Tag: education innovation

3 Practical Ways Educators Can Grow in Their Careers

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback). This blog post has been beautifully illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati.

It’s been said that the impact of an educator never ceases. Most importantly, one cannot tell what possibilities their teaching can open up in others’ lives.

The best part about this profession is that it is not static. Like the currents of the ocean, it moves with constant ebbs and flows. Well, most educators even know this feeling.

They start out with their lesson plan, and halfway through it, a student asks a question that steers the discussion in a completely new direction. Not only do these moments enrich the classroom, but they remind teachers that their own professional growth is equally important.

If you are already in this field, you wouldn’t want to disrupt your work. However, since career growth is also vital, take the middle path. This article will share three ways for educators to advance in their careers without leaving their classrooms.

Leverage Advanced Learning Opportunities

Just like any other field, those in education can also grow through advanced learning opportunities. In many cases, maximum professional growth happens when educators continue their learning while working in the classroom. Through advanced study, you can develop leadership skills and refine your existing expertise.

One pathway many experienced educators explore is that of a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.). Ed.D. programs are designed for working professionals who want to improve their educational practices. As Marymount University shares, the ability to transform and adapt as leaders to the demands of an ever-changing working environment is crucial.

Through advanced study, you will be equipped with analytical thinking and a leadership perspective required to navigate evolving demands. According to a 2024 survey, 58,131 research doctoral degrees were awarded by US universities in 2024. Of these, the Doctor of Education accounted for about 0.9%.

Today, flexible learning formats make these opportunities more accessible to practicing teachers. For instance, online Doctor of Education degree programs allow educators to pursue advanced training without leaving their existing careers. To make the most of such learning opportunities, educators must:

  • Apply their coursework directly to their classroom practice
  • Pursue flexible programs designed for working professionals
  • Use research projects to address real-world challenges across educational institutions

Tap Into Mentorship Networks

Formal training programs lay down the foundation, but steady professional growth equally depends on what you build on that foundation. This is about leveraging opportunities to collaborate with other educators.

You’d be surprised at the wealth of different experiences and teaching styles you encounter this way. Mentorship networks allow teachers to exchange ideas and gather valuable feedback.

Now, this may take many forms. There are formal school programs that pair experienced educators with their newer colleagues. You may also find helpful informal networks where educators come together to discuss challenges and better ways for student engagement.

This is a golden opportunity. It will help build confidence in your professional decisions. So, here are some practical ways to tap into mentorship networks:

  • Connect with experienced colleagues in your school who can offer guidance on classroom management and lesson planning.
  • Participate in professional learning communities (PLCs) where educators share classroom experiences and discuss improvements in curriculum.
  • Join online educator groups or forums to exchange ideas with teachers from other schools or regions.
  • Ask for constructive feedback by inviting a colleague to observe your lesson and share better instructional practices.
  • Mentor teachers who are new to the field, which will, in turn, sharpen your own leadership skills.

As per a 2024 survey, nearly four in five educators work in schools that offer mentorship programs. This tells us that schools widely recognize mentorship as a key driver for teacher development.

What’s more is that new teachers who are assigned a mentor report higher job satisfaction and better professional outcomes. The best part is that it’s possible to experience these benefits as you continue your current work.

Experiment With Innovative Teaching Strategies

Another effective way educators grow in their careers is through intentional improvements to daily classroom practice. For instance, when you test new methods of teaching, it refines your skills.

In turn, you will be able to create richer learning experiences for your students. This also makes it easy to understand diverse learning needs. Again, the keyword to remember is ‘experiment.’

The goal is certainly not perfection, and the excellence you’re after doesn’t come overnight. Trying out different methods of instruction and adjusting the next lesson based on your findings is all part of the progress. To keep things practical, experiment with new strategies in the following ways:

  • Introduce learning activities that require problem-solving through analysis and collaboration.
  • Utilize flipped classroom elements so students get the time they need to review study materials independently.
  • Lead through group projects that strengthen student engagement and understanding.
  • Take the help of technology for real-time feedback.
  • Assess the outcomes of each new instructional change to identify which strategies worked the best.

