Enhancing Curriculum with Strategic AI in Education

Educators are embracing AI in schools to streamline instructional planning and support student achievement, but the real impact happens when teams move from data to action.

In this episode, guest host Georgia Bambrick welcomes Amelia Gorman, Instructional Leader at Boston Public Schools, and Dr. Chantei Alves, Inclusion Teacher and Learning Specialist at Boston Public Schools. Together, they explore the practical ways educators are using AI tools, including Panorama Solara, to support daily workflows like strategic math and literacy intervention planning, and building collaborative systems that accelerate student outcomes.

Amelia and Chantei provide practical insight into how teachers in Boston Public Schools are leveraging AI to drive more effective teaching, create actionable and impactful small group instruction, and foster stronger partnerships between schools and families. They also discuss the challenges and opportunities of using AI in classrooms, including how technology can help educators synthesize complex information, align instructional goals, and support progress monitoring.

Finally, they highlight how AI tools like Panorama Solara help school teams analyze multiple data sources more efficiently,, generate tailored instructional plans, and collaborate more effectively, all while keeping a human-first, human-last mindset at the center of their work.

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TOPICS COVERED

How educators are leveraging AI tools to make sense of complex information faster
What it actually looks like when educators use AI tools in thoughtful, practical ways in the classroom
How teams can use AI to analyze multiple sources of information and make stronger instructional decisions together
How AI helps schools move from looking at data to taking action to improve student outcomes
How AI tools like Solara support collaboration across instructional teams and make small group instruction more efficient and impactful for every learner

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Episode transcript

Georgia Bambrick:
All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Leading and Learning with AI podcast. I'm your host today, Georgia VanBrik, and today I'm joined by Amelia Gorman and Dr. Shante Alves from Boston Public Schools. I'll be speaking with each of them separately to hear about their experiences bringing AI into their schools and supporting educators in that work. In our previous episode, we spoke with Sarah J., the Executive Director of Equitable Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. In Boston Public Schools. If you're interested in learning how BPS approached instructional change and AI integration at the district level, I recommend going back and listening to that conversation.

Georgia Bambrick:
But today we're going to shift the focus a little closer to the classroom. Amelia Gorman is an experienced educational leader with more than 20 years in K-8 education, and her work centers on instructional coaching, supporting teachers, and helping school teams strengthen learning for all students. Dr. Shante Alves has spent more than 15 years serving students and families in Boston, including more than a decade working in Mattapan Schools as an inclusion teacher and learning specialist. Her work is grounded in the belief that literacy opens doors and that every student deserves access to high-quality learning and strong partnerships between schools and families. So we'll start our conversation with Amelia, and then later in the episode, we'll hear from Dr. Alves about her experience. So if you've been paying attention to the conversation around AI in education, you know there's a lot of excitement right now.

Georgia Bambrick:
But the real question is, what does that actually look like inside a school? And I'm so excited. That's what we're going to explore today. So Amelia, welcome to the show.

Amelia Gorman:
Thank you so much, Georgia. You know, I just love talking to you, so I'm happy to be here.

Georgia Bambrick:
Um, I'm thrilled and same right back at you. I learned so much from you every single time we connect, so I'm so excited for this and for everyone listening to learn from you as well. So let's just jump into it. So when we first started talking about your work with AI, you shared a really specific example from math instruction, but since then, your approach has grown into something much bigger across your school teams. Can you walk us through how that shift has happened.

Amelia Gorman:
Yeah, sure. I had offered to take a math intervention group in 4th grade. I was coaching a teacher at the time, and we started dabbling with Solara as a tool to start planning for this group because I noticed in terms of we're using the I Am curriculum, the curriculum resources at that time didn't quite align with the needs of my group. So I completed the intervention, which you know deep, a lot about, but I started worrying about these 4th graders ending the year in the spring. I was thinking about, okay, they've made huge growth. However, there are still major gaps and I'm thinking about them as 5th graders entering in the fall. This led me to play around with the tool library to start thinking about first Tier 1, right? Like, what will be access points for them as 5th graders in Unit 1? And then I also was starting to think about, okay, what might a 6-week intervention plan look like for them as well, considering they would still be needing additional support. Okay, so that was math.

