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  • How teachers can use AI to listen, reflect and build math classroom community

    How teachers can use AI to listen, reflect and build math classroom community


    I wasn’t expecting a math journal entry to shift my perspective. But as I scanned through my students’ reflections that morning, one response stopped me in my tracks:

    “It’s more important to me that my teacher sees me as a person than if I get all the answers right.”

    A student, who I’ll call Jason, had been in my class for months — quiet, polite, barely noticeable. Not failing, not thriving. Just…there.

    Jason’s words reflected what many students feel but rarely say. As I reviewed other journal entries, I discovered an echo of voices expressing uncertainty, quiet resilience and a desire to be heard. I highlighted themes and let their words settle in, but as responses piled up, I needed help seeing the bigger picture.

    That’s when I turned to artificial intelligence (AI), using it to help summarize journal entries — not replacing my judgment but sharpening it. ChatGPT surfaced patterns I might have missed: anxiety about speaking up, appreciation for kindness, the importance of being seen. AI didn’t give me a summary of responses — it gave me perspective, revealing what my students were telling me between the lines.

    Too many students walk into math class carrying untold stories — about race, failure, shame, invisibility. And math, with its perceived rigid right-or-wrong structure, often leaves little room for the messiness of being human. Reflective journals and AI made that space. They reminded us that learning is emotional before it’s cognitive.

    Some view AI in education as a threat to authenticity — something that might replace meaningful learning, weaken rigor, and erode the relationships. Much of the conversation focuses on fears of cheating and weakened critical thinking. But in my experience, the opposite is possible. When used thoughtfully, AI doesn’t dehumanize the classroom — it rehumanizes it, helping us tune in to students’ emotional landscapes and respond with greater clarity and compassion.

    For educators exploring how to move from algorithms to empathy, here’s what I’ve learned:

    Use AI as a reflection partner to surface trends in student voice. I introduced reflective journals with prompts like “How do you see yourself in math?” and “Where might math be important in your life?” When responses accumulated, AI helped me identify emotional throughlines—what students feared, valued, and needed to feel seen. It didn’t analyze feelings for me; it spotlighted patterns across dozens of responses, allowing me to respond not just as a content expert, but as a listener who could address the class’s collective needs.

    Let AI handle the grunt work so you can do the heart work. After AI helped me identify themes like “I don’t feel smart, but I try harder than people know” and “I’m not the only one scared to ask for help,” I shared these anonymous insights with my class. Heads nodded. The room shifted. These reflections weren’t about fixing students — they were about making space where vulnerability felt safe and mathematical identity could evolve.

    Design with AI — not for it. I didn’t start by asking what AI could do, but rather “What do my students need to feel seen, challenged and supported?” Only then did I explore how technology could help me meet those needs more thoughtfully and efficiently. The tools followed the vision, not the other way around.

    Treat AI like a co-teacher, not a substitute. AI will never replace the personal connections at the heart of teaching, but it can help me see what I might miss in the everyday chaos of the classroom. This partnership allows me to combine technological insights with the relational knowledge that only comes from knowing my students.

    The day after reading Jason’s journal entry, I greeted him more intentionally and shared that I had once felt the same way about being seen as a person first. It was a tiny signal: I see you. This breakthrough emerged from recognizing that community building in math class doesn’t require elaborate group projects or icebreakers. Sometimes it starts with something quieter: giving students space to examine their relationship with mathematics itself, then using AI to help us listen more deeply to what they’re telling us.

    A week later, Jason lingered after class. “Thanks,” he said. “For, like, sharing with me.”

    That two-second moment cracked something open — for both of us. Because behind every silence is a student waiting to be seen. And sometimes, the most powerful data we can use isn’t a test score or a benchmark — it’s a journal entry, a nod of recognition, or a quiet “thank you” made visible with the help of AI, reminding us why we teach.

    •••

    Al Rabanera teaches math at La Vista High School in Fullerton, California. He is a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Leading Edge Educator Fellow.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • California wants to accelerate schools’ efforts to build 2.3 million units of housing

    California wants to accelerate schools’ efforts to build 2.3 million units of housing


    A view of the courtyard from the third floor of a housing complex for teachers and education staff of Jefferson Union High School District in Daly City on July 8, 2022.

