Transform your Teaching or Coaching with
TeachFX
Engagement | Equity | Student Voice
Ashley Yazarlou
H.U.S.D. EdTech TOSA
Resego Mooki
TeachFX Partnerships Associate
What is your role?
Teacher (Elementary or Secondary)
Instructional Coach
Administrator
Other
Today’s Objective
Participants will learn about TeachFX and how to utilize this tool to inform their teaching/coaching practice.
Graduated Flow Map
reflect
think
study
analyze
Here are four words we often see in education. How would you arrange them from negative to positive based on your understanding of the words? (Language standard 4 - nuances and word meaning)
Draw lines from each word to the box where you think it belongs.
TeachFX
Graduated Flow Map
reflect
think
study
analyze
Now think about same arrangement. Which makes the most impact on student growth?
Draw lines from each word to the box where you think it belongs.
TeachFX
Take your best guess…
What activity is done by most teachers in the U.S., but has almost no evidence of effectiveness in raising test scores?
(Hint: Educators spend over 40 hours a year, outside of class, engaged in this activity.)
In your average 50 minute class period, how many minutes would you guess that students spend engaging in student-led academic talk?
Instructional Coach & Science Teacher: Tyson Evans
ELA teacher & ELA Dept. Chair: Ashley Yazarlou
with team post 8th Grade Culmination Ceremony from John Muir Middle School in South Central, Los Angeles
The Magic of 30-30-30-10
“Teachers of high-achieving students spend about 12.5 fewer minutes talking each class than teachers of low-achieving students,” (Source).
To what extent do you agree that this 30-30-30-10 talk breakdown is a "good target to shoot for"?
Agree
Disagree
So, how can we determine if we are achieving this 30-30-30-10 ratio?
TeachFX!!!
What is TeachFX?
A pedagogical “fitbit” for every teacher…
TeachFX is an app that empowers teachers with job-embedded feedback on classroom equity, student engagement, and essential teaching practices.
Teachers can use the app to record the audio of a class and get insights into what’s happening in the classroom.
TeachFX Insights
TeachFX class reports shows student engagement insights like:
Teachers use the TeachFX platform to get regular feedback on their instruction — like an instructional coach gives
Teachers simply record audio of their classes on their phone, tablet, or laptop, and the TeachFX app uses voice AI to analyze the discourse patterns in the teacher’s classroom
The TeachFX app surfaces insights for teachers on their talk ratio, open-ended questioning, wait time, and equity of voice.
In addition, the TeachFX app transcribes classes and analyzes the transcript to surface evidence of academic discourse
Our philosophy
Teachers should be able to use TeachFX to improve their practice without fear of being judged or evaluated.
Therefore, a teacher’s TeachFX data is completely private to them. Only the teacher can listen back to their class and see their metrics. And teachers can delete classes at any time.
Most importantly, TeachFX data is private to the teacher
What do you wonder about TeachFX at this point?
TeachFX Pilot
CTI Reflective Coach
Ashley Yazarlou
Inquiry Focus: Actively Engaging Students in Meaningful Conversations
Inquiry Focus: Incorporating Wait Time & Talk Moves
Inquiry Focus: Implementing Effective Strategies to Stimulate Academic Discussion
During the 21-22 school year, there were 8 teachers on my CTI caseload, and 3 of them volunteered to tryout the TeachFX app as part of their inquiry cycle in January/February.
The 4th teacher, Ashley, was inspired to try it out because of the others, and she used it in her March/April inquiry cycle!
Inquiry Focus: Understanding Teacher/Student Talk Time to Create more Effective Lessons
Hannah - MS ELA
Inquiry Focus:
Actively Engaging Students in Meaningful Conversations
Goal After 1st Recording:
Increase student talk & allow more think-time after asking questions
What do you notice between Hannah’s first and second recording?
First Recording Second Recording
Think Time
Hannah’s Insights
“Giving that extra 5 seconds for students to gather their thoughts…gives the students a chance to think deeper. When I give students the time, they come up with well-thought-out responses…”
“After the first recording, I found it helpful to listen back to hear the types of questions that got students responding. For example, I asked, ‘How would we first go about finding an example?’ and ‘What Kind of quotes are we looking for?’ TeachFX really paved a clear path [that let me know] what needed to be worked on.”
Asking Questions
First
Recording
First
Recording
Second
Recording
Hannah’s Video Testimonial
Hannah
“I believe TeachFX is the most effective tool out there when it comes to analyzing real-time data. Getting such a detailed analysis of my lessons gave me new insight into my classroom dynamic.”
Heidi - MS ELA
Inquiry Focus:
Incorporating Wait Time & Talk Moves
Goal After 1st Recording:
Increase group talk & wait time, decrease teacher talk
Word Cloud, first recording…
Heidi’s Insights
“I noticed that the students’ most used words were more about things that they had been having side conversations about rather than the book we were discussing. Since the students didn’t have supports during their conversations, they got distracted.”
