teacher:smarter

  There are two kinds of students: the one who devours books and can't wait to tell you about the "deeper meaning," and the one who stares at a paragraph of prose like it's written in an ancient, unreadable script. You, the teacher, are the bridge between these two worlds, but sometimes you need a little help building that bridge. Enter the ELA tools on the teacher:smarter platform, an AI-powered suite designed to make you and your students the ultimate literary detectives. Instead of spending hours hunting for examples of figurative language or character motivations, you can now generate the clues in seconds and focus on the fun part: solving the case. Powered by Google's Gemini models, these tools transform any piece of text into a structured analysis. This isn't just about finding answers; it's about providing the scaffolding your students need to understand the "why" behind the "what." With tools like the Literary Analysis , Charac...

 Let's be honest, you became a teacher because you're a superhero, not a robot. But sometimes, lesson planning—especially for analytical writing—feels like a job for a machine. You spend hours reading a text, writing questions, creating a model response, and then a student asks, "Wait, what's a 'topic sentence' again?" and you have to start all over. What if there was a way to get the brainy part of the job done in seconds, leaving you with more time to be the inspiring, amazing teacher you are? Meet the RACE and PEEL generators on the teacher:smarter platform , your new AI-powered sidekicks for a late elementary, middle, or early high school classroom. They are not just tools; they’re your personal curriculum designers, ready to transform any text into a powerful, skill-building activity. The RACE Generator: Your Personal Comprehension Coach Remember when your students' text-based answers were a single, glorious word? The RACE writing strategy is des...

teacher:smarter was born out of pure dissatisfaction. It all started with a four-hour long, "self-paced," mandatory Professional Development session on AI my district rolled out this past spring. While the second half was pure district slop, the first half was a surprisingly interesting, if very canned, “Google Gemini for Educators” course. The training hit all the usual notes on ethics and privacy. But then it got to prompt writing, and a lightbulb went on. A strong prompt isn't just typing a question into a box. It requires a thinking process. It demands precise writing and editing. It involves adaptation, experimentation, and yes, failure.  It requires a teacher. My Revelation: AI is Just a Word Calculator   From that perspective, my view of AI completely shifted. I stopped seeing it as a Studio Ghibli meme generator. I stopped seeing it as the boogeyman that lets my students cheat or threatens my job. (Frankly, I have serious doubts about AI’s ability t...