The Teacher Burnout Podcast

AI and Teacher Burnout: Friend or Foe?
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Teacher Burnout Podcast, where we explore the challenges of burnout for teachers and share practical strategies to support teacher well being. I'm your host Barb Flowers. If you're a teacher looking for ways to prevent burnout or an educational leader searching for strategies to support your team, this podcast is for you.
Let's dive in.
Welcome everyone to the teacher burnout podcast. I'm excited today. We have a guest Preton Shaw with us and I'm going to go ahead and have Preton introduce himself and talk about his experiences in education.
Awesome. Thank you for having me on the show. My experience is kind of varied. So I'll kind of stick to the highlights that are relevant for our conversation today. , I come from a philosophy and policy background. So my undergraduate education is in philosophy. , and my master's in education was in policy.
And so I like to think about the, Philosophical implications of a lot of technology changes that happen in education, but also think about what kinds of policies we need to make to adapt to that. I also code, and so I [00:01:00] develop, EdTech tools as a way to kind of practice, stay up to date with technological, changes that are coming up.
And so all of those kind of come together when we think about, my current work in AI education. I recently wrote a book called AI and the Future of Education, that was published by Wiley last fall. I guess the year anniversary is just about coming around. And then we do a lot of professional development, run accredited courses, workshops, and build AI related tools for teachers and students.
Oh, that's great. I remember, gosh, it's probably only been a year ago that I really learned about AI like chat GPT and I instantly fell in love because I hate writing. And so I was like, wow, this is amazing. And then over the last year being an education, I've been a principal and. Just from different consultants, we've learned some really cool things that teachers can use AI for and, how it can help them in their teaching.
So how can AI be a tool to help teachers mitigate burnout and reduce their workload? Yeah. You know, . There's a lot of interesting ways that we can talk about what teachers can do that reduce a lot of the traditional [00:02:00] workload that comes with large teaching loads. One of my, you know, my caveat here is that I think, I think a lot of these things can only be done after we deal with this initial, you know, on boarding period of getting everybody to kind of be aware of what I tools are out there and deal with the changes that are coming with it.
and that might lead to burn it. And we can talk more about that later. So I'll start with the positives. First, a couple of quick highlights, and then we can talk through what some of those dangers might be. but I think I think my first set of things is like, I think a lot of outside of classroom time that teachers spend can easily be offloaded to AI.
I'm not someone who thinks that, like, our classrooms necessarily need, like, every student with an AI bot in front of them, , and everything in the classroom being mediated by, AI tools, but we found that teachers do find it useful to, kind of, produce a lot of formative exercises quickly, come up with creative assessments.
You know, generate lots of different assessment practices for their students, and those kinds of things are easy ways for teachers to kind of adapt their learning to the pedagogical styles they want to try, you know, goals they have for the classroom, so whether they want to shift to an inquiry based classroom or project based [00:03:00] learning classroom or mastery learning or standard space grading classroom.
Those will require a lot of work, a lot of preparation in terms of, the right rubrics and the right worksheets and the right guides for the students. And so that makes it really hard to adapt like an entire year's worth of curriculum. And so that's, that's what we like to encourage teachers to do is like, , take a lesson that you wanted to change in some way that wasn't really hitting, the way you wanted it to, , and see what you, what you can generate with AI, and how quickly you can do that.
So what are the risks of teachers using AI and how can that actually lead to more burnout? Yeah. So, this is a concern of mine. I've been trying to talk more about this because I think, I think when initially AI came out, like when tragedy critique were popular rather, folks are really excited because it can do these things.
And so it is easy for somebody who's like, you know, looks at the technology to say, Oh, this would make a teacher's life easier. Our concerns right now are that, there's an enormous amount of learning that needs to take place to actually feel comfortable using the tools. And then it's not just the use of the tools that you have to worry about as well.
And so, , [00:04:00] we see teachers talk about how, adapting their assessment practices to be AI proof has, is requiring a lot more time. And the summer was really the first time where we saw teachers have the time to sit down and process what this means for the next school year. I think last summer, folks were still a little bit hesitant.
We're still learning about the technology, and that means it is for the whole school year. Trying to catch up with, you know, what can I assign my students as homework? What can I, provide, for them to do outside of the classroom that's still relevant?
So that's a huge time suck. And so initially there is this period of where, teachers have more work rather than less work. . We've also noticed that teachers are reluctant to embrace the tools until they know more about it. And so, they're worried about the biases that are inherent in the systems about data privacy.
And these are all real concerns and they're concerns that we ought to all be talking about. but they all are daunting enough that prevents some teachers from embracing the school right away because they want to seek more knowledge. And so they're seeking PD on it. They're seeking resources on it.
And we're seeing that across the country that's still not really being supported at institutional levels. And so, , while lots of [00:05:00] teachers are individually seeking PD, and they're finding resources on their own and building professional learning communities with their peers. , there's still not like top the, you know, , about I think we're at 19 states now have, , state guidance on AI and education.
So that's a whole chunk that still haven't passed any, , sort of guidance from the state level. , but even, schools and districts are not necessarily providing the number of PD, , options that teachers really want in order to embrace the tools, learn how to use them and feel comfortable navigating them in a way that's safe for them and their students.
And you know, that's the data. Obviously slightly getting better. We're just I feel like we're getting to the point where school districts are starting to provide some more PD. , but one of the scarier things that we saw was that most schools provided one PD, at some point in the last two years and then have it in any follow up.
