Caswell County launches AI pilot and expands coaching for beginning teachers

Sydney Ramos, a coach with the North Carolina New Teacher Support Project, told the Caswell County Schools Board of Education that she has provided 147 coaching visits, totaling about 94 hours, to 14 beginning teachers in the district through the midyear point.

Ramos said her work has emphasized classroom environment and routines, planning for varied student learning needs and lesson planning. “The primary area that we’ve been looking at this year is the learning environment,” she said, noting classroom procedures, routines and management as recurring themes. She said her coaching is confidential and non-evaluative, which teachers told her makes them more willing to discuss challenges openly.

The presentation included results from midyear surveys Ramos administered; she said response rates were low (three to six responses on different surveys) but that feedback from those who responded was positive. Ramos described two professional-development sessions held so far: one on building relationships and classroom management in October and one on AI tools for educators intended to reduce teacher planning time.

Ramos announced an AI coaching pilot to be conducted with Caswell County and “Rocky High County” (as described in the presentation) using Sydney’s online platform. She said the pilot will be opt-in for teachers and that the coach, not the teacher, will handle video upload and report generation so teachers will not be required to do extra technical work. Ramos described features she plans to use including teacher/student talk-time breakdowns and automated classification of question types (for example, higher-order versus recall questions), and she said the platform includes a “CoPilot” conversational tool to generate research-based suggestions for educators.

Board members asked about privacy, participation and the logistics of the pilot. Ramos said biometric enrollment (voice samples and brief head-turn video) is optional; if a teacher does not opt in, the system can still analyze video but the coach will verify speaker labels before sharing any results. When asked how often coaching visits occur, Ramos said her general goal is weekly visits averaging about an hour per teacher, but that the schedule varies with holidays and remote days.

Angela Barney, identified in the meeting as joining the district part-time to support beginning teachers, was introduced by district staff as a retired principal and former beginning teacher support coordinator for Rockingham County Schools. Board members and district staff noted the district provides multiple layers of support for beginning teachers — a mentor teacher at each school, instructional coaches, principal evaluation and the New Teacher Support Project coaching.

Board members asked whether surveys could be administered on paper during staff meetings to increase response rates; Ramos agreed that paper surveys could be used. Several board members expressed appreciation for the coaching program and interest in follow-up reporting on the AI pilot’s outcomes.

Ramos said she will provide further updates and that the pilot’s opt-in design and the coach-handled workflow are intended to limit additional workload for teachers.