Why Leadership Matters More Than Technology with Aneesh Sohoni of Teach For America

Aneesh Sohoni is CEO of Teach For America and a former high school English teacher and TFA corps member. He has also led TFA Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana and One Million Degrees.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Why leadership matters more than technology in education.
2. How teachers can build practical AI fluency.
3. Teach For America’s 4 Ds framework for using AI.
4. Why AI can’t replace human connection in learning.
5. How teachers are using AI to personalize learning.

✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:04:45] Teach For America at 35: What’s changed and what hasn’t.
[00:07:45] AI Fluency: Helping teachers use AI effectively.
[00:10:50] AI Won’t Replace Teachers: Why relationships still matter.
[00:11:30] The 4 Ds of AI: Delegate, Describe, Discern, Diligence.
[00:13:27] Teachers as Builders: Educators creating AI-powered tools.
[00:16:09] The Next Generation of Leaders: What new teachers are saying about AI.

Learn more and register for TFA35 here.

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Alex Sarlin: Innovation in pre-K to grade learning is powered by exceptional people. For over 15 years, Edtech companies of all sizes and stages have trusted Higher Education to find the talent that drives impact. When specific skills and experiences are mission critical, Higher Education is a partner that delivers.

Offering permanent, fractional, and executive recruitment, Higher Education knows the go-to-market talent you need. Learn more at hireedu.com. That's H-I-R-E-E-D-U.com. 

[00:00:33] Aneesh Sohoni: Look, the story of how AI will impact students is still to be written, and I deeply believe that it's gonna require real leadership to ensure that that story is one of all children having access to an excellent education.

And as I shared, given what we do at Teach For America, I really believe it's gonna be our network of leaders more than anyone else who are gonna shape how AI gets used in the classroom to advance learning. And I believe in this because of who we recruit and who we select to join our core, their deep belief in all children, their curiosity, their desire to learn, and their ultimate focus on having a real impact on student learning.

[00:01:17] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to Edtech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. From funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood, K-12, higher ed, and work, you'll find it all here at Edtech Insiders. 

[00:01:33] Ben Kornell: Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter and also our event calendar.

And to go deeper, check out Edtech Insiders Plus, where you can get premium content, access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events, and back-channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoy today's pod.

Hello, Edtech Insider listeners. Today, I am so honored to be joined by Aneesh Sohoni, the CEO of Teach For America. Full disclosure, I am a TFA alumnus myself, Bay Area '03 in the house. I'm also on the board of Teach For America SoCal, so a little bit biased in the interview. Just a little bit about Aneesh.

He began his career as a high school English teacher in the two thousand and nine Twin Cities Corps, where his classroom experience sparked a lasting commitment to expanding opportunity for all students. And Aneesh has also served as Executive Director of TFA Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana, and One Million Degrees.

Aneesh, welcome to Edtech Insiders. 

[00:02:40] Aneesh Sohoni: Well, thanks for having me, Ben, and I am biased as well. I love having these conversations, but they're especially meaningful with alums, and so thank you for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to this. 

[00:02:50] Ben Kornell: Yeah. Before we jump into where Teach For America is today and where we're headed, tell us a little bit about your journey.

Why education? We heard a little bit about your teaching experience. What sparked the lifelong passion that you've had, and why do you think Teach For America matters now more than ever before? 

[00:03:07] Aneesh Sohoni: Yeah. My lifelong passion started with my own experience as a corps member, as you mentioned, in two thousand and nine.

I was lucky enough when I was in college at the University of Minnesota to run across this sidewalk chalk sign. This is pre-digital marketing era, and basically was invited through the chalk sign to attend an informational session on Teach For America, and that's where I met my recruiter, Katia Colon-Holmers at the time, and she was a two thousand and five New Jersey TFA alum.

And she just made this compelling case for me that I could join the corps and really carry forward my family's purpose. My parents had come to this country in pursuit of better educational opportunities, and as a result, my sister and I, who's also a TFA alum, had just access to opportunities, caring teachers like Ms.

Sarf, my ninth grade debate coach, who helped me see more in myself than I believed in that I could do in the world before she convinced me that I could. And so knowing I could carry that forward was really compelling, and knowing that there had been thousands of alums before me who were doing incredible things in terms of creating access for opportunity for kids, I was compelled to join.

