their hesitation, they agreed to clarify what students truly needed to learn in their next unit, what was important for students to learn in that same unit, and what was nice to know in that upcoming unit.
To be clear, we focused only on the next unit and not an entire year’s study. The standard they were focused on had to do with students evaluating the impact of the people, places, events and symbols of the Greeks, Romans, Turks, Russians, etc. As you can imagine, there was no shortage of content embedded in that one standard, and as we all subconsciously know and unfortunately don’t frequently acknowledge out loud, there was — and often is in any single unit — far too much content for students to master everything. So we started with one civilization and tried to narrow down the specific people, places, events, and symbols that students needed to learn, those that were important to teach, and those that were nice to know.
What's taught versus what's learned: The most important differences
The result was a chart like below. It was, of course, filled in with the content the teachers would teach. The difference between this practice and past practices, however, was that the need row was what the team was committing to ensuring that students learn. Everything else was not considered essential and, therefore, would be taught but not guaranteed. In other words, a chart like this distinguishes the difference between what was going to be taught and what was going to be learned.
Turning a Professional Learning Community Around to Try Again
Need help turning your professional learning community efforts around? Check out these resources to learn more about repairing or improving your PLC:
Just six weeks later, I returned to work with the team. The results of that one activity from September? A reduction in the failure rate on their end-of-unit exam from a typical 15 to 20 students to just two. Quite frankly, all they did was clarify the targets students needed to learn. From there, they created some graphic organizers to help kids with that content.
The team stated that not only did fewer kids fail, but the understanding of the need-to-know targets was much greater than before. As a bonus, students were actually interested in the important and nice content and made more connections to the need-to-know content than in previous years. It was a total transformation in only a handful of weeks, not years.
Lesson Learned: Getting Better at the Four Questions
DuFour was right, of course. Spending years getting ready to improve our practice without doing something about our work right now doesn’t work. For one, it’s a disservice to our students today. For another, it doesn’t generate momentum. If you’re considering the four critical questions regarding yearlong processes, take DuFour’s advice: “Don’t do that.”
Instead, ensure quick improvement cycles because it only takes a few weeks to see dramatic results and generate momentum for improvement. Move quickly to action.
When Tim Walz was announced as Kamala Harris’ running mate earlier this month, his ascendancy helped to elevate the idea of educators serving in public office.
Walz, who served several terms in Congress before becoming the governor of Minnesota in 2018, is a former high school social studies teacher and football coach who, to this day, holds those identities close. Come January 2025, depending on the outcome of the election, he could be moving to Washington, D.C., to serve as vice president of the United States.
Though Walz is squarely in the spotlight during this election, a number of other educators are seeking public office this year, many for the first time.
In many ways, politics is an obvious and natural progression for educators, teacher-candidates and political scientists say.
This summer, EdSurge spoke with five individuals running for election — three classroom teachers, one superintendent and an early childhood advocate — about their motivations and the skills and experiences that would set them up for success in office, if elected in November.
Once a Public Servant, Always a Public Servant
Plenty of former educators hold public office today, including at the federal level, such as Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, a former preschool teacher, and Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, a former high school history and government teacher.
“They’re already public servants,” Siegel-Stechler points out. “They have a lot of insight and experience in how to navigate some of the challenges that go along with large public institutions and the processes that make government happen.”
Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, adds that individuals who prioritize public service and volunteerism are more likely to engage with civic and political organizations.
Arguably the highest form of service is to teach every day.
— Jonathan Collins
“It’s the involvement in those networks that tends to catapult people into the process of running for office,” Collins says. “Think about teachers and teachers’ unions, about what a teacher does on an everyday basis. Arguably the highest form of service is to teach every day.”
Chad King Wilson Sr. is a high school alternative education and social studies teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. He’s running for a seat on the Frederick County Board of Education this November.
Teachers, Wilson says, understand that their role — with students, with families, in a community — has a certain power and, with it, demands a certain responsibility.
“In politics today, the decisions our elected officials make affect our lives — sometimes in small ways, sometimes big,” he says. “Educators have a service mindset and a duty of care in everything they do. That serves you well in any elected position, because you’re already serving. You’re a public servant, [asking], ‘How can I uplift you? How can I get you where you need to be?’”
Education Is Inherently Political — Even More So Today
Between the pandemic, which led to divisive and prolonged school closures, and the increasing politicization of education — from book bans to discussions of gender identity and legislation about what can be taught or said in a classroom — many teachers feel vilified.
“Teachers have found themselves under intense scrutiny in recent years, and that has really made them staunch advocates,” says Siegel-Stechler of Tufts. “When you feel like you are asked to justify and asked to uphold your values, that can lead you to want to make big changes.”
A few conditions must be in place for someone to run for office, adds Collins of Columbia. Once you account for access to resources and connections, the most important factor is being energized.
“You could argue no professional has had reasons to be as fired up over the last few years as teachers,” he says. “Teachers have been showing that they are fed up for quite a while. It’s the people who get fed up who tend to see politics as that next step as well.”
Especially when teachers feel that the conversations being had and decisions being made about them and their students don’t reflect reality, that can inspire some to run.
Numerous candidates noted that their school boards and state legislatures lack representation from people who have knowledge and understanding about schools today.
“You don’t have a lot of people [in office] who are still in front of students, working inside of schools, who know this because they live it every day,” says Wilson. “That gave me the nudge to go over the line: ‘I’ve gotta step up.’”
Sarah Marzilli is an elementary school art teacher who was running for a seat on the school board in Volusia County, Florida, but recently lost her primary. She feels that, with the pace of change in schools today — from social media and cellphone use to the growing challenges around mental health — school boards need representation from current educators.
“We need to make sure we have someone who’s in the trenches, so to speak,” Marzilli says, “not an outsider looking in on it.”
Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell, a longtime Spanish teacher and current substitute teacher who is running for a seat in the Kentucky state legislature, notes that because a lot of legislators are lawyers, they can have unrealistic expectations about how quickly change happens in education.
“When they talk about education, they talk as if you can snap your fingers and have something done,” Cottrell says. “As teachers, we know the amount of time it takes. We know more about the initiatives that look good on paper but won’t actually move the needle. … We’re results-driven.”
While tuning in to a recent public committee hearing about the growing population of English language learners in Kentucky schools, Cottrell was appalled by committee members’ ignorance about basic education codes. “I wanted to jump through the screen,” she recalls. “No one knows what they’re talking about. … They’re not even asking the right questions.”
Susie Hedalen is currently the superintendent of Montana’s Townsend Public School District and running to be Montana’s next superintendent of public instruction. Hedalen has worked as a teacher, a principal and a superintendent at districts of varying sizes in Montana.
“I’m living it every day,” Hedalen says. “I know what our challenges are. I know what school leaders feel like they need and how the state could support leaders as well as teachers. I get to work with students and families every day and really have a pulse on what’s happening in education in Montana right now.”
A Bevy of Transferable Skills
Educators tend to possess a set of skills that lend themselves well to public office, many people pointed out.
For one, teachers are often effective communicators to different audiences, be it students, families or administrators. They can communicate well one-on-one but also to large groups.
Teachers are practiced decision-makers, too.
“They make a lot of hard decisions every single day,” Siegel-Stechler says. “Alone in a class with 20 to 30 kids, they have to be able to make good decisions on the fly.”
Educators are often good listeners. They are trusted members in their communities. They get along well with people who have a range of personalities and opinions. They have a certain comfort level with public speaking. And they tend to be disciplined. Those are all qualities that came up during interviews.
Educators are usually empathetic too, Collins says, noting that empathy is a quality missing from our politics today.
“In order to be an effective teacher, you have to be able to empathize with students — not judge them based on preconceived ideas, understand the humanity and dignity of each child and how to maximize their potential,” he says.
Educators Take a Seat at the Table
The two candidates who are running for seats in their state legislatures — Cottrell from Kentucky and Safiyah Jackson from North Carolina — both noted that the electoral system is stacked against people like them.
“If you’re an educator with educator friends, or a Black woman with Black friends, it makes fundraising very difficult,” says Jackson, an early childhood advocate and chief strategy officer at the North Carolina Partnership for Children. “If you’re a lawyer with lawyer friends, bam. It’s a system designed to deliver exactly as it’s delivering.”
It takes a lot of time and money and social connections to run and win a campaign, Cottrell says. That’s not very practical if you’re a full-time employee earning regular wages.
