Transformative Principal

Jethro Jones: Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

I am your host, Jethro Jones.

You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.

Welcome to Transformative Principle.

I am your host, Jethro Jones.

I'm excited to have on the program today, Adam Geller.

He's the founder and CEO of Athena.

He's been on the program before in episode, oh, what was that?

Uh, 326.

So, uh, almost five years ago.

Adam, can you believe that?

Adam Geller: It does not feel that long.

Jethro Jones: Man, that's crazy.

So, uh, he Edthena is a video coaching, uh, platform.

And today we're gonna talk about some cool stuff that's coming out and, uh, it is called the, uh, observation co-pilot.

So, Adam, tell us what this observation copilot is.

Adam Geller: Sure.

So at the highest level, and, and you know, we can talk about the why and how we even got this idea in a minute, but at the highest level, observation co-pilot is a tool to streamline feedback to teachers built for principals.

So principals can take their classroom observation notes and with a few clicks.

Align those observation notes into rubric, aligned feedback that's ready for them to edit and then share back to their teachers.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, that's, that's awesome.

Um, I've gotta share this story with you because I think it's gonna contribute to the why.

I was coaching a principal a couple years ago, and she said that, um, she would, she was really falling behind on her observations, her formal observations, and it was just taking a lot of time.

And I was like, yeah, that, that can be tough, but like, how much time are you taking?

And you know, I was thinking like 30 to 45 minutes for an observation would be a lot.

And she came back and she said, well, it usually takes me, I do the observation, then I go home, I have dinner, and then from seven until 10 o'clock I work on this, uh, filling out the observation form.

And I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

There's no way.

That is that you're actually spending that long.

And she said, I'm serious.

That's how long it really takes me for every observation I do.

And I was like, that cannot be, how can you, how can you ever accomplish everything that you need to when it's taking that long?

And she's like, well, I've gotta do it in this certain way.

And there are these certain formats that you gotta follow.

And it was in New York State.

And I was like, I still don't believe you, . You gotta show me and, and walk me through what you do.

And so she did.

And, um, and I couldn't believe it.

We spent, uh, 45 minutes on a call and I said, there's no way you can keep going down this road.

You can't, this is not sustainable.

And then I helped coach her on how to do it better and, and figure it out.

And she got it down.

I. To, uh, just an hour that she was spending, and I still felt like that was way too long to be spending on one observation.

So that's, that's a little bit of what I perceive as the why.

What, what led you to this in your, in your circumstance?

Adam Geller: Well, That story rings really true to what we were hearing.

In fact.

So the background of how we came up with this as an idea is that we started just talking to principals.

Asking them, Hey, where are there pain points in the process of observing teachers and trying to figure out if there was, you know, some way that we could create value for them.

And pretty quickly in those interviews, and these were principles we didn't know, by the way.

Um, they were, they were new to us.

Uh, we started to very quickly see this pattern emerge across them where they would be talking about how . You know, the real challenge is the fact that they, just like you were telling that story, they go in, they do their 30 minute observation, and they're spending an hour, an hour and a half on the paperwork, right?

It's not about . Their desire to provide high quality feedback to teachers.

It's about the struggle that they're having getting this, the, the notes and the thinking that they have down on paper into, as you were saying, just the right perfect format so that it could go into the form the very certain way.

And so that's the kind of way that we got into this space.

Thinking about . Uh, you know, a tool for principals.

Um, it was, it was funny actually in the process of, of kind of uncovering this as we realized, you know, first of all, you know, this is very in line with our ethos of a company in terms of streamlining feedback to teachers.

Um, so we didn't feel like this was, you know, astray from, from what we . We know about and what we focus on, but we we're thinking about it generally and we're like, wow, you know what?

Not many people build tools for principals.

There's a lot of people that build tools for teachers in classrooms, very rightly.

A lot of tools for students to use, uh, but not a lot of tools to help principals do their jobs.

Um, and, you know, get them some time back in the day because . I, you know, I think about that principle you were just describing.

If we could help that principal take the process to, from today, from an hour down to 20 minutes, you know, she now has 40 more minutes to spend during the day on high value, high impact interactions inside of the building.

And that's what I think we would all say.

We want principals to be able to do.

Jethro Jones: Well, and the thing is, with these, um, reports and, and observation forms and things that need to be filled out, nobody ever reads them.

Nobody ever pays attention to them.

And you guys are really in the business of getting the right feedback to teachers so that they can improve their practice.

And, and so the, the issue is, you know, essentially what teachers often do is they say, what score did I get?

And if it was good, then I don't really care.

And if it wasn't good, then I really care a lot.

Right.

And so, so how do you, how do you find that balance where that is really the reality that people are dealing with?

Because everybody is busy and has a lot on their plates.

Adam Geller: Sure.

I mean, look, there are lots of different types of observations that happen throughout the year, and we were reminded of this when we were talking to the principals because, you know, okay, they've got their formal . Observations for an evaluation process, but they've got their informals and they've got their walkthroughs.