And then, as you know, you get into the classroom, you meet your students, you see their incredible potential, and you also see all the challenges standing in their way. And having had that experience directly with students and families in the community of Minneapolis, where I was teaching, forever changed my own pathway, my own journey.

Thought I'd be going to law school, but decided I couldn't turn away from the opportunity to ensure that even more children could have access to an excellent education. 

[00:04:45] Ben Kornell: So most of the folks who are listening to the pod probably had a impression of Teach For America from, like, twenty years ago. What's true about the program from where it is today?

You're about to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary here in October. What's true today that has always been true with Teach For America, and what's new or different as people understand this latest version of the corps and the program? 

[00:05:10] Aneesh Sohoni: Yeah. I mean, at Teach For America, we are still up to this mantra that rallied so mu- so many of us, right, around this idea that one day all children will have an opportunity to attain an excellent education.

And so that is still our North Star, that is still our vision, and we are still an organization that's focused on talent and leadership. How can we get even more of our nation's most promising leaders to say yes to making teaching their first job experience through Teach For America? Because of the proximity that they get to communities, to students, how they're able to have an impact on really driving student learning and student outcomes, and how they themselves, like I was, are shaped forever.

And then they go on to do incredible things, leading at all levels of the system across all sectors and working together. I think some of our best stories are of alums coming together. I myself had the opportunity at one point in my career to work at the Tennessee State Department of Education under a commissioner who was a Teach For America alum, Kevin Huffman, and at the time, Tennessee was ranked one of the bottom five states in the country on literacy and numeracy on the National Assessment for Educational Progress, and Kevin set a bold North Star for us to say, "How can we make Tennessee the fastest improving state in the nation?"

And I got to work alongside more than two dozen other TFA alums in this effort to help make Tennessee the fastest improving state in the nation, something we accomplished within four years of our work there. Now Tennessee continues to be well-regarded in terms of making meaningful educational progress over the last 20 years.

That's where I really learned the power of what it means to work together. And so the core of what we do is the same. What I would say is different is the moment in time that we are in. We are in a rapidly changing world. Your listeners certainly appreciate that from the standpoint of technology. I think the same is true in terms of our economic conditions, our political conditions, and we're seeing increased stratification, right, across our country with the gaps widening in terms of who has access to opportunity and who doesn't, and you're really seeing what I've been calling a crisis of hope Too many people don't feel like they can buy the house that they want, or that they can lead the life or have the family they want moving forward.

I think the antidote to that is leadership. In particular, getting more of the next generation of our leaders in, because the next generation of our leaders, they're digital natives. They understand how technology works. They'll be able to shape technology moving forward, and the next generation really helps to spark belief in what's possible by showing it.

They're naive in many ways, right? They don't know what's not possible, and so we need that infection and that energy, and a big part of what we're up to is continuing to bring in the next generation to meet the current moment. 

[00:07:45] Ben Kornell: Yeah, it's really fascinating, and you're doing all of this in a moment where AI is also not only changing the future landscape, but changing the way education is today in the classroom.

Teach For America recently partnered with Anthropic on the new AI Fluency for PK-12 Teachers course. I'm curious what the core AI skills you believe every educator should have, and why it's important to keep the training model agnostic 

[00:08:13] Aneesh Sohoni: Look, the story of how AI will impact students is still to be written, and I deeply believe that it's gonna require real leadership to ensure that that story is one of all children having access to an excellent education.

And as I shared, given what we do at Teach For America, I really believe it's gonna be our network of leaders more than anyone else who are gonna shape how AI gets used in the classroom to advance learning. And I believe in this because of who we recruit and who we select to join our core, their deep belief in all children, their curiosity, their desire to learn, and their ultimate focus on having a real impact on student learning, and because they're digital natives.

And so over thirty-five years, we've seen at the end of the day, technology will come and go, but leadership really matters. So that's why we partnered to create this course. The reality is we know teachers are using AI. What we're hearing from our teachers is they need support on how to use it to really support student learning, and that's why we built this course.

The ability to understand whether to use AI in a specific learning context and why, and if so, how to use it in a way that we believe will advance student learning, when not to use it, right, when the pitfalls might come. I'll give you one example of this. We've been working with our teachers to give them opportunities to build what AI can look like in their context, and we had a teacher in Michigan was worried about this idea that students may have an over-reliance on the technology, right?