“I would love to see more teachers run for office and be empowered to do that,” Cottrell says, “but that’s really, really difficult under the work burden they have.” (Cottrell is not teaching full-time right now.)
The result, she says, is a body of legislators that does not include many people with “boots on the ground, who are getting their hands dirty in the work.”
Cottrell understands that not every educator can or wants to run for office. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be involved in the process of politics in some way. They might consider alternatives like asking to testify before a committee or offering to work with their representatives on legislation pertaining to education.
“The more teachers are involved in the process, the better relationship there will be between the statehouse and schools,” Cottrell says. “That can only benefit the kids.”
As someone who views cooking and baking as hobbies, not chores, I follow a lot of food bloggers and recipe developers on social media. I subscribe to many of their newsletters. I, well, make and eat a lot of their food.
Yet I’ve only come across one who devotes back-to-school season to easing the financial burden on educators.
Deb Perelman, the best-selling author and food blogger behind Smitten Kitchen, has been running the Classroom Wishlist Project for three years now. Each summer, she creates a post on her Instagram account (1.8 million followers) welcoming teachers to share their school supply lists, along with a bit of humanizing information like where they live and what they teach, in a Google form.
Then Perelman puts their responses in a spreadsheet, which as of mid-August has over 730 entries for the 2024-25 school year, and invites her expansive reader community to visit a teacher’s wish list and purchase what they can so that these educators don’t have to pay out of their pockets.
The average teacher, according to the nonprofit DonorsChoose, spends close to $700 of their own money on classroom supplies in a given year — a reality that “feels all wrong and makes me sad,” Perelman says in the Classroom Wishlist Project description.
The famous food writer lives in Manhattan and has children entering fourth and 10th grade this year. There are all sorts of causes and issues she could support. Why, I wondered, did she choose this one?
I recently got to ask Perelman that myself, along with other questions — like what has most surprised her about the endeavor and what recipe on her site most says “back to school.”
She is quick to note that the wish list project, which she finds gratifying and heartening, does not require major sacrifice on her part.
“I almost feel guilty, sometimes, about what a low lift this project is for me,” she admits. “I would do it if it was harder, [but] I feel like I have to be honest — I'm not sweating over this.”
She adds: “It's more a reflection of the generosity of the community, and the kindness. This is not about me doing anything special. I'm really just using a space I've already created to bounce the light back to people who need it.”
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
EdSurge: When and how did the Classroom Wishlist Project first begin?
Deb Perelman: This is the third summer, so I guess that means that it began in — what year is this? — 2022.
A reader messaged me, and she said her daughter was a school teacher, and [the school] had given her no budget for classroom supplies. She asked: Would I mind sharing her classroom wish list with my readers and getting the word out?
It feels good. I think everybody wins. I love the idea of supporting teachers.
— Deb Perelman
And when I did, they wiped out her wish list in, I feel like, under a day. The generosity was just staggering. And I heard from a lot of other teachers who asked if I could help them, too. I thought, ‘Yes, why not? Let's just do this.’
The first summer, it was not the most organized. Like, people would [direct message] me their list, and I would share it in a spreadsheet. By the second summer, which was last summer, I knew I was going to do this as a project, hopefully every year.
I created a Google Form where teachers could submit their list, and asked them to tell us a little bit about their classroom and to tell us what city they’re in. I think that helps a lot because sometimes you might read, like, ‘Oh, it's a music classroom. I love music,’ or, ‘Oh, that's my town.’ So it's more meaningful for people to have a little more information when there are so many [lists].
Doing it that way, we got a lot, a lot, a lot more submissions — like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And I worried — and I still worry — that we get too many submissions to make any meaningful difference. If it's 20 lists, we're going to wipe them out. But I can't promise that for 900 lists at all — or even close.
But the thing I forget is that, if you need stuff and a stranger sends you even a quarter of it or one [item], it still just completely makes your day. Whether you just got the crayons or just got 10 books, it doesn't matter. There's no way it's not well received, even if it's not everything people need.
Photo courtesy of Deb Perelman
I imagine people receiving and giving appreciate the humanity of it.
Yeah, I think it feels good on both sides. And I think it feels really fun to buy books and crayons for classrooms. I love buying school supplies.
I have two kids, and they're both in public school. When they first started in their elementary school, we would get [a list] from the teachers at the beginning of the year, ‘Here's some stuff we could use for the classroom, bring it in if you can.’ And then, as the fundraising improved at the public school, the PTA was able to bring in more money. We no longer have to buy any school supplies at all, and it really is such a privilege. I mean, we don't even buy a single box of crayons. It's just — it's crazy.
We got very lucky. … And like I said, I think it's so fun to buy crayons and books and whatever for a classroom. It feels really good.
That's a very organic start. Do you often get reader emails of people asking for you to support a cause?
Not as often as I would expect, but maybe I'm not that on top of my email.
Photo courtesy of Deb Perelman
One of the dark Smitten Kitchen secrets is that I have no staff, just sort of a very, very, very part-time assistant. I'm just like a do-it-myself person, which is good and bad. So I wouldn't say this happens a ton, but I liked this one. It feels good. I think everybody wins. I love the idea of supporting teachers.
The things that these teachers need are often so basic. These are small, inexpensive purchases that can really make somebody’s day. And then I get these lovely notes back from them. It’s just the joy, the incandescent joy, from people who walk into their classroom and find that a complete stranger bought all the glue they needed for the year. Or somebody sent me this picture of — it must be 50 books for her classroom. Somebody bought basically every book on her list, and she walked into her classroom and it was there.
How do the teachers find you? Are they often readers in your online community?
Usually. I mostly do the shoutout through Instagram, where I have my largest social community. I have a website too, but I almost try to funnel it down a little bit. It's either somebody who reads the site, or it might be their kid or their friend. I was trying to keep it from being too wide and too open on the internet, because otherwise we'll just get 10,000 wish lists and nothing will get filled.
But I also like the idea, if I can get a part-time staff person next summer, of trying to expand it a little bit more. Like maybe I can get some people to sponsor or match wish list clearing. I just don't have, personally, the bandwidth to dig into that right now.
Is there any teacher this year or in past years whose story stands out to you?
Oh, my goodness, there have been so many.
I remember last summer, after the wildfires in Hawaii, there were people who were looking specifically for the lists from those teachers [on Maui].
Especially when there's been some sort of tragedy or weather disaster, and it's been in the news and teachers don't even know how they're going to start their school year, I think there's definitely a lot of focus on that. There's definitely an interest in helping in such a specific way — where what you're doing is going to directly affect a kid's education and how their year goes. It feels like the most satisfying giving in that way.
Is there a request that has been especially frequent or something that surprises you when you look through these wish lists?
I think the thing that [is most surprising] is just that so much of how a school thrives depends on the way we do funding. And I am not a national expert on education in any way … but so much of it comes from crowdsourced fundraising and not out of the money schools get from the state for students.
In a lot of places, parents don't have extra money to give. And then there's other places where parents are writing $500 checks or more to the PTA every year, and it's just crazy how much that changes a kid's education.
If you're in an area where parents don't have deep pockets and a lot of spare change, why should the kids' classrooms not have what they need? Why should that affect whether they have enough crayons? It's wild when you think of it that way.
That's what's been eye-opening for me. I've also heard from so many retired teachers and older teachers who are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I must have spent $2,000 a year from my own paycheck. This is so nice that people want to help out.’ People don't see this money that the teachers are spending. It's invisible.
Do you measure success by dollars raised or wish lists cleared, or are you measuring it at all?
I'm actually not measuring it at all. … I do use the thank you notes as a good measure of how it's being received and the joy. You can always just see the joy.
Final question: What recipe on your website is the most quintessential ‘back to school’ recipe?
I think homemade Oreos have got to be it, right? I mean, of course. It's either going to be grilled cheese and tomato soup — a kid-friendly meal — or it's going to be homemade Oreos. They’re really easy: It’s like two chocolate sugar cookies with vanilla in them. They’re really fun.
For the past couple of years, unrelenting change has come fast.
Even while schools are stuck dealing with deep challenges, COVID-19 pandemic relief funding is running its course. Meanwhile, new technologies seem to flow out in an unstoppable stream. These often have consequences in education, from an increase in cheating on assignments enabled by prose-spewing chatbots, to experiments that bring AI into classrooms as teaching assistants or even as students.
For some teachers and school leaders, it can feel like an onslaught.
