August 25, 2025 • 46 mins
What if teachers could reclaim their evenings and weekends while actually improving student outcomes? That’s the promise of AI in education—not replacing teachers, but amplifying their impact by taking on the administrative burden that pulls them away from what matters most: connecting with students.
Cary Wright, co-founder of TEACH (Transforming Education Through AI, Connections, and Humanity), brings 30 years of classroom and administrative experience to this eye-opening conversation. As a longtime Virginia educator, Wright offers practical insights grounded in real classroom realities.
Today’s teachers face classrooms with students needing accommodations, English language support, advanced enrichment, and more—often all in the same period. Truly differentiated instruction has been nearly impossible—until now. Wright shows how AI can analyze student data, align with curriculum, and generate customized plans for teachers to refine with their expertise.
The focus remains on humanity. “We’re not here to be all virtual with robots,” Wright emphasizes. “This technology helps teachers be more present for their students.” The results: lesson planning in minutes instead of hours, stronger administrator feedback, and instruction better tailored to student needs.
Whether you’re a teacher wanting time back, a leader supporting staff, or simply curious about education’s future, this conversation offers valuable insights. Visit teachaiedu.com to learn more.
Website - www.teachaiedu.com
Emails - Tyler Hunt, tyler@teachaiedu.com; Cary Wright, cary@teachaiedu.com
Socials:
- fb, https://www.facebook.com/groups/631757985609124
- tik tok, https://www.tiktok.com/@t.e.a.c.hai?_t=ZT-8z7fZ6Kz194&_r=1
- LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/company/transformeducationai/?viewAsMember=true
Blurb
- At T.E.A.C.H. LLC, we help K-12 districts transform teaching and learning with simple, safe, and human-centered AI workflows. Our team brings 30+ years of classroom and central office experience, so we know how to reduce teacher burnout while raising student performance.
- We specialize in using AI to analyze local data, create custom lesson plans, and build division-wide systems that actually fit state standards and federal funding streams.
- District leaders trust us for professional development, long-term coaching, and custom GPT builds that put control back in the hands of teachers and administrators.
- Whether you’re curious about AI or ready to scale it in your district, connect with us through our website, LinkedIn, TikTok, or email—we’d love to show you what’s possible.
Want to join a community of AI learners and enthusiasts? AI Ready RVA is leading the conversation and is rapidly rising as a hub for AI in the Richmond Region. Become a member and support our AI literacy initiatives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to Inspire AI, the podcast where we
explore how artificialintelligence is reshaping our
world.
I'm your host, jason McGinty.
In today's episode of InspireAI, we're diving into one of the
most important frontiers of AIeducation Teachers today face
mounting pressures lessonplanning, data tracking,
(00:24):
compliance and, above all,meeting the unique needs of
every student.
At the same time, schoolleaders are searching for ways
to raise achievement, close gapsand ease the burden on their
staff.
That's where Teach comes in.
Their mission is to integrateAI into classrooms and
leadership practices in a waythat reduces educator stress and
(00:47):
boosts student performance, allwhile keeping humanity at the
center of the work.
Today, I'm joined by KeriWright, founder of Teach, to
talk about their journey, howthey're helping districts and
teachers adopt AI responsibly,and what the future of AI and
education might look like.
So if you're an educator,school leader or simply looking
(01:10):
to be informed about how AI istransforming education, this
conversation is for you.
So let's jump in.
Kerry, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Thank you, Jason.
All of those words were soinspirational.
Man, I'm just gettinggoosebumps.
That was fabulous.
Hey, you're doing the work.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I'm just here to preach.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You're doing a great job, man.
I love your show.
I love all the guests you haveon it.
The organization you're a partof is so innovative.
I'm happy to be a part of itand honored to be with you today
.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Okay, awesome.
Well then, why don't you startby telling our audience a little
bit about yourself, yourbackground and what does bring
you to the show today?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, rock and roll.
I am a founder of ourorganization.
It is called TEACH and that'san acronym.
It stands for TransformingEducation Through AI,
connections and Humanity.
My other partner is Tyler Hunt,and we both currently work for
Martinsville City Public Schools.
We are longtime Virginiaeducators.
This is my 30th year in thegame.
(02:12):
This is not a video episode,but my white hair is shining
this evening.
Tyler has been in a publiceducation setting for a long
time.
As well as an elementaryteacher, a middle school teacher
, I taught high school Englishfor years.
Now we are both in centraloffice positions, and so we know
what Virginia educators aregoing through.
(02:33):
And we went to a conference insummer of 2023 when Chad GPT was
just getting its legsunderneath it, and we said you
know what we're at thisconference and we have to figure
out this technology foreducation, and so we skipped the
entire second day of classes.
Sorry, whoever paid for that,I'm sorry, but you know we have
(02:55):
brought some innovativepractices back to Martinsville,
and so back then, we were usingClaude, because Claude AI is
still one of the major playersin the game.
It had a paperclip on it.
It allowed us to upload our ownlocal, safe data, and so we saw
from that day the power thatcould have, and on our drive
(03:24):
home we said we have to startsome way to get this message out
to K-12 educators as far andwide as we can, because it's a
totally transformative time.
The last time, jason, I thinkthat our public education system
in the United States got suchan overhaul was the Industrial
Revolution, when so much I'mserious, man, I'm serious when
the foundations were laid forit's not far off from the truth.
That's what we still have andthis technology has the power to
(03:44):
do and I don't know if you'veever watched the movie or read
the book Ready Player One.
It's really pretty cool, and soI think we're getting to that
kind of place and we're here tokeep the humans in the classroom
.
Both Tyler and I taught throughCOVID.
We know how good and essentialit is to have a human being in
the classroom.
We're not here to be allvirtual and robots and
(04:07):
everything else.
This is going to be humansinvolved, guiding it, and we
want to show teachers, just likeyou said in the introduction,
how we can reduce their stressand improve student performance
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, all right.
Well then, let's double clickon that, kerry.
What precise problem ineducation did you see that made
you believe AI could be part ofthe solution?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The very first one that we were faced with was?
It was?
It was summertime and a verycommon task for principals and
division leaders during asummertime is to come up with
their plans for the next year.
Plans for the next year Takeall of the data that you've
amassed over the past year.
How did you land on state andfederal indices and what are you
going to do next year?
(04:50):
That's a little bit different.
That can be a very laboriousprocess, time consuming, getting
input from everybody, having todo data analysis, and we were
able to take safe localdownloads from our state SOL
reports.
Take the template of the schoolimprovement plans that we have
to write, and we were donewithin 20 minutes and this is
(05:11):
normally a process that takesweeks.
So when we saw that, we saidnow let's really plug this into
what we know is a major issue inthe lives of teachers.
One of those, jason is writinghonest to goodness lesson plans.
Lives of teachers One of thoseJason is writing honest to
goodness lesson plans.
Now, in the state of Virginia,grades kindergarten through five
have had to adopt a readingcurriculum.
(05:31):
Now, those lots of timescurricula are written for Texas
or California or Florida.
They may say that they areadapted to our brand new
Virginia standards.
And, by the way, jason, thebrand new English Virginia
standards do have AI baked intothem and we can talk about that
at some point.
But it's already saying thatstudents in their research
(05:52):
process must use artificialintelligence in their research
process.
It's in the standards, oh my.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And so what?
What age group was that for?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's for middle school and up.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Middle school and up no that's smart.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
It was our governor who pitched that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Jason, I have a lot of respect for our governor and
he's he's a very action orientedkind of innovative guy.
But this was created by VDOE.
A bunch of educators, includingmyself I got to sit around
those round tables and help withmy role in Martinsville, help
to draft those standards, and sothis was done by teachers.
Oh, okay great From the groundup.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's the way it should be.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, the way that process works is VDOE does this
for every seven years for eachdifferent curricular area and
says teachers, give us all ofyour input and they sit there
and draft the best they can.
Then it goes through a coupleother steps of academic experts
and everything else.
So AI is in those standards.
And so now when you take anormal classroom and, jason, if
(06:53):
there are educators I know thereare educators listening to this
If they look out at theirclassroom and they see I have a
class of 25 kids.
Four of them have spedaccommodations that can be
serious.
Three of them don't speakEnglish like they should, Five
of them are reading a gradelevel or two below and five of
them are gifted and maybe onehas a brain injury.
(07:14):
Okay, so take that curriculumthat was written for someone in
California that has maybe thestate of Virginia standards
glued onto it, and how are yougoing to truly differentiate
that lesson offer?
All of the scaffolds that needto be done.
Jason, when I was a classroomteacher, honest to goodness,
when I was in another districtnot even going to say it I would
(07:35):
have to do my lesson plans andwhen it came to that line that
said differentiation, every dayI would go copy and paste, copy
paste, copy paste, because Ididn't have time to do all of
that for that kind of a class.
And, jason, let's say that I'ma middle school or high school
teacher and have four of thoseclasses, each with different
parameters inside of each one ofthem.
That's a perfect kind of amashup for this technology to
(07:58):
take your standards, yourexpectations, your building
principal has some template.
He wants the lesson plans doneby and all of these learners out
there in front of you.
How are you really going tomake sure that lesson is going
to hit for each one of them?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
100%.
No, that's really great, Ithink, even if you're not an
educator, that resonates becauseeveryone wants some specific
support for their child or lovedone, exactly yeah.
So tell me a little bit aboutthe mission.
It, of course, emphasizes bothconnections and humanity.
(08:34):
So how do you keep AIhuman-centered in your approach?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, 100%.
What we found in so many of ourpresentations is that it's the
folks who are kind of like me,who have been in education the
longest, who get the biggestbenefit from this technology.
And a lot of people would think, oh no, it's the hot young
teachers who just came out ofcollege and they know TikTok and
everything else, but they don'tknow education, they don't know
(09:01):
kids.
And so when we have a seasonededucator who comes to us kind of
angry at the beginning of thesessions, they're like I don't
know kids.