Reduce their own thinking and reduce the cognitive load. And so he decided to use AI to insert an incorrect step in a math problem and then give the output of that problem to students to help them deduce what AI did wrong, right? So there's so many different ways you could think- Yeah ... about how to use the technology.

That's just one example of how to overcome the risk of over-reliance. 

[00:10:07] Ben Kornell: Yeah. It's interesting that you have a core of people that are as close to AI native as any teacher group will be, and each year as you subsequently have new core members, they're gonna be more and more fluent with AI. This also creates risks, like where is AI blocking the human-to-human connection that is so vital in education?

From a organizational standpoint or from a personal standpoint, what are the components of the teacher-learner experience that you think should never be replaced by the AI? How do you advise core members on when technology is appropriate versus not appropriate? 

[00:10:50] Aneesh Sohoni: Yeah. Look, I think it's impossible for AI to replace teachers, so I'll go even further and just say, like, I just don't think it can happen because we know how students learn.

Part of the learning journey and the experience is the relationship that a teacher, a trusting adult, builds with their students. I mentioned at the beginning about my relationship with my ninth grade debate coach, Ms. Sarf. The reason she was able to compel me to believe in myself Was not because of what she was teaching me or what tools she was using.

It was because she saw me. She had a curiosity about who I was and what I could become, and AI can't replace that. I also think about the power of the peer network and peer collaboration. Humans are sort of wired to engage in conversation with other people, to think critically, to collaborate, to solve really complex problems together.

Again, AI can be a tool that can support in that journey, but what it can't replace is the innate human desire to work together as well. And so I just deeply believe, again, that it'll be impossible for AI to replace teachers. The way we support our teachers in figuring out whether and why to use AI is through something we call the four D framework for making decisions on this.

So first, we encourage our teachers to think through what should and shouldn't be delegated to AI. That's the first D, delegate. The second is to then describe what they're trying to accomplish with enough clarity that they actually have a point of view on what to do with it. The third D is to discern, right?

Then they use it, they get an output. They actually need to evaluate. Is it giving you what you're hoping for? Is it accurate? Is it appropriate? Is it helpful for students? And then ultimately, and the fourth D is diligence. They have to own that final decision. We are tool and model agnostic because our teachers work ac- in nearly every state across the country, and we know the technology is rapidly evolving.

And so our bet is on developing the capacity of teachers and leaders to use the four Ds to apply within their context. We think that's the most sustainable path forward and will ultimately shape the future of teaching and learning. 

[00:12:56] Ben Kornell: I love that framework, and also the idea that we need to empower the people that are closest to the problems to understand when different tools are appropriate or not.

It's also like an incredible time to build solutions rather than finding things off the shelf. Are you seeing a, an increase in entrepreneurship or in homegrown tooling within the core? How are you thinking about this new wave, educators as builders, as part of the core experience? 

[00:13:27] Aneesh Sohoni: Absolutely. Again, we're, we're sort of betting on educators and entrepreneurs and builders.

You've mentioned multiple times we have a generation that is digitally native. They understand this technology, and so the issue here, again, isn't necessarily the technical skills. I'm sure we can all improve on that. But it's really the ability to understand whether and why and how to use it. But what we also know from research is the best way to learn how to use a technology is to actually try it on and to use it, right?

Theory can only take you so far. And so we have our novice teachers actually using AI and trying it on. We have one teacher, for example, who has built a tool that allows them to process student data they're getting back to more quickly be able to differentiate and personalize how they support individual students, right?

Data analysis that would have taken multiple hours to do before happens much faster. We have another teacher who's used a tool to input the interests of their students to really integrate those interests into the curriculum and the lesson so it's more, uh, relevant and more students feel a sense of connection and belonging in the classroom.

Those are a couple of examples we've seen that I think really work well with builders here really thinking about how we're shaping the future of this work At the same time, I don't think we can stop just at playing. We're also making a bet and investment on training our teacher coaches, right? Part of our model- Mm-hmm

is to make sure our teacher coaches can support teachers with what instruction and learning looks like over their first two years. And so we're building their capacity as well to not make this sort of a one-off training or a course or just a moment in time where they play, but a lot for them to go deeper and engage in dialogue with their coach to continue to evolve their practice.

[00:15:09] Ben Kornell: That's great. And in this era where building is accessible to all, it's also important that people have long-term commitment to the problems and challenges in the space. I think one of the common misperceptions of Teach For America is that it's a two-year and done kind of commitment. I think you're an example, I'm an example of people who've had lifelong work in education as a result of that experience, but also many corps members stay in the classroom or go on to principal and leadership positions.

