Is AI Making Teacher Burnout Worse?

Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Resilient Schools here on the Bee Podcast Network. Always a pleasure to have you with us as we dive into all of the topics relevant to school and district leaders and the things that we need to do to make our schools resilient, durable able to navigate through the various challenges we're facing in our schools and communities and teacher burnout. is a big one, right? The issue with recruitment, retention, attrition and just burnout in general. Having educators that are feeling happy, satisfied, supported in their jobs is a critical part of what it means to be a school leader, particularly in modern times. And along with that, right, with the implementation of new technologies, particularly AI technologies that teachers are having to learn about, put time and effort into implementation, how to understand what students are doing with these technologies, and being able to balance all of that with the other demands of their roles that is a contributing factor to what can potentially be somewhat of a solution to alleviate some areas of teacher overwork and burnout, but also on the flip side can make them feel even more burnout when not done correctly. So that's what we're talking about today. My guest is Preetan Shah. Preetan is an education entrepreneur. He's the author of a book called AI and the Future of Education, Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. He also is the founder of Pedagogy. cloud. which is an educator, educational consulting firm that supports educators in K 12 schools, higher ed, and the nonprofit sector in adapting to the increasing capabilities of AI. So he's a great person to talk about this. He also recently wrote an op ed for Ed Week about some of his concerns with you know, AI around alleviating some of teachers workloads. Some of the realities about it could be contributing to burnout. So we're going to dive into that and hopefully explore in some detail. Preet and welcome to the show. So you saw at the advent couple of years ago, right? Especially when generative AI tools like chat, GPT and others were becoming more and more accessible and prevalent for mainstream use a lot of potential for those tools to reduce features, workloads, particularly in areas of. of overwork or, or beyond kind of what can reasonably be expected, right? But what did you anticipate at that time? What was some of the promise you saw? Yeah I was one of the people who was really excited when the technology came out for all sorts of reasons and folks who've heard me speak before know that, like, I was sitting there trying to come up with all these personalized learning tools and figure out how we could kind of make these things that we wanted to happen, happen thanks to some of the new developments. But it was also the reality that a lot of the tasks that teachers often have to do are generative and all the kinds of tasks that these algorithms are being built. To kind of do really well. And so the hope was that we might able to some of that to the AI tools and kind of free up some future time and resources and mental energy to kind of focus on the things that they enjoy more. So I was hopeful that lesson planning, generating formative exercises, coming up with report card comments, even grading, all those were kinds of things that I was like, okay, there is a, there is a future in which. That technology can start taking someone right away. Maybe not all of it's doable or ought to be done right away. But, you know, I was excited. There's, there's some potential there. Are there some of those areas in particular that, I guess, from the teacher perspective, like, based on where they're hoping to save time, save workload how did those kind of break down as far as there are certain areas that are just, you know, This is something that just You know, we can never capture it within its container, basically. Like, it always takes more time than it should, and it's nights and weekends, right? I'm sure that's certain components, and then there's probably others that's, well, if we could spend a little bit less time on this thing, then I have more time for the real interpersonal work required in these other areas. Can you sort of give us a sense of how some of that breaks down? I think we've found that it differs greatly from teacher to teacher. When we're talking to folks, there's some folks who say, look, writing a lesson plan is like, I already have most of mine written. There may be some tweaks I make. And at the end of the day, like, I can spit one out in 30 seconds because I've been teaching for 35 years, and this template is like, back of my hand, and I can kind of do this really quickly, and so, by the time I even figure out how to use an AI tool for it, it makes no sense. And then we have some teachers who say they love the opportunity to use these tools to kind of come up with more innovative lesson plans and figure out how they might, you know, use project based learning or use pre based learning. You kind of push the creativity of how they teach a particular topic. And similarly, we see that, you know, along the entire spectrum of tasks. And so the way we like to think about the teacher tasks are the ones that they do on their own time. So lesson planning, building worksheets, formative exercises making essay prompts, those kinds of things. The things that they do with the students, and so what you do in a classroom, whether it be everybody open up your computer and you're now talking to an AI tool or let's create something to do together in class. Or what the teacher does with stuff that they receive from the student afterwards. And so the grading and feedback are mainly where, what the, the thing that fall into that category. That's where we see the, the largest split with folks who are, say, Look, I hate grading. I hate having to go through all these essays. It takes up way too much of my time. This is what I'm doing at the dining table. There's a reason why, like, all these essays have