And so when we have a seasonededucator who comes to us kind of
angry at the beginning of thesessions, they're like I don't
want this, I hate it, it'scheating, I don't even want it.
And when we can show them howit can give them a lesson plan
exactly designed, and they makea couple of tweaks to say that's
not going to work for my kids,that will.
(09:22):
Oh wow, that's really good.
So that's where the teacher isthe driver.
The building principal knowsher statistics that she has to
hit.
She knows her building Centraloffice leaders know their
division.
It's never a copy and pastesituation.
I tell folks all the time ifI'm in central office and a
(09:44):
teacher sends me a question andI just go, hey, ChatGPT, what's
the answer?
And I go copy and paste thatteacher's going to know it.
And they're going to say why doI need to email Kerry, I'm not
going to ask him any morequestions.
The same is true when a studentasks a teacher a question.
If a teacher goes, oh, here'sthe answer and I just got it off
(10:07):
, chat, the kid's going to know.
So we have to customize thefirst draft Now.
The first draft may have 70,80% done correctly and we have
to tweak and refine the rest.
But it's up to the human at theend, before the rubber hits the
road, to truly implement itwisely.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Human feedback.
Yeah, so you have two maindelivery models one for district
partnerships and one fordirect-to-teacher coaching.
How do you decide which modelis best fit for a school or
district?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
We are long-term public educators.
Jason, I'm speaking to you whois well-versed in the ways of
business and capitalism andeverything else, and we're
trying to figure out how this isgoing to work.
Our most familiar model is todo professional development
sessions and so a lot of timeswe'll go to a conference and
we'll put our processes ondisplay for decision makers and
(10:59):
then we'll try to follow up withthem to book some three-hour
sessions in their division.
We'll try to follow up withthem to book some three hour
sessions in their division.
That relies on an innovativedecision maker to bring that
back to a district.
And you can imagine, jason,just like there are so many
people in your regular dailylife who are all over the place
with AI and their emotions.
And, jason, down here inSouthern Virginia, I'm telling
(11:21):
you there have to be somepastors in the pulpits who are
saying it's the devil, I meanit's that kind of way all over
the state.
So we found that we can be verysuccessful with some of our
projects we've done withdifferent divisions from the
West to the East in theCommonwealth.
But it's a shame when aneducator does not get the
benefit of our processes if thatinnovative leader does not
(11:45):
bring us in.
And so we are just in the earlystages of opening up AI coaching
directly to teachers, wherewe're going to build a community
, and this is something myco-founder, tyler, has been big
on from the beginning.
How do we form a community ofeducators who are willing to
study AI, adopt it, try it?
And we're going to be rollingout some things here very
(12:08):
shortly.
We're going to be doing a bigevent at the end of September.
That's going to be a freethree-hour session for educators
and after that they're going tobe invited into this community
and we're going to be doing asession like that every nine
weeks to show how that nineweeks of the school year is
special.
And then they're going to bedoing a session like that every
nine weeks to show how that nineweeks of the school year is
special, and then they're goingto be invited to join this
(12:28):
community of an ongoing group ofprofessional educators to
really try this stuff out.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So okay, yeah, I was going to ask you how are you
planning to roll that out?
Sounds like you're going to doit incrementally introduce it to
some, let the word spread howamazing it is, and continue that
cycle every nine weeks or so.
How are you going to measureyour success?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
One of our favorite ways is I don't know it's like
on Amazon.
They'll say did you like thisproduct?
One through five stars.
And there's so many differentways to collect data.
Just the other week, jason, Iwas listening to a podcast where
this company is deployingrobots, and they're humanoid
(13:14):
robots.
The biggest goal of thoserobots in an industrial setting
was to go collect data.
Just go find data in any partof the factory, the process
whatever.
Go see what's there and collectit so we can have it to analyze
.
We are very big on surveys,both qualitative and
quantitative, so we're going tostay in touch with those
(13:34):
educators.
Something else, jason, is atthe very beginning we were
worried about whether or not oursessions were going to be good.
Would they like us?
Would they understand it?
But what we found is everysingle session we do is
transformational with theseeducators, and so now we're just
trying to leverage thatinformation, the benefit to them
, and build this community sothey get the benefit as we learn
(13:58):
.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Right, okay, makes perfect sense.
So what are the most commonways teachers are using AI right
now in lesson planning,differentiation or assessment?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Great question.
They're all over the place.
There are some teachers whostill love their file cabinet
and they say I even hate GoogleClassroom or Canvas I don't even
want to adopt those things andso we get that.
So it's all over the place.
There are educators who canjust refine one lesson.
Our favorite way to do it andwe haven't heard anyone else
(14:36):
talk about this before, jason,it's kind of surprising, it
still hasn't gotten out there isthat we are a large language
model platform agnostic company.
We're going to show teachershow to use a large language
model themselves, like Claude,like Grok, like ChatGPT.
There's other wrapper programslike Magic School, ai and these
(15:00):
other things that have ChatGPTat their core and a lot of folks
don't know that, and so theymay have done the prompting a
little bit for them and youcould click on a button and just
get a lesson plan.
Our favorite way to do it is toshow educators for each class.
They have build a thread inChatGPT, and when we say thread,
(15:21):
we mean one of thoseconversations that lines up on
that left-hand side of yourscreen and we're going to
right-click on it and with thosethree dots, we're going to
rename it and we might saymarketing, third block, then
what you do is you plug in theclass demographics for that
class.
I'm never going to put studentnames in there, I'm never going
to put student identifiableinformation in there.
(15:41):
And then I say here's my class,help me map out my year.
And so I get my curriculum set.
Then I start to get data fromassessments and I don't care
whether they are small or big.
In the education world, jason,they're called formative and
summative.
So formative assessments we'rebuilding, we're getting ideas on
how the students are doing,kind of building up to summative
(16:02):
assessments like a unit test, asemester exam, an SOL test.
And so if I get it to build alesson plan, like we were just
talking about a minute ago, thenwhatever assessment data I got
from that day, I plug that backin and I say here's how the kids
did today, what do you think weshould do tomorrow?
And adapt it.
What do we need to do next week?
And so when you can build thatthread over time, specific to
(16:28):
that class, specific to yourcurriculum, specific to your
state standards, and you gettheir formative assessments in
there, we've seen that doamazing things with student
performance numbers.
So that's our favorite way thatwe try to get educators to use
it.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
So that's our favorite way that we try to get
educators to use it.
Okay, yeah, you.
You mentioned having scrapedthe data before you put it in,
so you don't have any personallyidentifiable information.
So I guess that that addressesthe safety question.
What about bias and compliancewhile working with these large
language models?
How do you, how do you addressthat Great question?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Um, and we always say that we're not going to put
student information in there.
And when we talk to theeducators and we talk about how
a lot of these large languagemodels were built, we'll say you
know what?
So many of them are built oneverything that has been written
on the Internet or publishedpopulations who have not
(17:33):
published anything or putanything on the internet, and we
give them a minute to think.
We say that's not in there, andso right from the jump, we know
that these results are going tobe biased.
Now, sure, these AI models areonly the worst that we're ever
going to see them.
They're only going to continueto get better.
I mean when Sam Altman saysthey're only going to continue
to get better.
I mean when Sam Altman says,hey, it's free for spring 2025
(17:56):
for all the college kids inAmerica.
He's just gathering all of thatdata, so it's going to become
more and more refined.
But we tell educators there isan inherent bias in the way that
these were trained and soyou're going to have to watch
the outputs to ensure that it'sgoing to be safe for your
students to use.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Watch the outputs to ensure that it's going to be
safe for your students to use.
Okay, any particular complianceconcerns there as far as like
things that are coming out orhaven't quite caught up to the?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
technology.
Well, I do know in several ofthese platforms there are some
CEOs and boards of theseplatforms that are more willing
to keep things a secret, andsome of them are more willing to
say, no, we have safetyguardrails put in place.
And so, for example, a platformlike Magic School, ai is really
(18:44):
fantastic for student use andthey have a lot of safety
measures put in place.
And so when I got the chance todo your AI ready RVA session
this past summer, magic Schoolwas one of the presenters there
and that's fantastic.
They're great for student use.
But then it's just watching thefine print.
(19:05):
I mean, a lot of times on evena chat GPT account, it'll say
the user is 18, right Questionmark.
I'm not going to put a middleschool on there, and so many
times people gloss over justsome basic things like that, and
so we as educators have towatch the ethics of it.
We have to find out how thatdata is being collected and used
(19:26):
on the backend.
There's lots of settings inchat GPT where you can say turn
off my data, to where you're nottraining your models on what
I'm saying, but it takes thatkind of knowledge to go to the
settings wheel and go to thispage and that page and toggle
that off, and so it's those kindof things that we're trying to
battle test for educators toensure that it's safe.
(20:07):
Yeah, that sounds good, allright.
Well, how about share with oureducator?
Has put in a full day's workwith second graders.
Are you kidding me, jason?
When I was a sub, I could subdown to third grade and it was
like logical and I could dealwith student attitudes.
But when it gets down to likeK1 and 2, it's like attitudes
plus the physical labor ofwiping noses and picking up kids
(20:30):
and tying shoes.
Anyhow, she rolled into this.
I'm serious, jason.
That's the nature of the gameSounds exhausting.
It is.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Bless all the teachers out there.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Agree, I don't know how those K-1-2 teachers do it I
really don't and teach a kid toread and do math?
I mean there's, I totallybelieve them.
They're incredible people,highly underpaid, completely.
It's tragic.
So she comes in as a careerveteran.
She's got the little white hairgoing on like I do and she sits
down at our session and shebangs her big cup of coffee down
(21:02):
on the table and I said are youokay?
She's like yeah.
I said I bet you're gettingready to drink that coffee at
four o'clock in the afternoon.
This is like a Starbucks ventihuge thing.