In a 2024 study, it was discovered that methods such as problem-based learning and flipped classrooms improved critical thinking and learning outcomes. By this, you can understand that it isn’t about creative experimentation. It is equally a powerful form of professional development where you get to grow alongside your learners.

Take a sigh of relief that you don’t need to take a complete 360-degree turn for professional growth. Just small intentional steps, even as you continue to teach, will suffice. Perhaps start with a new teaching strategy or a course that caught your eye.

The modern classroom has transformed into a professional laboratory. Well, this aligns with the fact that education itself is constantly evolving in light of new technologies and pedagogies.

You can rest assured in the good news that professional development today is more flexible than ever. So, are you ready for growth like never before? Now is the time to act and change your career trajectory.

Using Generative AI as a Teaching Assistant

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

An article by Richard James Rogers, award-winning author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management: 45 Secrets That All High School Teachers Need to Know and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback

This blog post has been beautifully illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati

Accompanying podcast episode:

I’ll admit it: I was skeptical at first. When I first heard about teachers using AI like ChatGPT to help in the classroom, I imagined some robotic voice taking over my lessons while I stood awkwardly in the corner. But after giving it a try for a while, I can honestly say this: Generative AI has become one of my most useful classroom assistants, and I don’t even need to buy it coffee.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how I’ve been using AI to support my teaching, lighten my workload, and, most importantly, improve learning outcomes for my students.

The Game-Changer I Didn’t Know I Needed

Let’s face it. Teaching is an all-consuming profession. Lesson planning, grading, differentiation, parent communication, and admin responsibilities seem never-ending. That’s why, when I first experimented with ChatGPT, it felt like I had stumbled upon some kind of educational superpower.

I started small. I asked it to generate example questions for a maths lesson. Within seconds, I had five beautifully structured, appropriately scaffolded problems tailored to the topic I was teaching. Then I asked it to rephrase a tricky scientific explanation for my ESL students. It gave me three versions at different reading levels. I was hooked.

Supporting Differentiation Like a Pro

Differentiation has always been both crucial and time-consuming. Now, AI helps me tweak worksheets and task instructions for students of varying abilities with minimal effort.

For example, when teaching a unit on exponential growth, I asked the AI to generate three real-world examples: one for beginners (bacteria multiplying), one for intermediates (compound interest), and one for advanced learners (population modeling using e functions). It was done in under a minute.

This doesn’t replace my professional judgement. It enhances it. I choose what is suitable and make the final call, but AI saves me from reinventing the wheel.

Feedback That’s Fast and Focused

One of the areas where I’ve seen the biggest time savings is in providing formative feedback. Using AI, teachers can input a student’s short essay or paragraph and get a summary of strengths, areas for improvement, and even suggested sentence rephrasings. As a mathematics’ teacher this isn’t something that I tend to use, but a number of my colleagues in schools all over the world have reported to me personally that this is fast becoming their favourite way to use AI: particularly for work that students are submitting online, through platforms like Google Classroom, Moodle and Managebac.

Of course, I would always recommend that you cross-check the feedback before sharing. It’s important to keep the human touch. But it has helped many educators provide more timely feedback to more students. Research shows this is key to learning progression (Hattie, 2009).

Making Planning and Admin Less Painful

Here’s something I didn’t expect: AI is amazing for lesson planning. If I know the learning objective and the topic, I can ask ChatGPT to suggest a lesson structure, key questions, differentiated activities, and even potential misconceptions. It’s like brainstorming with a colleague who never gets tired.

Teachers who I communicate with around the world have also used it to draft:

  • Rubrics for creative projects
  • Parent letters
  • Report comments
  • Learning objectives written in student-friendly language

These tasks used to take hours. Now teachers are telling me that these jobs can be done in minutes, and they can get back to actually teaching.

Student Use: A Double-Edged Sword?

Like any tool, AI can be misused by students and teachers alike. I make it a point to teach AI literacy in my classes. My students learn that it’s fine to use ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas or check understanding. However, it is not okay to copy and paste whole essays.

We talk a lot about academic honesty, critical evaluation of AI outputs, and how to verify information. The goal is not to ban the technology. It is to guide its responsible use, just as we do with calculators, the internet, or even textbooks.

