Teachers Hate These Kinds of Paperwork
They described these categories:
- Student forms. “We still collect all the beginning-of-year stuff on paper! Emergency, income, medical, photo day, etc.”
- Tracking spreadsheets. “Everything from school-wide student of the month, entering every locker combination and who’s using it, tech and supply requests, student data at both the school and district level, parent communication, etc.”
- Field trip and event forms. “I made an approximately 15-step Google checklist my team manages for each field trip. Add to that the communication with school and outside organizations.”
- Endless administrative work around eighth-grade graduation. “Between caps and gowns, T-shirts, trips, ceremony prep, etc, it’s a Google Sheet with probably 50+ cells of to do’s.”
- Emails.
- Writing lesson plans. Creating presentation slide decks. Compiling practice sets. Handouts. Notes.
- Writing substitute lesson plans and posting announcements on Google Classroom.
- Writing pre-observation and post-observation forms that align with Charlotte Danielson Framework that connects to lesson plans and lessons to be observed. “This happens two to three times a year for most teachers in my district.”
- Writing, recording videos and doing work for National Board Certification or maintaining certification.
- Grading, writing meaningful feedback, and entering formative and summative assessments on a regular basis of 150+ students.
- Keeping up with communication and assignments posted on Google Classroom with students and families.
- Recording and documenting Behavior Incident Reports. “Anytime we communicate home we need to document this internally.”
- Keeping a running list of professional development records to get evaluated by the end of the year.
- Maintaining documentation and filling out surveys and forms for students with IEPs and 504s in addition to attending the meetings.
- Updating syllabi, course materials, including a daily schedule calendar.
- Creating and maintaining permission slips for field trips.
- Filing paperwork to request classroom supplies.
My Questions
If you are excited about the power of AI in education, I have several questions for you:
- Which of these categories of paperwork do you imagine those teachers could outsource to AI?
- How will the AI access all the context necessary to complete the paperwork?
- Will the work involved in making that context accessible to the AI offset any productivity gains?
Honest questions. I think I know the answers, but I would love to be surprised here.
Source: Teachers Hate These Kinds of Paperwork. Can AI Help? by Dan Meyer