She's like, yeah, as soon as Iget done with this stupid
session.
I got to go home and do lessonplans.
I said, oh my gosh, whatsubject?
She said math.
I hate math.
I'm on a new team.
I'm used to teaching firstgrade.
(21:23):
I got to teach second grade.
I hate math.
They're asking me to do the mathplans and so I show her the
process, exactly how we dothings, and she just looks up.
I mean she just has tears inher eyes, honestly.
She says thank you so much,carrie.
And she says but how do I putthis into a PowerPoint?
All these other teachers want aPowerPoint they can show the
(21:44):
class tomorrow.
I said put it into a set ofPowerPoint slides for me.
She did that and she did cryand she got up, she took that
cup of coffee, dumped it out inthe water fountain.
I said what are you doing?
She said I'm going home and havea glass of wine because her
work was done and so she's goingto go home, have a beautiful
evening and come into class thenext day fully rested to handle
(22:08):
all of those human issues.
It's amazing to me, jason, whenI'm in central office I get the
chance to drive around to ourdifferent buildings and help out
teachers, that kind of thing.
I'm not in a classroom and asI'm driving across town I see a
guy who has this big yard to cut.
He has a lawnmower and a weedeater.
All he has to do is make surehe has gas in the mower and that
(22:29):
his engine is working andeverything else.
A classroom teacher looks outat the different 30 different
universes of experiences infront of her and has to manage
all of those human connectionsOther than teaching.
It's hard for me, jason, toimagine another profession where
there are so many various humaninteractions throughout the day
(22:49):
.
So that's my favorite storyFirst coffee to wine.
That's the first one.
The next one is we've helped acouple of building principles
capture data from theirclassroom observations and we'll
use some audio capture tools,whether it's a Microsoft word
document that's cloud-based andI just clicked the microphone or
a program like Otter where ithas some AI wrapped into it, but
(23:13):
they'll go in.
They'll capture a little bit ofaudio and they will then go back
to that teacher's SMART goal.
They'll go back to what they'vealready worked on with a
building coach on helping thatteacher out, and the data that
comes out and the analysis thatcomes out is not subjective.
So many times a buildingprincipal having to go you know,
(23:35):
supervise another adult isrisking a subjective comment of
I don't like what you're wearingthis day or I hate you because
I don't like you as a person.
But how do I capture the dataof that lesson?
And so when we can capture theactual data from the class, plus
the lesson plan, plus whateverthe performance results were at
the end, that has been mindblowing for our building leaders
(23:58):
and they can send those emailsout immediately as opposed to
having to go back and try toanalyze data, figure this out,
send an email like next week.
This is hot and fresh feedbackto make the teaching better.
So there's two of our favoritestories Amazing.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, there's still some manual labor and sending
emails and such.
Do you have any vision insetting it up so that they're
workflow based for theseteachers?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Oh, definitely the next thing on the horizon that I
know about because I listenedto your podcast.
The next thing on the horizonthat I know about because I
listen to your podcast is theuse of agentic AI and when we
can set up agents, and this issomething that is blowing the
mind of even the major datacollectors of school systems.
So many school systems tie intoa company like PowerSchool,
(24:47):
where they will do all of theattendance, all of the
discipline, all of the grades,where they will do all of the
attendance, all of thediscipline, all of the grades,
and all I'm sitting therethinking is data.
Please, Can I just have a dailydownload of all of that data?
Plug it in so a lot of times.
Jason, I won't go to a schoolbuilding as a central office
person until the next week.
(25:08):
Can I please have a dailydownload of that data and then I
just hit, analyze all of thedata for me and present that
report to me?
Can I have emails sent toparents whenever certain
triggers are hit with attendance, discipline, grades, even just
send the emails to the buildingadministrator to go and check in
(25:30):
?
So the next era is going to benot only do we understand cute
little wrapped tools.
Not only do we understand largelanguage models, but how do we
set up agents?
I read a great article thispast spring that said this past
spring, 2025, was the lastspring that administrators in
(25:50):
any business would be managingjust employees.
From here on out, it's whichagents do you have operating in
the background, plus the humaninvolvement?
And so agentic AI is the nextwave of what's coming, and so
that's going to school divisions.
Right now, Jason are most ofthe time organized underneath
either a Google district or aMicrosoft district, and so when
(26:13):
Gemini can reach across all ofyour different Google suite of
products, Copilot can reachacross all of the Microsoft
suite, when it can integrate allof the data, documents,
presentations like that, and wetap in some wise use of agents,
that's going to be what's next.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And where do you see Teach supporting that mission?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
going to be?
What's next and where do yousee Teach supporting that
mission?
Thank you so much, jason, forasking.
Here we are, we know how to dothis stuff and we will stay in
touch with the most recentheadlines.
Even by the time we get off ofthis podcast, jason, this
interview, tyler will have sentme three different texts and
he'll say, oh my God, chatgptjust came out with this.
(26:53):
Oh my God, claw just releasedthis.
It's changing every day.
Oh my God, our federalgovernment just released a brand
new program called AIgov, andthe president you know love him
or hate him he wants our countryto be at the forefront of
artificial intelligence andeducation.
When our country is that way,we are ready to take any of
(27:15):
those funding opportunities, andthe only reason, jason, we need
money is to put gas in the tankto get to the next division.
We're going to try to make alittle bit to spread this
message, but we are seriousbelievers in the United States
of America, in our publiceducation system and in our
people, and so, when we can justhelp guide you with a couple of
basic instructional steps touse this technology, we're here
(27:39):
to be the leading edge of thattransformational time.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, yeah, that leads to a good question.
So what role does policy andfunding play accelerating or
slowing down the AI adoption inschools play?
Accelerating or slowing downthe AI adoption in?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
schools.
I think it's probably a age-oldquestion of how does government
funding assist public education.
As long as we've had publiceducation in this kind of a
format and there's been somedollars available to be spent,
they're going to try to do theirbest.
A lot of times there are acouple of steps actually behind
(28:15):
of where things really are.
But hey, we've been out here onthe front lines trying to
persuade school division leadersto pull from this pot of money
and that pot of money andsomething else.
If, all of a sudden, the fedsand the states loosen up some of
these and directly tie this toit, it's like gas on the fire.
We're ready to go, we have thesolutions, there's the money.
(28:38):
Plug and play, let's make ithappen Nice.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You've mentioned this and platform agnostic and
working directly with largelanguage models.
Why take that approach versuslocking into a single platform
and maybe like creatingexpertise around it?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Great question.
Right now, we're really kind of, like you said earlier, double
clicking on ChatGPT.
If someone has a $20 a monthsubscription to that platform,
we can do so much.
That's where we've reallyfigured it out.
Also, like I've alluded to inthe beginning, we first started
off on Claude just because ithad some features that allowed
(29:15):
us to upload student data.
I'm also going to be verytransparent.
We like to use AI in ourregular lives and we may or may
not like watching PGA eventsthat are data rich events, and
(29:41):
we may or may not like to wagera little bit of money on how the
top 10 list is going to lookfrom week to week.
If we can feed all of that datain there and then we can test
these different platforms andsee which one does a better job
with data analysis, we're goingto then lean in on that model.
So there's lots of these usecases that educators need.
We know what they are, butthat's also one of the reasons
why we want educators to alsouse AI in their personal lives.
(30:04):
Take a picture of therefrigerator on ChatGPT on your
phone and say what do I haveleft this week at the end of the
month as a public schooleducator to make a recipe with
this.
You know, my dishwasher justbroke.
I take off the toe plate andsnap a picture.
What are the parts?
Here?
They are on Amazon.
Here's your links.
Here's a picture of my raisedbed garden.
(30:25):
It's fall in Virginia.
What should I think aboutplanting when we can tie in
those tools of video capture onyour phone, when you can have
(30:47):
the conversational model?
Right now, Jason, I drive towork for 30 minutes and a lot of
times I'll pull up ChatGPT onmy phone and have, but I get to
work and I have my documents allready to go.
Everything's laid out.
So there's a lot moving on inmoving pieces in different
platforms.
We're going to test them out.
We know what educators need.
We don't want to totally committo one place, some Chrome
extension or something else.
(31:08):
We want to try them all out andfind that stack that is truly
going to be beneficial for K-12.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
All right, okay, so I don't mind you talking to your
chatbot honestly, as long as youdon't build an inappropriate
relationship with it.
You can even call it, you know,by a nickname, for all I care
All right so.
Kerry, I think we want to know,since you are so forward
thinking with these technologies, what do you think classrooms
(31:35):
will look like in the next fiveyears with AI?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Sure, great question Next five years?
I'm going to even talk aboutthe seniors who graduated last
year, spring of 2025, highschool seniors.
High school seniors a lot ofthem went off to colleges and
when you and I were in school,jason, we might get that
textbook list.
Oh my God, I got to go to thebookstore and spend these
(31:58):
thousands of dollars on thesestupid books.
Now they're not stupid, I'msure they're great.
But now they're rolling intoplaces like UNC and the
professor is saying it's arequirement to have a $20
subscription to ChatGPT.
Imagine coming from a highschool or a division where it
was banned and you thought itwas horrible, and now it's
(32:19):
required, and it's required inyour academic workflows.
So in academics, it is 100%there now In the workplace.
You know this perhaps betterthan I do, and the guests that
you've had on your podcast havesaid that AI is already in so
many workplaces out there.
(32:40):
Oh my gosh.
There was an amazing one youdid on healthcare.
I mean, there are workflows inevery industry that are
incorporating AI right now, andso students have to be ready for
that.
Even if there's a teacher wholoves that file cabinet and
doesn't want to adopt it for herown self.
You owe it to the students toget them ready for what's coming
(33:01):
.
And then so, jason, I'm fromSouthern Virginia.
A lot of our guys and gals downhere drive really big trucks
and they're kind of expensive.
Drive really big trucks andthey're kind of expensive.
