Validation from a veteran coach

Leanne NeSmith, an Instructional Technology Specialist at GA Coastal Plains RESA, has witnessed the incredible evolution of educational technology for 36 years—from implementing gradebook programs loaded onto 5 ¼ inch floppy disks all the way to powering modern classrooms with AI-infused technologies, she’s seen it all.

She supports teachers across 12 school districts in rural Georgia and is always looking for ways to leverage her tech stack to help teachers reach their maximum potential. But like so many instructional coaches around the country, Leanne is also witnessing something troubling.

“Teachers feel incredibly stressed. They feel unprepared for what they’re facing in education today,” Leanne explains. “They’re so overwhelmed by all the non-teaching responsibilities they have, they fail to become the great teachers I know they can be and struggle to keep students engaged.”

The statistics tell a sobering story. Across Georgia, teachers are leaving at alarming rates, particularly in at-risk schools like the ones in the Coastal Plains region. Many educators are entering through alternative certification routes without proper preparation.

Many of these districts don’t employ enough instructional coaches. And those employed are responsible for supporting 60 to 80 teachers while juggling supplemental campus-based responsibilities like bus duty, parent pickup, and administrative meetings.

“Sometimes, I find that the critical piece that is left out of an instructional coach’s job is simply to be the instructional coach,” Leanne reflects.

When support is stretched too thin, newer teaching populations often fall through the cracks first. Many new teachers are afraid to ask for help, worried that admitting their shortcomings could put targets on their backs. So they close their classroom doors and face their challenges alone.

Validation from a master teacher

Enter Kathryn Bailey, a high school English teacher Leanne supports in Lanier County Schools. She’s a master teacher who previously served as an academic coach and knows her curriculum inside and out. But even master teachers like Kathryn exist in this education landscape with daily uncertainties. She wonders: Am I reaching every student? Could I be asking better questions? Am I managing my classroom as effectively as I could be?

When Leanne brought M2 into Kathryn’s classroom, the stakes were clear—any tool claiming to provide teaching feedback and boast student engagement needed to prove its worth immediately. If it couldn’t support someone like Kathryn, it had no business aiding a new teacher.

Neither Leanne nor Kathryn knew exactly what to expect. Would this AI co-teacher understand the nuanced discussions about literary themes? Could it follow the complex dynamics of a veteran teacher managing both honors classes and difficult behavioral situations?

From the first lesson, M2 proved it belonged. As Kathryn guided her students through a comparative analysis of Animal Farm and Frankenstein, M2 quietly observed, analyzing not just her delivery of content, but her questioning techniques, student engagement strategies, and classroom management approaches.

“M2 was 100% correctly following her lesson and understanding what was going on,” Leanne recalls. “I was in the back monitoring the feedback as it rolled in live on M2 and it was spot on.”

The validation was immediate and powerful. M2 would suggest advice like, “That’s a great idea, now ask students a question about____.” And in the front of the room, without even looking at M2, Kathryn would ask that exact question.

“It just gave me chills to see that here’s this AI device mirroring the exact questions that a master teacher is naturally asking,” Leanne explains. “That’s when I realized: this thing is for real.”

Validation for engagement, not evaluation

Beyond delivering stellar feedback, Leanne also wanted to ensure that new teachers felt like they had a partner in class to keep energy high when they’re feeling like the content might fall flat. While working within the Animal Farm and Frankenstein unit, Kathryn discovered another unexpected use for M2 that made engagement soar. After students completed their essays, she simply asked M2 to respond out loud to the same prompt.

“She told students that if they included some of M2’s key points in their own response, they would receive a top score,” Leanne observed. “The students were immediately excited to hear an exemplar to gauge their own responses by.” By modeling out loud, M2 gave them a platform to self-assess their thinking and provided them with a big confidence boost on the spot.

And the best part? M2 integrated itself naturally within the classroom ecosystem. “By the end of the day, she was interacting with M2 and having students ask questions as well,” Leanne recalls. 

Students were curious by it, but not distracted. The technology, enhanced-rather than interrupted-the flow of class. It’s exactly the kind of technology that Leanne hunts to share with teachers.

Validating teachers’ struggles and breaking the cycle of isolation

For too long, teachers have faced a painful paradox: they need support to improve, but they’re afraid to ask for it. They close their classroom doors each day and struggle alone, worried that admitting challenges might threaten their job security.

M2 breaks this cycle by providing private, non-judgmental feedback that pin-points every ounce of good teaching while offering specific, actionable suggestions for improvement. It’s the trusted colleague every teacher wishes they had—always present, always supportive, never evaluative.

“This is the real deal,” Leanne reflects. “It’s asking and following very high-level content and able to understand many different components of a classroom, giving what an administrator and career teacher would say is very good advice.”

