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Teachers as Builders: Insights from Stephen Jull, Maruf Hasan & Sean McWeeney of Teach For All
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- [00:00]
Host/Announcer
This season of EdTech Insiders is brought to you by Cooley LLP. Cooley is the go to law firm for education and ed tech innovators offering industry informed counsel across the pre K to gray spectrum. With a multidisciplinary approach and a powerful edtech ecosystem, Cooley helps shape the future of education. This season of EdTech Insiders is brought to you by Starbridge. Every year, K12 districts and higher ed institutions spend over half a trillion dollars. But most sales teams miss the signals. Starbridge tracks early signs like board minutes, budget drafts and strategic plans, and then helps you turn them into personalized outreach fast. Win the deal before it hits the RFP stage. That's how top EdTech teams stay ahead.
- [00:53]
Sean McQueenie
I was like, actually something that can help teachers, Mark would be really good. And then I kind of took it a little bit further and I was like, what are the exact things that I want as a teacher as well? Not a kind of piece of software that's come from a bigger organization and doesn't necessarily meet all the needs. So I mean, that's, that's the kind of thing I've really been working on and using in my school and wider in terms of department. And that was the really exciting thing that you could create something that was so relevant to your context and you as your teacher could directly feed into it, directly design it, and then you could even make changes.
- [01:34]
Host/Announcer
Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. From funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood, K12, higher ed and work, you'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders.
- [01:49]
Ben Cornell
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 backchannel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoy today's pod. Hello, EdTech Insider listeners. It's me, Ben Cornell, and I've got a group of special guests today. You all know Stephen Jewell. He's the global head of AI and educational technology at Teach for All, an OG in the edtech space. This pivotal moment as AI reshapes education. He and his team are focusing on building reciprocal partnerships between educators and frontier AI model companies, ensuring teachers are at the center of shaping the future of AI for education. And we're also joined by two special guests, Marouf Hassan, a classroom teacher from Bangladesh and one of the AI LCC's most prolific builders. Marouf created a learning GAP intervention tool with AI generated assessments, real time teacher dashboards and automated remediation loops he built in a low resource setting. And his work reflects the belief that key AI innovation is happening in classrooms, not boardrooms. And we have Sean McQueenie, a UK based educator and Teach first alumnus with a sharp perspective on how AI is reshaping what it means to teach in high need schools. Sean has been an active voice in the AI LCC community on questions of equity assessment and teacher well being and on what it looks like for teachers to genuinely shape the tools used in their classroom. So without further ado, we've started very high level around AI in education. Today we're getting real. Let's get real with Steve, Stephen Marouf and Sean, welcome to EdTech Insider.
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Stephen Jewell
Thanks a lot. Let me just first pass to my guests and friends here just to give a little intro as to where they're sitting and where they're calling in from today.
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Sean McQueenie
Hi, I'm Sean, I'm a UK teacher currently. I came from work today to sort of join you guys and I've been teaching for about 10 years, taught in the UK, taught in abroad as well and it's been really amazing to be part of the sort of global group of teachers and I've learned so much from everyone around the world in terms of this really new super fast paced technology which is AI and how it's impacting us.
- [04:16]
Marouf Hassan
Hi there, I'm Maruf and I'm a teacher from Bangladesh. I completed my two years of fellowship from Teacher Bangladesh and you can see how low resource setting I'm in currently right now. I recently completed my fellowship and exploring the possibilities of AI in education space, especially in the low resource settings at the same time to actually address diversity, equity and inclusion. So thank you and really nice to be here today.
- [04:40]
Stephen Jewell
Hey, thanks, thanks Maroof and Ben, before you, I'll let you kick off and get us going here but I just wanted to say just before this Ben, we were having a pre call of course as we do, Sean and I were on the call Maruf, I'm messaging him of course, you know, in the various regular channels and he was a bit of radio silence there for a while. Then of course he moved like turns up and he's Stephen, I just managed to like my friend grabbed a new laptop for me and I'm racing down to my friend's house and sort of chasing ahead of like a power outage I think that he had where he's living right now. So Maruf is like a star for like making stuff happen when it just has to happen. So. And also what time is it there Marouf before we get going on this? Because we're approaching midnight there.
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Marouf Hassan
So it's 11 6pm here, so I really like it.
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Sean McQueenie
Awesome.
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Stephen Jewell
Thanks for being here. Amazing.
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Ben Cornell
Yeah. So I mean our listeners I think are excited to dive into the global use cases for AI and would love to hear from your educator learning community. I will say for many of us who've been following your journey, Steven, just six months ago it felt like you were kicking things off and then to have folks who've been actively building seems like a whirlwind six months. Can you tell us a little bit about how this initiative has evolved and the role that partnerships play?