    Credit: Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo

    Jefferson Union High School District used to lose a quarter of its staff every year, which meant that it began every school year scrambling to fill vacancies. That changed in 2022 when the Daly City-based district developed affordable housing for its staff.

    The district built 122 units on school district-owned land that is now fully occupied by 25% of the district’s staff. Board member Andy Lie said the district is beginning the new school year with zero vacancies, a transformation he calls “remarkable” and “unheard of in public education.”

    In January, legislation to ease zoning requirements for school districts interested in building affordable housing took effect. Jefferson Union High and a handful of other districts in the state are ahead of others in providing housing for both teachers and classified staff.

    Districts with success stories, as well as local and state leaders, will be at an Aug. 14 housing summit convened by the California Department of Education (CDE). During a news conference Tuesday at department headquarters, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said schools own 75,000 acres of undeveloped land that could be used to build 2.3 million units. Thurmond wants to see these units built over the next eight years as a way to address California’s teacher shortage.

    Citing overwhelming interest in this matter, the California School Boards Association’s presentation on the topic this month noted that 158 of about 1,000 school districts have expressed interest in providing affordable housing for education staff. Eight districts already provide housing or have housing under construction, while the vast majority of the rest are in the early stages of exploring it.

    The California School Boards Association (CSBA) has created a map showing the status of housing projects across the state. To access more information expand the map to full screen:

    Recruiting and retaining school staff

    State and local officials say that building housing goes a long way toward solving many of the problems both schools and other Californians face. Salaries of school staff are often far below the median rent in many areas, which creates difficulties finding or retaining staff. That leads to long commutes for staff whose household budgets are already stretched thin.

    Many districts dealing with declining enrollment and associated financial woes consider selling off some of their land, a valuable resource in California, for short-term gain, according to Andrew Keller, senior director of operations and strategic initiatives for CSBA.

    Developing housing on that land instead makes a dent in California’s affordability crisis and helps retain teachers, while also offering school districts a new stream of no-strings-attached funding. Schools can typically rent far below market value while still earning income that can support them long-term, Keller said.

    Jefferson Union High School District found no shortage of staff members interested in their affordable housing. The district currently has a waitlist of 30 members. Thurmond would also like to see legislation that would allow districts to open their units to the wider community because students and their families are also struggling with the affordability of California.

    In Los Angeles, LAUSD has three projects with 185 units that serve its employees — and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district is surveying employees and considering opening more affordable housing on 10 sites. But the district has also launched a project aimed at helping local families in concert with Many Mansions, a local nonprofit. The Sun King Apartments is a 25-unit facility that offers permanent supportive housing to chronically homeless families with children enrolled in LAUSD schools.

    Even school districts that led the trend said it was a struggle to make the pitch to the community. Richard Barrera, a San Diego Unified School District board member, said community members would be confused about why the district would need to get into the housing business.

    “If we don’t recruit and retain educators, we can’t do our job as educators,” Barrera said.

    San Diego Unified has a goal of opening up 1,500 affordable units to house 10% of its staff, thanks to a school bond measure that passed in 2022, Barrera said.

    Thurmond would like to see legislation that creates even more financial incentives for districts to build housing, which might help those seeking bond measures to fund projects. He noted that educator housing is also eligible for the $500 million in available annual housing tax credits from the state.

    Some school districts have had trouble convincing voters that building housing for teachers and staff is worth it. In 2020, school bond measures for staff housing failed at Patterson Joint Unified School District in Stanislaus County, Soledad Unified in Monterey County and East Side Union High School District in Santa Clara County. 

    Even Jefferson Union High School District eked out a narrow win with just over the 55% requirement needed to pass.

    “The community didn’t quite understand what it was that we were doing,” Lie said, “but it passed.”

    Lie said that staff morale has improved, and the district can now rely on veterans to stick around and build on their success in Jefferson Union High School District, demonstrating why affordable housing for staff is so important to student success. 

    “We can’t give our best to our students if our educators are struggling with housing insecurity,” he said.

    Resources for districts

    CSBA has joined forces with researchers to create resources for districts interested in building housing — to help overcome one of the biggest concerns about school districts lacking expertise in building housing, Keller said. 