Wherever you are, M2 is ready

For the countless new teachers entering classrooms, feeling unprepared and overwhelmed, M2 offers the immediate support they need. For veteran teachers like Kathryn, it provides validation and refinement opportunities that can elevate already strong practice.

For Leanne and coaches like her across the country, M2 represents the solution to an impossible equation: how to support every teacher when resources are stretched beyond limits.

The post The ultimate validation: how M2 earned the trust of a master teacher appeared first on Swivl.

This article introduces the key benefits of integrating M2 with your Reflectivity program. M2 is an AI-powered platform that prioritizes teacher feedback, captures video evidence, and manages small groups. Available as hardware, mobile-app and web-software, it uses AI to measure learning via customized verbal reflection prompts. Durable, mobile, and uniquely sized, M2 is a versatile teaching assistant that promotes professional growth, innovative teaching practice, and peer collaboration.

Reflection helps you see more in your classroom 

Teachers often focus on superficial aspects when observing their classes, overlooking crucial elements like student comprehension gaps, patterns within repetitive student misbehavior or passive engagement. Regular reflection can help prioritize their insights and strengthen their metacognitive abilities. To address this:

1. Teachers regularly reflect by chatting with M2 sessions on lesson goals and activities. Here they can dig deeper, working through any discrepancies in what they think they heard and saw and what M2 observed.
2. Teachers record using M2 to capture 180-degree classroom views, track teacher movement, and collect isolated student audio, automatically exporting the video to Reflectivity.
3. In Reflectivity, teachers use time-stamped annotations to identify off-task behavior and bookmark moments of perceived understanding.
4. During the next chat with M2, teachers compare video insights with new realizations to draw conclusions about necessary adjustments they need to make.

This reflect-record-reflect cycle enhances teachers’ self-critique and problem-solving skills and fosters autonomy. This means they require less administrator intervention overall and build resilience when they receive formal observation feedback.

Reflection makes teachers more coachable

Studies demonstrate that systematic progress monitoring leads to twice the implementation rate of new teaching practices. By “systematic” we mean as often as daily, not quarterly or bi-annually. With M2+Reflectivity, it takes minimal effort and setup to make this a sustainable reality.

M2 delivers in-the-moment support to teachers daily by:
1. Actively observing the class and generating feedback to support instruction
2. Tailoring the feedback to teachers’ specific lessons and objectives
3. Aligning recommendations to the teachers’ goals for that day

And when formal observations are needed, M2 captures 180-degree classroom views, tracks teacher movement, and collects isolated student audio, resulting into a ready-to-review video on Reflectivity.

The synergy between M2 and Reflectivity can revolutionize and streamline the entire coaching cycle*. M2 is a powerful tool for daily feedback, allowing teachers to build self-awareness and get support when they need it. This process primes teachers to become more adaptable, flexible, and receptive during 1:1 conversations with their coaches. 

Reflectivity completes the cycle by facilitating rich, structured interactions between teachers and their coaches through the Discussions feature, inspiring their goals for their next cycle. This integrated approach, combining daily feedback with M2 and conversations within Reflectivity, creates sustainable and transformative video coaching programs.

*Using the Impact Cycle? So do many of our M2 users. Watch our webinar to learn what they’re learning and applying in their daily work to grow teachers.

Reflection builds trust

Building trust is fundamental to meaningful professional growth and is a cornerstone in M2 and Reflectivity. Teachers need protected spaces to develop their reflective practice before and after recording. M2 further reinforces the support cycle through several key features.

1. Teachers engage in private chats in M2 customized to agreed-upon objectives
2. With M2, coaches gain invaluable insights into reflective practice. It allows you to skip the recall and jump straight into meaningful, targeted discussions with every teacher that drive real growth.
3. In Reflectivity, teachers privately review observations videos first, using time-stamped annotations to document observations before choosing what to share with coaches
4. Both platforms enable gradual collaboration through selective sharing features, letting teachers open their practice to peers when confident.

This trust-centered design helps teachers build confidence naturally while maintaining ownership of their growth journey. Schools report that this approach leads to more meaningful collaboration as teachers share their practice from a position of readiness rather than requirement.

Reflection inspires teachers to pursue challenges

Providing teachers access to M2+Reflectivity empowers them to pursue more challenges in their own professional growth. A popular mechanism is through National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification, a multi-year process involving deep reflection on one’s planning process, incorporating videos from the classroom, and providing supportive student evidence.