coffee stains on them. I'm always behind on the grading. And so help, you know, providing real personalized feedback on students writing or whatever it might be would be huge in terms of their quality of life. We also have lots of teachers who say, no, like, that is the one thing I always want to do. Like, I want to be the one who provides the feedback to my students so I know how they're performing so that I can kind of take into account the context that I know about them. But this is where you start to see a lot of, like, variation between folks initial, like, gut reaction. the AI technology. Some folks see it as another tool. Some folks see it as an invasion of, of teaching itself. And then some folks are worried about what the long term means for it. So, you know, I think that's true of all the kind of different types we can talk about. Yeah, so there's this potential that we see right now. We're recording this in July 2024. So we've had this entire past school year where these tools have existed and been available in some form or fashion. Obviously, they're continuing to evolve, but certainly since prior to this year, chat GPT has been out there, other generative AI tools, you know, being used. Google's tools, Microsoft, et cetera. In addition to, to all the different, you know, various startups and apps that are using AI in, in more forward thinking ways. So what's, what's the reality, what's actually happening in schools if it's different from the potential of what we imagine might happen, you Yeah. Most of the time there is a lot of fear. a lot of hesitation. And folks are overwhelmed. That is, you know, at the end of any session. And so we, you know, I, we've done sessions that are an hour long at the shortest. Luckily, we haven't had to fit anything into a shorter period of time to entire day workshops. And no matter what it is at the end of it we feel the amount of processing that's going on from folks because it does change quite a bit. There's positive changes. There's all these cool things folks want to try. They want to spend some time figuring out how they might incorporate it. And there's negative changes. They have to figure out what they might change about their assessment style or what they might need to incorporate into the curriculum. But no matter what, folks are, are definitely not seeing this as like the burnout cure that I think it was branded as. Among, you know, I was part of the, I, I, I was like, oh, this might help with teacher burnout was kind of like one of my go to taglines as well. But I think folks are starting to realize that it could get there. There is a world in which it reduces teacher workload. But the pathway was hard. There, there's a lot of learning that teachers need to do in order to actually make use of these schools effectively which requires time, money, and of course, space to do so. And there's a lot more burden that comes with AI as well. That's not just let's make lesson plans quicker. There is a, how do I, you know, reorient my classroom assessments in order to be AI proof or actually you know, prevent the students from being able to cheat so easily. Are there things I want to change about my curriculum that will, are going to make it more relevant for my students as they, you know, adapt to the world of AI and prepare for whatever world that they're going to inherit. And so, you know, Yes, it's nice and easy to make a lesson plan on ChatTPP, and it doesn't, it's not a massive learning curve to do that, maybe but the rest of it, it takes quite a bit of effort and we're finding that teachers don't find that they have the time and space to do so, and that, that's definitely a concern, and surveys are backing this up most school districts across the country are still not providing formal PD, to teachers. And I think that's different. That's, that's an easy win for a lot of folks. If we can start providing structured learning time for teachers to start exploring these pools, get some background knowledge that would be great. There's also the hesitation, right? They feel like they need to know everything about it and things are moving extremely quickly. And one of the things we like to do is, like, pump folks down and say, we're all feeling this way, right? Even the folks that, who are into faith who are reading every article that comes out on AI in education and trying to stay up to date with things. Every morning that I wake up and I see my, like, newsletter backlog or see what's happened I feel like I'm, I feel like I, like, no longer know anything. And I'm going to need to spend a lot of time catching up. And so I can only imagine as an educator when every time you open your Instagram or your Facebook and there's some new update that says it can do some new thing the level of overwhelm that that can cause. So, yeah, there's, there's definitely a lot. Yeah, And I can imagine and interpret that there's. a number of different areas where teachers are looking for help. Some may be heavily weighted toward one or another. Others may be looking for all the above, but I, you know, I think there's general kind of mindset and confidence issues around, you know, embracing or becoming proficient with new technologies and just even feeling like it's possible. I think there's specific training around tools and how to use them and how to feel like using them effectively. There's AI literacy around what the tools can and can't do and, and what we should try to do with them and what we shouldn't. And then also as far as students, right? Understanding what are the things students can and can't do. What are the things to look out for? What are the things that we need to redesign or think about differently. And then within all of that, the time and space, as you referenced, right? Am I being given an opportunity to realistically do this? If I know that we need to rethink the way that we do you know, accessible assignments or whatever that looks like in today's classrooms. And I need to re plan those and design them differently. Do I have a chance to do