Amelia Gorman:
And then I started thinking about how additional students outside of my particular intervention group were also likely to need additional support. Support and immediate intervention in all of the tiers. So that is when I learned, I believe from you, Georgia, how to navigate the students overview tab and utilize filters to see who needed to be grouped right away so that they would get support right off the bat. So I was like, oh, we don't necessarily have to wait for all this beginning of the year testing. We can hit the ground running as early as mid-September.

Georgia Bambrick:
Amazing. What made you realize you needed to move just beyond one subject area?

Amelia Gorman:
Well, so around the same time of last year, it was like early spring, I had applied for this literacy grant and the literacy grant was focused on strategic small group instruction. After receiving the grant, I wanted to ensure that teachers were equipped both with the development needed to plan their groups. And they needed the resources, the high-quality multiple text sets for their groups. So then I applied the same thinking to the analysis of literacy data in the same way that I was thinking about the math data. I was thinking, why wait the several weeks it takes to assess all of our students in the fall if we already know in the spring which students were significantly below grade level? So these are the students in particular that need that intensive instruction in order to make accelerated growth that closes achievement gaps.

Georgia Bambrick:
Yeah, I really hear you. It's like you saw the opportunity and the impact, and I love the way you say kind of like, why wait, right? You were able to do it, and so therefore leveraging technology in a way that's going to impact students feels like a no-brainer.

Amelia Gorman:
In that moment.

Georgia Bambrick:
So it's so powerful to hear the way that you kind of take action. So one thing you've talked about is helping team leaders look at multiple sources of information together instead of just one data point, right? So how does that actually work during planning or team meetings?

Amelia Gorman:
So I guess just to zoom out for a second, like in our district, we collect MAP data, and so that's more of the high-level data that is like beginning of the year, middle of the year, end of the year, right? And then throughout the year, we have 4 to 5 data entry cycles where we have teachers take more, we call it like a second layer of data. So core phonics, if that's needed, we use the CADIANCE data with additional data sources, you know, Heggerty for phonemic awareness. So reading is a complex process, right? So we needed to integrate all of these data sources to be able to make really good plans. And, you know, there's this tricky balance really between making sure that you are taking things off teachers' plate, but also like equipping them with what they need to be able to like drive their own bus. So when I tried to do this in the fall, this being like creating these intervention groups so each grade level could hit the ground running with their intervention groups, I did it wrong. I feel like I really made a lot of mistakes and my biggest mistake was trying to go at it mostly on my own. We all know how the, the beginning of the year in school is, and I was like, I'm gonna just create the intervention groups, give them to these team leaders, and have Solara generate the data and like, okay, here's your groups, go. And so this didn't work for a couple of reasons, as you can probably expect, right? So number one reason was that the buy-in really wasn't there yet.

Amelia Gorman:
Some teachers were still a little cynical and stuck in their prior routines, habits, or way of doing things. And then there were a couple teams that like were really pretty adept at analyzing data with one another, and they were getting good results. So they were kind of like, ooh, I don't know if we really need this. And then two, another reason why it didn't work is that we collected diagnostic reading data in the same way for the past 3 years, and the teacher leaders were really still kind of stuck in what we did before, even if they weren't using a super effective or efficient process. Third, teacher leaders and teams were kind of getting bogged down with adult scheduling. So students who are on IEPs, who maybe had Seagrid minutes, they were like, well, this kid needs to be pulled out here. And, and then if a student had ELL services, they were like very kind of rigid about like, okay, those are my kids and this is when I need to see them versus like, oh, let's think about like across the grade level, what do students need? How can we homogeneously group them according to that need? And then lastly, the leader at the school is a newer leader and she was kind of still growing her directive muscles, you know, using the information about groupings was like kind of posed as like an optional thing to do. So those were some of the reasons why me taking it on my own was not successful.

