Not just an educated educator, a Super Teacher!

This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.

Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,

educated educators talking education.

Yeah, there it is. It's Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk,

educated educators talking education.

Just Tim and Jess here on the Saturday afternoon, Jess, what's happening?

Oh, it's been a full week of pencil busting, my friend.

Oh, my goodness. Tell me about it.

Yeah. And everybody's like, where's Johnny? Hey, sometimes,

Johnny's, you know, he's got to do other things.

He is an educated educator.

Sometimes he gets caught up in that world of educating,

but we have a fantastic guest for you today.

A brand new pencil buster, Tim.

Come on, bring this guy on.

Bring him on right away. Well, I can't, you know,

gotta get a great Busted Pencils introduction.

So everybody, he is a former public school teacher who transitioned

from the classroom to the boardroom,

now leading a fast-growing venture-funded ed tech company.

He began his career teaching in an underperforming school in Harlem

before moving to Stuyvesant High School in New York City,

one of the nation's top performing schools,

where he was chosen as the faculty graduation speaker

by the class of 2007.

He then earned a PhD in Applied Math, the Cornell University,

where he developed mathematical models of educational software,

following his doctorate.

He founded Fly Labs, a startup acquired by Google,

where he spent five years creating AI features for Google Photos

and working in Google Research.

Driven by a passion for education,

he left Google to start Super Teacher,

the first AI tutor for elementary schools,

delivering over 200,000 hours of private tutoring last year

and partnering with schools across the Midwest.

Welcome to Busted Pencils, Tim, Super Teacher Novikov.

Tim, what's happening?

Thanks for the great introduction.

I loved it.

As I was listening to it,

it's like reliving my entire life from the first day of my first job

all the way through the twists and turns.

Yeah, it's great to be here.

Yeah, come on, there's a lot of stuff.

I mean, you've done some very interesting things,

getting you up to this point of being the CEO of Super Teacher

and how we get, you know, and the app and people,

you know, we're going to talk a ton about that.

But Tim, you know, the bio that I read there,

it's significant because, I mean, you know,

we are educated educators talking education,

and the reality is that, I mean,

you were first and foremost a teacher in those days.

I was just wondering, you know, just talking about,

you know, the experience you had teaching in Harlem

and then the move to Sivas and just some, you know,

some reminiscing.

What, you know, what do you remember?

What was it you loved?

Yeah, you know, I mean, for me,

it even goes further back than that.

My parents were teachers.

My grandmother was a teacher.

My wife is a teacher.

My eight-year-old daughter wants to be a teacher.

And it goes on and on.

My brother's a teacher.

His wife is a teacher.

My wife's mom is a teacher.

It's sort of just on the family.

And it wasn't unusual that, you know,

across the dinner table as a child would be talking about,

well, the goings-on of schools,

but also even just, you know, pedagogy and teaching math.

That type of thing.

Yeah, my first, my first job was with the New York City Teaching Fellows,

which is sort of a teach for America,

built specifically for the New York City Department of Education,

bureaucracy.

And initially,

did my student teaching up in Harlem is actually summer school.

And it was, it was a pretty rough situation.

There's, you know, if there was a heat wave,

there was no air conditioning,

just an extremely loud, large fan,

that, you know, when, when they put it on,

almost nobody could hear any,

any teaching anymore.

And so then it turned it off and everybody would start sweating.

It was impossible to, to focus.

And, you know, through a,

through a crazy,

a bit of a bureaucratic mishap,

when I shut up for my first day of the full year,

I was teaching at that school.

I fell brand off high school on about,

about 131st Street in Convin,

Avenue in Harlem,

where incidentally my aunt had attended high school,

you know, decades prior.

You know, I said, all right.

So where should I go?

And they said, oh,

you didn't get the letter.

You don't have a job here anymore.

Is that what?

This is like my first job out of college.

Right.

And the department says, oh, yeah.

No, you didn't get the letter.

There was a, you know,

a senior already transferred,

which is a sort of a New York City,

you know,

jargon for, you know,

a position was open,

but somebody with more seniority requested the,

the position.

And so anybody who doesn't have a,

so called building tenure,

gets bumped out.

And so that happened to me,

unbeknownst to me.

And,

that was the first day of my first job out of college.

Nice.

