Over the past decade, there's been much discussion in the tech world around the concept of "unbundling."

Last year, the a16z blog brought this concept to the top of many minds through their description of the unbundling of Craigslist. In the article, "Platforms vs Verticals and the Next Great Unbundling" ...

They featured an image showing the many online services that effectively take a piece of Craigslist's massive Internet pie.

These pieces include companies that offer a more optimized version of:

• Personal ads (Tinder)
• Housing listings (AirBnb, Zillow)
• Discussion boards (Reddit)
• Local communities (Nextdoor)
• Job postings (Upwork, Indeed)

And this is an interesting concept as it relates to education and edtech. One of the dominant feelings you might hear about when asking teachers, school leaders, or parents about their efforts to improve learning for kids...would be "overwhelm."

Might it be possible that we could distribute some of the responsibility of educating individuals across more people? And give them tools to help do those specialized roles better?

After a week in which I found myself planning a new unit for my students, speaking with various school professionals about the serious personal issues students were living with, following a discussion about the teachers' contract, as well as, yes teaching 3-5 classes per day. I started to ask myself...

In what ways can/is the teacher's job be unbundled? And in what ways could this increase teacher retention, reduce burnout, and ultimately improve student learning?

These are some of the responsibilities of a teacher that could potentially be segmented into discreet tasks:

• Delivering direct instruction (lecture)
• Assessing student work (grading)
• Curriculum design (this involves curating materials, sequencing them, aligning them to standards/objectives and more)
• Managing collaborative projects
• Facilitating group discussions
• 1:1 tutoring

Let's say a teacher is a great presenter. Imagine a world in which they strictly focus on that aspect of their job. This teacher then takes on a new role. Let's call it "Executive Lecturer".They create the best presentations, slides, videos, etc to instruct kids on specific skills and concepts.

Presumably, the students in these courses would do writing assignments throughout the year. Another teacher, skilled in providing essay help and good at managing the process could take on a new role. This role would be the "manager of student writing."

Of course, this would be a massive, terrible job on its own. But today, there are platforms like Prompt that could help with this. This company provides on-demand help for college essays, and foreseeably other types of writing. Then, this "manager of student writing" could be responsible for coordinating all these efforts as well as providing some in-person help to student writers.

This could be further modified as teachers take over tutoring with help from programs like GradeSlam, design curriculum with products like Newsela, Edpuzzle, Listenwise, etc.

This is more of a thought-experiment than an idea I'd actually like to see implement. But it's fascinating to note how the job of Teacher encapsulates so many skill sets that can be supported with individual tools. If the burden on teachers is limited, both by technology and by better strategy, than ultimately learners will benefit.

Thanks for reading,

Gerard Dawson

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