Some educators connect AI to broader changes that they perceive have been harmful to students, says Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Through interviews, she’s found that some educators link AI to social media and cellphones. So they’re having an understandably emotional response, she adds: “It’s kinda scary if you think about it too long.”
But in this ever-shifting stream of change, Lake is among those who believe new technology can be steered in a way that navigates schools to a more promising channel for reducing disparities in education in the U.S.
However, if that’s going to happen, it’s imperative that education leaders start pushing AI to transform teaching and learning in ways that are beneficial, particularly for low-income and historically disadvantaged students, observers like Lake argue.
If artificial intelligence doesn’t help solve disparities, advocates worry, it will worsen them.
Hazard Lights
AI has been used in education since at least the 1970s. But the recent barrage of technology has coincided with a more intense spotlight on disparities in student outcomes, fueled by the pandemic and social movements such as protests over the killing of George Floyd. AI has fed hopes of reaching more equality thanks to its promise to increase personalized learning and to boost efficiency and sustainability for an overworked teaching force.
In late 2022, the White House released a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” hoping that it would strengthen privacy rights. And last year, the U.S. Department of Education, along with the nonprofit Digital Promise, weighed in with recommendations for making sure this technology can be used “responsibly” in education to increase equity and support overburdened teachers.
If you ask some researchers, though, it’s not enough.
There have been fears that AI will accidentally magnify biases either by relying on algorithms that are trained on biased data, or by other methods such as automating assessments that ignore student experiences even while sorting them into different learning paths.
Now, some early data suggests that AI could indeed widen disparities. For instance: Lake’s organization, a national research and policy center that’s associated with Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, released a report this spring that looked at K-12 teachers’ use of virtual learning platforms, adaptive learning systems and chatbots. The report, a collaboration with the RAND Corporation, found that educators working in suburban schools already profess to having more experience with and training for AI than those in urban or rural schools.
The report also found that teachers in schools where more than half of students are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander or Native American had more experience using the tools — but less training — than teachers who work in majority-white schools.
If suburban students — on average, wealthier than urban or rural students — are receiving more preparation for the complexities of an AI-influenced world, it opens up really big existential questions, Lake says.
Big Promises — or Problems
So how can advocates push AI to deliver on its promise of serving all students?
It wouldn’t be responsible to lean on AI as the quick fix for all our economic shortages in schooling.
— Rina Bliss
It’s all about strategy right now, making smart investments and setting down smart policy, Lake says.
Another report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education calls for more work to engage states on effective testing and implementation in their schools, and for the federal government to put more detailed guardrails and guidance in place. The report, “Wicked Opportunities,” also calls for more investment into research and development. From its perspective, the worst outcome would be to leave districts to fend for themselves when it comes to AI.
Part of the reason urban districts are less prepared for AI may be complexity and the sheer number of issues they are facing, observers speculate. Superintendents in urban districts say they are overwhelmed, Lake says. She explains that while they may be excited by the opportunities of AI, superintendents are busy handling immediate problems: pandemic recovery, the end of federal relief funding, enrollment declines and potential school closures, mental health crises among students and absenteeism. What these leaders want is evidence that suggests which tools actually work, as well as help navigating edtech tools and training their teachers, she adds.
But other observers worry about whether AI is truly the answer for solving structural problems in schools broadly.
Introducing more AI to classrooms, at least in the short term, implies teaching students using screens and virtual learning, argues Rina Bliss, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University. But many students are already getting too much screen and online time at home, she says. It degrades their mental health and their ability to work through assignments, and educators should be cautious about adding more screen time or virtual learning, Bliss says.
Bliss also points to a “print advantage,” a bump in how much is learned from print materials compared to screens, which has to do with factors like engagement with the text and how quickly a student’s eyes can lock onto and stay focused on material. In her view, digital texts, especially when they are connected to the internet, are “pots of distractions,” and increasing screen-based instruction can actually disadvantage students.
Ultimately, she adds, an approach to instruction that overrelies on AI could reinforce inequality. It’s possible that these tools are setting up a tiered system, where affluent students attend schools that emphasize hands-on learning experiences while other schools increasingly depend on screens and virtual learning. These tools shouldn’t replace real-world learning, particularly in under-resourced schools, she adds. She worries that excessive reliance on this technology could create an “underclass of students” who are given artificial stopgaps to big problems like school understaffing and underfunding. It wouldn’t be responsible to lean on AI as the quick fix for all our economic shortages in schooling, Bliss argues.
So how should educators approach AI? Perhaps the correct posture is cautious hope and deliberate planning.
Nobody knows precisely how AI will impact education yet, argues Lake, of CRPE. It is not a panacea, but in her estimation there’s a real opportunity to use it to close learning gaps. So it’s important to craft plans to deliver on the potential: “A lot of people freeze when it comes to AI, and if they can instead think about what they want for their kids, their schools, and whether AI can help, that seems like a productive path to me, and a much more manageable one,” Lake says.
There’s nothing wrong with being hopeful, she adds.
Chris Nelson teaches preschool in rural Vermont, just a few miles from the Canadian border, but not in the school or child care center most people think of when they imagine state or locally funded pre-K. Instead, her 3- and 4-year-old students are integrated into her five-star-rated home-based child care program, where she also cares for younger children and a few kids who come after school until their working parents pick them up.
Many of those parents would have to drive more than an hour to reach a center- or school-based pre-K program where the state covers tuition for just 10 hours a week. In contrast, Nelson’s program is open 12 hours a day to cover parents’ commutes, the nontraditional hours of shift workers and those who do seasonal work.
Nelson would like to continue teaching pre-K, and parents of those children would like to receive the state’s $3,800 free tuition for enrolling in Nelson’s program. However, new recommendations from Vermont’s School Board Insurance Trust (VSBIT), which insures schools and preschool programs, effectively exclude home-based providers from participation, because the $2 million insurance policy they recommend (based on school district needs) isn’t even available to home-based child care providers, sometimes also called family child care providers or FCCs. Nelson brought the problem to the attention of state child care regulators. In a memo released in mid-June to school district superintendents, Vermont Agencies of Education and Human Services indicate that local departments of education can waive the insurance requirement for home-based pre-K programs that are unable or cannot afford to secure the policy recommended by VSBIT. Because this policy change has come so late, just two months before the 2024 school year begins, when most districts have already made decisions about partnerships with private pre-K providers, it remains to be seen how many home-based child care providers will be able to offer pre-K this year.
Vermont, like many states, is committed to a mixed-delivery model for pre-K education, allowing the state’s pre-K tuition subsidy to be applied for programs in a variety of existing settings, including those based in homes. Nevertheless, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) State of Preschool 2023 Yearbook, in 2022-2023, more than 60 percent of pre-K children served were in public school settings, not private programs or home-based child care options. Together, all of those programs served just 44 percent of eligible 4-year-olds and 17 percent of 3-year-olds. More than half of all 3- and 4-year-old children still do not attend preschool. For many rural families especially, the barriers of paying for and getting their children to a pre-K program are just too great.
Creating “universal” access to high-quality pre-K will require a massive, long-term public investment (as much as $33 billion, according to NIEER). In the near term, states can increase access by leveraging the existing infrastructure for providing pre-K in the home-based programs that already serve many rural families. Policy experts like The Erikson Institute and NIEER recommend “meaningfully” including and supporting home-based child care providers in the expansion and implementation of publicly funded pre-K as a promising first step to increasing access, especially in states where more than 50 percent of the population lives in a child care desert. A new initiative led by Home Grown, a national funder collaborative focused on improving the quality of and access to home-based child care, in partnership with NIEER, would support state, city, county and tribal government leaders to include home-based child care in their pre-K programs.
States’ commitment to a mixed-delivery model often falters in part because many, like Vermont, have a governance structure that reinforces a tendency to see pre-K as just an additional grade before kindergarten, with regulations and funding that follow the template of elementary education. These include layers of requirements for teacher licensure, classroom environments and administrative oversight. Meanwhile, home-based child care is overseen by the department of social services, with different parameters for licensure and oversight. Former state Rep. Ashton Clemmons, who co-chaired the early childhood caucus in North Carolina’s General Assembly, notes that this “disalignment” works to segregate infant-toddler caregivers from those who teach pre-K.