And when I'm watching Elonagain, love him or hate him,
when Elon Musk is rolling offthe line humanoid robots that
(33:22):
are going to be cheaper thanthose trucks, if I can't even
understand AI, how am I going tounderstand how to interact with
that robot in my workplace?
And so most of the time, whatwe're trying to do now, in an
ideal state in the next fiveyears, is to get robotics in as
much as we can.
The state of Virginia has akind of funky way to get their
(33:44):
computer science standards in.
They just said, hey, please,everybody integrate them and
please, hopefully, use them.
And so we're trying to use AIin a normal workflow for as many
different tasks that areacademic as we can, making it
real world and having thestudents use that as a part of
their process.
(34:04):
And sorry, just another sidebarhere, jason, as an English
teacher for the past, god knowshow many years English standards
have been ignored when it comesto oral and listening
comprehension, because it's noton a state test.
We know that the kids got to doreading because they got a
state test.
We know they got to do writingbecause there's a state test
every now and then Forget thoselistening and speaking things.
(34:27):
But, jason, think of how muchnow is powered by good speaking.
Think of how much now ispowered by good speaking.
If I don't have a brain that'sfiring fast enough to do some
audio controls of my chat GPTbot on the way to work, whatever
it is, I'm never going to beable to interact in a workplace,
not only with my fellowcolleagues, who are humans, but
also these robots.
(34:47):
So there's a lot going on andwe got to get it done as fast as
we can because it's here now.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Okay, you mentioned robotics.
I'm curious what is one mostinteresting or primary example
of a use case with robotics ineducation?
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I don't know right now, jason, okay, no, it's a
great question, but, like rightnow, in robotics a division like
Martinsville is considered veryforward thinking compared to
the other divisions around them.
When they'll offer a Legochallenge?
When they'll do the, the robotchallenge at the high school
where all the kids get togetherand build robots and have
(35:25):
different challenges andeverything.
In my opinion, in the past thatwas like a cute, fun thing to
do, right, hey, let's go do alittle Lego challenge, build
this and do that.
No, it's not cute any longer.
We have to understand how thosefit in with every aspect of our
lives.
Automation, robotics, I meaneven look at the what happened
at the Virginia ports.
(35:47):
You know you're a lot closer tothat Virginia port discussion
than I am, just geographically,but that kind of thing is
happening and if we're notpreparing our students to work
in that kind of environment,they're lost.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I agree so with those that are feeling lost.
How would you help them balancethe promise of AI with the fear
that it could depersonalizeteaching specifically?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, definitely, I think that that's out there.
I think that if someone let mesay this, jason my co-founder,
tyler has a father who works inthe home building industry.
He's very good at buildinghomes, and let's take, for
example, a nail gun.
If I just walked by your officetoday, jason and I dropped this
(36:35):
fully loaded nail gun down, Isaid, hey, jason, plug that in
and have fun.
It could be very damaging, itcould be very hurtful, so could
scissors, but we still havescissors in our classroom.
We just have to teach them howto use these tools safely and
wisely, and so sometimes, when ateacher may see-.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
No running with the scissors.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
See, that's what I'm saying.
When someone sees a fullyloaded nail gun in their office,
they may be scared and not eventouch it.
They may go and try it one timeand it shoots a nail into the
wall.
Oh my gosh.
So they're going to have to beusing what a regular hammer to
build a whole house.
No, you're missing out on thepower of that tool.
There's going to be teachersand educators who don't use AI
(37:19):
at all and they're hurtingthemselves and their kids or
they might misuse it the firsttime and get a result that is
trash, that is generic and it ishorrible.
And I also think on that vein.
You've seen when you putsomething into ChatGPT and say
write me a paragraph.
You see how vapid and dull itis.
When teachers get on there,they're going to see what that
(37:41):
looks like.
They're going to recognize itmore with their student use and
be able to coach them into howto use it wisely at certain
points during that workflow, buthardly ever for a finished
product that is cut and paste.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Got it Okay, 10 points during that workflow, but
hardly ever for a finishedproduct that is cut and paste.
Got it, okay?
All right, so tell me.
I'd like to talk through alittle bit about what the future
of Teach looks like over thenext few years.
We know where the technology isheading.
We know you and your group arevisionaries in education and
leveraging these technologies astools, skill sets that every
(38:16):
single teacher is going to need.
What are you going to do withthat and taking them to the next
level?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Great question.
Thank you, jason.
Again.
Tyler and I are long-termpublic educators.
We hear the nightly news andthey'll talk about the jobs
report in this quarter and we'relike, yeah, whatever, we have
no idea what that means.
We just decided we want to haveall it's either 132 or 133
divisions in the state aspartners.
(38:41):
We're focusing on Virginiafirst and we said you know what,
if we get our marketing rightand start getting a lot of
presentations, we're going toneed someone to help us out.
We recently hired a 1099employee to just go out and do
presentations in the NorthernVirginia area.
And so it's like here's twolong-term public educators and
we just created half a job.
(39:02):
Hey, and so we're ready to dothis for the state of Virginia.
We want all of the state to beour partners.
We want to hire a bunch morepresenters.
We want to hire a full staff tonot only run the presentation
part of it but the business partof it.
And then we're going to usethis new model that we have of
rolling it out directly toteachers, irregardless of where
(39:24):
they are in the world.
And hey, if we can find acouple of pockets of folks in
Kentucky, we'll go start inKentucky If we can find some
folks in Massachusetts, we'll goto Massachusetts.
We're figuring out Virginiafirst, trying to be intentional
there.
We know those challenges andonce we've figured that out
we're going to take it as far aswe can.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Okay, awesome, all right.
Well, how about for theteachers and school leaders
listening right now that haven'ttaken that first step?
What is one small step they cantake tomorrow that will get
them to start using AIresponsibly and effectively?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Great question, jason .
You can do this on a free chatGPT account, and so many of the
lessons and instructions we giveto first-time users are on a
free account.
Use your school email address.
Go into chat GPT, make anaccount.
It's totally free.
You're going to see a littleplus sign down there.
You're going to find all wecall this building a brain.
(40:19):
Go find all of the stuff thatyou keep in your head your
lesson plan template, your statestandards, even right now,
jason, if I just said statestandards, go get your state
standards into a downloadedfolder on your computer.
Go in there, hit that plus signand say hi, my name is Kerry.
I don't mind using my name inthat thing.
It's going to refer to me by myname as I keep on going.
(40:41):
I'm a fourth grade teacher inMartinsville, virginia.
The reason I say Martinsvilleis I can now customize all of my
assignments to that region.
The reason I say Virginia isit's going to start pulling all
of the standards in for thestate of Virginia.
I'm a fourth grade teacher inMartinsville, virginia.
Here are my state standards.
I'm trying to get 100% of myclass to pass this year.
(41:03):
What ideas do you have for me?
And so sometimes, jason, welike to be very directive in
telling this large languagemodel exactly what we want.
Sometimes we'll, in the processof it, open it up and say what
ideas do you have?
And so it's going to come upwith maybe 10 ideas.
I see that eight of those Ialready knew that.
That ninth one that's new, Ihaven't thought of that before.
(41:27):
And that 10th one I've alreadyforgotten that one, but it's
good, I'm going to try it again.
So there's a specific set ofsteps that a brand new user can
do.
Just try that.
After you see that first result, go to my website, email me.
Say what do we do from here?
Kerry, let's ramp this up.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
That is a very practical example.
All right, I think alleducators can resonate with that
one.
And I was just about to ask youhow do people connect with you
and learn more about Teach thatone.
And I was just about to ask youhow do people connect with you
and learn more about TEACH?
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I'm going to be very hopeful that we'll be able to,
in the show notes or some way,put our email address in there
and our website.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It's wwwteachaieducom .
Speaker 2 (42:10):
It's a great landing spot All of the acronyms Just
trying to get it all in thereand so it's a great landing
place for you.
You can get on there, book acall with us.
We're still working for aVirginia school division, so you
can't book us during the day,but four to seven o'clock at
night we are here to talk to you, figure things out.
We're on TikTok.
Oh my God, Jason, I'm trying tofigure out TikTok.
We're on Facebook, we're onLinkedIn, we're all over the
(42:32):
place and so.
But let's start with thewebsite there and then we'll
connect as much as we can.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Okay, all right.
My final question for you,kerry.
I like all of my intervieweesto walk away with this one, and
the audience to hear about you alittle bit more personally.
If you could have anysuperpower in the world, what
would it be?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
and why, jason, my superpower would honestly be
just to go old school.
I mean, as much of thistechnology is here, I would love
to be able to go off the gridwith all of the suggestions.
Well, I guess I'd have to be onthe grid to power my chat GPT
account.
I guess I'd have to be on thegrid to power my chat GPT
account, but I want to be ableto raise my own food, have a
(43:15):
community of people where wewalk together, we interact with
each other, we worship with eachother.
I think if we can harness thesetechnologies to bring
communities back and that humaninteraction that has been so
long gone since COVID socialmedia, cell phones If we can
(43:36):
find some way to manage a lot ofthese busy work tasks, to get
them off of our plates, I can gooutside and walk and meet my
neighbors and become a healthier, happier human.
That's my superpower.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Connect again.
Yeah, just a side note, myson's school has rejected phones
altogether.
They used to say you can usethem during lunch, yeah, but
yesterday we got an email sayingthere is absolutely no phones.
Here's your warning system,yada, yada, and.
And I said to myself he's goingto be very upset about that
(44:11):
because he likes to be on hisphone during lunch.
And I say to myself that is soawesome, because these kids
don't know how to interact inface-to-face situations.
It's been years since I saw anykid sitting around a table
together and actually talking.
Totally agree.
They have no idea how to do itanymore.
No idea, totally agree.
(44:32):
So I think it anymore.
No idea, totally agree.
So I think it's a great thing.
