Changing Schools to Make Teaching More Sustainable

Brian Costello, Owner HIVEXR

Schools have been drastically changed.  While we continue to hang on to what we have known as school for a long time, we are still facing serious challenges.  Teaching virtually, teaching hybrid, teaching in a socially distanced in-person setting; all of these are vastly different than what many of us have worked on creating throughout our careers.  We are faced with intense challenges of redefining what we do as educators to help reach our kids in the most effective ways.  In doing so, however, we are left with dramatic difficulties in sustainability.  

Teaching was already a draining profession that faced difficult rates of attrition.  With the additional responsibilities of completely shifting their understanding and style of teaching, combined with various increases in how tasks centered around planning, grading, and technology we have seen several major shifts.  One, teachers are both working more and available to students more than ever before.  Also, they are being forced to embrace forms of technology that, in the past, many educators had avoided or used sparingly because new situations dictate it.  

One question that has consistently come up in my own robotics classes is: Will/Can teaching become an automated profession.  The overwhelming majority of my students have always said no, but in light of this pandemic and also some of the amazing things happening at Princeton Hive, I am not so sure that answer is a complete no, nor am I sure we as educators should want it to be.

What if the majority of assignments I gave were graded automatically based on the parameters I set forth in a rubric?  

What if class participation, attention, and engagement were measured automatically based on indicators developed with each student?

What if most simple questions were answered automatically without interrupting class or taking teacher planning time?

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How might this change the sustainability of teaching as a profession? All of these things are possible through the use of AI and automation.  While we as educators have traditionally fought hard against the idea that machines could do the jobs of teachers, there isn't enough time spent on thinking about how the use of machines and AI could enhance the time teachers spend on their actual craft and on their own improvement.  If the majority of my assignments could be scored through AI, most questions were answered directly to students without interrupting the class or planning time through automated AI, and engagement in lessons was detected through AI as well, we as educators might find that we don't spend hours on the nights and weekends grading and planning.  We might find that we are able to focus on our jobs in a way that is both more enriching and more sustainable than the current model we are using.