- [05:51]
Stephen Jewell
Thanks Ben. Yeah, and first of all, thanks for your generosity across all EdTech community, of course, over many, many years. And I think you and I had checked in a few times just as I was beginning this role with Wendy Kopp and TeachForAll and you're right, it's been the first six months has been an absolute whirlwind, but it's felt like startup ecosystem, Ben. So I really felt at home, let's put it that way. The beauty of what I was able to walk into here was that when you're starting a startup there's a lot of uncertainties, there's zero foundations. But what we have at Teach for All, of course, is I had the privilege of walking into an environment which had the stability of 30 years plus of vision, values, testing the thesis of engaging with young people, people entering work for the first time, considering education as potentially their first form of employment, taking that on as a challenge, getting in close proximity to the issues that matter in their home communities, shaping and supporting education and schools where may not otherwise have access to highly qualified, highly motivated educators. And then either staying in education, then going on, you know, into into education or social impact or whatever that happens to be. After their two year fellowship, I had the advantage of landing in that environment. And so I'm surrounded by talent, like talent and foundations. And so it Ben, to be honest, it was difficult insofar as like how do you do this with this unpredictable technology and not break the stability of what is an established brand and trusted process that Wendy has set up over many, many decades across now 63 countries. And so the journey was really let's create a space for the talent to shine. And you know, my work historically, Ben, has really been about like build something, put it out into the world or find other people who are building Things create a space for people to explore and just by doing that, don't create a bottleneck, don't try to impinge on creativity and opportunity. And that's really kind of the architectural foundation to the AI Literacy and Creator collective. And those words were all chosen very, very carefully. And that's really so six months whirlwind. But starting with excellent foundations and incredible talent across the world.
- [08:07]
Ben Cornell
Well, I think that's one thing that distinguishes Teach for All is that there's a belief in vision, mission, alignment across the org in a vertical way. But the innovation really comes bottoms up. So, you know, Sean, tell us a little bit about the work that you've done with AI. I think there's optimism and a lot of fear in the space about AI in the educational context. And you work with low income schools where sometimes that possibility doesn't translate. Can you tell us what you've built, where you see the opportunities and possibilities and also where are we off track with rolling out AI in the education context?
- [08:45]
Sean McQueenie
For me, I think a really exciting moment there was lots of. When we first sort of started with the, with the network, people were using it to sort of like do lesson planning and kind of create artifacts on Claude. But for me, a kind of moment that, I mean that was amazing in itself. But then the next step that was even more incredible was using it to code. And like, I've never coded in my life at all, but when I saw the capabilities of it just through vibe coding to sort of produce, very early on, I produced something just very simple. It was just like a little interface for students. And then I was thinking, what is it that my school really needs? Or what is it that my context really needs right now? And I'm actually in a school. The UK has got lots of examinations. I think we're the most examined country in the developed world. And that means that we've got lots of.
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Ben Cornell
We're close behind you, but yes, you're in the lead.
- [09:36]
Sean McQueenie
Yeah, we're there, you know, so it's essays and workload is huge in the uk. It's a big issue, I'm sure, for teachers everywhere. I was like, actually something that can help teachers, Mark would be really good. And then I kind of took it a little bit further and I was like, what are the exact things that I want as a teacher as well? Not a kind of piece of software that's come from a bigger organization and doesn't necessarily meet all the needs. So I mean, that's the kind of thing I've really been working on and using in my school and wider in terms of department. And that was the really exciting thing that you could create something that was so relevant to your context and you as your teacher could directly feed into it, directly design it and then you could even make changes. So you could do one iteration of it, which we've done in terms of marking, done a kind of like whole cycle, mark students work, give them feedback, let them redraft and then kind of saw oh actually this is how we need to change it. And we could iterate at a speed that you just, you wouldn't be able to do as a software company. And the other thing is we own it, it's ours. So there's kind of like there's ownership of the tech that teachers didn't really have before. That is, that is really exciting all the way from designing it to reacting to it, to getting feedback from the students about what they would need. So for me that's been really exciting. And then, and then it's led on to working with Marouf as well and thinking kind of globally as well.
- [11:03]
Ben Cornell
Let's come back to the power of the community. And it is really interesting, just this sense of ownership. It's both like the IP ownership but also sense of owning the outcomes and feeling engaged and involved. Marouf, can you talk a little bit about what you've built and where you see the biggest opportunities? As Sean says, there's unique opportunities in each context. What are the opportunities in your context that you've been exploring Foreign.