that? Do I have some guidance on what that might look like? Do I have support from my administration when it's clear that there's a particular type of assignment that we should encourage students to leverage some of these tools for and to learn how they can help? That. That's going to be encouraged and supported versus viewed as like, I shouldn't be introducing students to them, et cetera. Are there certain things that are really like standing out from the educators you're speaking to when you walk into that room and everybody's, you know, maybe feeling like, why are we doing, you know, are the particular things where they're saying, look, this is what's standing out to me. This is where I need the most help, or this is where I'm just feeling like the most overwhelmed. I think keeping up with the updates as to what the tools can do is definitely a key concern. And I think it's more, it's not even so much that they want to keep up to date because they want to make sure that they're using the tools most effectively. Because I think most tasks that folks who want to use AI tools for can, once you've kind of experienced the technology, you can kind of play around and pick up on it intuitively. Yeah. The fear definitely seems to be about what students can do with the, with the AI tools, and so that's where the larger, just like, what, you know, yesterday it couldn't cite sources, today it can cite sources, it couldn't do math, now it can do math you know, like, what, what exactly are the tools capable of and where, where is it going is definitely the largest concern, how to keep up with that, right, so you know if your assessments that you're sending home are still you can preserve integrity with those or not. And then the second place is they also want to be able to tell their students why they're still teaching what they're teaching. And I think that that's, you know, these are the larger questions where they require so much time and space for us to kind of sit and talk with each other and sit down with, you know, all stakeholders and figure out what, like, what is the value of writing an essay still so you can justify it to a student who could now generate this essay at the, you know, at the tip of their fingertips on their devices. And so. This is where I think the support from admin to kind of have those, that time to sit down with your colleagues and say, okay, here's how we're going to, here's how we're going to talk to our students about what they're allowed to do with the AI tools. Here's how we're going to explain to them why we still want them to do these tasks. Here's how we might use these tools. tools ourselves in order to kind of streamline some of our work. And then the final piece is there is, there is some room to bring these tools into the class, right? We, we do think that students need to start building some of that, the AI literacy that you just mentioned by using it in supervised settings with teachers, know what's ethical, know how they can use it to augment themselves rather than replace themselves. But teachers are afraid to do that because there's a baseline level of understanding they want about the tools before they're going to expose, you know, entire classrooms full of students to the tools. And so, this is where, you know, until teachers build that initial comfort level with the tools and the technology, understand how it's built, understand how you can use it safely it, it is hard to expect them to suddenly, you know, have everybody open up ITPT on their school computer in in, inside the classroom when they're not sure exactly how might that go. What are, what are administrators saying when they, are they feeling the same? Are they feeling that, okay, I can tell that my teachers are feeling some additional burdens here. What approaches are they trying to take you know, to, to support that? Or are they feeling like they're at a loss to, to really know what to do? yeah so, I mean, it was selection bias here in terms of which administrators I'm speaking to after the ones who kind of realizes the problem and realize that the teachers need support and I've kind of like sought help to kind of get some guidance as to what kind of PD they can provide we often get a lot of requests for train a trainer type PD where we can kind of work with department chairs and department heads to kind of get them up to speed so they can kind of navigate this for the rest of their teachers. And we find that to be very effective because they have a peer in the department who they can kind of go to for questions and kind of promote further training. We do, the admin are, are still very skeptical of student usage of the tools. They're, you know, a lot of these tools are still not signing agreements that need to be signed in order to meet some, like either state laws in particular admin are afraid of what parent backlash if the tool are kind of like integrated more heavily in the, in the classroom. And it's also time we're all talking about like banning cell phones and reducing screen time. And so suddenly they'll also be having conversations about how we bring AI tools in front of students. That, that's one where we see the most skepticism. This, we're, there's definitely been a trend, like, you know, last summer versus this summer, we're already seeing a massive difference in terms of like the willingness of admin to kind of start thinking about how do we budget for which AI tools we want to have our teachers ought to have access to in the fall. What are our PD days look like when it comes to AI? And those are all promising thoughts. And so that we're excited to see that folks are responding to the teacher's concerns about not getting enough support and are seeking out those resources because there's tons of resources out there, right? There's lots of options for folks to kind of, you know, either on their own or in school settings kind of come up, get up to date with what, where the technology is. And I think the, the other thing is folks kind of realize that it's, this is not a static