And you're, you know, whetheryou would call it utopian
society there or not, it feels,it feels good.
And you know, when we all getto the universal basic income
and yeah, because AI and robotsare doing everything for us then
I think it's great.
You know, let's, let'sreconnect and let's hold hands
(44:59):
and sing Kumbaya, it's all good,I'm with you and have a drink,
yes, oh, yeah, definitely Allright.
So, carrie, thank you very much.
As the founder of teach, sharinghow your work is helping
schools and teachers harness AIsafely, effectively and with
purpose brings a lot of greatvalue to our audience.
So here's my big takeaway toeveryone AI and education isn't
about replacing teachers.
(45:20):
It's about scaling theircapacity, giving leaders sharper
insights and, ultimately,helping students succeed.
So if you want to learn moreabout TEACH, head on over to the
wwwteachaieducom.
And if you enjoyed today'sepisode, please don't forget to
subscribe to Inspire AI.
(45:41):
Wherever you get your podcasts,share it with colleagues,
friends, educators, students,anyone curious about how AI is
shaping the future of learning,and until next time, reminding
you to stay curious, keepinnovating and always look for
ways to future-proof yourknowledge.
Thanks again, kerry.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Thank you, jason, take care.
Welcome back to Inspire AI, the podcast where we
explore how artificialintelligence is reshaping our
world.
I'm your host, jason McGinty.
In today's episode of InspireAI, we're diving into one of the
most important frontiers of AIeducation Teachers today face
mounting pressures lessonplanning, data tracking,
(00:24):
compliance and, above all,meeting the unique needs of
every student.
At the same time, schoolleaders are searching for ways
to raise achievement, close gapsand ease the burden on their
staff.
That's where Teach comes in.
Their mission is to integrateAI into classrooms and
leadership practices in a waythat reduces educator stress and
(00:47):
boosts student performance, allwhile keeping humanity at the
center of the work.
Today, I'm joined by KeriWright, founder of Teach, to
talk about their journey, howthey're helping districts and
teachers adopt AI responsibly,and what the future of AI and
education might look like.
So if you're an educator,school leader or simply looking
(01:10):
to be informed about how AI istransforming education, this
conversation is for you.
So let's jump in.
Kerry, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Thank you, Jason.
All of those words were soinspirational.
Man, I'm just gettinggoosebumps.
That was fabulous.
Hey, you're doing the work.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I'm just here to preach.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You're doing a great job, man.
I love your show.
I love all the guests you haveon it.
The organization you're a partof is so innovative.
I'm happy to be a part of itand honored to be with you today
.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Okay, awesome.
Well then, why don't you startby telling our audience a little
bit about yourself, yourbackground and what does bring
you to the show today?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, rock and roll.
I am a founder of ourorganization.
It is called TEACH and that'san acronym.
It stands for TransformingEducation Through AI,
connections and Humanity.
My other partner is Tyler Hunt,and we both currently work for
Martinsville City Public Schools.
We are longtime Virginiaeducators.
This is my 30th year in thegame.
(02:12):
This is not a video episode,but my white hair is shining
this evening.
Tyler has been in a publiceducation setting for a long
time.
As well as an elementaryteacher, a middle school teacher
, I taught high school Englishfor years.
Now we are both in centraloffice positions, and so we know
what Virginia educators aregoing through.
(02:33):
And we went to a conference insummer of 2023 when Chad GPT was
just getting its legsunderneath it, and we said you
know what we're at thisconference and we have to figure
out this technology foreducation, and so we skipped the
entire second day of classes.
Sorry, whoever paid for that,I'm sorry, but you know we have
(02:55):
brought some innovativepractices back to Martinsville,
and so back then, we were usingClaude, because Claude AI is
still one of the major playersin the game.
It had a paperclip on it.
It allowed us to upload our ownlocal, safe data, and so we saw
from that day the power thatcould have, and on our drive
(03:24):
home we said we have to startsome way to get this message out
to K-12 educators as far andwide as we can, because it's a
totally transformative time.
The last time, jason, I thinkthat our public education system
in the United States got suchan overhaul was the Industrial
Revolution, when so much I'mserious, man, I'm serious when
the foundations were laid forit's not far off from the truth.
That's what we still have andthis technology has the power to
(03:44):
do and I don't know if you'veever watched the movie or read
the book Ready Player One.
It's really pretty cool, and soI think we're getting to that
kind of place and we're here tokeep the humans in the classroom
.
Both Tyler and I taught throughCOVID.
We know how good and essentialit is to have a human being in
the classroom.
We're not here to be allvirtual and robots and
(04:07):
everything else.
This is going to be humansinvolved, guiding it, and we
want to show teachers, just likeyou said in the introduction,
how we can reduce their stressand improve student performance
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, all right.
Well then, let's double clickon that, kerry.
What precise problem ineducation did you see that made
you believe AI could be part ofthe solution?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The very first one that we were faced with was?
It was?
It was summertime and a verycommon task for principals and
division leaders during asummertime is to come up with
their plans for the next year.
Plans for the next year Takeall of the data that you've
amassed over the past year.
How did you land on state andfederal indices and what are you
going to do next year?
(04:50):
That's a little bit different.
That can be a very laboriousprocess, time consuming, getting
input from everybody, having todo data analysis, and we were
able to take safe localdownloads from our state SOL
reports.
Take the template of the schoolimprovement plans that we have
to write, and we were donewithin 20 minutes and this is
(05:11):
normally a process that takesweeks.
So when we saw that, we saidnow let's really plug this into
what we know is a major issue inthe lives of teachers.
One of those, jason is writinghonest to goodness lesson plans.
Lives of teachers One of thoseJason is writing honest to
goodness lesson plans.
Now, in the state of Virginia,grades kindergarten through five
have had to adopt a readingcurriculum.
(05:31):
Now, those lots of timescurricula are written for Texas
or California or Florida.
They may say that they areadapted to our brand new
Virginia standards.
And, by the way, jason, thebrand new English Virginia
standards do have AI baked intothem and we can talk about that
at some point.
But it's already saying thatstudents in their research
(05:52):
process must use artificialintelligence in their research
process.
It's in the standards, oh my.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And so what?
What age group was that for?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's for middle school and up.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Middle school and up no that's smart.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
It was our governor who pitched that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Jason, I have a lot of respect for our governor and
he's he's a very action orientedkind of innovative guy.
But this was created by VDOE.
A bunch of educators, includingmyself I got to sit around
those round tables and help withmy role in Martinsville, help
to draft those standards, and sothis was done by teachers.
Oh, okay great From the groundup.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's the way it should be.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, the way that process works is VDOE does this
for every seven years for eachdifferent curricular area and
says teachers, give us all ofyour input and they sit there
and draft the best they can.
Then it goes through a coupleother steps of academic experts
and everything else.
So AI is in those standards.
And so now when you take anormal classroom and, jason, if
(06:53):
there are educators I know thereare educators listening to this
If they look out at theirclassroom and they see I have a
class of 25 kids.
Four of them have spedaccommodations that can be
serious.
Three of them don't speakEnglish like they should, Five
of them are reading a gradelevel or two below and five of
them are gifted and maybe onehas a brain injury.
(07:14):
Okay, so take that curriculumthat was written for someone in
California that has maybe thestate of Virginia standards
glued onto it, and how are yougoing to truly differentiate
that lesson offer?
All of the scaffolds that needto be done.
Jason, when I was a classroomteacher, honest to goodness,
when I was in another districtnot even going to say it I would
(07:35):
have to do my lesson plans andwhen it came to that line that
said differentiation, every dayI would go copy and paste, copy
paste, copy paste, because Ididn't have time to do all of
that for that kind of a class.
And, jason, let's say that I'ma middle school or high school
teacher and have four of thoseclasses, each with different
parameters inside of each one ofthem.
That's a perfect kind of amashup for this technology to
(07:58):
take your standards, yourexpectations, your building
principal has some template.
He wants the lesson plans doneby and all of these learners out
there in front of you.
How are you really going tomake sure that lesson is going
to hit for each one of them?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
100%.
No, that's really great, Ithink, even if you're not an
educator, that resonates becauseeveryone wants some specific
support for their child or lovedone, exactly yeah.
So tell me a little bit aboutthe mission.
It, of course, emphasizes bothconnections and humanity.
(08:34):
So how do you keep AIhuman-centered in your approach?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, 100%.
What we found in so many of ourpresentations is that it's the
folks who are kind of like me,who have been in education the
longest, who get the biggestbenefit from this technology.
And a lot of people would think, oh no, it's the hot young
teachers who just came out ofcollege and they know TikTok and
everything else, but they don'tknow education, they don't know
(09:01):
kids.
And so when we have a seasonededucator who comes to us kind of
angry at the beginning of thesessions, they're like I don't
know kids.
And so when we have a seasonededucator who comes to us kind of
angry at the beginning of thesessions, they're like I don't
want this, I hate it, it'scheating, I don't even want it.
And when we can show them howit can give them a lesson plan
exactly designed, and they makea couple of tweaks to say that's
not going to work for my kids,that will.
(09:22):
Oh wow, that's really good.
So that's where the teacher isthe driver.
The building principal knowsher statistics that she has to
hit.
She knows her building Centraloffice leaders know their
division.
It's never a copy and pastesituation.
I tell folks all the time ifI'm in central office and a
(09:44):
teacher sends me a question andI just go, hey, ChatGPT, what's
the answer?
And I go copy and paste thatteacher's going to know it.
And they're going to say why doI need to email Kerry, I'm not
going to ask him any morequestions.
The same is true when a studentasks a teacher a question.
If a teacher goes, oh, here'sthe answer and I just got it off
(10:07):
, chat, the kid's going to know.
So we have to customize thefirst draft Now.
The first draft may have 70,80% done correctly and we have
to tweak and refine the rest.
But it's up to the human at theend, before the rubber hits the
road, to truly implement itwisely.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Human feedback.