Georgia Bambrick:
Makes sense. And I think probably so many folks listening out there can relate to some or maybe all of those kind of challenges. So it's really powerful to hear kind of what it's like on the ground. It sounds like you learned from your mistakes, which is, you know, how great learning happens. How have you shifted your approach since That's it.

Amelia Gorman:
So around the middle of the year, so we had collected our middle of the year dipstick part and then our dipstick data from MAP, and then we were about to embark on a new data inquiry cycle and we had like a good amount of PD time. So when I was meeting with the principal, we collaboratively crafted these two main goals. We wanted grade-level teams and content teams to compare and calculate the percentage and number of students who met or exceeded proficiency in the fall and compare those numbers and percentages to how students were performing in the winter. The principal set a student learning goal of 15 percentile points of growth. So we also wanted them to calculate what that 15% looks like. So we know the percentage and number of kids being and exceeding in the fall, like crunch the numbers and figure out what that actually looks like in the spring. So that was goal number 1. Goal number 2 then was, okay, now analyze these multiple data sources to identify groups, create SMART goals, create a 6-week plan, and then progress monitor, like what is your progress monitoring plan? And like, what's your one-week plan? So here are some of the ways the shift has started to evolve.

Amelia Gorman:
Number one, teachers became much more fluent in using Panorama. They were inputting intervention groups a lot more like fluently and efficiently. A lot of them had tried using SOLARA to figure some things out between the beginning of the year and the middle of the year. So buy-in did grow. And then I got smarter having reflected on the beginning of the year stuff. I got smarter about educating the teacher leaders. Really, it's like they're representatives on ILT that are the teacher leaders, and I hope to like give them a tool to lead their team. And so I got smarter educating them about how to use the tool.

Amelia Gorman:
And I was really just trying to think about like, what's the adaptive learning and what's the technical learning? So at ILT, I modeled the process using one team's data, and then I also gave them like step-by-step visual directions to get out the technical. And then I met with everybody individually with the principal to kind of like do a little practice run and like answer any individual questions that they might have. In order to facilitate this work with their team. And like, we established much more clear expectations. The last thing that mattered was that I did a little coaching with the principal. She did a follow-up review of everybody's data analysis charts for every grade bubble and looked at each individual teacher's plan to ensure that they had a SMART goal, a 6-week plan. And a progress monitoring plan. She was like noting more completion, and I feel like as we move forward, our next step is really around like ensuring that there are quality plans and giving feedback.

Amelia Gorman:
So at the end of the day, like, okay, now there's support and there's some level of accountability. So that's where I think like things really shifted.

Georgia Bambrick:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And also that there's so many steps you put in place. But then it's really about shifting to just raising the bar on quality once you kind of have a system and structure in place. Just love that kind of system thinking. So a lot of educators talk about data cycles and what that cycle— it's sort of a phrase that's used, but in reality that can feel very long and overwhelming. So how is AI helping make those conversations easier or faster or more effective for your team?

Amelia Gorman:
Well, I think this really goes back to the fact that adaptive learning really takes so much time, right? Like teachers are all in different places. I did like 3 years of professional development around focus on strategic small groups, but then we got like this whole new cohort of teachers that didn't have that experience. So rather than waiting for them to build their knowledge and skills, we can have Salara generate a 6-week plan for them, and then we can kind of judge it accordingly, or I can support them in the judging.

Georgia Bambrick:
Very technical term, the judging.

Amelia Gorman:
Very technical. Yeah, I get that from Paris. Yeah. And then, you know, even with SMART goals, it takes some time for teachers to really think about what makes a good goal. And instead of having to use several hours of PD to be able to build like what makes a good SMART goal or what makes a good 6-week plan, Solara can do that. So it just makes the process much more efficient and effective.

Georgia Bambrick:
Yeah. And I hear sort of underlying too, not just efficient and effective, but also kind of uniform in a way. I hear kind of in some of the ways you're talking about it too, just starting from the same place, almost like upleveling the starting place so that what you're judging is a strong foundation that everyone can lean on.