And, you know,

the way I ended up at Stuyveson is,

is a little,

a little crazy.

First thing I did was I called all the other schools in Harlem,

you know,

bread and roses high school,

boys and girls,

they all had their math teachers,

their slate of teachers set up for the year.

And eventually I was sent to this,

you know, New York City,

DOE,

it might have still been the BOE,

the Board of Ed,

you know,

office,

where I'm on a long line of teachers

who are getting random assignments

somewhere in the five boroughs,

where,

so it's sort of a list of a lot of the teachers

who are probably not the most sought after teachers

in the system in the first place.

And I don't even have a file number.

And a few weeks prior,

somebody who tipped off Stuyveson,

that there was a sort of,

you know,

you know,

talented math guy in the New York City Teaching Fellows program

that they might want to try to recruit me.

So I actually had gotten a recruiting call

from Stuyveson High School,

asking if I wanted to

interview

for a position that had recently opened up.

And I actually declined them.

I said,

you know what?

I actually joined the New York City Teaching Fellows

to,

you know,

teaching a heart to staff in their city's school.

I don't want to leave them in the lurch,

you know,

a few weeks before the school year started.

I didn't know they were going to leave me in the lurch,

you know, as it were.

And so I called them back on a payphone.

I called 3-1-1,

got the phone number,

because this is 2003,

and said,

hey, are you not interviewing for that role?

Any chance?

Still, are you?

And they said,

Tim, we're just wrapping up.

You have to take a cab down here right away

and teach a lesson on the law of co-signs.

And I took a cab down,

sort of winged it with my very first,

you know,

sort of a lesson on the subject for the interview

two hours later,

head of the department called,

said, Tim,

you got the job.

Show up tomorrow.

We'll tell you what your classes are.

at that point, though,

did, did you know

the reputation of Syversent in,

yes.

Okay.

I did.

I'd actually gotten into Syversent as a kid

growing up in New York City,

and then declined to go,

because I went,

I wanted to be an actor at the time,

and I went to LaGuardia High School,

which is the School of the Movie Fame.

And I sort of did a lot of acting.

I did voices on a MTV cartoon.

Okay.

I'll wait.

I wanted to ask the question of that.

If you are the same Tim notebook off,

that when I'm doing searches on you that pops up,

that you were the voice of,

is it Jeffy?

That's right.

In the MTV show,

Darry.

That's right.

That was really my,

my actual first job was basically doing voices

for, for an MTV cartoon,

initially for a pilot that didn't take off

and then for Darria.

Yeah.

Jess, what do you think about that?

Well, now it makes more sense when we were doing our,

you know, pre-show equipment checks,

and you,

you did more work than I did.

Sorry.

Well,

I don't know.

Back when I was a kid,

they would,

you know, they would tell me what,

what to do in the sound studio.

But,

yeah, it's going to be in front of a mic again, I guess.

Well, I don't have, yeah.

Yeah.

We totally are.

In fact, too,

if you would like to,

you know, again,

I would like to have a name for you,

so,

yeah,

we were going to like to do that today for some of you

that are going to like to cross bond and have all of those

conversations with anybody.

And the way they want to participate

with busted pencils we have our guests today,

Tim Novakov,

he is the CEO of супertiture.

We're going to be talking a lot more about super

teacher how we got there.

But you know,

Tim started off as a math teacher.

And so Tim,

did you always have

just this

you know,

I mean, when I say you know,

I did,

I got by with what I had to do.

I think maybe algebra two,

a little bit of geometry.

Precalc.

Nope,

nope,

nope,

nope,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

инов,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

no,

I was always

pretty good in math as a kid.

My dad was a mathematician and taught calculus at NYU.

So I was kind of around the talk of math all the time.

And

it wasn't surprising when I got into it,

even more and more as I went to high school at college and majored in it.

And so,

you know,

everybody sort of almost everybody fails out of math at some point.

You know,

I,

you know,

I ended up going a little further,

majoring in math and then going to grad school.

But, you know,

when I took the hardest math,

you know,

graduate level math classes in,

you know,

in grad school,

they were right at the edge where I could barely follow anymore.

And if I went any further,

I don't think I'd be able to follow anymore at all.

And,

you know,

I've even talked to some of guest mathematicians who said,

you know,

this,

this happens to them as well.