Yeah, so you have two maindelivery models one for district
partnerships and one fordirect-to-teacher coaching.
How do you decide which modelis best fit for a school or
district?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
We are long-term public educators.
Jason, I'm speaking to you whois well-versed in the ways of
business and capitalism andeverything else, and we're
trying to figure out how this isgoing to work.
Our most familiar model is todo professional development
sessions and so a lot of timeswe'll go to a conference and
we'll put our processes ondisplay for decision makers and
(10:59):
then we'll try to follow up withthem to book some three-hour
sessions in their division.
We'll try to follow up withthem to book some three hour
sessions in their division.
That relies on an innovativedecision maker to bring that
back to a district.
And you can imagine, jason,just like there are so many
people in your regular dailylife who are all over the place
with AI and their emotions.
And, jason, down here inSouthern Virginia, I'm telling
(11:21):
you there have to be somepastors in the pulpits who are
saying it's the devil, I meanit's that kind of way all over
the state.
So we found that we can be verysuccessful with some of our
projects we've done withdifferent divisions from the
West to the East in theCommonwealth.
But it's a shame when aneducator does not get the
benefit of our processes if thatinnovative leader does not
(11:45):
bring us in.
And so we are just in the earlystages of opening up AI coaching
directly to teachers, wherewe're going to build a community
, and this is something myco-founder, tyler, has been big
on from the beginning.
How do we form a community ofeducators who are willing to
study AI, adopt it, try it?
And we're going to be rollingout some things here very
(12:08):
shortly.
We're going to be doing a bigevent at the end of September.
That's going to be a freethree-hour session for educators
and after that they're going tobe invited into this community
and we're going to be doing asession like that every nine
weeks to show how that nineweeks of the school year is
special.
And then they're going to bedoing a session like that every
nine weeks to show how that nineweeks of the school year is
special, and then they're goingto be invited to join this
(12:28):
community of an ongoing group ofprofessional educators to
really try this stuff out.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So okay, yeah, I was going to ask you how are you
planning to roll that out?
Sounds like you're going to doit incrementally introduce it to
some, let the word spread howamazing it is, and continue that
cycle every nine weeks or so.
How are you going to measureyour success?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
One of our favorite ways is I don't know it's like
on Amazon.
They'll say did you like thisproduct?
One through five stars.
And there's so many differentways to collect data.
Just the other week, jason, Iwas listening to a podcast where
this company is deployingrobots, and they're humanoid
(13:14):
robots.
The biggest goal of thoserobots in an industrial setting
was to go collect data.
Just go find data in any partof the factory, the process
whatever.
Go see what's there and collectit so we can have it to analyze
.
We are very big on surveys,both qualitative and
quantitative, so we're going tostay in touch with those
(13:34):
educators.
Something else, jason, is atthe very beginning we were
worried about whether or not oursessions were going to be good.
Would they like us?
Would they understand it?
But what we found is everysingle session we do is
transformational with theseeducators, and so now we're just
trying to leverage thatinformation, the benefit to them
, and build this community sothey get the benefit as we learn
(13:58):
.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Right, okay, makes perfect sense.
So what are the most commonways teachers are using AI right
now in lesson planning,differentiation or assessment?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Great question.
They're all over the place.
There are some teachers whostill love their file cabinet
and they say I even hate GoogleClassroom or Canvas I don't even
want to adopt those things andso we get that.
So it's all over the place.
There are educators who canjust refine one lesson.
Our favorite way to do it andwe haven't heard anyone else
(14:36):
talk about this before, jason,it's kind of surprising, it
still hasn't gotten out there isthat we are a large language
model platform agnostic company.
We're going to show teachershow to use a large language
model themselves, like Claude,like Grok, like ChatGPT.
There's other wrapper programslike Magic School, ai and these
(15:00):
other things that have ChatGPTat their core and a lot of folks
don't know that, and so theymay have done the prompting a
little bit for them and youcould click on a button and just
get a lesson plan.
Our favorite way to do it is toshow educators for each class.
They have build a thread inChatGPT, and when we say thread,
(15:21):
we mean one of thoseconversations that lines up on
that left-hand side of yourscreen and we're going to
right-click on it and with thosethree dots, we're going to
rename it and we might saymarketing, third block, then
what you do is you plug in theclass demographics for that
class.
I'm never going to put studentnames in there, I'm never going
to put student identifiableinformation in there.
(15:41):
And then I say here's my class,help me map out my year.
And so I get my curriculum set.
Then I start to get data fromassessments and I don't care
whether they are small or big.
In the education world, jason,they're called formative and
summative.
So formative assessments we'rebuilding, we're getting ideas on
how the students are doing,kind of building up to summative
(16:02):
assessments like a unit test, asemester exam, an SOL test.
And so if I get it to build alesson plan, like we were just
talking about a minute ago, thenwhatever assessment data I got
from that day, I plug that backin and I say here's how the kids
did today, what do you think weshould do tomorrow?
And adapt it.
What do we need to do next week?
And so when you can build thatthread over time, specific to
(16:28):
that class, specific to yourcurriculum, specific to your
state standards, and you gettheir formative assessments in
there, we've seen that doamazing things with student
performance numbers.
So that's our favorite way thatwe try to get educators to use
it.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
So that's our favorite way that we try to get
educators to use it.
Okay, yeah, you.
You mentioned having scrapedthe data before you put it in,
so you don't have any personallyidentifiable information.
So I guess that that addressesthe safety question.
What about bias and compliancewhile working with these large
language models?
How do you, how do you addressthat Great question?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Um, and we always say that we're not going to put
student information in there.
And when we talk to theeducators and we talk about how
a lot of these large languagemodels were built, we'll say you
know what?
So many of them are built oneverything that has been written
on the Internet or publishedpopulations who have not
(17:33):
published anything or putanything on the internet, and we
give them a minute to think.
We say that's not in there, andso right from the jump, we know
that these results are going tobe biased.
Now, sure, these AI models areonly the worst that we're ever
going to see them.
They're only going to continueto get better.
I mean when Sam Altman saysthey're only going to continue
to get better.
I mean when Sam Altman says,hey, it's free for spring 2025
(17:56):
for all the college kids inAmerica.
He's just gathering all of thatdata, so it's going to become
more and more refined.
But we tell educators there isan inherent bias in the way that
these were trained and soyou're going to have to watch
the outputs to ensure that it'sgoing to be safe for your
students to use.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Watch the outputs to ensure that it's going to be
safe for your students to use.
Okay, any particular complianceconcerns there as far as like
things that are coming out orhaven't quite caught up to the?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
technology.
Well, I do know in several ofthese platforms there are some
CEOs and boards of theseplatforms that are more willing
to keep things a secret, andsome of them are more willing to
say, no, we have safetyguardrails put in place.
And so, for example, a platformlike Magic School, ai is really
(18:44):
fantastic for student use andthey have a lot of safety
measures put in place.
And so when I got the chance todo your AI ready RVA session
this past summer, magic Schoolwas one of the presenters there
and that's fantastic.
They're great for student use.
But then it's just watching thefine print.
(19:05):
I mean, a lot of times on evena chat GPT account, it'll say
the user is 18, right Questionmark.
I'm not going to put a middleschool on there, and so many
times people gloss over justsome basic things like that, and
so we as educators have towatch the ethics of it.
We have to find out how thatdata is being collected and used
(19:26):
on the backend.
There's lots of settings inchat GPT where you can say turn
off my data, to where you're nottraining your models on what
I'm saying, but it takes thatkind of knowledge to go to the
settings wheel and go to thispage and that page and toggle
that off, and so it's those kindof things that we're trying to
battle test for educators toensure that it's safe.
(20:07):
Yeah, that sounds good, allright.
Well, how about share with oureducator?
Has put in a full day's workwith second graders.
Are you kidding me, jason?
When I was a sub, I could subdown to third grade and it was
like logical and I could dealwith student attitudes.
But when it gets down to likeK1 and 2, it's like attitudes
plus the physical labor ofwiping noses and picking up kids
(20:30):
and tying shoes.
Anyhow, she rolled into this.
I'm serious, jason.
That's the nature of the gameSounds exhausting.
It is.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Bless all the teachers out there.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Agree, I don't know how those K-1-2 teachers do it I
really don't and teach a kid toread and do math?
I mean there's, I totallybelieve them.
They're incredible people,highly underpaid, completely.
It's tragic.
So she comes in as a careerveteran.
She's got the little white hairgoing on like I do and she sits
down at our session and shebangs her big cup of coffee down
(21:02):
on the table and I said are youokay?
She's like yeah.
I said I bet you're gettingready to drink that coffee at
four o'clock in the afternoon.
This is like a Starbucks ventihuge thing.
She's like, yeah, as soon as Iget done with this stupid
session.
I got to go home and do lessonplans.
I said, oh my gosh, whatsubject?
She said math.
I hate math.
I'm on a new team.
I'm used to teaching firstgrade.
(21:23):
I got to teach second grade.
I hate math.
They're asking me to do the mathplans and so I show her the
process, exactly how we dothings, and she just looks up.
I mean she just has tears inher eyes, honestly.
She says thank you so much,carrie.
And she says but how do I putthis into a PowerPoint?
All these other teachers want aPowerPoint they can show the
(21:44):
class tomorrow.
I said put it into a set ofPowerPoint slides for me.
She did that and she did cryand she got up, she took that
cup of coffee, dumped it out inthe water fountain.
I said what are you doing?
She said I'm going home and havea glass of wine because her
work was done and so she's goingto go home, have a beautiful
evening and come into class thenext day fully rested to handle
(22:08):
all of those human issues.
It's amazing to me, jason, whenI'm in central office I get the
chance to drive around to ourdifferent buildings and help out
teachers, that kind of thing.
I'm not in a classroom and asI'm driving across town I see a
guy who has this big yard to cut.