Amelia Gorman:
I like that point about coherence. That's totally true.

Georgia Bambrick:
What changes actually in action when teachers can move from looking at data to actually doing something with it more quickly? Like, what have you seen on the ground? Because it's like, that's all a means to an end, but what's the impact?

Amelia Gorman:
Does that look like— well, you know, I think this is where that phrase like human first and human last for AI is really important, right? So I think that now, rather than spending a lot of time and cognitive energy on like the data analysis part and creating the SMART goal part, we can really think more about the human last part. So, you know, we're putting in this information, Solara is organizing it for us and generating plans and information for us, but now like teachers can invest their cognitive energy and time in like evaluating this plan and then critically thinking about, okay, like actually does it make sense for me to alternate fiction and then nonfiction and then fiction for the week's read? No, I'm gonna like chunk 2 weeks of fiction, 2 weeks of nonfiction, and then the last 2 weeks we're gonna do a hybrid. You know, I think that like that critical thinking piece afterwards is like probably the most important step.

Georgia Bambrick:
Yeah, I've heard you say this before, and I think it's worth noting, you and, and the folks on the Boston team, of this idea. So I think you could simply say it in the way you said, like human first and human last, but actually what I really hear you saying is that AI is getting your team to think more critically, not less. That's a real flip. You know, I think a lot of folks approach or think about or fearful that AI in education is going to lower rigor or take away the thinking that educators are doing. But what I see actually in practice when I talk to you and talk to, you know, other folks is no, we're actually increasing in many ways critical thinking, or we're putting thinking in the places that matter most or more. And I just think that's such a powerful takeaway that I've learned from you that I wanted to call out.

Amelia Gorman:
Thank you.

Georgia Bambrick:
All right, we're gonna look ahead a little. So if we were to have the same conversation a year from now, which I hope we do, so we should mark the date, what would success look like for you and your district when it comes to using AI?

Amelia Gorman:
Yeah, I mean, the easy no-brainer answer is like more widespread and consistent use in practice. But I think like on the SOLARA side, more thoughtful and efficient use. So for Tier 1 instruction, using it as a tool for access, streamlining, and supplementing. You know, I feel like teachers actually now are getting more in the habit of giving students like more practice opportunities, using it to create like, okay, here was my lesson, here's the worksheet, like Can you create additional opportunities for students to practice this skill? And then on the intervention side, consistent entering of plans, progress monitoring, and implementing interventions that actually work. So for Tiers 2 and Tier 3, I'd like to see solid plan creation. This means like less muddling and trying things out, like, let's see if this works, and more use of solid research practice. I'd like to see educators feel like they have efficacy in noticing what is and what is not working and feel empowered to use the tool to make changes so that student outcomes are impacted. And then lastly, I'd like to see educators really value the tool for what it's worth.

Amelia Gorman:
Like, I want them to know that they are the ones that hold the knowledge of what solid practice is and what it looks like, and they know their students best. So like using it as a tool, it is a really strong effective tool.

Georgia Bambrick:
That's great. And again, let's pencil it in and I have no doubt that we will be in that place with your leadership. And also I think we'll probably learn a lot along the way over the course of the year. So I am just so thankful every time I talk to you, as I said, to learn from you and really also just hear about the way you're thinking about leveraging this technology. You really don't approach it from a just how can we do things faster. You know, there's lots of uses of AI where we could, you know, accelerate speed, but you're really thinking about accelerating outcomes and pinpointing problems, which you articulated so clearly. So I just really appreciate you. I appreciate how practical your perspective is.

Georgia Bambrick:
You shared with us not just ideas about AI, but what it actually looks like when educators start using these tools in thoughtful ways. And yeah, I think one big takeaway for me is just the real, real value of AI in terms of the impact and how it can take and help teams make sense of complex information faster and support better decisions for students. So thank you. You're having an impact. Beyond your school, beyond Boston, by sharing your story.