“If you give parents a voucher and let them go where they want to, many parents would choose FCCs for pre-K as well as care for their infants and toddlers,” says Rachel Bymun, a licensed home-based child care provider in Bay Point, California, a low-income, primarily immigrant community an hour from San Francisco. She notes that although California also subscribes to a mixed-delivery model, her county does not have the Family Child Care Home Education Network that would enable home-based child care providers like her to participate in California’s subsidized pre-K program. As a result, families in her county who wish to access publicly funded pre-K have to leave her program and enroll in another setting.
The families who prefer a home-based child care environment often are the most underserved and hard to reach, including families of color, those in rural communities, those who speak languages other than English, and those who work nontraditional hours, according to Alexandra Patterson, director of policy and strategy at Home Grown, a national collaborative of funders supporting home-based child care: “Excluding these providers from the formal pre-K system further marginalizes the families and providers who most need those resources.”
Another significant barrier to access is that working parents need more than two to six hours of care per day for 180 days a year, which is the typical pre-K school year. Many eligible working parents struggle to get multiple children of different ages to different schools or can’t find a preschool with an open slot that is also within commuting distance from their work and home. Home-based pre-K, on the other hand, is typically integrated into a comprehensive child care program serving multiple children of mixed ages that is open all day and year-round. This family-like setting, according to this report from The Erikson Institute, provides continuity and stability for children, culturally and linguistically responsive care, individualized education, and fosters the community connections and relationships that families rely on for support from each other and their child’s teacher.
Nelson’s nature-based, play-based approach to learning in a small, mixed-age group is a strength of home-based pre-K that many parents prefer to hectic classrooms full of 20 or 30 4-year-olds.
“Schools mandate 275 days a year for learning,” she says, “but I believe every single minute is a teachable moment. On a typical day, we might visit the pond to collect tadpoles and bring them back so that children can learn about life cycles. The two-year-olds might want to feel the little jelly eggs, and the older ones will see that the eggs grow legs and tails and grow into frogs.”
This approach is also endorsed by the National Academies New Vision for High Quality Preschool Curriculum. The “Magic 8” preschool classroom practices, according to child development researchers, include precisely the practices FCCs implement daily in their homes: lots of listening to children, holistic sequential activities, cooperative interactions between kids, and minimal time spent in transition from one space to another or between lessons. These videos from Home Grown feature home-based child care providers demonstrating these practices as they teach and care for mixed-age groups of children.
How could publicly funded pre-K programs enroll more children and accommodate the needs of more families? NIEER’s recent report and recommendations from the Erikson Institute on pay equity and support for providers detail strategies for setting pre-K reimbursement rates to reflect the true cost of providing high-quality pre-K services in a home-based child care setting. These include supporting home-based providers with educational, coaching and evaluation programs specific to preschool standards, setting environmental recommendations and the ratio of infants to toddlers allowed under a caregiver’s license appropriately for home-based settings. Changes like these would allow Nelson and other home-based child care providers to sustain their programs and open their doors to 3- and 4-year-olds who are waiting in the wings for school to start. This solution also builds on and strengthens the existing capacity of FCC educators, buttressing states’ workforces and economies in both the short and long terms.
What’s more, this solution doesn’t require building new preschool wings onto aging school buildings or training up a new cadre of preschool teachers. What it does require, says Patterson, is an “innovative and inclusive view of family child care homes as centers of learning, and of qualified caregivers who operate them as early childhood educators,” that is, pre-K teachers deserving of all the same support and salary afforded to school- or center-based pre-K programs.
What if why you choose to become a teacher determines how successful you will be in the role?
Society has always been fascinated to learn about the motivations of famous athletes, entertainers, and politicians and how they came to their profession. We think about their career trajectory and consider its relevance to ourselves or people we know. What if, similarly, we learned about the motivations of aspiring K-12 teachers, and used that to predict how effective they will be and how long they will stay in the classroom?
As professors and researchers in university teaching and learning programs, we’re fascinated by this question. We figured that learning more about teacher motivation could help us better understand teacher pipelines and find ways to diversify and improve the quality of our nation’s teachers, so we designed a study to gather more information.
From 2012-2018, nearly 2,800 preservice teachers within one of the largest teacher preparation programs in Texas responded to an essay prompt, “Explain why you decided to become a teacher.” We used a natural language processing algorithm to review their responses.
Historically, people went into teaching for relatively straightforward reasons: They desired a stable career, enjoyed having summers off, or had family members who were teachers. However, across the essay responses, we found that those motivations were not the most prevalent, nor were they related to teacher outcomes — but others were.
Studying Preservice Teacher Motivations
Previously, researchers have primarily looked at in-service teacher motivations. Rather than learning from someone who is already in the profession, we wanted to learn from those who have yet to enter the profession. This better informs our understanding of how to get someone interested in teaching to then aid recruitment.
Using machine learning to process the thousands of open-ended essay responses, we identified 10 broad reasons for why preservice teachers want to become teachers.
The two most frequent drivers were altruism (the desire to do selfless good) and intrinsic motivation (an enjoyment of teaching, helping or interacting with students or children). Other interesting but less frequently cited motivations include the impact of prior teachers, love of a content area, and a family connection to teaching.
Interestingly, motivations differed by preservice teachers’ characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, gender, family income and certification.
For instance, individuals seeking their elementary certification were more likely to enjoy working with children, whereas middle and high school preservice teachers were interested in teaching a particular content area. Relatedly, men were less likely than women to report that they had “always wanted to teach.” This suggests that background characteristics can shape motivations to become a teacher.
Further, and more importantly, we found that some teacher motivations were related to better teacher outcomes. While altruism was the most frequent answer given, it wasn’t the one most strongly correlated with effectiveness.
Specifically, preservice teachers who shared that they were intrinsically motivated to teach and had experienced some adversity within schools were found to be both more effective educators and less likely to leave the classroom prematurely. Individuals who had these two motivating factors had a significant and positive correlation with their clinical teaching observation scores, and were less likely to leave the K-12 public school system within their first several years of entry.
Though these were modest effects, the fact that written self-reports of teaching motivation had even some significance with these outcomes is noteworthy. Motivations are no longer just interesting; they can be consequential.
From Motivations to Marketing
By better understanding teacher motivations, we can learn more about who could succeed in the profession. More precisely, we want to find individuals who are intrinsically motivated to teach or have overcome adversity within education spaces.
These future teachers could be like the following study participant who expressed how adversity and the impact of prior teachers motivated them to become a teacher:
“The statistics are stacked against someone with my background. Living in an impoverished neighborhood and struggling to learn English as my second language, and a daughter of Mexican immigrant parents who didn’t even get to finish primary school … I was fortunate to have many teachers who became my role models … I want to pay forward what my teachers did for me.”
How can we get these kinds of people into the classroom?
First, states need to consider long-term solutions to teacher shortages, including finding and nudging motivated individuals into educator preparation programs. Policymakers could invest in early teaching opportunities such as tutoring programs or summer programs with an explicit design to encourage individuals to consider careers in education and teaching (consider Breakthrough Collaborative as an example).
Second, teacher preparation programs need to prioritize strategic marketing, particularly in places where intrinsic motivation for teaching occurs more naturally (think: high schools, college campuses and child care centers).
Third, school districts could consider teacher motivations as part of their hiring process. Considering all else equal, it may be worth gaining insight into applicants’ interest in teaching, since our research indicates some motivations lead to more effective and longer tenured teachers than others.
Through these recommendations, classrooms across the nation can begin to utilize teacher motivations to enhance student learning.
Tiaja Gundy was just 19 years old when she started working at Federal Hill House, an early learning center in Providence, Rhode Island. It was 2016, and back then, she lacked experience and expertise working with young children. She had no intention of staying in the field long-term.
But the work grew on her. Gundy started out as a “floater,” helping with infants, toddlers and preschoolers as needed. She found she loved being around children.
As years passed, Gundy gained experience, and she moved into an assistant teaching position in a toddler classroom. Yet she was still missing some of the critical knowledge about child development that would allow her to continue growing in her career.
In 2021, Gundy recalls, one of her supervisors pulled her aside, and said, “You’re very promising. I know you can go farther in this field,” then told her about an interesting opportunity.
Rhode Island was launching a registered apprenticeship program for early childhood educators. With her employer’s support, Gundy would get to continue her paid teaching job as she took college courses, pursuing a Child Development Associate (CDA), a nationally recognized credential for those who work in early care and education settings. It would set her up to one day become a lead teacher. The apprenticeship would come with guaranteed wage increases, too.
Tiaja Gundy, a toddler teacher in Providence, Rhode Island.
