A skilled teacher can change the trajectory of a child’s learning, and in literacy instruction, that impact is profound. Strong teacher-led instruction remains the most powerful lever we have for ensuring that every student becomes a confident, capable reader. By observing, assessing, and providing care and support, teachers can offer the individualized attention that leads to timely reading intervention and meaningful growth. More than that, teachers are often uniquely attuned to the many factors that influence a student’s ability to learn, including external stressors and social-emotional needs.
Yet teachers have limited time, and today’s classrooms are more complex than ever. On any given day, teachers must manage the needs of 25 or more students at a time, respond to emails and calls from parents, and handle constant interruptions—all while differentiating instruction, tracking student progress, and maintaining a positive classroom environment. In response to the resource gap of limited teacher time, countless digital tools have emerged, promising to free up teachers, boost student engagement, and enhance learning.
While digital technologies do hold great promise, they often add to teachers’ workloads rather than lighten them. At times, they even shift focus away from the teacher-student relationship that drives learning. Some educators worry that digital tools limit their creativity, reduce opportunities for hands-on, paper-and-pencil learning, and become yet another task on an already long to-do list. Clearly, the goal is not technology for technology’s sake, but technology that amplifies a teacher’s impact and strengthens teacher-student connections. When utilizing technology in the classroom, teachers must have more time—not less—to interact with students. And technology must also provide students with learning experiences that are worth their precious time by reinforcing concepts, filling in gaps, and meeting their individual learning needs.
Alleviating Digital Fatigue for Both Teachers and Students
During the pandemic, school districts across the country invested large sums of money into digital learning programs and devices. Today, stakeholders still expect those technologies to be integrated into the classroom on a regular basis, and to see those devices in use during classroom observations.
Yet educators may continue to experience the digital fatigue brought on by the use of digital tools and platforms to support online learning during the pandemic (EdWeek, 2021). Students, too, may be at risk for digital burnout or may experience digital activities as interchangeable and uninspiring, especially when screen-based instruction takes the place of the human interaction and creativity that make learning engaging.
Balancing Teacher-Led Instruction and Digital Resources to Strengthen Teacher-Student Connection
Emphasizing teacher-led lessons and relationship-building between teachers and students is one of the best ways to combat digital fatigue in the classroom because it helps bring focus back to positive human interaction that prioritizes individual students and their needs. Extending upon effective teacher-led instruction at the center, the right technology can and should free up educators’ time for the creative, life-enhancing aspects of teaching that energize both students and teachers.
For example, digital assessment tools can help quickly ascertain where students are in their reading progress through diagnostic tests, ensuring that teachers understand their students’ specific challenges so they can deliver targeted support. Digital tools are also invaluable in providing students with the personalized, ongoing reading practice required to master skills and become proficient. Digitally delivered deliberate practice—where texts are all within each student’s zone of proximal development (“stretch zone”) and offered along with real-time corrective feedback and coaching—is a particularly powerful use of technology in classrooms where teachers or paraeducators do not have time to listen to every student read out loud every week.
Personalized Support, Powered by AI
One digital tool that delivers on a promise to support, rather than supplant, teacher-led instruction is EPS Reading Assistant. Reading Assistant is an AI-driven tool that provides automated assessment, personalized reading practice, and actionable data, and it can be used in a range of settings with students in K-8th grade. As a helpful assistant for teachers, Reading Assistant automatically delivers a 15-minute, online literacy assessment to screen for dyslexia or other reading challenges, offers rich diagnostics, and presents teachers with clear information about each student’s skills and abilities. Reading Assistant then uses the data to craft a personalized reading practice path for every student, providing students with deliberate reading practice precisely in their “stretch zone” to augment teacher-led instruction and accelerate reading gains.
Rooted in the science of reading, Reading Assistant can work in tandem with SPIRE, an intensive, Orton-Gillingham-based literacy intervention program. It is also a central feature of EPS Reading Accelerator, a targeted Tier 2 intervention for striving readers in grades 3 and beyond. In these cases, the automated assessment and personalized reading practice of Reading Assistant help students strengthen both fluency and comprehension and help teachers track student progress along the way.
Securing Bright Outcomes for Students and Teachers
When thoughtfully selected and integrated, the right technology can support superior outcomes for both students and teachers. Everyone benefits when technology frees up time for enhanced teacher-led instruction and relationship building, provides actionable data and insights about each student’s needs, delivers personalized learning experiences for students, and reduces the potential for digital fatigue.
A well-considered approach to literacy instruction—one that prioritizes teacher-led lessons while leveraging technology as a support—helps strengthen students as readers and learners and gives teachers the opportunity to engage even more fully in the multifaceted art of teaching.
At the heart of every student’s successful reading journey is a teacher. By equipping our educators with the right tools and keeping them at the center of instruction, we can and will achieve the vision of literacy and learning for all.
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