How Providence Day School is using Flint to enable student-centered learning

What has PD’s strategy been for supporting the exploration of the teachers? What did the initial launch of Flint look like and what is your plan for continued learning? 

Tomarra Londeree:

Like I mentioned, we had an AI task force over the summer. Then the EdTech team met and we built, based on that task force, a Canvas course for teachers. That was a professional development training that teachers had to go through before they could implement Flint in their classrooms. What we really wanted to do is sit down with teachers and partner with them to discover what this tool is, why we should use it and how we should use it. We don't want teachers just to feel like they're like on an island by themselves. 

Matt hosted a few professional development events over the summer, but when teachers got on campus, we told them they had to meet with us before they could implement Flint in their classroom. So, we've met with a ton of teachers throughout the beginning of the school year. The EdTech team has also offered to go into the classrooms when teachers don't feel comfortable at first, and our team would create an activity and introduce the students to it. That gave the teachers a little more clarity and comfortability around using it. They don't feel completely isolated. We're there to help, to monitor. 

Also, at an upper school faculty meeting, the teachers were able to pick out of eight different topics what they wanted to go to and learn more about. Flint was one of the sessions. We asked they come with any materials they have for a lesson they’re going to teach the next week. We really find it important to give them time to build something useable because teachers don't have the time during the day. We wanted to show them what Flint is, but then we wanted to give time to work and walk away with an activity they can implement in their classroom tomorrow. That was very helpful—walking through the steps with teachers who just want to feel heard and want to feel that they are supported. We want to make sure that we are open and ready to answer any questions for them. 

That was about a month ago. In early November, I circled back around to ask what teachers were working on, if they implemented any of the Flint strategies, if they need more support. In responses to that email, we had a few teachers running with Flint already and some who hadn’t had a chance, but wanred to meet with us and talk about what we can do in the future. It's about keeping those open lines of communication. That’s the phase we're at right now.

Matt Scully:

I'm really fortunate that, one, I have Tomarra in the role that she's in, and, two, that she's got a great team. They've been able to create relationships with faculty and really partner with them to leverage the tool. If this was just me running around, I'd have people signing in and using it, but I wouldn't have people using it to the level that Tomarra and her team have been able to help people get to. It's been really rewarding to see such a fast adoption. And I don't just mean number of users. I really mean that we've gone from not understanding what the tool is and does to good conversations with faculty about what we're able to do. The one thing we haven't talked about is that I really love the feedback the kids are getting in the moment. If a kid wants additional help or another shot at it, the customization, the opportunities Flint provides are so big. One examples I heard from Tomarra, was helping one teacher to go from standard flashcards to using Flint.

Tomarra Londeree:

Yeah, we want to be cognizant of what digital tools we're using, and we've pulled back some things that teachers may have had in the past. One was a flashcard making tool. I told the teacher, “We don't have that anymore, but what if you took your vocabulary and you put them in Flint?” A lot of his vocabulary was coming from a YouTube video, so we put the YouTube video and the vocabulary words into Flint and what they were getting back was so much more. Instead of having a flashcard and just turning it around to see the definition, Flint asked a question and if the student got it wrong it would say, “No, but have you thought about this?” It was explaining the definition like you would have a normal conversation instead of just a definition you would find in a dictionary. The students were then asking questions back. And instead of learning just clear definitions, students were getting background knowledge of why it was called that. It's way better than flashcards.

The teacher already had that content. And, now that the students have used this in place of flashcards, he now can make a quiz that has the exact same information. Just ask Flint to make the rubric, make rules, and now you have an easily graded quiz for the students. The students walk away with a better understanding of the vocabulary, and the teacher walks away with quiz results that show students’ mastery based on the feedback Flint gave them.

Matt Scully:

To me, what Flint does is it mimics what a teacher would do. If I were running through the flashcards with the kids, and if a kid got one wrong, we'd stop. We'd talk about why they got confused. If the kid's doing flashcards by themselves, doing the old traditional look at the front of the card, think for a minute, and flip it over, or if they're working with a partner, you lose that dialogue about why a particular definition is correct. It's not the average kid who's taking the time to reflect on why they got that wrong or put that one off to the side to revisit. But in this activity that they built, every kid is getting that kind of relational coaching that says, “Oh, you got this one wrong. Let's talk about that here in the moment.” Not an hour from now, not tomorrow when I get your quiz back to you and I see which ones you got right. When we're leaning towards mastery and competency, this is a tool that we're just scratching the top of the surface.