    Researchers want to make the process as easy as possible for schools, said Manos Proussaloglou, assistant director at UCLA’s cityLAB, including preparing guides, based on lessons learned both from both successful and unsuccessful projects. 

    “We’re really interested in learning why some educational workforce housing projects start but then stall — and see if we can learn from those,” Proussaloglou said.

    To expedite the process of building, researchers from the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley have created a map that homes in on the communities that will most benefit.

    “Ultimately, those are the districts we really want to work with and make sure they understand that it is an opportunity to address those challenges,” said Sara Hinkley, the California program manager at the Center for Cities + Schools.

    The calculations behind the map by UC Berkeley are where Thurmond got the number of 2.3 million potential units in the state. That figure assumes that every extra acre of developable land a school district owns could support 30 units.

    The map tallies the surplus property California school districts own, considering factors such as how many are on school campuses or completely undeveloped sites and whether those sites are close to amenities like public transit, while also accounting for annual teacher turnover rate, the demographics of the school, enrollment and the gap between staff salaries and median rents.

    “We know that until we can pay teachers and classified staff better — which is our priority, that building affordable housing for them is an important tool for educator recruitment and retention,” said Thurmond.





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  • How Tutors Build Public Speaking & Presentation Skills

    How Tutors Build Public Speaking & Presentation Skills


    In today’s world, strong communication skills are as valuable as academic knowledge. Public speaking and presentation abilities not only boost confidence but also open doors to new opportunities. However, for many students, the idea of speaking in front of others can be nerve-wracking. This is where the role of a skilled tutor becomes invaluable. Tutors can help students overcome these fears, nurture their self-expression, and build essential skills to present their ideas confidently.

    1. Personalized Approach to Overcome Fear

    • Many students feel intimidated by public speaking, often due to fear of judgment or making mistakes. Tutors play a key role in helping students confront these anxieties through a supportive, one-on-one environment. By understanding each student’s unique fears and insecurities, tutors can offer personalized encouragement and build a comfortable space for students to practice without pressure. Over time, this fosters self-assurance, allowing students to express themselves more openly.

    2. Focusing on Basics: Voice Modulation and Body Language

    • A powerful presentation is not just about words—it’s also about how you say them. Tutors emphasize elements such as voice modulation, clarity, and appropriate body language. Through exercises in vocal tone, pace, and volume, tutors help students deliver their words with confidence. Learning to control body language—maintaining eye contact, using hand gestures, and adopting a strong posture—also contributes to a polished and engaging delivery. Tutors use practical activities, like role-playing and storytelling, to make these techniques natural for students.

    3. Structuring Thoughts with Clarity

    • Organizing ideas is essential for effective communication. Tutors teach students how to structure their thoughts logically, introducing them to techniques like outlining, using bullet points, and breaking down ideas into clear, concise segments. This way, students learn to present their arguments or information in a way that’s easy to follow, which is crucial for engaging an audience. By practicing this process with their tutor, students gain clarity on how to craft introductions, main points, and conclusions that leave an impact.

    4. Practical Speaking Exercises

    • Tutors often incorporate practical exercises such as impromptu speeches, Q&A sessions, and mock presentations. Impromptu speaking helps students think quickly and respond confidently, even under pressure. Meanwhile, mock presentations simulate real-life speaking situations, allowing students to practice in a safe environment where they receive constructive feedback. This hands-on approach is essential for preparing students for both classroom presentations and real-world speaking situations.

    5. Constructive Feedback and Continuous Improvement

    • Constructive feedback is a game-changer in building effective communication skills. Tutors offer valuable insights into areas like clarity, engagement, and delivery, helping students understand what they’re doing well and where they can improve. This continuous loop of practice and feedback is fundamental to mastering public speaking, as students can steadily refine their skills and work toward improvement.

    6. Developing Critical Soft Skills: Confidence, Patience, and Adaptability

    • Public speaking requires more than just speech techniques; it also involves crucial soft skills. Tutors work with students on building patience and adaptability—helping them learn how to handle unexpected questions or comments gracefully. Overcoming initial nervousness gradually instills confidence, which is a cornerstone for any effective speaker. Through regular practice and exposure to various speaking scenarios, tutors prepare students not only to present information but also to engage and connect with their audience.