thing. So, one of the things we heard a lot more earlier this year than we hear now is we're gonna wait to see where this technology ends up before we take our next steps, right? Like, we can't build a, you know, a school policy on it or honor policy on it because the things aren't static and so we're waiting for things to kind of like slow down a little bit before we approach creating a policy or bringing in you know, doing PD with our teachers on it and we're subscribing to any particular tool. I think folks are realizing that the pace of development is just, is, has been ongoing. If anything, it's gonna keep getting quicker. And so they're, they're kind of realizing that this requires a bit more of a nimble iterative strategy. And so that's, I'm glad to see that. I'm glad to see that folks are realizing that this is not gonna be a one and done, we have one AI policy, we do a PD workshop, and then this is that's it. Everybody is good to go. And that's different. That's different than any other crisis that education has had. It's different than any other, like, right, like, tech moment. And so, you know, when Microsoft Word came out we spent years training teachers on how to use Microsoft Word and Excel and students on it. But it did plateau at some point, right? There were new features that came out every time, you know, every version came out. But it wasn't the drastic differences that we see every time a new AI model comes out. And so, it's reasonable to have that level of let's try, like, why can't we just like freeze this for a little bit and it'll catch up? And maybe that will ever some come at some point. But I don't think it's coming and I don't think anyone in the field thinks it's coming. Right. Yeah. I mean, and there's going to be leaps forward that are clearly have high potential others that are confusing others that are that that seem to, to not be super useful. And I think, I mean, it sounds like there's opportunities here for some individualization of goal setting you know, as far as the different goals that, that you have. different educators may have for what they are hoping to get out of the tools, particularly when it relates to how it affects their own personal practice, right? Their ability to streamline or save some time on certain tasks that they have to do that, you know, You know, that there could be a, they could have stages where they can get used to it a little bit at a time, not feel like I have to do everything all at once, or I have to do it the same as everybody else is doing it, because it really is about me and my own comfort level with what I'm doing, and also for them to be able to think about. You know, I think that question that relates to all types of technology, software, things that we implement is like, is it worth it? Is it, is it worth the effort? That I'm going to put into learning how to use this and going through the implementation for whatever outcomes it's going to give me. And even if I see really promising outcomes it's still a new thing. I have to add on to what else I'm doing. And so I have to believe that. It's better and not just different, right? I have to believe that on the other side of that effort and that learning, there is a better way of doing things. There is better student outcomes. There, you know, it enables me to do my job in a way that that I want to do it. And that is, you know, It's either currently not possible without using this technology, or that enables me to, you know, to kind of do something in a different way, right? Versus just, I think, you know, for a lot of people, right? If we think about some of the things that some of the tools are used for people are grappling with and having to reconcile the fact that they're here to stay with, if they didn't exist, right? We'd be fine, right? Like, if I can use generative AI to write an essay. Well, that's, it's not going away. So that, that capability is now going to exist and it's only going to get better. Is that, you know, on its face, does that have any value to a lot of people? They would say, well, not necessarily like, why don't you know, but the reality is it now exists and in five, 10 years, as these kids are going into the workforce and whatever the economy is going to be, like. Being able to do these things manually without technology is no longer really going to be that valuable because everybody's going to have access to this technology, they can do it that way. And you're fighting against the tide. So, I guess to try to leave this door to question it's You know, what, at the individual educator level, I guess, in, you know, conversation about them really thinking about, what are your goals here? You know, what are the things that you hope to achieve? And how do you work toward those? What might some of those conversations look like? Because I think that There's a lot of opportunity there versus just saying as a blanket statement, okay, this is what everybody has to do. As you've already referenced, right? There's a, there's a lot of variance in what are the things that, that different teachers are most interested in, yeah. And this is, you know, we try to like ground folks with this as well when we're doing some of our workshops, because reminding folks that like, if you don't want to use these tools in your personal workflow, you don't have to is important. And so we start with like, this could save you time. This might give you some, you know, help you ease the burden of having to do a lot of paperwork. It might give you an avenue for brainstorming and creativity and kind of be a nice little thought partner for you. But if it's none of those things, You should still play around with them, and that's that's what we try to like convince them of in that like them building that literacy with the tools, that fluency with the tools, is what's going to help them navigate two things. The first is, Making sure that they know what their students are doing. And at the end of the day, building effective assessments is a component of education. And until the teachers