Using AI to Mentor Teacher Trainees

This year’s workforce figures from the UK Department of Education (DfE, 2024a) show that just under 40,000 teachers left the profession in 2022-23, and it will probably come as no surprise that teachers are most likely to quit in the first five years of their teaching career. 

To retain early-career teachers, the UK government extended the induction program in 2021, transforming the NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) year into a two-year ECT (Early Career Teacher) programme. This shift was intended to provide longer-term support but has doubled the demand on mentors, many of whom are already stretched thin.

With an increased demand for mentors, who is left to mentor new PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) students and ECTs? The answer often lies with teachers who have been in the profession themselves for 5 years or less, or in worst case scenarios some mentors are doubling up and trying to support an ECT at the same time as PGCE trainees. No wonder teacher burnout exists.

With no extra pay, and in a number of schools only one extra hour given on the timetable for a trainee/mentor meeting, the mentors are supposed to deliver ‘consistent support and training.’ This is either a pipe dream or it relies on mentors going above and beyond their contracted time - once again. 

Is there an easy answer? Sadly not… but there are some rays of hope. 

With the rise of AI in the Education industry, teachers have been exploring how they can cut their workload and increase their wellbeing using chatbots like Google Gemini, and there is a wide space for it in the support of new teachers. 

Think back to your first days in a new job:

How much of your learning occurred because you asked a colleague for help? 

How often did you sit in the office listening to the conversations of others, making a mental note of what the acronym you had been using actually meant? 

How many 'stupid questions' did you not ask? 

Fortunately, chatbots don’t judge you when you ask stupid questions, and here’s proof: 

Using Gemini as a Sounding Board

Since chatbots don’t judge—at least for now—they can serve as pseudo-peers for bouncing ideas, acting as an AI sounding board. When that late evening panic sets in for teachers and they’ve already switched off the smartboards and hidden the marking for the day, how are trainee teachers supposed to plan an engaging, accessible, assessed lesson for the next day that follows the curriculum?

Well, the start would be word association; typing in a few words related to whatever you have to teach the next day. You can then work from there by reading the suggestions, editing prompts, and brainstorming with AI. Some people may feel like they’re Dave Bowman dealing with HAL 9000, finding this synthetic interaction creepy and uncanny, but now users can even ask Gemini to play the role of a mentor and respond appropriately.

Using NotebookLM to understand the ECT Framework

Google’s NotebookLM, an AI research and note taking tool, means that a trainee teacher can upload a variety of sources to one notebook and interact with this Notebook Chatbot in a focused manner. 

For example, uploading the many E-Guides and PDFs that are shared with new teachers 

when they first start the induction, means that they can ask the chatbot specific 

questions about teaching standards, observations, and needing support. It even allows for the user to engage with the content via a podcast-like solution.

Using Brisk to Start Your Resource Creation

Another surprise new teachers often discover is that our 3-4 year specialist degrees did not prepare us for every single topic that we will have to teach.

Imagine you are newly qualified and have been assigned to create a week’s worth of lessons on Lady Macbeth (don't worry, you have been given the half-term break to ensure it's completed). It’s a real shame that you did not study Shakespeare's ‘Macbeth’ at university and now you need something quick, something engaging, something Brisk!

‘Get thee to a Punnery!’ - Wrong Shakespeare play, but you get the idea. How can we make engaging, fun lessons when half the battle is educating ourselves with new content before resource creation can even begin?

Google Chrome Extension ‘Brisk’ allows teachers to create resources from web pages, YouTube videos, Google Docs, and more. It will even create a Google Slides deck including images (premium version only) or a Google Form with answers. It’s any teacher’s holy grail, especially if that teacher is new and does not have a bank of past resources to fall back on. 

As Dan Fitzpatrick, author of The AI Educator, asserts, 'AI won’t replace teachers, but it will replace teachers who don’t use AI.' Just as AI likely won’t replace teachers, it likely won’t replace mentors, but AI tools like Gemini and Brisk can help ease workloads, enhance mentorship, and improve teacher retention. By leveraging AI to support teachers and trainees, we can build a more sustainable future for education without losing sight of the human connection at its heart. So let’s start by using AI in aiding teacher retention and not giving Silicon Valley any logistical reasons to build a 

robot teacher army.

Want to read more? bit.ly/ai-mentor-teacher-trainees