Why I Joined an AI Startup Focused on Tier 3 Intervention
A few years ago, I left education mid-year, completely burned out. I sold my home, packed up my life, and moved to Washington State, a place where I didn’t know a soul. It was the boldest move I’ve ever made, but it gave me something I desperately needed: space to breathe, reflect, and rebuild.
I’m not the only educator who experienced such a deep level of burnout that leaving education became an act of self-preservation. In fact, more and more educators are making similar decisions. According to a 2024 report by the RAND Corporation, 60% of teachers reported feeling burned out, and nearly the same percentage experienced frequent job-related stress, nearly double the rate of other working adults. This growing exodus is putting additional strain on a system that’s already cracking under the weight of chronic staffing shortages, increased student needs, and ever-expanding expectations.
During my time of burn out recovery, I continued working on a passion project I had started my last few years as an instructional coach, rethinking how Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) could actually work for educators. I had long believed that PLCs had the potential to drive meaningful instructional change, but only if they moved beyond surface-level compliance and school leaders were also involved in a PLC to support the PLCs at their school. So I used my time in Washington to refine that vision and build something new.
From Reset to Reinvention: Building VOYAGE Horizons
That vision became VOYAGE Horizons, a professional development model designed to help schools and districts strengthen their PLCs by aligning them to adult learning theory, differentiated needs, and real-world instructional challenges. Rather than pushing one-size-fits-all PD, VOYAGE provides schools with self-paced learning modules, facilitator guides, and implementation tools that support instructional coaches and school leaders in diagnosing and improving the effectiveness of their PLCs.
But here’s what truly changed things for me: artificial intelligence.
How AI Tools Empowered Me as a Creator
If you were to ask some of my former coworkers about my relationship with technology back when I worked in public education, most of them would probably laugh. Not because I was known for being tech-savvy. In fact, I was often seen as the least “techy” person in the room. I didn’t gravitate toward digital tools, I didn’t enjoy troubleshooting tech issues, and I certainly wasn’t the one people came to for app or software recommendations. No one, including me, would have guessed that I’d go on to work for not one, but two different tech companies after leaving education.
But sometimes, the right tools come along at the right time and they change what you believe is possible.
As I began developing VOYAGE Horizons, I started exploring tools like ChatGPT, Synthesia, Pictory, and PlayHT. I didn’t have a full design team. I wasn’t sitting on a marketing budget. I was one person with some time on her hands. What I had were ideas and lots of them. I had a vision for what better professional learning communities could look like. These tools helped me bring them to life.
With ChatGPT, I could quickly draft content, simplify complex frameworks, and brainstorm creative ways to support teachers and leaders. Synthesia allowed me to create realistic AI-powered “talking head” videos—something I never would have attempted before. Pictory helped me turn written content into short, polished videos, and PlayHT gave me access to professional voiceovers without needing to hire talent. In fact, with PlayHT I could clone my own voice and what would normally take me hours to get just right as a voiceover, now took minutes.
These tools didn’t just make content creation more efficient. They gave me the freedom to build professional-quality learning experiences on my own without needing to become a video editor, voice actor, or designer. They helped transform me from a burned-out educator into a confident creator and innovator.
It turns out, you don’t have to be “techy” to do meaningful work with technology. You just need tools that are accessible, intuitive, and built to support your ideas not replace them.
These tools didn’t just help me create content they allowed me to create things I never had the technical skills to do before. I would have been too intimidated to even try to build the skills. What once would have cost thousands of dollars and weeks of outsourced work was now something I could do on my own.
That moment of creative freedom shifted something for me: AI isn’t about replacing educators or content creators. It’s about extending what’s possible, especially for those of us working with limited time, energy, or resources.
From Curiosity to Deep Dive: Training LLMs at Google
My interest in AI deepened. I wanted to know how it all worked, not just what it could do. That led me to accept a contract position with Google, where I worked directly on training and refining their large language models (LLMs).
The experience was both technical and deeply human. I saw how much human reasoning, nuance, and care went into teaching these models how to respond to complex questions. It was a reminder that behind every “smart” AI tool are thousands of hours of human thought and intention.
That insight reshaped how I thought about AI in education. It’s not magic, and it’s not the enemy. When done right, it’s a powerful partner.
Now: Leading Tier 3 AI Implementation in Public Schools
Today, I serve as the MTSS Implementation Manager for an AI startup that’s working to transform how public schools support students in Tier 3 intervention.
The core idea is powerful: take an AI-powered learning platform originally developed and refined over 10 years in a private school setting and adapt it to meet the real needs of public school students, particularly those in Tier 3.
In its original form, the platform enabled students to complete personalized academic instruction in just 2 to 3 hours a day. The rest of the day was left open for teachers, now called guides, to lead project-based workshops, coach students in developing real-world skills, and focus on what they do best: build relationships and foster growth.
Now, we’re piloting that same platform within Tier 3 intervention blocks in public schools, where students are often years below grade level and the traditional systems are failing to meet their needs.
What’s Broken in Tier 3 and How AI Can Help
If you’ve ever worked in a Tier 3 setting, you know the reality: students are grouped together despite widely varying skill gaps. Teachers are expected to differentiate across multiple levels without the time, training, or materials to do it well. Often, students get slotted into a generic computer program for 20 minutes a day, with no real alignment to their actual learning gaps.
It’s not that teachers don’t care. It’s that the expectations are impossible.
The AI platform I’m helping implement in public schools handles the part that’s nearly impossible to do manually with limited time and resources: analyzing assessment data, identifying exact learning gaps, and generating personalized learning paths that adapt in real time.
This allows the teacher to do what no AI can. The teacher has the time to build relationships, coach students through obstacles, set meaningful goals, and help students develop the metacognitive skills they need to take ownership of their learning.
The AI delivers the instructional precision. The teacher brings the human connection.
Why This Work Matters to Me
This edtech tool is a new way of thinking about intervention. One that respects the complexity of teaching, honors the value of educators, and finally gives students the targeted, individualized support they need.
For students who’ve struggled for years and feel left behind, this model offers a fresh start. For teachers who are stretched thin and out of options, it offers support and relief. And for me, it brings the journey full circle, from burnout and reinvention, to building resources for educators, to now helping lead the rollout of a tool that has the potential to address issues that so many educators face in public education.
I’m just incredibly proud to be part of something that puts educators back at the center of innovation and gives students the kind of support they’ve always deserved.
Because when we give teachers the right tools, and students the right support, real transformation becomes possible.