have fluency with what the tools are capable of they won't know what the students could also be doing with the tools. And so even if you never want to use it for your own workflow, you might still decide that you want to play around with these tools so you can keep up to date with what the students are doing. The second is, and you alluded to as well, is the tools will play a role in a student's lives, right? They, whether it be. How they learn in college, whether it be in their careers and part of, you know, a part of our education system is to prepare students to use the tools that they'll, like, have to use later and we don't want our students to be disadvantaged against students who are being exposed to the tools and have movements in the tools and can thus, like, take on positions that require using AI. And we, like, the data on which industry will be affected by, which industries will be affected by AI is very conclusive that it's everything. There is, there is nothing that will be spared in some way or another, right? Like, maybe it's not, you know, I'm not claiming that everything will be done by AI, or we'll have, like, AI robots, like, taking care of every single one of our tasks but there, there is no industry in which AI will not, like, have some impact and having the fluency with these AI tools will help. Our students, you know, work in that world. But the other thing is kind of starting to have this convers the larger conversation with students about what, what is ethical usage of ai? Why not they use their voice when they're writing that essay? Even if they can generate it with Chi GPT, what is the point of developing your own voice? So look, kind of conversation. Teachers are much more able, like, effective at having them if they can speak to the students with the same level of tech expertise that the students are, right? Like, when you're trying to convince a student that, that writing an essay is still valuable, if you can't answer their concerns about why, if AI can do it or if AI is going to take over this job or that job why they still need to learn these skills, you're a less credible person to them. And that's just the reality of, like, the media our students are exposed to, what they're seeing, right? Like, what they're hearing, the conversations that they're having. They're also afraid, right? Like, they're afraid about what this means for their future and they want to feel like they can come to you and have a real conversation about what role does what we're doing in the classroom play for my life long term and I think teachers kind of need to have that fluency with AI tools themselves to have those conversations for our students. And so, again, I don't have any, you know, like I, I'm someone who's still like to do list notes all on paper. Like I am, I'm a very techy person. I code, I build websites. I like to try to find tech solutions to those things. But when I have to write a to do list or if I was taking notes in any setting, I still find myself gravitating towards pen and paper because that's what works best for me. So just because tools exist that are way more efficient or way cooler or can sync across all my devices doesn't mean I have to use them. But it's good for me to know how to use them so that I can have conversations about them with folks, especially if I'm an educator and I know my students are using them. right? Yeah. I think even, even in the areas where educators may have skepticism, like you still have to know what it is so that you can speak to that and have those conversations because these tools at least currently have limitations. In the future, some of those limitations may be addressed, but there's, there's good reasons to say, well, we shouldn't try to rely on this technology to do this because It might have an inaccuracy or it might, you know, whatever the case may be, right? Even with some of the teacher tasks around grading and assessment, you know, there's a certain level of leaning on the tool that probably wouldn't be wise because it would either be, okay, are we checking it for accuracy or there might be some issues or, or am I still getting the information that I need? As a teacher to know what to do with that information, right? And what, what kind of instruction to deliver and all, and, and same with students being able to have that dialogue with them around. Did you use the tool for this? What did you use? How did you use it? Okay. What, what were the results like that literacy, that media literacy for the new age of understanding where does information come from? What's it telling us? Does it add up, you know, what does that mean? And if, yeah. You're just shutting down that topic of discussion, right, and not, not inviting dialogue and not, or not informing yourself enough to be able to speak to it and engage in the dialogue, and it's only going to lead to worse outcome because students either won't engage in the tools at all, in which case they're not, developing the skills that they need to be successful in the future, or they'll be using them maybe in, in less effective ways because nobody's giving them any guidance or, or helping them work through it, or they think they have to do it in secret, right? And you know, that's, that's ultimately not obviously going to be such a great thing. What, you know, with respect to, I think this like kind of works off of that same point. that we know there are currently limitations, whether it be just certain, you know, Functions that the tools can't yet perform, um, reliably with respect to, you know, mathematics or, or kind of real time information or things like that, where there, there tend to be some inaccuracies or cultural biases, right. From the data sets, those kinds of things. With also understanding that they have, Extraordinary, you know, capabilities already and, and that potential to evolve and that educators have a really good understanding of what the goals of their profession are, what their goals are for students, like how can educators, I guess, get more involved