By: Nick Lundberg
Our district has a rich history of delivering meaningful professional development for teachers and we continue to seek innovative ways to meet the diverse needs of all teachers. Instructional coaches have been invaluable to this learning, especially when they have led teachers to reflect on their practice and apply new learning. Overwhelmingly, teachers would say that the most impactful professional development opportunities in the past have been learning experiences through learning labs and focused learning around Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).
As we sought to bring back these experiences following the pandemic, we faced new challenges. Shifts in funding and an increased need for more intervention in schools resulted in a drastic reduction of our instructional coaching staff. Our new reality was that many schools did not have instructional coaches to lead this work, so we had to find a different approach to providing these same types of experiences for teachers.
This led us to explore using artificial intelligence (AI)-powered coaching to help fill the void of instructional coaches in schools while still providing teachers opportunities to reflect on their practice in a profound way.
Introducing AI Coaching to Teachers
Our district implemented an AI-powered coaching platform in 2022 as a self-paced professional development option for teachers. Providing teachers with an asynchronous option that provides an opportunity for them to self-reflect was a great complement to our district’s professional development offerings. This also helped us provide a structure which provided scaffolding and support for teachers participating in an AI-powered coaching cycle ensuring that the experience was meaningful.
Additionally, in schools that still had coaches, we encouraged instructional coaches to model and support teachers through an AI-powered coaching cycle. This helped coaches see the value, especially as a complement to their own coaching. From there, the interest grew as coaches shared with teachers how an AI-powered coaching cycle could be beneficial in providing feedback for a wide-range of contexts, regardless of the teachers actively working with an instructional coach or not.
We have made participation with AI coaching completely voluntary, and the results of the coaching cycle have remained private to each teacher. In addition to classroom teachers, we’ve had instructional coaches, specialists, and intervention teachers participate in AI coaching. We continue to refine structures to help each teacher find value with AI coaching as it connects to their growth and feedback with school/district initiatives.
How AI Coaching Works
To facilitate the AI coaching process, we implemented the AI Coach by Edthena platform, which walks teachers through a coaching cycle using a self-recorded video of their lesson. The platform acts as a virtual coach as teachers complete four coaching stages: Analyze, Reflect, Enact, and Impact.
During the process, the virtual coach guides each teacher as they observe their video and prompts the teacher to reflect and develop a near-term goal, develop an action plan, and identify the impact of the action plan. Each teacher’s experience is personalized to their self-selected priority areas for professional growth. The entire process is private and driven by the teacher through the self-paced coaching cycle.
How AI Coaching is Helping Teachers and Instructional Coaches
While our district is still in the beginning stages of identifying how AI coaching fits into our PLCs and professional development, we continue to hear overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers and are seeing some preliminary uses that could have some significant impacts.
We currently have individual teachers accessing AI Coach on their own as a professional development opportunity as well as seeing some schools explore AI coaching as a school strategy as part of their School Improvement Plan (SIP). As a SIP strategy, AI coaching has the potential to enhance teacher collaboration and build collective teacher efficacy as teachers share their learning with each other.
Below are additional ways we are integrating AI coaching in schools to help support district initiatives.
Supporting Instructional Coaching and Microteaching
AI-powered coaching has supported our instructional coaches in several ways. First, it has helped instructional coaches expand their caseload. Teachers who are not participating in a coaching cycle with their instructional coach at the time can now participate in an AI Coach session and then have a quick conversation with their instructional coach about what he/she learned.
Additionally, the platform has helped teachers more hesitant to coaching find an entry point to complete a coaching cycle. These teachers have shown more willingness to participate in AI coaching to conduct the self-reflection process and access their instructional coach as a resource when needed.
Further, we’re exploring the use of AI coaching to help us refine microteaching, especially within effective PLCs. Microteaching involves teachers conducting mini-lessons and engaging in a post discussion, typically facilitated by an instructional coach in a learning lab environment. According to John Hattie’s research through Visible Learning, microteaching has an effect size of 1.01, showing that it can significantly impact student learning. Using AI Coach provides scaffolding for the teacher prior to engaging in microteaching with the instructional coach, especially for teachers who are not yet comfortable opening their classrooms to others.