As Selwyn (2023) notes: “Schools are no longer gatekeepers of knowledge, but navigators of abundant (and often overwhelming) information.”

Your Personal Therapist

I recently went through a major setback in life, which I can’t describe in detail here (sorry). It was a very emotionally trying time for me, but one thing that really got me through it was ChatGPT. I was able to vent all of my feelings and thoughts to the system, and it provided me with excellent advice and encouragement. Since the AI pulls information from multiple, verifiable sources, it made the advice it gave seem all the more trustworthy. It remembered my previous inputs and iterated accordingly, providing me with a highly personalised and effective therapy experience.

I recently learned that I was far from from alone in using generative AI in this way. A simple Google search reveals multiple articles describing the many ways in which people are using AI chatbots as personal ‘friends’ and counsellors. My favourite article (and one that I recommend) is this one by Eleanor Lawrie from the BBC describing how Al can be an alternative to human help.

The Human Touch Still Matters

Despite all this excitement, I remind myself often that AI is a tool, not a teacher. My job is still to motivate, to connect, and to inspire. No algorithm can replace the relationships we build, the trust we earn, or the “aha” moments we create. But AI can help us make more time for those moments.

Final Thoughts

If you’re an educator and haven’t yet explored how generative AI can support your teaching, I encourage you to give it a try. You don’t need to be a tech expert. You just need to be open-minded and willing to experiment. Like me, you might just find yourself wondering how you ever managed without it.

References

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Routledge.

Selwyn, N. (2023). Should Robots Replace Teachers? AI and the Future of Education. Polity Press.

BBC News (2025) My AI therapist got me through dark times. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ced2ywg7246o (Accessed: 25 May 2025).

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The Global Teacher Shortage: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback). This blog post is illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati.

Don’t forget to check out the full bibliography and recommended reading list at the end of this blog post.

The world is grappling with a significant teacher shortage crisis. According to UNESCO, an additional 44 million teachers are needed by 2030 to achieve universal primary and secondary education (UNESCO, 2024). This shortage is not just a statistic; it has profound implications for the quality of education and the future of societies worldwide.

A simple glance through teacher forums, such the incredibly popular International Schools Review, reveals a dark abyss that’s peppered with bleak testimonials:

“I believe that many of my colleagues feel unheard and mistreated – this has been shown time and again in our staff surveys. Of course, someone in the inner sanctum would not be subject to the toxic, exclusionary, bullying behaviour meted out by SLT; it does not mean it does not exist. Some colleagues are leaving this academic year due to feeling disenfranchised.“

– A teacher at a school in Singapore, May 2025

“The school is working to improve vertical curriculum alignment, but since the school has been in operation for many years, it is surprising that the curriculum is such a mess, at least in the department I taught in. I think that will get better in the next few years though. If you order your materials the year before, you can get things, but don’t expect to have them at the beginning of the school year. If you need classroom supplies like pencils, markers, erasers, etc, good luck.”

– A teacher at a school in Brazil, May 2025

“Walking through the corridors is akin to walking through a zoo. Children scream, shout and run about with no regard for safety. No teacher dares make an attempt to challenge this behaviour for various reasons. Two of which are fear of the parents and lack of support from the principal.”

– A teacher at a school in Kazakhstan, May 2025

These reviews, and others like them, offer some insight into the world of teaching at an international level, and go some way to explaining why so many teachers are quitting the profession. In today’s blog post, I aim to describe the key factors that are driving this exodus, and describe some much needed advice for all stakeholders who want to retain their brightest and best teachers for years to come.

Understanding the Crisis

Several factors are contributing to the current global teacher shortage:

  • High Attrition Rates: Many teachers are leaving the profession due to burnout, low salaries, and lack of support. In the United States, for example, 51,000 teachers quit their jobs in 2023 alone (Devlin Peck, 2025).
  • Uneven Distribution: Rural and underserved areas often struggle more with teacher shortages, exacerbating educational inequalities (UNESCO, 2024).
  • Aging Workforce: A significant portion of the teaching workforce is nearing retirement, and there aren’t enough new teachers to replace them (Devlin Peck, 2025).