The thought of balancing both work and school again was daunting, Gundy admits, but she was encouraged by her colleagues and excited to deepen her understanding of early childhood education. She decided to apply.
For decades, apprenticeship has been a popular career pathway for occupations such as electricians, plumbers and carpenters. In early care and education, however, there was limited uptake of the model.
Recently, that has changed — and fast. A decade ago, only a handful of states had registered apprenticeship programs in early childhood education. Five years ago, that had risen to about a dozen. As of last year, 35 states had an apprenticeship program for child care and early childhood education, and another seven states were developing them, according to a report published by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).
In 2021, the last year for which there is available data, early childhood education was one of the five fastest-growing occupations for apprenticeship, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
“There’s just been an explosion,” says Linda Smith, who authored the BPC’s apprenticeship report last summer and has since joined the Buffett Early Childhood Institute as director of policy. “It is happening all over this country.”
Explaining the ‘Explosion’
Smith sees at least two reasons for the emergence and rapid growth of this model in early childhood education.
The first is that more federal funding has become available in recent years. At least 10 states are using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars to build or expand their child care apprenticeship programs, and 13 are using Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five funds. As many as 15 states are using money from the Child Care and Development Fund, which received a $15 billion boost under ARPA.
The second reason is that there is increased awareness of how essential and how endangered the early care and education sector is.
“We’re in a tough spot right now with child care in this country,” Smith says soberly. “We have a workforce problem on our hands. Everyone is crying for child care workers. They can’t fill jobs. Wages are low. Child care programs can’t compete with big box stores, fast food, you name it.”
Broad recognition of that reality, Smith says, made policymakers and other leaders more willing to invest in the early education workforce.
It also helps, she adds, that people understand what apprenticeships are. It’s a well-established model that they can visualize and — importantly — measure.
From day one, an apprentice is a W-2 employee. There is no such thing as an unpaid apprentice.
— Randi Wolfe
Randi Wolfe, founder and executive director of Early Care and Education Pathways to Success (ECEPTS), an organization that provides training and technical assistance to get programs registered as apprenticeships, believes this model is proliferating in early care and education because it’s a natural fit for the field’s workforce development needs.
The early care and education workforce, Wolfe points out, is mostly made up of low-income women, and they are disproportionately women of color, immigrants, non-native English speakers and first-generation college students.
“Asking those people to do an internship that is unpaid creates unintended inequity,” Wolfe says. “From day one, an apprentice is a W-2 employee. There is no such thing as an unpaid apprentice.”
It works well for both educators and early learning programs, she adds. Early childhood educators who can’t afford to miss out on wages while they earn a degree get to do both at the same time — and at little or no cost. They get raises throughout the apprenticeship and, in many cases, are eligible for a promotion once they complete it.
Their employers, meanwhile, end up with highly skilled teachers who, after investing significant time and energy into their careers, are more likely to remain in the field.
“They’re the best qualified candidate,” Wolfe says of apprentices. “You’ve trained them. You’ve grown them.”
For early learning programs, better-qualified teachers can also help them move up the scale on their state’s quality rating system. Higher quality ratings are tied to higher subsidy reimbursement rates in many states. In short, apprentices help a program’s bottom line.
All of these outcomes support children and families, who benefit greatly from having teachers who provide high-quality, research-backed care and education.
The Nuts and Bolts of Apprenticeships
To be considered a “registered” apprenticeship, programs must meet a number of criteria and get approval from the U.S. Department of Labor or a state apprenticeship agency. All registered apprenticeships have a sponsor, such as a community-based organization, a workforce intermediary or a business, that manages program operations. Registered apprenticeship programs have a few other key ingredients:
Employers must partner with apprentices, allowing them to learn while they earn. In early care and education, the employers are early learning programs.
Apprentices must receive on-the-job training with opportunities to practice their new skills in context. Many programs pair apprentices with a mentor to fulfill this goal.
Apprentices must receive instruction related to their industry. In early care and education, that happens in a classroom setting, often at a community college but at four-year institutions too. Employers are expected to provide support and flexibility so apprentices can attend classes and complete coursework.
Apprentices are guaranteed incremental wage increases as their knowledge and skills grow. This is a huge win for early educators, who have some of the lowest wages in the country, but also a point of tension for programs, which are seldom in a financial position to pay staff more.
Apprentices must receive a credential. In early education, that is usually a CDA or an associate degree, and sometimes a bachelor’s degree.
Despite the many criteria, there is still some flexibility for individual apprenticeship programs to put their own spin on the model.
In Rhode Island, where Gundy apprenticed, the program is exclusively for infant and toddler teachers, often the “least educated and least compensated” faction of the early childhood workforce, says Lisa Hildebrand, executive director of the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children, which helped develop and implement the program, in partnership with a state agency, and now manages it.
There is a notion in the field, Hildebrand says, that if you start out as an infant or toddler teacher, you can get more training and education and then “move up” to teaching preschool.
“It’s almost like a promotion,” she says, because preschool teachers typically earn more money and command more respect.
But that dynamic leads to the high turnover of infant and toddler teachers, which, given the challenges many programs already face with hiring and retention, and the legal requirements around staff-to-child ratios, can result in classroom closures and reduced slots for the youngest children. It certainly has in Rhode Island.
“The waiting list for infants and toddlers is absolutely astronomical,” Hildebrand says, acknowledging that’s true outside of Rhode Island too. “It is reaching critical levels at this point.”
With additional funding on the way, the apprenticeship may soon expand to preschool teachers, among whom there is ample interest, Hildebrand notes. But right now, Rhode Island is focused on retaining the teachers who are in the highest demand.
Minnesota’s registered apprenticeship program, which launched in summer 2023, includes a strong mentorship component. Each apprentice is paired with a mentor, often a colleague at the program where they work, says Erin Young, who manages the program for Child Care Aware of Minnesota.
“That’s the secret sauce,” says Young. “That’s the magic.”
Mentors, who receive 24 hours of free training, guide apprentices through questions and topics ranging from children’s behavioral challenges, to curriculum implementation, to family engagement. That can be especially helpful for apprentices who are still quite new to the field of early childhood education, Young explains.
“It’s nice to have someone say, ‘It’s OK.’ ‘Try this.’ ‘Start here,’” Young says. “Having a mentor at the beginning of my early childhood career would’ve been a huge help.”
The mentorship made an impression on Katelyn Sarkar, an apprentice who graduated with her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education leadership in June.
Katelyn Sarkar, a lead teacher and early childhood apprentice in Rochester, Minnesota, reads a book in her Head Start classroom. Photo courtesy of Sarkar.
Sarkar’s mentor would observe her in her classroom at a Head Start program in Rochester, Minnesota, then offer feedback and suggest strategies for her to try. “As an early childhood educator, I grew so much more in my skills because of that,” Sarkar shares.
Next up, Young is developing an apprenticeship model for licensed family child care providers, a group that is currently left out of most registered apprenticeship programs, despite being the “dominant form of care in rural Minnesota,” Young says, and an option preferred by many families.
“If it gets approved, that’s a really big win,” Young notes. “It opens the door for other states to do it.”
No Such Thing as a Silver Bullet
Although many early childhood advocates view the apprenticeship model as a promising strategy for workforce retention and improvement, they’re also quick to caution against overweighting its potential.
In early childhood, we tend to [want] a single solution to a complex problem. That does not work. ... Apprenticeships are never going to be the only answer.
— Linda Smith
“In early childhood, we tend to [want] a single solution to a complex problem. That does not work. The problems of child care in this country are very complicated,” says Smith of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. “Apprenticeships are never going to be the only answer.”
The model, while exciting, has its limitations, Smith adds.
Right now, apprenticeship cohorts tend to be quite small, with around five to 25 early childhood educators enrolled. Rhode Island graduated 16 apprentices in its pilot cohort and has another 17 enrolled now. Minnesota had 19 apprentices enrolled as of June.
That’s because apprenticeship programs are demanding, resource-intensive and very costly.
In Minnesota, for example, where early childhood apprenticeship costs fall on the high end, Young budgets $20,000 to $24,000 per apprentice per year. Apprenticeships there run for at least two years, she says.
That estimate includes covering 85 percent of the cost of college tuition and books, as well as giving apprentices an annual $2,000 stipend to help with transportation, internet access and their remaining 10 percent of tuition costs, and awarding them a small bonus at the end of their apprenticeship year.