For schools without a dedicated instructional coach, AI coaching has provided an ongoing support for our teachers to benefit from a coaching experience. We’re excited about the future potential of this as it continues to grow but, at a minimum, it has enabled volunteer teachers to participate in a meaningful reflection opportunity despite the absence of instructional coaching support. We’d love to see schools adopt structures that provide teachers opportunities to plan and collaborate around their experiences with AI coaching cycles in the future.
Equity Initiatives
Our messaging continues to be that teachers participate in an AI coaching cycle as it connects to school and district initiatives. In other words, this should not be an isolated activity, but a learning opportunity for the teacher to reflect on the progress of school and district initiatives.
Most, if not all, districts across the nation have been working to improve equity and equitable teaching practices in recent years. Our district has done a lot of work around this including various professional development opportunities such as guest speakers, book studies, and workshops. However, we have limited structures in place to allow teachers to monitor their progress towards equity in their classroom. Outside of principal observations as part of teacher evaluation, opportunities are limited, and we have seen some teachers explore AI coaching as an option.
AI coaching can help teachers assess and monitor progress regarding the goals they set for themselves around equity. For example, let’s say a teacher decides that he/she sets a goal to ensure all students are getting a fair opportunity to respond and participate during learning activities within a workshop model. The teacher could record snippets of lessons at various time points throughout the year and use the AI Coach platform to monitor the effect of this strategy.
Professional Learning Communities
Within PLCs, teachers should walk away from each experience feeling challenged. Too often teachers get distracted by the data and the plenty of examples that are contributing to students not learning.
As we reboot PLCs in our district, we are supporting teams to ensure that new learning is developed and new instructional strategies are being implemented as a result of the PLC process. Student data is a great measure to see if these strategies are effective, however, we are exploring the role of microteaching and self-reflection through the use of AI coaching as another way to provide feedback to the teacher.
For example, let’s say a teacher selects a jigsaw activity as an instructional strategy to impact student growth as part of a PLC cycle. Before the next PLC cycle, that teacher can record a small part of the lesson and participate in an AI coaching cycle. Perhaps the teacher notices many students were not engaged in the jigsaw activity which explains the low number of students who showed growth. Now, the teacher can adjust this strategy before the next assessment/PLC cycle to ensure the strategy is being employed with the desired effect.
When the teacher returns to the next PLC cycle to assess the impact of this strategy, he/she now has new learning from completing the AI coaching cycle that can add context to the student data. What a powerful addition to that teacher’s PLC!
What Teachers are Saying about AI Coaching
With permission, the following is some feedback we have received from participating teachers and instructional coaches regarding AI coaching:
- “This was more valuable to me than admin observations”
- “I have already utilized new strategies because of doing this coaching cycle. I’m excited to do it again”
- “As a result of my goal setting process through [AI coaching], I have determined that I would like to focus on providing positive feedback to undesirable student behavior. Instead of telling a student what not to do, I will practice wording corrections in a positive way”
- “I will continue to track my student-to-teacher talk ratio by tallying how many times I am talking to my students when I feel like I am spending more time talking than I want”
- “Through the AI coaching cycle, I found that I have good routines and content, however, I’m noticing students disengaged. We are to the point of the year where I need to add a little more engagement to my lesson”
AI coaching is just one way we are exploring leveraging AI technology to scaffold teacher reflection. And, while we are still determining what this looks like across our schools, the opportunity to enhance instructional coaching, as well as add some coaching in schools that do not have instructional coaches, is invaluable.
We are excited to see how teachers continue to grow in their use of teacher self-reflection and microteaching within the PLC structure using artificial intelligence. If our teachers feel comfortable with AI-powered, video-based self-reflection cycles on a regular basis, we can only imagine where it could lead—especially within PLC conversations and building collective efficacy!
Nick Lundberg serves as a district administrator supporting elementary Title I schools with Spokane Public Schools. He is part of a team that supports schools in closing achievement gaps and school improvement through instructional coaching, academic intervention, and support with effective PLC structures. Within his 15 years of education experience, he has also served as a fifth-grade teacher and elementary assistant principal.
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