- [11:30]
Host/Announcer
We'll be right back. Innovation in pre K to gray 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@higheredu.com that's H I R E edu.com
- [12:09]
Marouf Hassan
so basically I see AI as an opportunity to actually support students who are left behind to be honest because AI is the only tool which can actually, actually give you their proper time 247 all the time. So that's what actually students of underserved community needs a proper guidance. What actually confuses me like we often are really very much concerned about the AI ethics and all but we should be concerned but when we are actually using AI as a large language model so then we should be. But I, I believe that we teachers are responsible to redirect that heavy technological masterpiece to a certain level where students get real experience, right? And we have, we the teachers have that responsibility to redirect the AI's purpose. And I believe that AI has actually decentralized our technology usage in education system. Because when you try to access any kind of AI tools in education or technology, so you need some kind of subscription or you need to buy some courses for big companies, but after AI arrived, like a non technical guy like me can also develop tools which can actually give our students a proper learning experience, curate that learning journey. And I believe that we have so much usage of AI for our students, we can improve, integrate, like curate videos, our textbooks and show it to the visual learners as well. We can also help our kinesthetic learners as well. So AI is like every single day, AI is actually giving us new concepts, new things. Especially in 2026, we are seeing that agentic AI has become a thing. So ultimately from lowering the burden of the teachers to actually support students to the most personalized level, I believe that AI is going to reshape the education system of this world in the future. So that's what I.
- [14:15]
Ben Cornell
So we had Maruf cut off there, but he was dropping some knowledge bombs and some really, really great insights around this future of decentralized AI. Actually a theme that both of you hit on is the role of the educator and harnessing the potential of AI for the greatest use. And that frankly scares some people who are more focused on centralized control. What has this community collaborative, this idea that creators, we're going to connect the creators. Have you constructed that in a way that ensures that there's quality control, ensures that the best ideas are winning and then it's not every educator for himself or herself. Stephen.
- [15:00]
Stephen Jewell
Yeah, thanks, Ben. And I'm sure Marouf will jump back in. It's just like kind of a. I mean that's a great example of just like, you're right, the barriers that you have to overcome. And as we get through this pod, Ben, we'll come back to something these guys have been working on, which is the offline model. So we'll going to make a mental note for myself too to make sure we hit on that. These two guys are collaborating on some really cool offline literacy support for learners in schools in all environments, which is brilliant. First of all, I talked briefly. Thanks for the question about like how we've come to this point. And so I talked about the foundations and of course what Wendy's built here. And we are just dealing with like a pool of like incredible Talents just to reinforce and double down on that. And then your question is, you know, about like, well, how do you, how do you manage quality control in an environment like that? So initially, of course, we decided to kick off a pilot. As you know, we kicked that pilot off with Anthropic, our great first Frontier Labs partner. I made a really nice announcement with them. We're doing some really excellent work. So establishing a relationship with one of the Frontier Labs was a really key component to the success of the AI Literacy and Creator collective in the first instance. Not because we needed, you know, a Frontier Lab partner in order to bring together this talent pool, but what this talent pool was looking for was more than what, you know, any one person could, could give them.
- [16:17]
Marouf Hassan
Right?
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Stephen Jewell
Because the, the diversity of need and kind of the, the level of interest, the breadth was so incredibly diverse across 63 countries. To have a series of workshops delivered, let's say internally by a series of so called experts just wouldn't cut it. Sean's politely sitting there, just kind of nodding along in some capacity there. So when you bring on Brick Frontier Labs, that creates an opportunity like, okay, right, we have access now to an opportunity to work very closely with engineers, product safety people, you know, people working on the business side of things, like how this is rolled out, professional development. And it created an opportunity for this very big community to get involved at various levels, depending on what they were interested in. So we have this WhatsApp community. We have about a thousand, actually we have about 1500 plus people in the AI LCC now as a part of a pilot, we just wrapped up phase one, moving into phase two. And about 50% of those are in a very large WhatsApp community, all self organized around language groups and interest groups. And in those interest groups we get groups of people upwards of about 300, 350 people in each of those communities exploring ideas. And what I have to say is like, you know, I've been asked this question and I'll wrap on this Ben. I've been asked this question about like, well, you know, Stephen, should we be surfacing, you know, some of the identified talent more, you know, or people who are doing like the really big builds? And my go to Ben has always been that's not really where you can find the emerging ideas. And so by opening it up to everyone to play equally across this landscape, ostensibly by us not getting involved in trying to predetermined or predict the direction that people were moving with this technology, after spending time in live webinars and live AMAs with our colleagues over at Anthropic. And in the first instance, we would be working with the other labs too, of course, in the future. That just creates this opportunity for people to find, you know, where it is that they want to land. And actually, Sean touched on this initially, where people started early stage with lesson planning, and there's been this progressive journey from literacy through to creator as we've gone forward. So, I mean, ostensibly, you know, create the conditions, then as, you know, get out of the way and the real talent finds its way. And people learn from the likes of Don and Marouf on a daily basis in our community.