in advocating for development of better tools to better serve the need that they have, right? Versus, versus just, you know, Evaluating and critiquing what currently exists and how it does or doesn't match what they need, like, how can they be more involved in saying, look, if we could have something that would help us with this, that would really be meaningful, or, you know, this other thing that's being developed, like, It's not that it's good or, you know, it's, it's good or not good. It's that it's not really serving a meaningful purpose, right? I'm sure there's plenty of that, but, you know, in order to make sure that these tools are actually developed, I think that's an opportunity for that kind of advocacy. Yeah, and I think you know, this is a nice part about just like the education technology market in general I think folks are kind of out there listening the folks who want to listen are listening about how they can better serve students and teachers and figure out exactly how to build things that are useful for them. I think It's very easy. I think oftentimes there's like new flappy stuff. And teachers will kind of like play around with it and realize that it's not the right fit and their gut says a lot. Because they, they have the context to kind of make that initial call on, okay, this is kind of a, you know, they're, they're nicely branded. Pretty new thing with flashy button but this doesn't actually achieve anything for me and I think some of that, like, that self selection, natural selection will probably take, will hopefully get some good exactly what teachers want. But in the meantime, what we've been encouraging teachers to do is try to use, like, the, the larger models. directly as much as possible. And so, like, while we even have, like, our set of, like, feature tools, we always use those as stepping stones because the ultimate goal is if you, if you know how to write a good prompt, if you know how to use these initial systems well, then you're a little bit less reliant on some third party to kind of figure out exactly how, what your needs are and you can kind of communicate those, communicate in quotes, rather directly with, you know, or whatever, to get the output you want and the way you want. Same time, little larger questions about like policy making sure that like folks are are building that literacy so they can have conversations in their schools about which tools that they're going to subscribe to, which tools you're going to introduce what state policy looks like. They're still, majority of states still have not released any sort of AI policy and they do often not as much as we'd like, but they do turn to educators for some guidance on building education policy and so articulating what concerns you have, what kinds of tools, like guidance you're looking for, what kind of things you want in policy, right? I think oftentimes we hear from teachers especially that their school doesn't have an AI policy and AI policy is a pretty ambiguous term. But often what they mean is, what are teachers allowed to use it for? What are students allowed to use it for? What are, you know, what's, what's considered a breach of data privacy? Are they allowed to use it for IEPs, or use it for recommendation letters, or only to build lesson plans? Those kinds of questions they're all seeking answers to. And I think continuing to push whoever is you know, in charge of your local School district or your institution as a whole to kind of give you some of those answers that there's some consensus or something we can all work off of at least is a good idea because I think every, this is where like everybody kind of, you know, messing with things on their own, especially students, some teachers, but there's no like coherent strategy around it and figuring out, okay, this is, this is how we're going to approach it as an institution, even if it's at the school level in a way that does service to our students and not just kind of ends up being this haphazard everybody go play with it on your own and then maybe you're using it right, maybe you're hurting yourself, maybe you're sharing too much, like, you know, lots of open questions that I think are kind of really important to answer. right. So what's the outlook now? I mean, has the outlook changed? Or is it just going to take a little bit of a different route to getting there? Yeah I'm still an optimist. I think I'm an optimist when it comes to the human element of this. And so I think my ideal, and I think what we're working towards, and I think that what I think will, is achievable is that we find ways to kind of get rid of the worst parts of most of our job. And find ways to kind of focus in on the things that make the teaching process more fun for all of us, more engaging for all of us, help us build a relationship with students. I do think it's, there's, it's, it's a long haul. I think there's folks have to see that this is not a short term skill set that you're picking up. I think that, that's another reason why it seems so daunting. It's because if it's just yet another tool as all the other tools that have been thrown at you in your, you know, three decades of teaching it feels a lot more daunting of a curve but when you think of AI, not as like, oh, cat TPT, or this particular education AI tool, but more as a, as a, as a like era of society as I was going to change careers, I was going to change the world, I was going to change how we interact in every aspect, not just this new ed tech tool that, that will kind of help calm folks down a little bit and kind of be able to start thinking about this in the ways that will allow them to make use of the technology and adapt to it appropriately. Right. Yeah. So, you know, to kind of wrap this up, right? The the biggest piece here to think about is What is teachers experience with this? What are they feeling? What are the areas where they're feeling burdened, stressed, overworked? And are we finding ways to alleviate that or are we adding to it? Right? And, you know, ultimately, of course, the