Tomarra Londeree:

We have another example, too. An AP psych teacher in upper school put in scenarios that the student had to respond to with the vocabulary word. One student was getting very frustrated with how she would normally do this study guide. Her answer would just be wrong, and she moved on. She would have to wait till the next day to find out why she was wrong when she felt she was right. But with Flint, she was able to tell her side of why she thought that this was the answer, and Flint would come back and tell her its reasoning. It offers students instant feedback. In this day and age, our students were born for instant feedback, right? That's what they're used to. This was a way for her to be able to sleep at night knowing why they said this answer instead of the answer she had put. At least it put her at ease. Then, she can go to her teacher the next day if she wants more clarification and that opens up dialogue between the student and the teacher that probably would have never happened. 

It's not just about having them do something digitally. It opens up so many more questions and dialogues between students and teachers that maybe weren’t happening before. It's creating a more human dynamic as well, because they're having to reach out to their teachers to ask these questions.

Those are two amazing examples! What other trends have you seen over time? Are certain departments embracing Flint more? Are there certain ways that people are using Flint more?

Matt Scully:

The early adopters seem to fall into two broader categories. One are our typical early adopters who are always looking at the next opportunity, the next wrinkle. They love tech. They are some of the ones we have to slow down a little bit. Then the second group is the one that's really looking to gain efficiency. They're swamped and there's more they want from this experience with the kids. There's something else I want to be doing. How can I make times for more of the cool things? 

In both cases, what we're finding is that AI is driving us towards teachers spending more time with students where the content gets complex and less time in the areas where the kids just need to get general understanding and familiarity. That's one of the places where they feel really comfortable letting the artificial intelligence tools pick up the slack. In both of those groups, we’re finding that it's leading teachers to be able to spend more time, to Tomarra’s point, in deep conversations in class. “I was fighting with the AI last night because I thought my answer was right.” Holy cow, if every class started like that, I'd love it! That's rich. That's engagement with the content.

In a world where complexity and uncertainty are increasing, it means a lot to be able to give kids the opportunity to minimize some of that uncertainty, reduce anxiety, and provide clarity through instant feedback. Then also, the faculty are able to spend more time in the relational learning elements. The reason why people commit to schools like ours is they want that kind of connection and that relational learning. We're able to really provide, I think, a richer version of it. 

Other trends, I would just say we're getting more people to move beyond the super search engine mentality towards viewing AI as something different. In some places it's taken a little bit longer than I thought it would, but perhaps I’m just a bit impatient trying to get to the next level.

Tomarra Londeree:

I just got really excited because I was looking at a teacher who used it the most in the past. He really prides himself on being the number one user and gets real upset when he's not. But I was just looking at who was next and it's an upper school science teacher. It looks like he has the students create their own quiz based on a topic. They have to come up with the questions and then answer the question themselves. That’s really cool too as an alternative to a basic quiz. Also, students were putting their review unit packets into Flint and having it create quizzes as an exam review. I even had a parent reach out to tell me how amazing the tool is and for the first time her child was actively engaged in studying for their final exams.

We've focused a lot on faculty and now Matt's getting out to the business and college guidance and just some different departments that we haven't touched on yet. I feel we'll work more on making sure that all departments are on it. One thing I'm interested in moving forward is how Flint can be used in our lower school because currently we're just doing it in middle and upper school. I want to see if this is a tool we can start using with our fourth and fifth grade. I want to develop some pilot case studies to see what that looks like for our younger learners. Obviously we still have more work to do for middle and upper, but I've had a few of very eager lower school teachers reach out about different AI tools. 

[Note from Lulu: We had a Campfire Session for Lower School teachers to chat about how they have used Flint. You can see the recording here.]

Do you two have any final thoughts to add?

Matt Scully:

The one thing that I'm excited about is getting more into the spoken part of Flint. We've been using a lot of the text based stuff, so the world language department is starting to come sniffing around, and I think they're going to be one of our next pieces. If we take the keyboard out and they're just talking and getting responses, what does that look like and how does that help them start playing with using AI for language practice? But yeah, it's been a good run and we're excited about it. Things have been going pretty well so far.