And so when you just think about how quickly the technology is moving, how many things we have to keep up with on a regular basis, those things are all daunting. And so, you know, just the amount of effort or all that takes is enormous. Well, and not only the teachers learning how to use it, but how to use it with their [00:06:00] students, right, is a whole nother layer that I think there isn't enough training because I've heard in our area of schools adopting policy where you can't use chat.
GTP at all as a student. And I just feel like. That's not even practical. You know, it's such a big part of our technology that we need to be teaching kids to use it in a proper way. Right. , and yeah, we, I mean, this is also part of where I think teachers want to be able to talk to their students about it.
And they want to be able to, you know, tell them, okay, here are productive ways you might use the technology, because not all of this is about cheating. And I know, it's still, you know, some folks who haven't yet, like, played around with the tool still see it largely as a tool that was used for cheating and the media is partially to blame because that's how it was popularized.
and that that is and was a real problem. So there, you know, there, there is evidence that students have been using it to cheat. , but there is a lot more to it. And so the more we learn how to talk about it with our students and tell them, okay, look, like these are the ways that you're doing yourself a disservice.
Here are ways that we actually want you to use the AI tools or that may help you, , achieve the same pedagogical goals that we've always had used the ad tools. [00:07:00] Those conversations would serve everybody a little bit better. I think calm everybody's anxieties, , around what education looks like at the age of AI.
, but all of that requires Even that requires the teachers to have enough knowledge to communicate with their students, right? Like they, they don't want to, you know, be up in front of the classroom, , you know, talking about this and the students like, well, yeah, I can already do this, right? Or something, you know, like that's the kind of fears that we hear is, the students are definitely keeping up to date with it, much faster and much more regularly than I think, , teachers are being provided at least official resources.
I know , there's lots of teachers out there seeking, all the updates and keeping up to date with all the technology, but. There's so many different, number of tools increases every day that the tools that already exist, like, you know, there's new updates on a regular basis that dramatically change what they can do.
, but it is a lot to keep up with, , you know, that, that's definitely, we're seeing, be a struggle for a lot of folks. So what do you recommend to teachers if I'm a teacher and I'm in a district and they're not offering any support for AI, and I want to learn more my students are starting to use it like what would you suggest for them to do?
Yeah. , so I think there's [00:08:00] there's two easy starting places, I think, pick up , you know, start with any sort of like online PDF or book and there's plenty of great options out there. , to at least get some basic introduction, and I don't think any, you know, there's, there's lots of different versions of this if you're, , there's, you know, video courses, there's podcasts, , and there's books and all of those kind of can please give you some basic knowledge about what, what is this technology, how is it different than what existed two years ago, why is this suddenly making such a splash, but what are some initial ideas about where the tech, like where this technology, is going?
, but then the pause, right? Like, I think the information seeking is to stop at some point because, , you know, if you keep just looking for more information, you will get stuck and go down rabbit holes because,, you know, there's folks who've made their entire, , jobs right now to just think about a very particular aspect of AI education, let alone like all of AI education.
And so thinking you're going to grasp all of it, is going to, , you know, be self defeating, , and then play around with it. So we'd like to have you just start with a very simple tool, either chat GPT or cloud. Those are super powerful. The free models work really well, so you don't have to worry about paying for any particular, subscription, which is to [00:09:00] worry about some other tools.
, and it's also the tools that students are probably using. And so, I know there's a lot, a lot of great, , teacher facing education tools out there. , but if you're just trying to get, you know, figure out what's going on, we recommend you start with a tool that not only can you use, but also you know your students are using.
Because , it's one thing that kind of helps you to deal with both. , and then I think it's having conversations with their students. So once you've played around with the tools, you get the hang of it. Students are looking to like have these conversations to be able to tell their teachers, Okay, look, these assessments don't really make sense to me anymore because, I don't feel like it's preparing me for the workforce right there.
We're seeing the students are feeling anxious about their career paths, about what they can do post, you know, graduation, because some of the things they were thinking about might look less relevant, , and look very different now that AI is continuing to grow. , but also students are worried about getting, accused of cheating when they're not cheating, , when they're not trying to use it to misuse, but they're using, you know, grammar, we defer to grammar, and then they're just like, oh, this is still better.
, get picked up by one of these, you know, , false AI detector, that are claiming to like be the magic bullet here. , and students also want to [00:10:00] know that they're, you know, being graded on a fair standard. So that's the other thing that we hear from students is, I don't particularly want to use AI to cheat because, you know, I'm a rule follower.
I know what my, teacher's stance on this is, but I, I don't trust that my peers aren't using it. And so it might get penalized unfairly for not using it. So I think open conversations with students, and I know those are daunting. , but I really do think that, , they're the ones being affected by this the most at the end of the day.
, and I think they have lots of strong opinions and advice for us on, , how to approach this and just, , you know, what, what the pros and cons of how we might navigate the next couple of years might look like.
Well, thanks so much today for being on the podcast. We covered a lot of topics related to AI, and this is a conversation that I think is just going to keep happening in education because, you know, the technology keeps improving and it keeps getting better.
Getting better. And there's so much out there that we're going to see, , more with AI. So thank you so much for being here today. Any last things you want to share with the listeners? No, I just hope everybody's taking a deep breath this summer. I'm sure there's a lot more updates coming out this year.
And so as folks are kind of getting ready for the new school [00:11:00] year, , hopefully it will take some time away from their computers before we all figure out what the next AI update is, , in September. For being here today. Thank you for having me.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.