He has a lawnmower and a weedeater.
All he has to do is make surehe has gas in the mower and that
(22:29):
his engine is working andeverything else.
A classroom teacher looks outat the different 30 different
universes of experiences infront of her and has to manage
all of those human connectionsOther than teaching.
It's hard for me, jason, toimagine another profession where
there are so many various humaninteractions throughout the day
(22:49):
.
So that's my favorite storyFirst coffee to wine.
That's the first one.
The next one is we've helped acouple of building principles
capture data from theirclassroom observations and we'll
use some audio capture tools,whether it's a Microsoft word
document that's cloud-based andI just clicked the microphone or
a program like Otter where ithas some AI wrapped into it, but
(23:13):
they'll go in.
They'll capture a little bit ofaudio and they will then go back
to that teacher's SMART goal.
They'll go back to what they'vealready worked on with a
building coach on helping thatteacher out, and the data that
comes out and the analysis thatcomes out is not subjective.
So many times a buildingprincipal having to go you know,
(23:35):
supervise another adult isrisking a subjective comment of
I don't like what you're wearingthis day or I hate you because
I don't like you as a person.
But how do I capture the dataof that lesson?
And so when we can capture theactual data from the class, plus
the lesson plan, plus whateverthe performance results were at
the end, that has been mindblowing for our building leaders
(23:58):
and they can send those emailsout immediately as opposed to
having to go back and try toanalyze data, figure this out,
send an email like next week.
This is hot and fresh feedbackto make the teaching better.
So there's two of our favoritestories Amazing.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, there's still some manual labor and sending
emails and such.
Do you have any vision insetting it up so that they're
workflow based for theseteachers?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Oh, definitely the next thing on the horizon that I
know about because I listenedto your podcast.
The next thing on the horizonthat I know about because I
listen to your podcast is theuse of agentic AI and when we
can set up agents, and this issomething that is blowing the
mind of even the major datacollectors of school systems.
So many school systems tie intoa company like PowerSchool,
(24:47):
where they will do all of theattendance, all of the
discipline, all of the grades,where they will do all of the
attendance, all of thediscipline, all of the grades,
and all I'm sitting therethinking is data.
Please, Can I just have a dailydownload of all of that data?
Plug it in so a lot of times.
Jason, I won't go to a schoolbuilding as a central office
person until the next week.
(25:08):
Can I please have a dailydownload of that data and then I
just hit, analyze all of thedata for me and present that
report to me?
Can I have emails sent toparents whenever certain
triggers are hit with attendance, discipline, grades, even just
send the emails to the buildingadministrator to go and check in
(25:30):
?
So the next era is going to benot only do we understand cute
little wrapped tools.
Not only do we understand largelanguage models, but how do we
set up agents?
I read a great article thispast spring that said this past
spring, 2025, was the lastspring that administrators in
(25:50):
any business would be managingjust employees.
From here on out, it's whichagents do you have operating in
the background, plus the humaninvolvement?
And so agentic AI is the nextwave of what's coming, and so
that's going to school divisions.
Right now, Jason are most ofthe time organized underneath
either a Google district or aMicrosoft district, and so when
(26:13):
Gemini can reach across all ofyour different Google suite of
products, Copilot can reachacross all of the Microsoft
suite, when it can integrate allof the data, documents,
presentations like that, and wetap in some wise use of agents,
that's going to be what's next.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And where do you see Teach supporting that mission?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
going to be?
What's next and where do yousee Teach supporting that
mission?
Thank you so much, jason, forasking.
Here we are, we know how to dothis stuff and we will stay in
touch with the most recentheadlines.
Even by the time we get off ofthis podcast, jason, this
interview, tyler will have sentme three different texts and
he'll say, oh my God, chatgptjust came out with this.
(26:53):
Oh my God, claw just releasedthis.
It's changing every day.
Oh my God, our federalgovernment just released a brand
new program called AIgov, andthe president you know love him
or hate him he wants our countryto be at the forefront of
artificial intelligence andeducation.
When our country is that way,we are ready to take any of
(27:15):
those funding opportunities, andthe only reason, jason, we need
money is to put gas in the tankto get to the next division.
We're going to try to make alittle bit to spread this
message, but we are seriousbelievers in the United States
of America, in our publiceducation system and in our
people, and so, when we can justhelp guide you with a couple of
basic instructional steps touse this technology, we're here
(27:39):
to be the leading edge of thattransformational time.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, yeah, that leads to a good question.
So what role does policy andfunding play accelerating or
slowing down the AI adoption inschools play?
Accelerating or slowing downthe AI adoption in?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
schools.
I think it's probably a age-oldquestion of how does government
funding assist public education.
As long as we've had publiceducation in this kind of a
format and there's been somedollars available to be spent,
they're going to try to do theirbest.
A lot of times there are acouple of steps actually behind
(28:15):
of where things really are.
But hey, we've been out here onthe front lines trying to
persuade school division leadersto pull from this pot of money
and that pot of money andsomething else.
If, all of a sudden, the fedsand the states loosen up some of
these and directly tie this toit, it's like gas on the fire.
We're ready to go, we have thesolutions, there's the money.
(28:38):
Plug and play, let's make ithappen Nice.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You've mentioned this and platform agnostic and
working directly with largelanguage models.
Why take that approach versuslocking into a single platform
and maybe like creatingexpertise around it?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Great question.
Right now, we're really kind of, like you said earlier, double
clicking on ChatGPT.
If someone has a $20 a monthsubscription to that platform,
we can do so much.
That's where we've reallyfigured it out.
Also, like I've alluded to inthe beginning, we first started
off on Claude just because ithad some features that allowed
(29:15):
us to upload student data.
I'm also going to be verytransparent.
We like to use AI in ourregular lives and we may or may
not like watching PGA eventsthat are data rich events, and
(29:41):
we may or may not like to wagera little bit of money on how the
top 10 list is going to lookfrom week to week.
If we can feed all of that datain there and then we can test
these different platforms andsee which one does a better job
with data analysis, we're goingto then lean in on that model.
So there's lots of these usecases that educators need.
We know what they are, butthat's also one of the reasons
why we want educators to alsouse AI in their personal lives.
(30:04):
Take a picture of therefrigerator on ChatGPT on your
phone and say what do I haveleft this week at the end of the
month as a public schooleducator to make a recipe with
this.
You know, my dishwasher justbroke.
I take off the toe plate andsnap a picture.
What are the parts?
Here?
They are on Amazon.
Here's your links.
Here's a picture of my raisedbed garden.
(30:25):
It's fall in Virginia.
What should I think aboutplanting when we can tie in
those tools of video capture onyour phone, when you can have
(30:47):
the conversational model?
Right now, Jason, I drive towork for 30 minutes and a lot of
times I'll pull up ChatGPT onmy phone and have, but I get to
work and I have my documents allready to go.
Everything's laid out.
So there's a lot moving on inmoving pieces in different
platforms.
We're going to test them out.
We know what educators need.
We don't want to totally committo one place, some Chrome
extension or something else.
(31:08):
We want to try them all out andfind that stack that is truly
going to be beneficial for K-12.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
All right, okay, so I don't mind you talking to your
chatbot honestly, as long as youdon't build an inappropriate
relationship with it.
You can even call it, you know,by a nickname, for all I care
All right so.
Kerry, I think we want to know,since you are so forward
thinking with these technologies, what do you think classrooms
(31:35):
will look like in the next fiveyears with AI?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Sure, great question Next five years?
I'm going to even talk aboutthe seniors who graduated last
year, spring of 2025, highschool seniors.
High school seniors a lot ofthem went off to colleges and
when you and I were in school,jason, we might get that
textbook list.
Oh my God, I got to go to thebookstore and spend these
(31:58):
thousands of dollars on thesestupid books.
Now they're not stupid, I'msure they're great.
But now they're rolling intoplaces like UNC and the
professor is saying it's arequirement to have a $20
subscription to ChatGPT.
Imagine coming from a highschool or a division where it
was banned and you thought itwas horrible, and now it's
(32:19):
required, and it's required inyour academic workflows.
So in academics, it is 100%there now In the workplace.
You know this perhaps betterthan I do, and the guests that
you've had on your podcast havesaid that AI is already in so
many workplaces out there.
(32:40):
Oh my gosh.
There was an amazing one youdid on healthcare.
I mean, there are workflows inevery industry that are
incorporating AI right now, andso students have to be ready for
that.
Even if there's a teacher wholoves that file cabinet and
doesn't want to adopt it for herown self.
You owe it to the students toget them ready for what's coming
(33:01):
.
And then so, jason, I'm fromSouthern Virginia.
A lot of our guys and gals downhere drive really big trucks
and they're kind of expensive.
Drive really big trucks andthey're kind of expensive.
And when I'm watching Elonagain, love him or hate him,
when Elon Musk is rolling offthe line humanoid robots that
(33:22):
are going to be cheaper thanthose trucks, if I can't even
understand AI, how am I going tounderstand how to interact with
that robot in my workplace?
And so most of the time, whatwe're trying to do now, in an
ideal state in the next fiveyears, is to get robotics in as
much as we can.
The state of Virginia has akind of funky way to get their
(33:44):
computer science standards in.
They just said, hey, please,everybody integrate them and
please, hopefully, use them.
And so we're trying to use AIin a normal workflow for as many
different tasks that areacademic as we can, making it
real world and having thestudents use that as a part of
their process.
(34:04):
And sorry, just another sidebarhere, jason, as an English
teacher for the past, god knowshow many years English standards
have been ignored when it comesto oral and listening
comprehension, because it's noton a state test.
We know that the kids got to doreading because they got a
state test.
We know they got to do writingbecause there's a state test
every now and then Forget thoselistening and speaking things.
(34:27):
But, jason, think of how muchnow is powered by good speaking.
Think of how much now ispowered by good speaking.