Heidi provided her students with these “Talk Moves” Sentence Stems and a thought-provoking discussion question during her second recording…
Word Cloud, second recording…
Heidi’s Insights
“...I was able to be mostly a facilitator of student discussion. Both word clouds have words from our main question of the day which was ‘Do you think Ben should have been banished? Why?’… By having a focus question that required students to take a stance and using sentence stems, the class talk was more focused.”
What area(s) in Heidi’s talk ratios
improved after her second recording?
1st Recording
2nd Recording
Heidi
“Since using TeachFX, I have been inspired to try some new techniques to help reach a 30-30-30-10% proportion of class time for teacher-student-group- and silent time. I am hoping that increasing student talk will also help me to have more one-on-one interactions with students as I walk around the classroom instead of talking from the front. I also noticed that when the class was given a clear discussion goal with supporting sentence stems to reach higher levels of academic dialogue, negative student behaviors decreased.”
Heather - MS SPED ELA
Inquiry Focus:
Implementing Effective Strategies to Stimulate Academic Discussion
Goal After 1st Recording:
Decrease teacher talk & ask more meaningful questions to engage students in academic discussions
What area(s) do Heather’s talk ratios
reveal that she may still need to work on?
1st Recording
2nd Recording
Teacher Talk Time, Student Talk Time, & Group Talk Time
Heather’s Insights
1st Recording
2nd Recording
Heather was able to reflect on what the data revealed, and she realized that she needed to talk less and intentionally plan more activities that allow for students to interact with one another.
Student Contributions & Think Time
Heather’s Insights
Heather was able to see that her strengths are building upon student contributions and providing that much-needed think-time for her Special Education students. “The data helped me recognize that I have a strength of allowing for time to think.”
Heather
“I realized I need to plan more pair/group activities so students can interact with each other, and I learned that I need to pre-plan to ask specific questions that are meaningful and relate to the essential question.”
Ashley B. - HS ASL & ELA
Inquiry Focus:
Understanding Teacher/Student Talk Time to Create More Effective Lessons
Goal After 1st Recording:
Increase group talk time
First Recording Second Recording
What area(s) in Ashley’s talk ratios
improved after her second recording?
Ashley B’s Insights
Group Talk Time
First Recording Second Recording
During the first recording, Ashley said, ”I was shocked to see that I only had a minute of group talking time. That seemed insane to me.” During the second recording, Ashley saw an increase of 5 minutes for group discussion.
Ashley appreciated the additional data and reflection suggestions that TeachFX provided that she wasn’t expecting to get…
Ashley B’s Insights
Ashley also found it helpful to listen back to the recordings because it forced her to ask herself questions like:
“How much did I talk? How long did I give them to think? How many times did I take their answers and adjust to make them think critically?”
Reflecting on her practice informed Ashley’s next instructional moves…
“I made efforts to push students to discuss together and I gave them driving questions.”
Ashley B’s Insights
Ashley B’s “Bonus” Insights
Word Clouds
First Recording Second Recording
“I decided to show [my students] the word cloud [from the recordings]. We were able to point out words that were likely helpful and useful [and] words that were likely off topic and unnecessary. Seeing this visual helped them with holding [our learning community] accountable for academic talk in our classroom.”
Ashley B.
“All in all, TeachFX was a great tool to use and was incredibly helpful. I was able to analyze student and teacher voice recordings to see how class time and voice was used in order to create more effective lessons to support my students, to check in with myself, and to foster student accountability in our classroom community.”
Ashley’s Process of
Coaching with TeachFX
Bonus: The Power of TeachFX in PLC’s
Q&A
What questions do you have?
Please keep this slide for attribution.
Resego Mooki, TeachFX Partnerships Associate
Ashley Yazarlou, H.U.S.D. EdTech TOSA
Click here to join IACUE!
How does it work? The app uses voice AI to learn your voice — like Siri does on an Apple phone — and then analyze discourse patterns in your class to give you private feedback.
Does it work on any device? Yes (well, any Apple or Android phone, tablet, or laptop with a working microphone.)�
Am I even allowed to record my class? Does that require student/family permission? TeachFX is fully FERPA and COPPA compliant, so yes, you can record your classes for PD purposes, and no, you don’t need student or family permission.
�Is measuring engagement backed by research? Yes, 5 decades of it show that the more you get students talking, the more they learn and the better they score in multiple measures of academic achievement. And the learning is highest for our most vulnerable students, such as English Learners and students with disabilities.��Will TeachFX be used to evaluate me? Never. Your data is private to you. There is no administrator access to our platform or your data.
TeachFX FAQs