Amelia Gorman:
Thank you so much, Georgia. I always appreciate you pushing my thinking and your willingness to help me work through challenges.

Georgia Bambrick:
So many educators are working with literacy data, but turning that information into clear instructional plans can be really challenging. So Dr. Phelps, what does that process usually look like for teachers when they're doing it without AI?

Chantei Alves:
Sure. Typically, in a school-based setting, that either is, if you're lucky, you have a learning specialist or some other support that can do that work for you. But that also requires you having time to sit down and meet and discuss the data, discuss what the teacher is seeing in the classroom, and then what the learning specialist or the support in the classroom might also add as observational data to kind of pinpoint the direction you need to go, because we don't just take the literacy data. We also take other important data, like information, like based on how they are with a certain member in the classroom, or who would they learn best with in a challenging setting or a challenging instruction. And so one, the biggest piece that you have to account for without Solara is time. And we know that time is not always available for educators when they're in the classroom. And so without Solara, you are trying to find time. Typically it's before school or during a working lunch, which is supposed to be sacred, but we know that most teachers work during their lunches.

Chantei Alves:
You're meeting with your team members to try to collaborate on what the next step should look like based on the data. If the teacher is the one who did record the literacy data, they're also noting challenges that they saw while they were doing the assessment. Or in my role as a learning specialist, I would then share like, I noticed this student tapped out this word, or this student mixed up the sh sound with the ch sound, that's all other observational data that's needed. However, if you are on a crunch for time, that can take up most of your planning time where you're just talking about the observational data and not really able to get into what the assessment is providing you. And so it's really a delicate balance, and oftentimes collaboration is not as effective as it could be. If some of the thinking was already done beforehand or the collaboration was already done before you sit down with your team to talk about it.

Georgia Bambrick:
So when, when does it usually become the most complicated or time-consuming specifically?

Chantei Alves:
When it's time to discover if a student needs to move to a new group or have a different level of instruction. If you are a classroom teacher, you also need to be able to say, I have the time to move this student to their own group or to a different group, inform the families, inform the service providers, the other support staff who are also trying to support this student as well, hoping that they're not also going to get pulled out during your literacy block to receive a service, which they are required to receive, or it's a consistent pattern that you can provide. That is sometimes very complicated because every day is a new day, as we know, in the classroom. And so you're not always sure what your day will look like, but you plan for the best. And then do as much as you can to make it through each day. And I find that in the classroom setting, although we do all the work we need up until the point of actually sitting down and meeting, that doesn't always mean that we're able to get through everything because as we are going over our notes or what we know about the student, we sometimes don't even have time to truly dig into the data because we're still talking about other aspects of that student or their learning profile or the classroom environment that can take up some of the time or most of the time.

Georgia Bambrick:
Makes a lot of sense. And so last time we were together, well, we've talked before, but you shared, you've shared with me a, and with a group of folks last time we were together, a really interesting example of how using SOLARA to help organizing literacy data and then create small groups. Can you walk us through how you started that process? And what prompt you used and sort of what you intentionally did to build those out.

Chantei Alves:
Sure. So in speaking earlier on the importance of using as much time as you might have, I started with using Solara by uploading the data. I appreciated that because it was able to be like a thought partner with me on what the groupings might look like or could look like based on the data that I simply uploaded. So the data that I uploaded into Solara was first me having, I believe it was about almost 20 students, and I uploaded this data. I removed the names and I just said, based on this data, how would you pair these students to learn these literacy goals? And so the prompt was first, what groupings would you suggest based on this data? The second prompt was. Based on these groupings, give me 2 goals that I can work on within 6 weeks for each group. And then I wanted to, to make sure I understood what mastery would look like for those groups and their goals. And so I appreciated that Selara didn't just give me what it should look like data-wise, but also what it could sound like and what they could do to show that they are masters of that goal.