1. With M2, teachers can record their classroom displaying an expansive view of both instruction and a collection of crisp audio of teacher and student discourse through Group Guides.
2. Teachers export their videos to Reflectivity to annotate for self-reflection.
3. Teachers share the video with peers on Reflectivity to facilitate discussions which helps them narrow down the perfect exemplar to attach to their NBPTS submission.
4. Next, teachers set up students to participate in project-based and hands-on activities using M2. 
5. With M2, teachers gather insights through voice-based assessments on student engagement and collect evidence of student learning to attach to their NBPTS submission

Reflection fortifies professional learning communities

Teachers spend an excessive amount of time during in-person and virtual PD workshops analyzing and discussing student assessment data. However, many organizations do not have formal data dialogue protocols to ensure these conversations stay aligned, structured, and impactful. 

When students reflect with M2, they gain a “whole-child” analysis automatically, significantly reducing the time it takes to gather data points from various student artifacts. M2’s AI provides insights on individual and whole class understanding and participation levels. Trends are easily identified in M2, giving teachers a head-start during PD time and a basis for ongoing discussions in Reflectivity long after the workshop ends.

Multi-layered reflection using M2 and Reflectivity is the key to organization-wide collaboration and self-sustaining professional development.

1. First, teachers reflect in M2 on their progress and pain points. 
2. Next, they incorporate student reflection data from M2 to discover learning gaps and developmental concerns.
3. Finally, using Reflectivity’s Topics feature, teachers share findings, identify commonalities, and create actionable game plans in the discussion threads that help everyone succeed.

M2 and Reflectivity were made for each other

The integration of M2+Reflectivity creates a powerful ecosystem for professional growth and collaboration in your organization.

By combining M2’s innovative hardware and AI-powered insights with Reflectivity’s robust collaborative platform, everyone in your organization gains access to a comprehensive toolkit that transforms the way they approach professional development.

As teachers become more self-aware, adaptable, and collaborative, the ultimate beneficiaries are the students, who reap the rewards of innovative, responsive teaching practices. And isn’t that the whole point? 

Pilot both

We’re offering a 90-day, commitment-free opportunity to pilot the whole system!

The post M2 and Reflectivity belong together. Here are five reasons why. appeared first on Swivl.

With this in mind, we asked four instructional coaches from the Swivl community about the role of reflection in teacher-coach relationships. Their comments have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Why is written reflection important for teachers?

Erica Beals, Instructional Coach at Waukee Schools in Iowa: Reflection provides a layer of processing. When I meet with a teacher, sometimes the meeting is filled with emotion based on how the days has been. But when they have time to process, it eliminates some of the emotion because they’ve had that release already.

Then my questions will come in: I noticed on your reflection you said there was time wasted. What changes could we make, or what shifts would you like to see to eliminate that wasted time? So I never take the approach of telling teachers it should look like this. My questions are always going to be reflective in nature to allow them that realization of what’s taking away their energy or what their students might need. 

I want to take my teachers from where they are to where they want to be with their goals. That requires them to take steps forward without any of my intentions or beliefs pushing through.

How do instructional coaches help teachers set goals for reflection?

Erica: We usually start with a wide net and focus on our universal instruction, our tier one instruction.

We ask, what are we doing to meet all of our students? Within that, we look at academic work or behavior. I have checklists we might work through, asking, for example, How often are you sharing agendas with your students?

As an instructional coaching team in our district, we’ve created a number of tools that help us narrow in on a teacher’s goals. They include questions such as, How often do you provide a multitude of opportunities for students to reflect on their learning? How do you anticipate behavioral challenges? How do you create an emotionally safe space?

By having my teachers utilize these tools, and reviewing their responses together, we’re able to hone in on a goal together. Then, as we’re watching our videos, we’re reflecting through that lens. 

How do you help teachers build a reflective mindset?

Debbie Slocum, Instructional Coach at Byron-Bergen Schools in New York: Newer teachers are overwhelmed.  Every day they’re putting out fires, and they’re making 8,000 decisions. 

I will ask them, On your ride home, what is it that comes to mind? What do you feel in your gut? What is it that’s making you a little bit anxious? I try to help them pinpoint that with questions. 

Then, I say, don’t overwhelm yourself with the globalness of a classroom. Just focus on the thing that bothers you. It could be one kiddo that never raises his hand. Or someone who never finishes their work. Then we start to reflect on that.

From there we focus on, What can you do that works for you, but especially works for that child? 

Reflection has to be continuous. It has to be a priority because everything’s changing. Our expectations for the kids keep changing. Technologies keep changing, and culture is changing. There’s a need for continuous reflection to keep up with the changes. 

What role does autonomy play in encouraging teachers to reflect?

Mandi Olson, Instructional Coach at Alpine School District in Utah: For any coaching process to work, teachers have to be involved in choosing what they want to work on. 