    7. Building a Growth Mindset Around Public Speaking

    • Finally, tutors encourage students to view public speaking as a skill that improves with effort, not as a fixed talent. This growth mindset is essential for students to embrace challenges and welcome feedback positively. A supportive tutor helps them understand that each presentation is an opportunity to learn, pushing them toward continuous improvement and building resilience.

    Conclusion

    Public speaking and presentation skills are vital assets for students, helping them succeed academically, socially, and professionally. Tutors play an instrumental role in shaping these abilities, guiding students through the fundamentals of speech delivery, providing constructive feedback, and nurturing a confident mindset. With a strong foundation in public speaking, students gain not only communication skills but also the self-assurance to share their ideas with the world.



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  • Pandemic-era push to ‘build solutions’ must continue, panel says

    Pandemic-era push to ‘build solutions’ must continue, panel says


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemKlBPWB2E

    The Covid-19 pandemic, which first shuttered schools five years ago, disrupted learning, disengaged students and harmed their mental health, amplifying the long-standing inequalities in their achievement.  

    Recovering from the effects of the pandemic has proven difficult for most California schools, and the challenges that defy easy fixes, such as chronic absenteeism, require partnerships with families, community members and organizations to develop support systems that will focus on student academic success, as well as a willingness to analyze and change those approaches, according to panelists at EdSource’s Thursday roundtable, “Five years after Covid: Innovations that are driving results.”

    “The pandemic showed us that schools are so much more than just places to teach our students in the classroom,” said Lorena Solorio, associate director of the Care Corps Program at Rocketship Public Schools, a group of TK-5 charter schools, mostly in East San Jose, that enlisted care coordinators during the pandemic. “We have to support our students and their families to get them to school, but also that they’re prepared to learn because our students can’t learn if they’re coming to school hungry.”

    While the pandemic is mostly defined by the personal loss and academic setbacks that most experienced, it presented opportunities for some communities to become creative and innovative in igniting change to improve the conditions that the pandemic magnified. 

    The policy and advocacy work of Oakland REACH, for instance, wasn’t improving student outcomes before the pandemic. The pandemic became an opportunity for the parent advocacy group to “build the solution around education that we really know that our families wanted and needed,” co-founder and CEO Lakisha Young, a panelist, said. 

    Oakland REACH created a virtual family hub that trained parents and caregivers to tutor their children in early literacy — “a model that takes parents off the sidelines and to the front lines in an academic way.” 

    “Parents set the tone for how kids decide they want to engage in education,” Young said. 

    After five weeks of remote learning with the virtual hub, long before anyone realized school closures would last for at least a year, students in grades K-2 saw significant gains, as 60% improved by two or more reading levels and 30% increased by three or more reading levels on Oakland Unified’s assessment.

    Since the return to in-person learning, REACH has partnered with the school district to train parents, caregivers, and community members to go into classrooms as tutors teaching reading and math. 

    Rocketship Public Schools was inspired at the height of the pandemic to work directly with families and connect them with resources and services through care coordinators in all of its charter schools, according to Solorio. 

    The care coordinators, for example, connected families struggling with housing with community partners and hosted on-campus resource fairs and health, vision and dental screenings, referring students for additional services, as necessary, and allowing them to “show up and learn in the classroom,” Solorio said. 

    Today, the coordinators’ roles have expanded to help school leaders address chronic absenteeism. 

    “Helping support a culture of learning, a culture of coming to school is important,” Solorio said about coordinators helping families, “whether it’s changing mindsets or it’s driving out core root causes of some of these obstacles.” 

    Finding, providing and sustaining innovation

    Districts have used one-time pandemic relief funding and/or their own resources to address the persistent challenges facing students during and since the pandemic, including the fact that California schools have more staff now than at any time in history. 

    Federal pandemic relief and recovery funds from the state put California’s spending at over $18,000 per student, said panelist Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, an education finance research center based at Georgetown University. 

    “While the state was seeing some growth in scores earlier in 2014, 2016, there’s some decline during the pandemic,” she said. “But the part that frustrates us, I think, is the continued decline, on average, even after these investments were happening.”