Chantei Alves:
And then I asked intentionally for multisensory instruction to be embedded. As someone who believes in the approach of Orton-Gillingham and as a learning specialist, I wanted to make sure that it was something that I could use in my pull-out or push-in settings that my students were already familiar with. They're familiar with multisensory instruction. So I didn't want to bring in new data from Solara or new organization skills that I would be teaching without making sure that it was consistent with the approach that I took with my students. And so when I went through the data and I saw the groupings and I was able to see how Solara then suggested we should group our students, that is something I can easily take to my colleagues, the lead teacher, the support staff, because they've already done the work. And then we can go through those pairings and say, You know what, Ashante and Georgia will probably talk too much, so let's switch them with this student or another student. That takes away so much time that we would have to spend trying to first pair students based on the data and then making sure that they fit well together. It was just, the steps were so simple yet so impactful because Solaria does that in, what, 30 seconds? And that would have taken at least 15 to 30 minutes as a collaborative team trying to figure out which grouping should work.

Chantei Alves:
Okay, how do we make this multisensory? So now it's on me to make sure that there's multisensory pieces already added in. But the fact that there were goals and multisensory instruction, I could decide what I was going to use, what goals I wanted to tweak a little bit based on IEPs or just based on knowing the students, and then also how my multisensory instruction was going to support those goals based on the resources that I had. In my classroom space, in the teacher's classroom, and also based on the level of knowledge and support the support staff could also give to the classroom.

Georgia Bambrick:
Amazing. You kind of already answered this, but kind of more tactically, from a, like, impact perspective, you answered it. So I hesitate to go from the, like, profound impact to this level of granularity, but once Solar processed the information, like, what did it actually generate for you?

Chantei Alves:
So first, when I put all this information into Solara, it generated groupings, it generated learning goals, and then I also requested that it generate progress monitoring worksheets for me. I wanted to be true to the process in seeing what Solara could provide me, and then also providing some resources for the teachers that I was supporting. I didn't want to just say, hey, let's try this, and then not have resources for them to actually use. So it also provided me with progress monitoring worksheets that I could send home. It also generated some exit tickets for me to be able to be sure that at the end of my instruction, I could give this exit ticket to a student and they would be able to show what they learned or show that they had mastery. And I appreciated that because, again, we want to make sure that even though I'm using the tool, I'm able to show the data or the collaboration. With other members of the team, especially the student's team and especially their caregivers. And so if I have some progress monitoring worksheets, I could take a quick picture and say, hey mom, hey caregiver, this is what Shontay learned today, or this is what Shontay's been working on for the last 6 weeks.

Chantei Alves:
Look at how much growth she's made. Please support this at home by honing on this area or practicing this skill with these resources that I could send home. Also, the teacher would know, okay, you know, Dr. Owls gave me 7 progress monitoring sheets that lets me know that 4 of the students need to have more support in this area. I can also target this in whole group instruction. I can make sure that I'm asking these questions. I can make sure that I'm pushing my students' thinking, giving them time to turn and talk so that they're also practicing what they're learning. Allows not just me to have a thought partner, but then I also share that learning with my collaborative team.

Chantei Alves:
And then also I can provide those checkpoints when I'm pushing into the classroom, when I'm connecting with families, and when I'm meeting with my teammates.

Georgia Bambrick:
Amazing. When you looked at the actual resources it created, especially the strategies that involved things like manipulatives or movement, How closely did they align with the way you already approach literacy instruction?

Chantei Alves:
Very closely. Using the suggestions that Solara gave me allowed me to seamlessly transition from what I received in Panorama and then what I was able to share with my colleagues. And so it wasn't far-fetched. The suggestions on manipulatives were manipulatives that, if not all, most classrooms already have. We're talking about linking cubes and sand. Now, these are things that are important in early childhood classrooms. So whether you're taking it from the sand table or you have separate sand that you bought from a literacy website, you have access to these materials. And it was easy to, like I said, transition my students to this next level of teaching because they were already familiar with those manipulatives.