It also includes an annual $5,000 stipend to employers to offset the costs of hosting an apprentice. In Minnesota, employers chip in the final 5 percent of tuition costs, and they are expected to give apprentices a $1 an hour raise at the end of each year, which typically works out to be about $2,000 a year, Young says. It can be hard for employers to budget for that right away, she notes. Mentors also receive a $3,500 annual stipend.
It’s expensive, to be sure, but Minnesota recently received $5 million from the state earmarked specifically for apprenticeships, Young says.
“There’s not going to be one silver bullet,” Young acknowledges, “but professionalizing the field, reducing turnover and increasing compensation is going to have to happen, and I am hoping the data will show this is one positive strategy that moves the needle on that.”
Now 27 and finished with her apprenticeship, Gundy has received her CDA and been promoted to lead teacher in her toddler classroom. She’s also pursuing her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.
“It was nice to get the science behind what I did,” Gundy shares about her apprenticeship experience. “It answered ‘why’ — why are we doing it this way, why is play important. … It helped me be an overall better teacher.”
As a school counselor, Leighanne Mainguy can never be sure what’s in store for her each day.
Some days, she arrives at her elementary school to learn that a student is in crisis and needs her full attention; she’ll clear her schedule. Occasionally, a tragedy in the community will leave students and staff shaken, and Mainguy will move swiftly to lend support.
The job can be heavy and hard. With so many young people today facing mental health challenges, such as anxiety, depression and stress, school counselors are in high demand. Yet their capacity is limited: School counselors in the U.S. have an average caseload of 385 students, based on the latest data available. (Mainguy’s caseload is slightly better than that, and the American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of one counselor to 250 students.)
But the job also comes with regular doses of levity, joy and laughter — moments that Mainguy describes as “soul building.”
Every week, a student may interact with dozens of adults in their school, from counselors to custodians, bus drivers to paraprofessionals, food service workers to school nurses. These individuals are integral to a school community but rarely as visible as, say, teachers and principals.
In a new series, “Role Call,” EdSurge is elevating the experiences of the myriad school staff members who help shape the day for kids. This month, we’re featuring school counselor Leighanne Mainguy, who shares how she came into this work, what people get wrong about it, and what she wishes she could change.
The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Name: Leighanne Mainguy
Age: 49
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Role: School counselor
Current age group: PreK-5
Years in the field: 12
EdSurge: How did you get here? What brought you to this role?
Leighanne Mainguy: So I didn't start counseling until I was 38. I've always been a helper by nature. When I was a kid, I found a lot of joy in that. When I went to college, right out of high school, I got my degree in psychology and knew I wanted to do something in that realm, but circumstances didn't allow for that for quite some time.
For years, I was helping my husband through college, and we were having kids. We were living in Michigan, and I had a good job working in corporate America. Then we moved to Nevada, and with my husband’s support, I started a master’s program. In most states, you have to have your master’s degree to work as a school counselor.
I could have been a mental health professional as well — I could have gone into something like that. But I'll be honest with you, I love the school environment. I love working with kids. Plus, it's given me an opportunity to spend a lot of time with my husband and four children because they were in the school district (my husband is a teacher).
It's something that I think I was meant to do, but how I got here was just a long, long process.
When people outside of school ask you what you do — say, at a social event — how do you describe your work?
So in my profession, especially for people my age and older, the term used to be “guidance counselor.” We prefer to be called school counselors now, because previously a “counselor” would be considered somebody who supported you in finalizing your credits, who you might've only seen in high school and helped you maybe decide on which direction you were going to go after high school.
Now, many school counselors do tier one counseling, which is working with all students; tier two counseling, which might look like small group support; and then we might do tier three, which is individual counseling for short periods of time. I don't recall that ever being the case when I was a kid. I think I saw my guidance counselor once or twice, maybe, my senior year. Now we're in elementary schools, we're in middle schools, we're in high schools. So it's just a more well-rounded job.
Most of the time, I get a pretty good reaction to telling someone I’m a school counselor. They're like, ‘Cool, that's awesome. You're an educator.’ But if somebody allowed me to get that deep into it, that’s what I’d say.
What does a hard day look like in your role?
Hard days can be super emotional. I think most counselors are pretty good at compartmentalizing the bigger issues so we don't take it home at night, but we get to deal with some of the hardest things that a kid, or even a staff member, will see.
I've had kids come in the day after one of their parents died. I’ve had to talk to kids about some pretty horrific things that have happened in their homes. On top of that, days when we have to implement suicide protocols (after students have expressed thoughts of self-harm) are probably the most emotionally draining. We take that very seriously.
I mean, some days are kind of crazy just because you have a lot of busyness. I never know what my day is going to look like. I could come in one morning and have a plan to do three lessons and talk to five kids, and then find that a student is having some suicidal ideation first thing in the morning and have to support them through managing that, getting in touch with their family and managing the aftermath of that with their teachers.
Bigger events can be really difficult as well. We had a huge, traumatic event in our district with the Route 91 shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017. That affected a lot of families in our community. Over 500 people were shot and 59 died.
Those are big days where you're like, ‘OK, scrap it.’ You shift gears, you’ve got to manage everything. You’ve got to take a step back [and ask yourself], ‘How are we going to support our students as a school? How are we going to support our staff?’
What does a really good day look like?
Field Day is always a really great day. We've had some professional athletes come — from the Golden Knights and the Raiders. They have these events where, like, 50 kids get to practice with the Raiders out in our field. We have picnics where parents come into our school, and we all go out in the field and eat with the students.
Anytime that it can feel like we’re a community, anytime we can do something big with the kids, and you just see them smiling and enjoying themselves, I would say those are my best days. There's nothing like seeing a kid light up, to see a kid giggle. It's soul building to see them have fun.
What is an unexpected way that your role shapes the day for kids?
School counselors are out and about all the time at our school. The day starts, and we're in the hallways with the kids. I think knowing that there are other people in the school besides their teacher that care enough to know their name, know about their families, ask about how their soccer game went last night, know that they have a big test coming up — I think, for some kids, that’s unexpected. For some parents, that’s unexpected. And I think that makes them feel important and seen and heard.
What do you wish you could change about your school or the education system today?
I wish that more people were willing to ask questions about what we do — like you are doing — and listen to our answers.
There are a lot of assumptions about the education field currently — not just about teachers, but about my role too.
I guess if I could change something, it would be that people would listen better, because I think so many of the people [making decisions about] public schools haven’t spent any time in them, and aren’t asking good questions about what we need to support our students.
Your role gives you unique access and insight into today's youth. What is one thing you've learned about young people through your work?
They just give me hope, as an adult. I think that we get super clouded in the day-to-day stuff — paying your bills and being an adult, it can be a lot. I'm not even going to get into politics and all the really scary things that can happen. But kids give me joy and hope.
I know that's not insight, necessarily, but they remind me of all the good things in life. Even though I get to hear some of the worst things that have happened to them, they remind me of all the good things in this world. So I guess maybe my insight is that us adults need to be a little more present in our day and learn to be a little bit more like kids.
There are plenty of changes teachers say could help them do their jobs better, such as adequate planning time and support for their well-being.
Louisiana’s Department of Education decided to tackle some of these challenges by bringing together a group of teachers to recommend solutions — and they’re seeing change take shape.
The Let Teachers Teach workgroup released its list of recommendations in May, and their ideas span improvements for dealing with issues including professional development, student discipline and what one of the state’s top education leaders calls “the art of teaching.”
“To me, teaching is a pedagogical science, but it requires an artistic delivery,” Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley says. “Unfortunately, many teachers — due to bureaucracies or inadequacies of leadership — feel as if they're more of a robot than a professional.”
The 18 recommendations don’t mince words when describing the problems teachers face. Its section on training eschews “redundant professional learning sessions” in favor of strategies like individually tailored teacher growth plans and more time for better collaboration and planning.
One of the recommendations on discipline is titled “Trust us — don’t blame us,” calling for “excessively disruptive” students to be removed from the classroom and for “ungovernable students” to be assigned to attend alternative schools. This kind of “exclusionary discipline” practice has its critics, who argue it can be counterproductive and that it unfairly targets students who are racial minorities. However, post-pandemic, some teachers are looking for new solutions as they’ve struggled to manage what they call worsened student behaviors.
Brumley says that four recommendations became laws during the state’s spring legislative session. They include a law requiring disruptive students to be removed from class at a teacher’s request and prohibiting retaliation against the teacher.