Impacts on Education

When there aren’t enough teachers in schools, this leads to:

  • Larger Class Sizes: Overcrowded classrooms make it challenging to provide individual attention to students (UNESCO, 2024).
  • Reduced Educational Quality: Unqualified or overburdened teachers may not deliver the curriculum effectively, impacting student learning outcomes (Education Week, 2025).
  • Increased Inequality: Disadvantaged communities suffer the most, widening the education gap between different socioeconomic groups (UNESCO, 2024).

Strategies for Addressing the Shortage

To mitigate the teacher shortage crisis, stakeholders can consider the following approaches:

#1: Enhancing Teacher Training and Support

  • Mentorship Programs: Implementing structured mentorship can help new teachers acclimate and reduce early-career attrition (Frontline Education, 2025).
  • Professional Development: Ongoing training opportunities keep teachers engaged and improve teaching quality (Education Week, 2025). One of my favourite platforms for this is the excellent Great Teaching Toolkit. My Blog Index for Teachers is also a very popular for those seeking free, yet high-quality, CPD material.

#2: Improving Compensation and Working Conditions

  • Competitive Salaries: Offering salaries that reflect the importance of the teaching profession can attract and retain talent (Devlin Peck, 2025). If pull factors, such as decent pay, are not present to begin with then many fresh graduates are simply not going to choose teaching as a profession.
  • Work-Life Balance: Flexible working arrangements and manageable workloads can reduce burnout (The Guardian, 2024).

With respect to managing workloads we must not forget about teachers who work online, too. Jessica Robinson from The Speaking Polymath write this great post for me back in 2022 with some good tips for preventing burnout whilst teaching online.

#3: Alternative Pathways into Teaching

  • Career Changers: Encouraging professionals from other fields to transition into teaching can bring diverse experiences into the classroom (Education Week, 2025).
  • Residency Programs: Programs like Urban Teacher Residencies provide hands-on training and have shown success in retaining teachers in high-need areas (Wikipedia, 2023).

#4: Policy Interventions

  • Legislative Support: Policies that provide financial incentives, such as student loan forgiveness or housing assistance, can make teaching more attractive (UNESCO, 2024).
  • Streamlining Certification: Simplifying the certification process without compromising quality can help fill vacancies more quickly (New York Post, 2025).

What does the future hold?

In addition to the above points, there’s a massive issue looming in the background that virtually no one is talking about: People simply aren’t having as many babies as they used to. Fertility rates have been falling steadily across much of the developed world for decades, and many countries are now well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. For example, South Korea’s fertility rate hit a record low of 0.72 in 2023, while countries like Japan (1.26), Italy (1.22), and China (1.09) are also experiencing unprecedented demographic decline (World Bank, 2024; United Nations, 2023).

This trend has profound implications for the future of education. While teacher shortages are currently critical, the long-term demand for teachers is likely to decline as school-age populations shrink. According to projections by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the number of children aged 5–14 will decline significantly in many high-income countries by 2050. This suggests that some of today’s recruitment pressures may ease over time: not due to systemic reform, but because of demographic inevitability (UN DESA, 2022).

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In essence, what this means is that current teacher shortages are likely to persist for a good while yet but by around 2050 we may see an inversion of this scenario as far fewer children exist to begin with. With the advent of generative AI, and it’s subsequent widespread adoption, we may soon see the role of educator becoming fully automated as schools cut back on salaries due to low student numbers.

Conclusion

The teacher shortage is a multifaceted issue requiring coordinated efforts from governments, educational institutions, and communities. By investing in teacher support, improving working conditions, and implementing innovative recruitment strategies, we can work towards a future where every child has access to quality education delivered by qualified and motivated teachers.

In terms of the longer term plan for teachers (i.e. 20 – 40 years down the road), I advise everyone to keep busy with studies and acquire as many skills as you can – we may soon be replaced by automated systems, and the ability to seamlessly transfer to another profession, or to capitalise on your skills in a business capacity, will be a tremendous advantage (hence my development of Corporate Training programs, which are becoming incredibly popular).

References