You've got the alumni event coming up. I believe it's between seven to ten thousand people coming to in October, and you also have this ability to pulse check in a scalable way the future teachers of America. You have a, a corps member survey that came out on August twenty-fourth. I'm curious, from that survey, from the alumni, what are some of the trends that you're seeing that the corps members might chime on for the broader education space?

I 

[00:16:09] Aneesh Sohoni: mean, as you noted, we are now thirty-five years old. We have over seventy-two thousand people who have gone through our program and our experience, and similar to me and you, right, when you get into the classroom, when you make teaching either your first job or an experience early in their career, you of course, your first obligation is to make sure your students have access to learning opportunities that they deserve And as you do that, you are forever shaped.

And so now 60% of our alumni network remain working directly in education, and 75% work either in education or in related fields and sectors impacting the students that we work with in low-income communities. And so I think the power of our work, of course, is the power of who we recruit, who we select, and how we support them in their two years.

But then, as someone put it to me recently, the 40 years of leadership you get thereafter, that is really incredible. And so we're excited to come together in October for our 35th anniversary summit to both celebrate the impact of this network, but also to commit to a future, because we know the job's not finished.

There's still more work to do, and so we're really excited and looking forward to that. An underlying ethos of our work has always been surveying and listening to our teachers. And as you noted, we recently surveyed our newest teachers, over 3,000 of them, to ask them, "How are you experiencing AI in the classroom?"

And I think the most fascinating result we got back was the majority of them, over 75%, say they use AI in some form or fashion in the classroom, but less than 10% of them find that they've really found a way to make it relevant for student learning To me, what that signals is there's sort of an acceptance that it's here, that we need to figure out how to use it, but it's still very much early days, right?

And these are new teachers, these are digitally native teachers. I would be willing to bet they're the first ones to figure out how to make it relevant to student learning. I think what we're seeing is they're holding a very high bar for what it means for this to be relevant to student learning, and are looking for additional training and support on how to do that.

[00:18:11] Ben Kornell: Well, wonderful. I'm excited to share that survey with everyone, and the Edtech Insiders are excited to also share the stage with you at the anniversary summit. We'll be interviewing Lin-Manuel Miranda there, celebrating what looks like an incredible lineup of inspirational leaders and challenges for the next decade of Teach For America's work.

What's the best way for people to find out more about Teach For America if they wanna learn more? 

[00:18:37] Aneesh Sohoni: Yeah. Well, first, whether you're a Teach For America alum, a partner, just somebody who's invested in the sector and cares about the work, it's not too late. We hope to see you at our thirty-fifth anniversary summit to hear you all in conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda.

We're gonna have Common coming to speak, Jay Ellis is coming. There's so many incredible people who will be there, and we're gonna have real rigorous conversations, right, about where this work goes, and so I'm looking forward to that. We hope you join us there. And if you're someone listening, whether you're a parent of a student who's con- a college student who's considering Teach For America, you might be a college student yourself wondering, "Hey, I'm really into AI," or, "I'm really into education technology," I would encourage you to make your first step and your first move to join Teach For America's teaching corps.

So many of our alums, rooted in their experience, right, on the ground with students and families, have figured out how to take that experience to start organizations. I think about our friend Dan Carroll, for example, who took his experience in the classroom to then start Clever because he knew that the way in which the different technology tools that school districts were using weren't all working or serving school systems and schools effectively.

So do this because it'll forever change how you view the world, and there's so much opportunity thereafter. So I hope you go to our website, teachforamerica.org, apply to join the corps or learn more about the corps if you're supporting somebody in your life who might be interested in joining us. 

[00:19:54] Ben Kornell: Awesome.

It gives me chills that you remind me-- Sean Waldheim was my recruiter. Reminds me of Sean's pitch many moons ago. Thanks so much, Aneesh, CEO of Teach For America, for joining us today. We will be following up very, very soon, in about a month and a half, with our podcast from the summit, and check it out, teachforamerica.org.

Thanks so much for joining us today. 

[00:20:15] Aneesh Sohoni: Thanks, Ben.

[00:20:16] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of Edtech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the Edtech community. For those who want even more Edtech Insider, subscribe to the free Edtech Insiders newsletter on Substack.

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