- [18:39]
Ben Cornell
This idea that community isn't just contiguous to your local context is quite interesting, and yet the local context plays a really big role. Sean, I'm actually curious, you know, in terms of your communities, where you're collaborating on AI work, how much of it is part of this Teach for All global community, and how much of it is within your local school and your local school system community?
- [19:08]
Sean McQueenie
Well, I think what's been really interesting is sort of the idea that we are all teachers in very diverse settings, but yet we all. What comes up again and again is actually the similarity of experience just, just as it teaches. Even if we're kind of teachers, I mean, like Marie from Bangladesh or myself in the uk, there's real connection between actually the needs of our students or what's happening in terms of differentiation or adaptive learning, or our students who have English as a second language. I have students who English as a second language. And that's been a really interesting thing as well, that even though it's, it's kind of. It's kind of the idea of like you're, you're. You're living locally and you're trying to adapt to your context, but you're thinking globally as well. So there's been so much similarity, actually, between the needs of our students, the discussion around it, and kind of sharing ideas with it as well. That's kind of the quite inspiring thing about it as well, is that I could learn something from a teacher on the other side of the world, like, who was more engaged, more full of life, more kind of proactive than a teacher in my own school who didn't have half the energy. And I think that's been the kind of most inspiring thing about. It's the energy that people have brought and the interest and the kind of daily WhatsApp excitement as well, where someone would say, have you seen this? And that's also how fast AI is moving that someone would say have you seen this thing? Or have you seen that? And that's been the thing that's really opened my eyes to what's possible with it as well.
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Ben Cornell
Yeah, Maroo, I see that you've joined too. How has the community added to your experience and also your ideas and practical solution?
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Marouf Hassan
So before joining the community, to be honest, before October last year, so I was just doing this thing as a hobby and also support my students. I was exploring through different types of AI tools and all and I was thinking about different strategies but I was seeing no one from my country doing it. And then when I actually found this community, it actually gave me that space to share my ideas. Especially when I joined the community like Rhonda reached out to me and told me to like you are doing amazing. Inspired me a lot. Then I had a chance to actually talk with other teachers who are doing amazing things with AI in education and got new perspectives to be honest. Then I met Jule and etc got huge learning opportunities from cloud, from Reid Huffman, read Hastings and so on. Then I was developing tools through a different tool. Then I got introduced to cloud code and someone from the community also reached out to me like when I mentioned that I do want to know more about using cord code as I'm a really non technical person and she literally reached out to me, gave me 1 hours of her time and then showed me how I I can actually publish my own app through cloud code which really inspired me a lot. And today, literally today I shared one of my very first work with cloud code in the community. So it has been a really great learning journey for me to be honest. And when I joined people were always talking about like the prompting and strategy of prompting and then now everyone is like building new AI tools and finding out different strategies. It's so fun to be there.
- [22:45]
Ben Cornell
That's so inspiring to hear. We're running out of time for this pod. But Stephen, if people want to find out more about the community that you're building, potentially some of the projects that people are launching, what's the best way for them to learn more?
- [22:59]
Stephen Jewell
The best way probably is to come visit teach for all. Check out our website, you can find most of us there on the staff team. For the rest of us, for Sean and Marouf, maybe what we'll do is Ben afterwards we can get some sort of way of having people do a reach, maybe reach out to the community and we could even post some shared insights if people want to in our AI literacy and creator collective community can Definitely put those people in touch because this community is growing fast and innovating even faster.
- [23:28]
Sean McQueenie
Yeah.
- [23:29]
Ben Cornell
And I would say, like, some of the themes from this interview are timeless. Community is valuable. The role of the educator is critical. The sense of ownership. These are things that existed long before AI existed. And there's also this sense of something new, which is power to create, to adjust, adapt, evolve, iterate. That is really new in the world of EdTech. It's Ed first, tech second. We've got as educators to use the skills and tools and advantages we have on the education side, but putting it together with this new technology, I'm coming away Maruf and Sean, really inspired and it makes me think about, like, what does this look like two years from now, four years from now, five years from now, the role of teacher and the role of builder. You know, the idea that somebody far away from the problem had to solve these things before. Now it's coming together and that's such an exciting moment, not just for educators across the world, but also for the learners themselves. So thank you, Sean. Thank you, Maru, for joining. Steven, as always, anytime you want to have your community members on the EdTech Insiders pod, we love to hear what's happening. Thank you all for joining. And folks, check out Teach4All's website. We can learn more about all of this work. Thanks.
- [24:53]
Stephen Jewell
Thanks, Ben.
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Sean McQueenie
Thank you.
- [24:56]
Host/Announcer
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. Tuck Advisors was founded by entrepreneurs who built and sold their own companies. Frustrated by other M and A firms, they created the one they wished they could have hired but couldn't. Find one who understands what matters to founders and whose North Star KPI is the percentage of deals closed. If you're thinking of selling your edtech company or buying one, contact Tuck Advisors now.