So, you know, I do think there's more than one type of moment where feedback can be generated for teachers, um, and make it valuable for them.

Um, one of the things that was a big focus for us as we went into this project, um, is making sure that in addition to taking . The As one, uh, tester said my, her chicken scratch notes, right?

So taking the chicken scratch notes and turning them into this paragraph ready, you know, prose was that.

In addition to that, we're able to generate ideas to consider and we felt comfortable doing this because, uh, you know, using the kind of AI tools under the hood that we have available, uh, we're confident that we can get

Pretty close to good ideas every time.

Yeah.

That said, of course, this is not going straight to a teacher.

This is really helping that principal provide high quality ideas to the teachers.

So, you know, your question was how do we make sure this is meaningful, that this is something useful?

Uh, it it, you know, in addition to all of the kind of formal language, you know, at nine 15 I saw this, and at nine 20 this thing happened and it was related to this particular type of teaching skill.

In addition to that.

The, the principals are able to kind of get their creative juices flowing with some ideas that they can offer back to their teachers to make this usable, right.

And useful.

Um, I think there's one other thing, one other thing that is, uh, interesting that we heard about the, the process.

You know, some states, of course, they have . Um, some rules about how fast you have to turn around the feedback to teachers, which makes it very difficult for principals given anything that might be going on during the day, or it might limit them to only doing one observation a day because of the, the kind of, uh, workload that you described.

Um, but it is that timeliness of the feedback, right?

The, the ability to observe today.

And get feedback to the teacher today transforms even that most formal of observations into something that, you know, means something to me as the teacher because I'm not two weeks down the road teaching something else.

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

What was it that, what lesson was, were you observing?

Because we all know they just kind of blend together, you know?

And, and if you don't get that feedback that day, it makes it really difficult for you to say, oh yeah, I remember exactly what was going on because I. There's, there's just so much, and, and unlike, you know, people love to make the analogy of, of sports and teaching, but the difference is, is that with teaching every single day is game day.

So you don't get the practice reps in between, like athletes do.

You have game day every single day, and you are on the clock, you're on the stage, you're, you're on the field every single day and it's not something that you can, like . Pause and say, oh yeah, let's, let's try this different way and see what happens.

You gotta make those decisions like in the moment right away.

Adam Geller: Right.

And you know, also for teachers, not only is a game day every day, but every day is a different game.

, you know, the lesson keeps changing.

The students have something else, you know, impacting whatever's, you know, going on for them inside their heads, right?

It's different every day.

Um, you know, something that comes to mind for me here.

Uh, you know, thinking about, you know, this podcast and, and your audience, and I think there's a question of, well, how is streamlining the observation process, uh, how is that transformative?

Right?

Um, but you know, when I think about it, and I, I think about, I imagine the types of principles that, that listen to this podcast regularly, they're the types of principles who see themselves as instructional leaders.

They're the types of principals who don't want to be pushing paper around, and they want to be finding the ways that unlock the full potential of their teachers to have the greatest impact with their students.

And so, yes, streamlining feedback means that we save the principals time during the day, but as we said before, it means that they get that feedback to the teacher so much faster in all scenarios that suddenly every visit.

Can be, um, something that you know makes a difference and that teachers can feel good about because at least they got something out of it, right?

Even if they didn't want you to come, at least they got something out of it to help them do better tomorrow.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, that's, that's really important and that's what makes those, uh, conversations and those observations valuable is, is the teacher actually being able to get something out of it?

It's, it's not about them getting a final evaluation score or any of that kind of stuff.

Uh, every teacher that I know who matters is really about how do I improve my teaching?

That's really what they want to do is be better teachers.

And when principals can do things that help them with that, then that is incredibly powerful.

Um, one of the things that I want to talk about here is a lot of problems with AI tools is that they're not . Aware of the context in which, uh, teachers are, or principals are working and existing and they don't
know like, what really matters in my school or in my district, or even in my state, uh, as much as there is information out there, it, what I tell people all the time is people will say, can, can AI do this?

And my answer's always, yes, it can.

But the question is how much can it do?

So, you know, somebody does a, people do these videos and stuff all the time where they , they do these demonstrations and it's all well and good.

That it can do that.

But when you get down to brass tack and you actually look at it, it's actually not very good at specific things unless you know exactly what you're looking for.

You know?

So can it write notes on a teacher observation?

Yes.

But how good are they and how aligned are they with, with my context and the state and the district and the, the priorities that we have?

How have you adapted that and, and made it so that it does understand that context?

Adam Geller: Yeah, that's a, that's a great question.

I mean, generally, overall thinking about . , you know, how do these kind of foundational technologies layer, uh, a perspective into, you know, what the outputs will be?

You know, from our end, how we thought about this is, first of all, we're, um.

I, I think we need to remember that we're not kind of going to the computer and saying, uh, you know, Hey computer, please generate an observation notes, set of notes for Jethro.

Right?

Uh, we are taking those human powered notes from the principal exactly that they would take the notes today.

