One of the things that I learned during my time in the classroom is that giving students Space can be make a huge difference. You can be the most engaging teacher in the world, but some students will not engage. The have so much going on that the 50 minutes in your classroom is just not working for them on some days. Some teachers will drill down on those students and make sure they engage in some way, but all that does is make the students curl up tighter in their own ball of security.
I think it is not realistic to expect students to be ready to go and engage and learn every class. The world around them is vastly different than it was for many of us growing up. They know far more about the world around them and have a wide range of issues that they are dealing with, that there are going to be days that they do not have the bandwidth to commit to school the way a teacher would like them to.
I remember the first time I realized that my class is not the most important thing in the world for a student. I say this, because there are teachers who still act like their worksheet is the end all be all of learning and not completing it is a high crime. Anyway, I talked to a student after class to ask them why their paper is not completed and submitted. They looked at me and their eyes welled up and said they have been up late for multiple nights taking care of their sick sibling while their mom works the late shift this week. She wanted to get the paper in on time, but she just has not had the energy to commit to it.
I felt like a grade A turd after that. Two things stuck out to me;
1. I have not created a classroom environment that allowed for this students to feel like they can ask for extra time.
2. My class should never be more important that a student's wellbeing.
I worked really hard to change the way that my class functioned moving forward. I also worked really hard to make my class as accessible as possible. It was a catalyst for me to move away from textbooks and use Evernote to store all class notes and readings so students could access them from their phones. I started to dive into EdTech to bring as much equity to my class as possible. As the tools changed, the goal was the same, how do I make sure all students feel like they can engage when they are ready to engage. Anytime, anyplace learning.
I bring all of this up because there are plenty of conversations about AI in the classroom and I do not hear enough people talking about the value of AI when it comes to accessibility. There are so many students that benefit from using AI to help them learn when they are ready to learn and are in a place that allows them to learn. Sometimes, those places are not in a school. Sometimes, they are in their home, alone in their room, blocking out the noise from down the hall. Sometimes it is when they get to visit their friend and take a deep breath and let it out before diving into classwork with a peer they trust. There are so many reasons why a student will not be ready or able to engage in class, and space is the best think we can give those students sometimes.
I look at how I started using AI in the classroom before I left to create content and to training for SchoolAI and it was always around accessibility and inclusion. Creating Spaces for students to help them when they needed help was a way to support their learning when they were ready and where they were. Does the student need to take a mental health day and cannot get to school? Well, the Space I created was there for them when they were ready to explore. Student have another doctor's appointment that had them miss their 17th day of school? There was a Space for them. Did a student have a hard time getting their writing started because their dyslexia makes them feel less than? I had a Space for them too.
Using Spaces from SchoolAI allowed me to make sure that my students were able to get the access and support they needed when they needed and when they were ready to engage with it. You can use just about any AI tool out there to make a worksheet and the students can use AI to answers all of the questions on the worksheet. Using a Space that allows the students to drive the learning and focus on the parts they need to learn is all about personalization and differentiation in a way that was not possible for teachers before.
The next time you are thinking about creating more busy work for students to engage them, take a moment and think whether or not Space is actually what they need to be successful.
Hugs and High Fives,
NP