Others will ban cellphone use in schools starting in the fall and require extra pay for teachers’ “non-academic” work, which Brumley says might include activities like working the concession stand at a school football game.
The legislature also tasked the Louisiana Department of Education and State Board of Education with devising a more effective plan for state-mandated training, Brumley explains. The Let Teachers Teach recommendations described these trainings as something teachers do “outside of the normal school day and without compensation.”
Brumley says he wanted the working group to come up with “real-world solutions to make the profession stronger while keeping in mind that student outcomes have to be paramount.” The concept was to address problems that teachers consistently told him hindered their ability to do their job.
“A very clear example is I will hear teachers say, ‘My school forces me to read a script,’” Brumley says. “We were very clear around that particular concept in the recommendations: Unless it is explicit, direct instructions or it's a novice teacher or a struggling teacher, effective teachers need the autonomy to deliver the content through the art of the profession and not simply reading from a script.”
While Brumley and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry have come out in strong support of the recommendations — they led a news conference announcing the document’s release — that’s not to say the education landscape there is without conflict.
Low earning potential has some Louisiana teachers wondering how much longer they can stay in the field, and the governor declined to back permanent pay raises. It’s also a place where culture wars are playing out, which teachers say are a mental strain — the governor is suing the federal government over expanded Title IX guidelines that protect transgender students from discrimination.
When ChatGPT and other new generative AI tools emerged in late 2022, the major concern for educators was cheating. After all, students quickly spread the word on TikTok and other social media platforms that with a few simple prompts, a chatbot could write an essay or answer a homework assignment in ways that would be hard for teachers to detect.
But these days, when it comes to AI, another concern has come into the spotlight: That the technology could lead to less human interaction in schools and colleges — and that school administrators could one day try to use it to replace teachers.
And it's not just educators who are worried, this is becoming an education policy issue.
Just last week, for instance, a bill sailed through both houses of the California state legislature that aims to make sure that courses at the state’s community colleges are taught by qualified humans, not AI bots.
Sabrina Cervantes, a Democratic member of the California State Assembly, who introduced the legislation, said in a statement that the goal of the bill is to “provide guardrails on the integration of AI in classrooms while ensuring that community college students are taught by human faculty.”
To be clear, no one appears to have actually proposed replacing professors at the state’s community colleges with ChatGPT or other generative AI tools. And even the bill’s leaders say they can imagine positive uses for AI in teaching, and the bill wouldn’t stop colleges from using generative AI to help with tasks like grading or creating educational materials.
But champions of the bill also say they have reason to worry about the possibility of AI replacing professors in the future. Earlier this year, for example, a dean at Boston University sparked concern among graduate workers who were on strike seeking higher wages when he listed AI as one possible strategy for handling course discussions and other classroom activities that were impacted by the strike. Officials at the university later clarified that they had no intention of replacing any graduate workers with AI software, though.
“Our intent was not to put a giant brick wall in front of AI,” Brill-Wynkoop says. “That’s nuts. It’s a fast-moving train. We’re not against tech, but the question is ‘How do we use it thoughtfully?’”
— Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges
While California is the furthest along, it’s not the only state where such measures are being considered. In Minnesota, Rep. Dan Wolgamott, of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, proposed a bill that would forbid campuses in the Minnestate State College and University System from using AI “as the primary instructor for a credit-bearing course.” The measure has stalled for now.
Teachers in K-12 schools are also beginning to push for similar protections against AI replacing educators. The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, recently put out a policy statement on the use of AI in education that stressed that human educators should “remain at the center of education.”
It’s a sign of the mixed but highly charged mood among many educators — who see both promise and potential threat in generative AI tech.
Careful Language
Even the education leaders pushing for measures to keep AI from displacing educators have gone out of their way to note that the technology could have beneficial applications in education. They're being cautious about the language they use to ensure they're not prohibiting the use of AI altogether.
The bill in California, for instance, faced initial pushback even from some supporters of the concept, out of worry about moving too soon to legislate the fast-changing technology of generative AI, says Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, whose group led the effort to draft the bill.
An early version of the bill explicitly stated that AI “may not be used to replace faculty for purposes of providing instruction to, and regular interaction with students in a course of instruction, and may only be used as a peripheral tool.”
Internal debate almost led leaders to spike the effort, she says. Then Brill-Wynkoop suggested a compromise: remove all explicit references to artificial intelligence from the bill’s language.
“We don’t even need the words AI in the bill, we just need to make sure humans are at the center,” she says. So the final language of the very brief proposed legislation reads: “This bill would explicitly require the instructor of record for a course of instruction to be a person who meets the above-described minimum qualifications to serve as a faculty member teaching credit instruction.”
“Our intent was not to put a giant brick wall in front of AI,” Brill-Wynkoop says. “That’s nuts. It’s a fast-moving train. We’re not against tech, but the question is ‘How do we use it thoughtfully?’”
And she admits that she doesn’t think there’s some “evil mastermind in Sacramento saying, ‘I want to get rid of these nasty faculty members.’” But, she adds, in California “education has been grossly underfunded for years, and with limited budgets, there are several tech companies right there that say, ‘How can we help you with your limited budgets by spurring efficiency.’”
Ethan Mollick, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has become a prominent voice on AI in education, wrote in his newsletter last month that he worries that many businesses and organizations are too focused on efficiency and downsizing as they rush to adopt AI technologies. Instead, he argues that leaders should be focused on finding ways to rethink how they do things to take advantage of tasks AI can do well.
He noted in his newsletter that even the companies building these new large language models haven’t yet figured out what real-world tasks they are best suited to do.
“I worry that the lesson of the Industrial Revolution is being lost in AI implementations at companies,” he wrote. “Any efficiency gains must be turned into cost savings, even before anyone in the organization figures out what AI is good for. It is as if, after getting access to the steam engine in the 1700s, every manufacturer decided to keep production and quality the same, and just fire staff in response to new-found efficiency, rather than building world-spanning companies by expanding their outputs.”
The professor wrote that his university’s new Generative AI Lab is trying to model the approach he’d like to see, where researchers work to explore evidence-based uses of AI and work to avoid what he called “downside risks,” meaning the concern that organizations might make ineffective use of AI while pushing out expert employees in the name of cutting costs. And he says the lab is committed to sharing what it learns.
Keeping Humans at the Center
AI Education Project, a nonprofit focused on AI literacy, surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. educators in 2023 about how educators feel about how AI is influencing the world, and education more specifically. In the survey, participants were asked to pick among a list of top concerns about AI and the one that bubbled to the top was that AI could lead to “a lack of human interaction.”
That could be in response to recent announcements by major AI developers — including ChatGPT creator OpenAI — about new versions of their tools that can respond to voice commands and see and respond to what students are inputting on their screens. Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, recently posted a video demo of him using a prototype of his organization’s chatbot Khanmigo, which has these features, to tutor his teenage son. The technology shown in the demo is not yet available, and is at least six months to a year away, according to Khan. Even so, the video went viral and sparked debate about whether any machine can fill in for a human in something as deeply personal as one-on-one tutoring.
In the meantime, many new features and products released in recent weeks focus on helping educators with administrative tasks or responsibilities like creating lesson plans and other classroom materials. And those are the kinds of behind-the-scenes uses of AI that students may never even know are happening.
That was clear in the exhibit hall of last week’s ISTE Live conference in Denver, which drew more than 15,000 educators and edtech leaders. (EdSurge is an independent newsroom that shares a parent organization with ISTE. Learn more about EdSurge ethics and policies here and supporters here.)
Tiny startups, tech giants and everything in between touted new features that use generative AI to support educators with a range of responsibilities, and some companies had tools to serve as a virtual classroom assistant.
Many teachers at the event weren’t actively worried about being replaced by bots.
“It’s not even on my radar, because what I bring to the classroom is something that AI cannot replicate,” said Lauren Reynolds, a third grade teacher at Riverwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City. “I have that human connection. I’m getting to know my kids on an individual basis. I’m reading more than just what they’re telling me.”
Christina Matasavage, a STEM teacher at Belton Preparatory Academy in South Carolina, said she thinks the COVID shutdowns and emergency pivots to distance learning proved that gadgets can’t step in and replace human instructors. “I think we figured out that teachers are very much needed when COVID happened and we went virtual. People figured out very [quickly] that we cannot be replaced” with tech.
