How one Colorado teacher gave 75 students weekly feedback—and got their humanity back; Elevating educator voices in tech decisions; AI’s impact on the brain and more. Read on!
Welcome to Classroom Perspectives on AI! Spooky Season is behind us….or so I thought until I saw the news that Google was planning to turn off search functions for schools that choose to fully restrict AI tools for students. Google says that its AI functions are so embedded into its search that it’s hard to turn those features off completely. Pushback to the decision came in quickly. We wonder if any educators were consulted in this decision.
This is one of the reasons why PEBC is surveying teachers and leaders on what their actual needs are when it comes to effectively utilizing AI in their practices (more on that below). Unlike the seasons, our mission to elevate teachers’ voices in what their AI uses and beliefs are doesn’t change. Let’s get to it.
A Conversation With Johnnie Lacey
What’s an example of how you integrated AI into your teaching practice when you were in the classroom, and what did you learn from it?
When I was a literacy teacher in 5th grade, I was looking for something to invigorate my teaching and impact students. I ended up joining the AI advisory group [in APS] in 2022, and learned about a set of AI tools that I had access to. It blew my mind what generative AI could do, but the skeptic inside of me told me to use it sparingly and with intent.
I spent time building scaffolds and accommodations [for my students], but the thing that really helped me was when I found my flow around giving students more informal writing feedback on a weekly basis to 75 students, before they submitted assignments for evaluation.
I used the AI tools available to me to help define the essential parts of our reading for the week that students need to meet the standard; then I used it to help me write a prompt for their weekly writing that would help them synthesize the information they read by collecting
textual evidence to answer the prompt. From there, I would utilize a rubric-influenced custom chatbot that I created to help me give timely feedback.
So, essentially, my students would spend Monday through Wednesday working with the text to collect their notes and evidence for their writing, which they would submit as a first draft on Thursdays. By Friday, all 75 students would get customized feedback from me, assisted by the AI feedback tool that I customized, and they could incorporate that feedback into their final drafts for their graded work.
How long would it take you to give feedback to 75 students prior to developing this process?
The feedback used to take me a couple of weeks to get done. I would spend two weeks with paper rubrics reading each student's paper and circling/highlighting where they scored on the rubric. I focused more on the evaluation side of things and never really gave them the chance to treat it as a work in progress. We always had to move on to the next assignment to stay on pace for the year.
The efficiency and effectiveness of that loop helped me be a better human in the space for my students. I was able to be more present for their needs and give them support in areas they were vulnerable in.
What were the results? I’m curious what you saw in terms of student outcomes after implementing this process, as well as any other shifts in your classroom.
My results were amazing. I was starting to see students jump proficiency levels. They would go from non-proficient to approaching, and some even made the jump all the way to proficiency from non-proficient. The growth was impactful enough that it even made a difference on CMAS assessments, where my most vulnerable students made a 28% proficiency growth. These practices helped elevate all students; the most vulnerable group got smaller, the approaching proficiency section got a little bigger, and the amount of proficient students also grew.
These practices allowed students to elevate their own agency as well. They knew the structure and routines, and they dove right in. They knew how to collect notes and collaborate with others, and they drafted writing knowing they were going to get weekly feedback. The students loved reading their feedback and then applying it to their writing. Students learned how to analyze and synthesize information from a text in order to develop it into a communicative writing piece that answered an overarching question. They were demonstrating comprehension while also doing genre-specific writing. Students engaged in discourse, were reflective about their work, and demonstrated critical thinking in how they communicated their understandings. All valuable characteristics of a lifelong learner.
You left the classroom to come to PEBC. What are you excited to work on this year?
That is a loaded question because I am excited for so much work this year! As the Manager of AI Initiatives, I get to be the “connective tissue” between how AI can be an asset for equity for all students as well as an amplifier of giving teachers their time and humanity back in the classroom.
I am most looking forward to helping teachers find more opportunities to be relational with their students by making their time more productive and efficient.
You’ve developed a survey for educators to help surface what their specific needs are in terms of smart implementation of AI into their practice - do you have an example of something that you’ve learned so far from the survey data?
I really want to know what teachers need because they are, in my opinion and experience, the most knowledgeable and important part of the system.
We know that teachers value professional development that is both meaningful and customized to their own learning, rather than a one-size-fits-all type of training. So I’m utilizing the responses in the survey to help me understand how to best design PD that has an engaging model of inquiry and focuses on the problems that teachers are interested in solving. We know from our survey and others that about 70% of teachers are somewhere between “exploring” and “actively using” AI tools, without a lot of clear guidance. So, how do we help teachers utilize their own background to help them develop their own efficacy while staying true to their beliefs? It’s a big question, and I’m excited to dig into it intentionally over the coming months.
Editor’s note: You can learn more about Johnnie’s classroom use-case study here. To participate in the Educator AI Needs Survey, use this link.
What We’re Reading
🥼 Will AI Make Your Brain Lazy?, an interactive feature in the New York Times, does a good job of explaining recent research into AI and cognition.
💡Similarly, Edutopia’s recent piece on 5 “Good” AI Use Cases that are actually bad for students does a good job of including thoughtful nuance into the student engagement and AI question.
Meme of the Month
Learning Together
Thanks for your ideas on how to tinker with AI as a recipe-planner last month. It really comes down to smart prompting + trusting the skills you already have. I made some delicious Rancho Gordo beans, and Gemini was a good thought-partner in putting together my toppings (and I learned that my kids love kale chips). Thanksgiving isn’t ready for me.
This week, PEBC’s Phenomenal Teaching Institute (PTI) kicks off. It’s one of my favorite offerings of ours, not only for its focus on cultivating thinking-oriented classrooms based on PEBC’s Teaching Framework, but also because you get to pick out a book from a list curated by PEBC staff, take time during the week to read it, and think about what’s happening in your brain while you do that (what my smarter colleagues call “metacognition”). How incredible to get to spend time simply reading and thinking as part of your learning! Don’t worry if you’re missing it this month; PTI will be back in the spring.
So - if you had to pick a book to be a part of PTI, what would you choose? Hit me up with a favorite you’d pick, and I’ll let you know which of my recommendations made this year’s list.