If I don't have a brain that'sfiring fast enough to do some
audio controls of my chat GPTbot on the way to work, whatever
it is, I'm never going to beable to interact in a workplace,
not only with my fellowcolleagues, who are humans, but
also these robots.
(34:47):
So there's a lot going on andwe got to get it done as fast as
we can because it's here now.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Okay, you mentioned robotics.
I'm curious what is one mostinteresting or primary example
of a use case with robotics ineducation?
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I don't know right now, jason, okay, no, it's a
great question, but, like rightnow, in robotics a division like
Martinsville is considered veryforward thinking compared to
the other divisions around them.
When they'll offer a Legochallenge?
When they'll do the, the robotchallenge at the high school
where all the kids get togetherand build robots and have
(35:25):
different challenges andeverything.
In my opinion, in the past thatwas like a cute, fun thing to
do, right, hey, let's go do alittle Lego challenge, build
this and do that.
No, it's not cute any longer.
We have to understand how thosefit in with every aspect of our
lives.
Automation, robotics, I meaneven look at the what happened
at the Virginia ports.
(35:47):
You know you're a lot closer tothat Virginia port discussion
than I am, just geographically,but that kind of thing is
happening and if we're notpreparing our students to work
in that kind of environment,they're lost.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I agree so with those that are feeling lost.
How would you help them balancethe promise of AI with the fear
that it could depersonalizeteaching specifically?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, definitely, I think that that's out there.
I think that if someone let mesay this, jason my co-founder,
tyler has a father who works inthe home building industry.
He's very good at buildinghomes, and let's take, for
example, a nail gun.
If I just walked by your officetoday, jason and I dropped this
(36:35):
fully loaded nail gun down, Isaid, hey, jason, plug that in
and have fun.
It could be very damaging, itcould be very hurtful, so could
scissors, but we still havescissors in our classroom.
We just have to teach them howto use these tools safely and
wisely, and so sometimes, when ateacher may see-.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
No running with the scissors.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
See, that's what I'm saying.
When someone sees a fullyloaded nail gun in their office,
they may be scared and not eventouch it.
They may go and try it one timeand it shoots a nail into the
wall.
Oh my gosh.
So they're going to have to beusing what a regular hammer to
build a whole house.
No, you're missing out on thepower of that tool.
There's going to be teachersand educators who don't use AI
(37:19):
at all and they're hurtingthemselves and their kids or
they might misuse it the firsttime and get a result that is
trash, that is generic and it ishorrible.
And I also think on that vein.
You've seen when you putsomething into ChatGPT and say
write me a paragraph.
You see how vapid and dull itis.
When teachers get on there,they're going to see what that
(37:41):
looks like.
They're going to recognize itmore with their student use and
be able to coach them into howto use it wisely at certain
points during that workflow, buthardly ever for a finished
product that is cut and paste.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Got it Okay, 10 points during that workflow, but
hardly ever for a finishedproduct that is cut and paste.
Got it, okay?
All right, so tell me.
I'd like to talk through alittle bit about what the future
of Teach looks like over thenext few years.
We know where the technology isheading.
We know you and your group arevisionaries in education and
leveraging these technologies astools, skill sets that every
(38:16):
single teacher is going to need.
What are you going to do withthat and taking them to the next
level?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Great question.
Thank you, jason.
Again.
Tyler and I are long-termpublic educators.
We hear the nightly news andthey'll talk about the jobs
report in this quarter and we'relike, yeah, whatever, we have
no idea what that means.
We just decided we want to haveall it's either 132 or 133
divisions in the state aspartners.
(38:41):
We're focusing on Virginiafirst and we said you know what,
if we get our marketing rightand start getting a lot of
presentations, we're going toneed someone to help us out.
We recently hired a 1099employee to just go out and do
presentations in the NorthernVirginia area.
And so it's like here's twolong-term public educators and
we just created half a job.
(39:02):
Hey, and so we're ready to dothis for the state of Virginia.
We want all of the state to beour partners.
We want to hire a bunch morepresenters.
We want to hire a full staff tonot only run the presentation
part of it but the business partof it.
And then we're going to usethis new model that we have of
rolling it out directly toteachers, irregardless of where
(39:24):
they are in the world.
And hey, if we can find acouple of pockets of folks in
Kentucky, we'll go start inKentucky If we can find some
folks in Massachusetts, we'll goto Massachusetts.
We're figuring out Virginiafirst, trying to be intentional
there.
We know those challenges andonce we've figured that out
we're going to take it as far aswe can.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Okay, awesome, all right.
Well, how about for theteachers and school leaders
listening right now that haven'ttaken that first step?
What is one small step they cantake tomorrow that will get
them to start using AIresponsibly and effectively?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Great question, jason .
You can do this on a free chatGPT account, and so many of the
lessons and instructions we giveto first-time users are on a
free account.
Use your school email address.
Go into chat GPT, make anaccount.
It's totally free.
You're going to see a littleplus sign down there.
You're going to find all wecall this building a brain.
(40:19):
Go find all of the stuff thatyou keep in your head your
lesson plan template, your statestandards, even right now,
jason, if I just said statestandards, go get your state
standards into a downloadedfolder on your computer.
Go in there, hit that plus signand say hi, my name is Kerry.
I don't mind using my name inthat thing.
It's going to refer to me by myname as I keep on going.
(40:41):
I'm a fourth grade teacher inMartinsville, virginia.
The reason I say Martinsvilleis I can now customize all of my
assignments to that region.
The reason I say Virginia isit's going to start pulling all
of the standards in for thestate of Virginia.
I'm a fourth grade teacher inMartinsville, virginia.
Here are my state standards.
I'm trying to get 100% of myclass to pass this year.
(41:03):
What ideas do you have for me?
And so sometimes, jason, welike to be very directive in
telling this large languagemodel exactly what we want.
Sometimes we'll, in the processof it, open it up and say what
ideas do you have?
And so it's going to come upwith maybe 10 ideas.
I see that eight of those Ialready knew that.
That ninth one that's new, Ihaven't thought of that before.
(41:27):
And that 10th one I've alreadyforgotten that one, but it's
good, I'm going to try it again.
So there's a specific set ofsteps that a brand new user can
do.
Just try that.
After you see that first result, go to my website, email me.
Say what do we do from here?
Kerry, let's ramp this up.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
That is a very practical example.
All right, I think alleducators can resonate with that
one.
And I was just about to ask youhow do people connect with you
and learn more about Teach thatone.
And I was just about to ask youhow do people connect with you
and learn more about TEACH?
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I'm going to be very hopeful that we'll be able to,
in the show notes or some way,put our email address in there
and our website.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It's wwwteachaieducom .
Speaker 2 (42:10):
It's a great landing spot All of the acronyms Just
trying to get it all in thereand so it's a great landing
place for you.
You can get on there, book acall with us.
We're still working for aVirginia school division, so you
can't book us during the day,but four to seven o'clock at
night we are here to talk to you, figure things out.
We're on TikTok.
Oh my God, Jason, I'm trying tofigure out TikTok.
We're on Facebook, we're onLinkedIn, we're all over the
(42:32):
place and so.
But let's start with thewebsite there and then we'll
connect as much as we can.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Okay, all right.
My final question for you,kerry.
I like all of my intervieweesto walk away with this one, and
the audience to hear about you alittle bit more personally.
If you could have anysuperpower in the world, what
would it be?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
and why, jason, my superpower would honestly be
just to go old school.
I mean, as much of thistechnology is here, I would love
to be able to go off the gridwith all of the suggestions.
Well, I guess I'd have to be onthe grid to power my chat GPT
account.
I guess I'd have to be on thegrid to power my chat GPT
account, but I want to be ableto raise my own food, have a
(43:15):
community of people where wewalk together, we interact with
each other, we worship with eachother.
I think if we can harness thesetechnologies to bring
communities back and that humaninteraction that has been so
long gone since COVID socialmedia, cell phones If we can
(43:36):
find some way to manage a lot ofthese busy work tasks, to get
them off of our plates, I can gooutside and walk and meet my
neighbors and become a healthier, happier human.
That's my superpower.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Connect again.
Yeah, just a side note, myson's school has rejected phones
altogether.
They used to say you can usethem during lunch, yeah, but
yesterday we got an email sayingthere is absolutely no phones.
Here's your warning system,yada, yada, and.
And I said to myself he's goingto be very upset about that
(44:11):
because he likes to be on hisphone during lunch.
And I say to myself that is soawesome, because these kids
don't know how to interact inface-to-face situations.
It's been years since I saw anykid sitting around a table
together and actually talking.
Totally agree.
They have no idea how to do itanymore.
No idea, totally agree.
(44:32):
So I think it anymore.
No idea, totally agree.
So I think it's a great thing.
And you're, you know, whetheryou would call it utopian
society there or not, it feels,it feels good.
And you know, when we all getto the universal basic income
and yeah, because AI and robotsare doing everything for us then
I think it's great.
You know, let's, let'sreconnect and let's hold hands
(44:59):
and sing Kumbaya, it's all good,I'm with you and have a drink,
yes, oh, yeah, definitely Allright.
So, carrie, thank you very much.
As the founder of teach, sharinghow your work is helping
schools and teachers harness AIsafely, effectively and with
purpose brings a lot of greatvalue to our audience.
So here's my big takeaway toeveryone AI and education isn't
about replacing teachers.
(45:20):
It's about scaling theircapacity, giving leaders sharper
insights and, ultimately,helping students succeed.
So if you want to learn moreabout TEACH, head on over to the
wwwteachaieducom.
And if you enjoyed today'sepisode, please don't forget to
subscribe to Inspire AI.
(45:41):
Wherever you get your podcasts,share it with colleagues,
friends, educators, students,anyone curious about how AI is
shaping the future of learning,and until next time, reminding
you to stay curious, keepinnovating and always look for
ways to future-proof yourknowledge.
Thanks again, kerry.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Thank you, jason, take care.
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