    The high spending and low test scores make the state one of the nation’s worst in its “returns on investments,” the Edunomics Lab found. 

    There are districts, such as Compton and Milpitas Unified, that defy the average and show a rapid recovery for their students, Roza said. 

    Now, billions in pandemic-era funding have expired. California districts still have $6 billion in state funding to replace the federal relief, but as the Edunomics research shows, the spending alone won’t address student success. From now on, schools must know when to change their approach, panelists said. 

    Compton Unified exemplifies the importance of doubling down on a strategy that works. Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley said that consistently assessing student performance to determine the academic strategies that schools use has led to the district being No. 1 in California in terms of growth in English and math test scores.

    “We’re measuring everything,” including graduation rates, core graduation requirements and chronic absenteeism rates that are also improving, Brawley said.  “It’s all about data: reflecting on that data, coming together as teams to reflect on how each individual school is doing, receiving that feedback.” 

    The common characteristic of districts nationwide that beat the odds for their kids, Roza said, is “they really focused on reading and math.” 

    Roza attributed the reading and math focus of Oakland REACH to its success. 

    Although the group will soon end its partnership with the district, Oakland Unified can continue the approach Oakland REACH started, much like 12 Denver schools recently did by replicating the model.

    “REACH exists out of a problem,” Young said about not knowing if the literacy and math it brought into the homes of low-income families would work, at first. Whether we think something is good or not, let’s test it. We cannot be so vulnerable to system disruption. When we’re vulnerable to disruption, our families are vulnerable to disruption.”

    Panelists echoed the importance of finding a method that works — and being unafraid to try things. 

    “If it doesn’t work, you’ve got to try something else, including nontraditional strategies,” especially in addressing attendance, Roza said. “I think we hear from district leaders all the time: ‘I would love to do these great ideas, but we can’t because dot, dot…”

    It’s that fear that leads to the status quo, Brawley said. 

    Cheryl Jordan, superintendent at Milpitas Unified, which developed an Innovation Campus that offers students real-world work and life experiences through internships, apprenticeships and project-based learning, said that it is only through looking at the opportunities that a crisis provides that schools and districts can “develop something that’s better and meets the needs of our learners in a way that is innovative and really excels them to become the leaders and creators of the future.” 





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  • Reading Aloud From Real Books To Build Fluency, Attention and Meaning

    Reading Aloud From Real Books To Build Fluency, Attention and Meaning


    Engaged, attentive students learning to read productively

     

    In our forthcoming book The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading, Colleen Driggs, Erica Woolway and I discuss the overlooked importance of shared oral reading of rich and complex literature in book form.

    This is a critical part of reading instruction for several reasons.

    1) It builds student fluency, which is critically overlooked. If students can’t read fluently, their working memory will be engaged in the task of figuring out the words and will not be available for meaning making.  Oral reading practice is critical, especially when it builds prosody, the ability to imbue text with meaning as students read it. Students learn what text sounds like from hearing models and this then influences the way they read silently.

    2) It brings the story to life in a group setting. Students connect with the book via that shared experience of reading it aloud together. THis makes reading class more meaningful and increases their motivation to read.

    3) They learn to sustain focus and attention while reading longer segments of text without break or distraction.

    4) They are exposed to books and read them cover to cover, a topic I have discussed frequently here and elsewhere.  Books are long-form complex arguments in which ideas are developed through deep reflection. A protagonist never thinks and believes at the end of the book what he or she thought and believed at the beginning. In an age when social media has normalized the “hot take”–one can understand a complex issue in a few seconds–the book is the antidote.

    With that in mind here’s a beautiful example of what the activity of reading aloud as a class can look like.

    In this video Christine Torres reads aloud from Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars with her fifth grade students.

    Notice how much fluency practice there is for students, but also how Christine combines this with her own beautiful (and carefully prepared) oral reading. Students develop a clear mental model of what the text should sound like. And it comes to life so powerfully, with students experiencing it together.  Notice also how student attention is focus and maintained via the shared experience of reading together. Students sustain their attentional focus in part because everyone around them is also doing so.

    It’s a beautiful and joyful thing and, happily, much more valuable to young readers than a 45 minute discussion of the main idea of a text excerpt students have no connection to and little background knowledge about.

     



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