At first, teachers may choose something they already feel confident about. If it’s the first time they’re working with me, they deserve the right to develop a spirit of vulnerability and trust with me. If they want to show me that they’re good at something, that’s okay. That’s a start, and it’s a way in for me.

How do instructional coaches use reflection to balance teacher needs and district goals?

Mandi:  At our school, we want teachers to be diagnosing, intervening and evaluating their impact every day. Especially for new teachers, that’s a lot. 

After we have classroom management and procedures under control at the beginning of the year, we ask, What’s your learning intention? What’s your success criteria? How are you going to know that kids meet it every day? How are you stating that to kids? Can I walk in the room and ask a student what they’re learning, why they’re learning it, and what success looks like? That’s our goal.

We try to direct teachers that way because those are general enough statements that you can direct any lesson there. If there’s something else teachers want to focus on, we can work on that, too. But if we don’t have a clear learning target and clear success criteria every day, then that’s a good place to start with a new teacher.

How does reflection lead to teacher growth?

Brenda Tomanek, Instructional Coach at El Campo ISD in Texas: Reflection leads to us becoming self-aware.  

This is a trait that isn’t the easiest for many of us to acquire because it requires us to be vulnerable, humble, and self-critical at times.  As an instructional coach, it is my job to make sure the teacher doesn’t become too self-critical. I encourage them to use their reflection and self-awareness to improve their skill set. 

I have to let them not look at missteps in the classroom as failures but as stepping stones toward improvement.

Coaches have been trained to ask reflective questions. More than likely, the teacher will come up with what he or she needs to change through reflective questioning. They may not always know how to change it, but they can see what needs to change.

I’m reminded of the quote from Henry Ford, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” Reflection is the key piece that has to be there for a teacher to grow.

The post Four instructional coaches explain why reflection is essential for teacher growth appeared first on Swivl.

My professor left this note on the reflections he required during my semester of student teaching.

He was right – I did get lots of value from the routine. During this first real teaching experience, I received a barrage of information from my teacher prep classes and the results of lessons I was teaching. Reflection helped me make meaning from it all.

What I could not express then was that reflection was the perfect routine for maximizing my growth during this early stage of my career. I now realize that responding to those teacher reflection questions turned my daily experiences into lessons I could refer back to for years to come.

When administrators put reflection at the heart of new teacher programs, early career educators have a chance to thrive.

Make new teacher support more generative and less additive

Teachers have more to process in the first few years than at any other time. 

Each day brings new experiences and new information. Curriculum, policies, student data, and more. Then there’s the emotional experience. New teachers feel the joys and challenges of the job for the first time, leading to an understanding of the phrase “teacher tired.” 

If given a chance to pause and process, new teachers navigating have a unique opportunity for growth. All it takes is a few minutes per week of reflection. 

Reflection is a generative act. In other words, it builds on the thoughts and feelings teachers already have. It does not add to new teachers’ plates, but helps them digest what’s there.

Massachusetts mentor sees reflection for new teachers lead to growth

Not only does reflection for new teachers lead to growth, but it helps coaches and mentors improve, too.

Jeremy Brunaccioni is a 20-year elementary teacher from Massachusetts who supports new teachers as a mentor. During a recent new teacher partnership, reflection led to growth for both the new teacher and Jeremy. 

“I think [reflection] was beneficial to the both of us,” Jeremy noted. “For me, it was often reaffirming for my practice and would sometimes lead to new ideas. For him, it was an opportunity to think about how he might tweak a lesson, react differently to a student, or differentiate a lesson.”

For reflection to yield its true benefits, it has to be ongoing, as Jeremy observed. 

“We quickly fell into a pattern of identifying areas we wanted to refine and were able to support one another. We chose teacher language as a focus and both made gains during the course of the year,” he said.

As both mentors and new teachers bring their reflective approach to their classrooms and interactions with colleagues, it can have a transformative ripple effect on the entire organization.

It all starts with a simple goal

With new teachers already busy, reflection could be considered “one more thing.” But the beauty of reflection is in its simplicity. It takes little time, and makes other time spent more productive.

Reflecting with Sessions requires just two steps: setting a goal at the beginning of the week, and reflecting on it by the end.

Including goals as part of the reflection process is important for two reasons:

• Goal-setting helps new teachers build self-awareness. Setting a goal requires teachers to identify areas of their practice where they want to grow, and define challenges in need of solutions.

• Goals keep reflections focused. Without a goal, reflections can become meandering. However, a goal keeps the reflection focused and productive.

When channeled through reflection, new teachers’ energy and ideas become renewable fuel for growth. Concerns and anxieties become catalysts for finding solutions. 

It all starts with setting a simple goal to revisit by the end of the week.

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