Georgia Bambrick:
That's amazing. That's what I was hoping to hear because we want alignment and coherence, not kind of disparate. Suggestions that are undermining coherence. So that's great. So why was it important that the resources worked not just for you, but for everyone supporting students in the classroom?

Chantei Alves:
So the resources that Solara suggested were important for not just myself, but also my teammates, because we want consistency. Students learn best when there's a level of predictability, but also structure. Consistency. And so as a special education learning specialist, I am supporting teachers in a classroom population where, you know, having something new introduced in instruction, it requires explicit instruction, but also the more consistency you have with the resource, the more students feel ownership on using it for themselves. And so it was important for me to make sure that whatever I was pulling from SOLARA was something that I can translate into the classroom without much disruption. Option because my students thrive on consistency and they also are flexible. We teach them to be flexible. However, if I can use the same tool in a new way, that creates a level of creativity for not just myself, but also my students without disrupting them too much in a material that they aren't familiar with.

Chantei Alves:
And it also makes them eager to see, oh, what's Dr. Els going to do with this material next time? Or Well, what other way can I use this? I will never forget when I saw students starting to use some of the materials in dramatic play in a unique way based on what they had learned in a small group instruction. And again, that creativity not only comes from Thought Partners, but it comes from knowing your students and saying, okay, I can introduce this resource to them and then letting them go off and explore and have fun with it. And sometimes we need that creativity to be generated for us, which Salar did give me some great suggestions on what I could do with the materials I already have in place. And then also in taking that information to the team, we either built on it or expanded on it and then said, you know what, we're going to try it this way or we're going to try it in a different way. And again, I cannot stress enough how much having the support of here's the foundation. Now you can build up and build out however you want with your team and with your students. Amazing.

Georgia Bambrick:
So we've been talking about literacy up until now. So after seeing how this worked with literacy instruction, how did you, or are you, did you and your school begin thinking about using Solara in other areas?

Chantei Alves:
So my school has been using Solara not just for academic data points, but also social-emotional data points. We use Solar to help us figure out the best way to track data for a student who had situations where we need to provide them with breaks, but we also wanted to implement it into a system of incentives. And so it was able to create not just a tracker for us to collect that data, but also instructions in student-friendly language. That we were able to provide to our support staff. Of course, we tweaked it a little bit based on our understanding of the student the best. However, Solara took away the time we needed to sit down and write up all the instructions by using the data that was already in Panorama that we had been putting in through intervention plans and updating, you know, call logs, and then it supported us by creating a tracker and then instructions that we could give to support staff. So I was able to quickly intro this new tracker to support staff, the morning support staff and the afternoon support staff within minutes because the instructions were right there. I could quickly model how to use it.

Chantei Alves:
And I do think using Panorama and Solara for this social-emotional toolkit, you could say, for our student was very helpful because we were then able to support it with the caregiver to use at home. So we tweaked it a little bit and then allowed the caregiver to use the same type of incentive plan with the child at home. And then we created more visuals and it just started us on a path that till this day, the family is so thankful. They will reach out and say, can we get more of this or more of that? Or share how they can now go to the grocery store and they are not concerned about any behaviors that might interrupt. Because they are consistently using a tracker that the student also is familiar with from school and we communicate consistently about. And so the family feels more confident in how they're able to adjust to their student and support their student outside of school, which is the ultimate goal.

Georgia Bambrick:
That is amazing. It's funny talking about like such human moments in the grocery store on an AI podcast, right? And I was just smiling the whole time you were talking because I think a lot of this really, and a lot of what you've been sharing is about bringing humanity to the forefront. But I just, I just love the kind of caregiver through line there that to the moments in the grocery store that it's impacting. So let's close out with just stepping back and looking at the bigger picture from your perspective of how can AI tools help educators move from sort of simply looking at data to really actually taking action for students?