Uh, those are the notes we're taking, and so those notes inherently highlight . What's important through that lens of the context, it inherently has more information about the particular things that are a priority to our building or our district right now, uh, than not.

And so we have, uh, a hundred percent leaned on the information that's provided by the principal, and our job is really to take that information and essentially reorganize it.

So we're not trying to, yeah, we're not trying to fill in any blanks here because unless you wrote down that, uh, a student said a certain thing, you know, the, the algorithms shouldn't invent that information.

So I think that that's been a, a, a big piece of the, the shaping of the outputs for the principles is really.

Taking their information and applying it, um, as evidence to the various categories.

Now, I'll tell you one place where I think that the computer can do it, uh, maybe . More comprehensively than a principal who is not spending three hours doing this work each time is that the computer doesn't think, oh, I already used that student quote in section one.

So I don't need, you know, the, I don't have it available anymore to put into section four for a different style of evidence.

But the computer's job is to say, okay, from the observation notes, exactly what evidence do we have of a listening student thinking.

And separately, what evidence do we have around, uh, creating a welcoming environment or whatever the, the kind of indicators might be.

And so at the end of the day, I, I think, um, you know, that's how we've approached it.

I think also, you know, this is a system to help a principal create a first draft.

We are not, um, asserting, nor would we suggest that a principal . You know, clicks the, the buttons inside of our platform and then copy and paste it over to a email for a teacher.

Because at the end of the day, it has to represent what the principal believes happened in that classroom during that lesson.

Um, and so, you know, we are keeping the human in the loop all throughout this process.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, that piece is really important and so many of the AI tools try to take the human out of it, and what I appreciate is, as with many things that you've done over the years, is you're trying to keep the human in it and, but just make it . Easier and faster for them to do the good work that they're trying to do.

now you mentioned before, uh, we started recording that this is something that you're offering for free for all principals.

Can you tell us about that

Adam Geller: Yeah.

So, um, just in case somebody's listening to this five years from now, it's currently spring 2025.

Uh, so no telling what the future holds 'cause it does cost money to operate this service.

However, right now, spring 2025, and the reason why we are talking today is we are just excited for principles to log in.

And use this for absolutely no cost.

We wanna see what happens when the listeners of your program find out about this and use it.

Hopefully they have the great reactions and send us really nice emails that we've been getting some from some principals already, but do they share it with their colleagues who didn't listen to your podcast?

Um, because, um.

We're a small organization, we're not going to, uh, spin up some sales process to find all the principles in the world and convince them to give us money.

Um, so we just wanna see how they use it, what impact it has, if there's, if we're saving them time, um, and what else it needs to do in order to create lots of value for them.

And, uh, yeah.

That all they need to do to sign up is use their district email.

So you can't use your Gmail or anything like that, but you go to observation copilot.com and you get started for free.

Jethro Jones: I mean, that sounds pretty easy.

And what's great also is that you've got, uh, the state.

. Um, rubrics and things already loaded in there because you've been doing this for a while, so there's already stuff in there.

So if you're, if you are new to Athena, then uh, the, the work's already been done to have those things there.

Do you wanna say anything else about that?

Adam Geller: Yeah, I, I mean, the question of the frameworks is a really good one because, um, you know, imagine you're a teacher in Massachusetts.

Well, every school in Massachusetts uses the same framework.

I. To talk about teaching for the purpose of observations.

It would be really silly if we asked every single teacher in Massachusetts to enter that framework over and over again.

So, um, we do already have that framework inside of our system, but our goal is to make it easy to find.

And once you select it, you know it's auto selected again for you in the future.

Um, because, you know, like you said before, this is about saving time, making it easy, making it, uh, . Low friction.

You know, that's a, that's a way to describe it for everyone to just get going.

Um, and you don't have to change your process to, to be able to make use of this.

If, if you like taking notes, um, you know, in your drafts inside of Outlook.

Okay, great.

Do that still.

Um, and then copy and paste 'em in.

Or if you want to use our tool to take the notes, uh, we built a preacher that was based on the feedback, which you might find really cool and helpful, uh, because when you open it up to start an observation and it's
9 0 2 and you start taking your notes, it actually puts a timestamp in there at 9 0 2 and then you hit enter and because at 9 0 4 something else happened, and then you hit enter and at nine 10 something happened.

So it just automatically logs all the details that you find throughout that lesson.

Automatically with a timestamp.

So then at the end, all that evidence is really precise and exact right at, you know, literally at 9 0 4 this thing happened, uh, is now the level of detail that can, can get into the notes if you know, if that's the kind of way you want to take notes in our system.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, that's awesome.

Alright, well observation copilot.com.

Adam, thank you so much for being part of transformative principle.

Once again, my last question, um, I think I know the answer to which is, go . Go try observation copilot.com for free.

Um, you can do that for the rest of the school year, so everybody go check it out.

Observation copilot.com.

Thanks again, Adam.

Appreciate you being

Adam Geller: Yeah, thanks for having us and look forward to all the feedback from all your listeners.