goal in our schools is, is to student learning, student outcomes, and teachers are critical to driving that. And when we have teachers who are either overwhelmed or or are exiting the profession, then we're not able to serve them. And, and this is a big piece of it. This is what's happening in schools. And these are the questions to grapple with to not be afraid to of these technologies, but also to be mindful of, especially if they're like, if we're prioritizing them, right, that that it also means that we at least need to temporarily maybe deprioritize something else, shift something else to say, look, we really need to get up to speed on learning how to use these. So we're going to have to move another training or something that maybe we do routinely, but we know that. teachers know how to do it, right? That, that it can't always be added on to another thing and also it's a good opportunity, you know, I think for, for leadership to be thoughtful and mindful about what. What tools do we want to pursue at a given time? Are we really tuned into the voices of our teachers about things they're looking for help with that they would like us to consider implementing? And how we support that to happen. And, you know, in so many ways, the good thing is like not a different, not really a different set of considerations as Always but a new opportunity to continue getting better at it, you know, in areas where these same questions always come up about implementing new tools, what is it for? Is it just another thing? Is it really useful to me? Can I use it? Et cetera. And you know, it's certainly with respect to, you know, to the transformative nature of what this might do for students. There's a little bit of a difference there and everything is augmented, but but the same questions to ask and, and, but to really be aware of that educator experience and making it a positive one and, and enabling them to feel, Bottom line, biggest thing, like they're effective at what they're doing. Like they are effectively helping their students to be successful, to be prepared for the future. That's the tipping point of burnout. I think in, in such a high percentage of cases is yes, this is hard work. I'm working hard, but the thing that either makes that feel like a worthwhile investment or. A waste of energy is what's happening with my students. And if I'm like Okay, I'm trying to learn all these tools and having all these things thrown at me. I don't really know what's going on. I don't know. And, you know, and I don't really feel like it's helping my students or or I sense that they're just as lost as I am. If I'm a teacher that that is in the profession for that reason, right, I'm going to draw the conclusion that. I don't know if I can do this versus okay. It's a lot, it's, it was a lot to learn, but I can see the results. So, you know, any final points on that for for, you know, the leaders who are figuring out, okay, which way do we go here? What do we try to take on? What are our timelines, right? Like understanding these things are moving fast and we can't be complacent about it because it's going to continue to, to move forward at the same time. We have to have a Progression. We can't do everything all at the same time. Yeah, no, and I think, I think we've kind of touched on it, we can just highlight them are like, I think, building time for teachers to kind of learn about what where the field of AI is these days, what the newest developments are that are relevant to education, and then what the top tools that students might be using. Are a very easy place to start. I don't think it has to, you know, like the, it doesn't have to be a a year long campaign or PD about one particular, like, ed tech company's tool it can be very general enough to give them the kind of, like, baseline foundational knowledge so that they can go explore and do some learning on their own, right? Like, give them, if they, if you're giving them time and space to do these things in PLC meetings and department meetings, to kind of have conversations about what all this means after they've built that foundational knowledge. They can, they do have the capacity to do that once they've been given some time to do so. One, the problem is when you're overburdening them with any, all these other whether it be alternative PDs on things that are not as timely. Or treating as a non issue altogether I think is when teachers feel a little bit more lost because they see the impact it's having on their students learning. They see what it's doing to their assessments, they see, they hear students talking about it and so at the least, giving them some time to catch up with what our students are using it is definitely is very high priority in fact, probably like a September, you know, first week priority in most contexts and so that, that, that's, that's I hope folks are finding ways to build that into their you know, summer and back to school PD time. Excellent. So listeners, you can hear more, learn more about Freeton and Pedagogy. Cloud on our EdTech Startup Showcase Series. We, you can find that in whatever podcast player you're listening in, or we'll also put the link below so that you can find it wherever you'd like. You also can visit his website and we'll put the link there as well. So you can learn about the work that Pedagogy. Cloud is doing. See if there's anything, any resources, any support there that would help you with your current efforts and visit bpodcast. network to learn about all the other shows on the network. Anything else if you're a leader, if you're a teacher, no matter what your role is, there's a variety of content there for you. So check all that out and just continue exploring, asking questions and trying to do a little bit better. And. You know, as, as Preetin mentioned in this episode, right? Nobody has all the answers and it's constantly changing. So it's just a matter of continuing to engage in the dialogue and doing the best we can. So Preetin, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me on the show.