Chantei Alves:
So Lara is great because it provides you with action plans for the data you put into it, right? So as a caregiver giving the classroom teacher notes that the classroom teacher would put into Panorama, or as a learning specialist uploading data or integrating the data that's already in Panorama with the data that you're uploading. It's going to read through that very quickly and give you a short summary or an extended summary, depending on your prompt, of what your next steps could be. And it's always action steps that can be immediate. Like I said before, I was able to get the suggestions from Solara, and I already had all the resources that it recommended for multisensory instruction. So my next small group, I can begin to implement a unique way of using SAND or a unique way of using linking cues because I already had those resources. I would encourage educators to see Solara as the thought partner that makes data dives not so scary. I do feel like in the beginning of my career, you know, at Princeton, I'd say like, what is the data telling you? And I would say, well, the data is saying they got this one wrong and this one right. You know, sometimes it is hard for us as educators, especially when we're new in the field to get data in front of us and know how to interpret it into actionable items or actionable next steps for students.

Chantei Alves:
So Lara can be that thought partner that you need. And then you still get to put your own understanding of the student or understanding of the classroom, the family dynamic, the culture into the action steps and to make it more prescriptive for that student and making sure that they are actually getting what they need because like I said, for me, So Lara was the foundation, and then taking that foundation and building upon it with my teammates, caregivers, students, support staff, service providers, that's how you really make it an action, and you make it a consistent action. And if everyone's on the same page about what it can look like, and what it should sound like, and what mastery should look like, then you can march toward that in whole group instruction. You can march toward that in hallway conversations with the student. Or in communication with the family, it takes away that fogginess that sometimes data can make a person feel, especially when you have 20+ students in your classroom. It helps condense it and provide you with next steps, and then based on what you know about your classroom, about your students, you then can tailor it to that student or that classroom and then take off from there. Incredible.

Georgia Bambrick:
I know I said that was the last question. Last one. So for educators who are curious about trying something like this, what advice would you give them for getting started?

Chantei Alves:
Sure. I would actually suggest for educators to start by using something that you are comfortable with. Like, say if math is your subject, you know math in and out, then put math to the test with Solara. Or if you are really trying to Strengthen your science understanding, put standards in and see how Solara can break down those standards for you. You can start with whatever data point you feel most comfortable with. It doesn't have to be 25 students. It could be that one student that you're really trying to figure out. Let me see what Solara is going to say about Shontay based on this panorama data, based on this literacy data, based on its math data.

Chantei Alves:
How can I push Shontay to the next step in the next 6 weeks? How can my support staff also support me in doing that? I would say start with a data point that either is really tripping you up this year, or start with data that you have a great understanding of, but you just want to take it to the next level. And you can start small. It does not have to be a full class set worth of data. It could just be 1 or 2 students that you want to take to the next level. See how that works. And then if and when it does work great, okay, let's try adding more students and, and more thought partners to the process.

Georgia Bambrick:
Incredible. Such great advice. I love the idea of starting with something you feel comfortable about. Don't be intimidated. Start small. And there's just so much to learn from you and such exciting work you're doing. I know we'll circle back and there'll be even more. So thank you.

Georgia Bambrick:
Thank you so much. And I want to thank both Amelia and Shontay for sharing your experiences in this episode. What I really appreciate about these conversations is how they show two different sides of the same work. Amelia talked about how teams can use AI to look at multiple sources of information and make sort of better instructional decisions together. And Shante showed us what it looks like in practice when you're working kind of directly with student data and building small group instruction that supports every learner and really how it kind of bridges down to humanity, which is just so powerful. And I think one of the big takeaways, I should say, from this episode is that AI is not just about saving time, right? It can help educators move much more quickly from data to action, can support collaboration across instructional teams, and give every adult kind of working with students really a clearer picture of what success looks like and the resources to support that as well. As you kind of really clearly articulated. If this episode sparked ideas for you, share with a colleague and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future conversations.

Georgia Bambrick:
You can find show notes and ways to connect with both Amelia and Shante in the episode description. So thank you so much for tuning in, and as always, keep leading, keep learning, and keep building what comes next.

From Data to Action: Using AI in Schools with Amelia Gorman and Dr. Chantei Alves

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