Soon after Miriam Bravo began watching her 2-year-old grandson full-time, she realized that many years had passed since she was last responsible for a young child. Feeling a bit rusty, she turned to the internet to seek out activities suitable for little Tadeo and advice for how best to support him.
She found some resources online, such as songs to sing with him, but Bravo wanted more.
Bravo is part of a group of caregivers often referred to as family, friend and neighbor (FFN) providers. Although this is the most common non-parental child care arrangement in the United States, used by millions of families, few options for training and education are available to FFN providers. Most early care and education supports are reserved for licensed child care providers or parents. And the limited professional development opportunities available to FFNs are often inaccessible, due to factors such as costs, scheduling and language barriers.
So it was lucky that when Bravo knocked on the door of a community center near her home in San Jose, California, wondering whether they had any programs to help her improve as a caregiver, she found exactly what she was looking for.
In Bravo’s northern California community, a home visiting service called ParentChild+ has adapted its well-established model for parents to fit the needs and priorities of home-based child care providers, including FFNs.
For decades, evidence-based home visits from trained professionals have supported families across the U.S. These programs empower parents to engage their children with high-quality, developmentally appropriate activities; promote social-emotional skills and school readiness among kids; and foster a safe, healthy, nurturing home environment. More recently, a number of national home visiting programs have recognized an opportunity to reach more children by serving home-based child care providers, too, and there’s evidenceto show it’s making a difference.
“This is promising,” says Natalie Renew, executive director of Home Grown, a national initiative to increase access to and quality of home-based child care, “especially in a landscape where there are so few other interventions.”
People want to do right by kids and many times don’t have the tools or knowledge of what the right thing is. Sometimes it’s just bringing in new opportunities.
— Kerry Caverly
In the last few years, Home Grown has provided grants to three home visiting programs that serve home-based providers — ParentChild+, Parents as Teachers and Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters — to help them better understand the needs of the caregivers they’re engaging, learn what factors contribute to the success of the programs and, ultimately, expand their footprint.
It’s an investment in an often-overlooked but invaluable caregiver population that, in most cases, was already looking for ways to provide higher quality care and education to children, explains Kerry Caverly, chief program office at Parents as Teachers.
“People want to do right by kids and many times don’t have the tools or knowledge of what the right thing is,” Caverly says. “Sometimes it’s just bringing in new opportunities.”
An Organic Expansion
Bravo signed on to the free, voluntary, home-based child care model with ParentChild+ right away. Since February, Stephanie, the home visitor assigned to Bravo, has been visiting her and Tadeo twice a week.
Stephanie brings books, toys and materials that Bravo keeps and can use during future learning activities with Tadeo. But her home visitor’s biggest contributions, Bravo shares in Spanish through an interpreter, are less tangible.
Tadeo lights up when Stephanie arrives, Bravo says. He’s eager to find out which activity she planned for him that day. His motor skills have improved, and now, at 2-and-a-half years old, he’s cutting with scissors — a task that many children have not yet mastered by kindergarten. He is able to focus and complete activities that his attention span did not allow even a few months ago.
Bravo, for her part, has gained confidence. She has become a more patient, loving caregiver, she says. “It’s brought us closer.” She sees herself now as more than Tadeo’s grandmother; she is his teacher as well.
Miriam Bravo with her 2-year-old grandson Tadeo. Through home visits from ParentChild+, Bravo says she has become a better caregiver to Tadeo. Photo courtesy of Bravo.
The ParentChild+ home-based child care model emerged organically, says Sarah Walzer, CEO of the organization, which started in 1965 as a home visiting program for parents and today serves a majority immigrant population that speaks over 40 languages.
A little over a decade ago, home visitors reported that a number of parents in their caseload were caring for other children in the community. Over the next few years, in response to that need, ParentChild+ built out a parallel model tailored to home-based child care providers, including FFNs. Today, the program has a presence in 10 states.
The program for home-based providers runs for 24 weeks, compared to 46 weeks for families. The visits are designed around hands-on learning activities and play, Walzer says, adding that the goal is to improve the quality of the child care and to build school readiness for children, with attention to the learning environment and adult-child interactions.
We don’t go in there to find what is missing, lacking or illegal. We go in to look at what is going really well and strengthen [it].
— Sarah Walzer
Their work is strengths-based, Walzer explains. Home visitors seek to identify what’s already working and build on it — that’s true of other home visiting models and of home visits targeted to parents.
“We don’t go in there to find what is missing, lacking or illegal,” Walzer says. “We go in to look at what is going really well and strengthen areas of child care” based on evidence-based practices.
Parents as Teachers has a similar origin story for its home-based child care model, which they call “Supporting Care Providers Through Person Visits” (SCPV).
It was the late 1990s, and more women were entering the workforce, recalls Caverly, the chief program officer. More families, as a result, were seeking out child care arrangements. Home visitors serving families across the country were sharing that they’d show up for home visits and find a relative or neighbor with the child instead of the parent.
“It really got us thinking,” Caverly remembers.
Parents as Teachers adapted its curricula and built out the SCPV program, which is currently being used in 12 states. (With funding from Home Grown, they are updating their curricula for home-based providers and will spend much of 2025 using those new resources to expand their reach.)
Both Parents as Teachers and ParentChild+ serve a mix of licensed home-based child care providers and unlicensed FFNs through their home visiting programs, but “at the heart of it is FFNs,” says Caverly, adding that their work with FFNs does look, in a lot of ways, like their work with families.
One of the key distinctions between their work with providers and families, she says, is that providers learn how to do screenings and evaluations of the children in their care.
That element was especially valuable for Gretchen Dunn, a licensed provider in Olathe, Kansas.
Dunn has owned her home-based child care program for 25 years, she says, but when she heard Parents as Teachers was offering home visits for providers, she called up her local site and asked to participate.
She’s a seasoned provider who attends annual training, she acknowledges, but she liked the idea of getting a “refresher” and the chance to observe another early childhood professional interact with the kids in her care.
Gretchen Dunn with four children in her program on Valentine's Day 2024. Dunn learned how to screen for developmental delays during home visits from Parents as Teachers. Photo courtesy of Dunn.
Over the course of two years, Dunn received monthly home visits, during which her home visitor would usually lead an activity with the kids and leave Dunn with a handout so she could repeat it in the future. The home visitor also brought books. And she helped Dunn screen children for possible developmental delays using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, something Dunn hadn’t used before in her program. Those evaluations can tell a provider if a child may need to see a specialist — a speech therapist, for example — but they can also help inform providers about appropriate activities and interactions to use with each child.
The entire experience was validating for Dunn, she says. As the sole employee of her program, she has minimal adult interaction during the day. Plus, there is rarely anyone to observe her work or note if she is doing a good job.
“To have someone who actually knows my field and training come in and give me new ideas and support and back me up — all those things, that’s what I enjoyed” the most, she says.
‘Money Well Spent’
Perhaps the biggest hangup of this model is money, according to Renew of Home Grown.
The sites that already exist to provide home visiting services — to both families and providers — say that with more funding, they could reach many more caregivers.
“We know we have a lot of children who will fall through the cracks,” says Maria Rios, a home visitor for Parents as Teachers in Kansas City, Kansas, who has a caseload of 30 home-based child care providers. “I wish there was more funding.”
Rios, a former preschool teacher and school vice principal, is less concerned about children’s academic skills. “They’ll learn their ABCs in school,” she says. It’s the social-emotional skills — how to interact with other children, how to share — that she feels many children need to pick up sooner.
Home visiting programs are expensive to implement, as most high intensity, high integrity services tend to be, says Renew. It’s a big shift, she adds, for states and localities to go from spending zero dollars on FFN providers to investing thousands of dollars in each person. But she thinks it’s feasible, especially given the number of children who stand to benefit.
A few different funding models are in play already. The state of Colorado has used its Preschool Development Grant Birth to Five dollars on home visiting. And ParentChild+ is getting public funding, including dollars from the federal pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, to support its home-based child care programming at several sites, including New York state and counties in North Carolina.
“From our perspective,” says Renew, “it’s money well spent.”
It certainly has been for Bravo, the FFN provider in California. Both the mentorship from her home visitor and the new community she has found among other FFNs in her area have made for a “beautiful experience.”
“It’s not just a program,” Bravo adds, “it’s a family.”
Equipped with new caregiving expertise, she’s thought about taking in more children. She is open to the idea, she says. At a minimum, she’ll get to use her knowledge with future grandchildren.
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