And so,

I think that's what he does,

does hit their wall.

You know,

okay.

Eventually.

So it's just a question of one.

Yeah.

Okay.

So even mathematicians

have a breaking point when it comes to math.

Very often.

Yep.

Okay.

So Jess,

there we go.

We're,

we're,

we're okay.

We're doing fine then.

Sounds like

we're doing fine.

Oh,

man.

But,

yeah,

think about that,

you know,

teaching,

you know,

you know,

you know,

you know,

you know,

you know,

you know,

you know,

we're in this teacher shortage area,

or era that we have right now.

I mean,

you know,

if you can be a math teacher,

the ability to just go wherever it is,

you would like to go as out there,

you know,

working in teacher education,

as I have for,

you know, over 20 years,

the number of students

to get them interested in becoming, you know, a math teacher.

Sometimes even that is such a hurdle,

because,

you know,

again,

I mean,

I mean,

a really good questionplatification,

the experience that a lot of my future teachers had,

almost is it not almost,

a lot of them felt discouraged

by being a math learner.

And,

and so the idea of becoming a math teacher

was just something

that,

that they weren't interested in.

And these are people

who actually had some really,

you know,

insightful ways of looking at mathematics.

And you could tell

that they were good,

but they had turned off.

I don't know, Tim,

20 seconds there.

What do you,

you know what I'm talking about here?

Yes, I do.

I mean, I think if people

have a great math teacher,

that can often be a big inspiration for them.

For me,

I think my father is an inspiration for me,

but I think in the future,

people might be inspired by,

AI math teachers.

I don't know.

I like Super Teacher.

We'll talk more about that.

Yeah, we'll talk more.

Our guest, Tim Novakov,

he is the CEO of Super Teacher.

We're just talking about his math.

Experiences, teaching and stifers in high school,

New York City.

When we get back there,

let's dig into the education technology

that we're talking about.

Busted pencils,

back after the break.

Yeah, of course,

we always see your smile.

Busted pencils,

fully-led education talk.

And we know Jess has the best bumper music

in the country, Jess.

Maybe, you know,

we know we've got listeners who just

come on because they're like,

you want to hear some cool music?

You guys got to listen to Busted pencils

because Jess is delivering all the time.

Well, happy to make you smile.

It made me smile.

It's Busted pencils,

fully-led education talk.

Our guest, Tim Novakov,

he is the founder and CEO of Super Teacher.

Came up though as a math teacher,

started in New York City,

was going to start in Harlem,

ended up at Stibeson.

How then, though, Tim,

now let's make the transition here,

because you highlighted, though,

and just get a little question, though,

on this,

the AI,

we know it's coming.

And in fact,

we're going to talk a lot about it.

But,

yeah.

Do you really see the possibility

of,

of AI

being a teacher or being

an assistant to a teacher?

Well,

AI is never going to replace a teacher.

So that,

that is not possible.

I think if there's,

you know,

I'm humble about a lot of things,

but my insights into this particular issue

of AI and teaching and education,

I think I'm among the world's foremost experts as,

you know,

could this ever happen?

And my answer to that is no.

It can never happen.

AI will never replace a teacher.

And not just because of sort of like feel good,

you know,

teachers are replaceable and they're so wonderful,

though,

that's definitely true.

I feel that,

I feel that way.

But just the practical reality is you can't,

like,

no parent would drop their kids off at a school

that doesn't have teachers in the classroom.

Okay.

You wouldn't even really want,

at the high school level,

kids in a classroom that didn't have a teacher.

You know,

when I was a high school teacher,

you know,

even legally,

you couldn't leave the classroom before getting another

adult to be in the room.

And if that could have worked anywhere,

maybe it would have been at a school like stivocent where,

you know,

kids are very motivated and generally speaking,

you know,

almost no behavioral problems.

But the reality is,

when it's nothing but the high school kids,

you know,

that all sorts of stuff happens,

you know,

bullying,

you know, flirting.

It's just like,

it's not going to actually be,

you know,

like a,

a well-functioning math class

without a math teacher in there.

There's just no way,

no how.

So,

just the practical reality

is that it would never happen.

It's,

it would also be not good for the kids.

No parent wants this.

I don't think any kids would really want it.

The teachers wouldn't want it.

The teacher,

you know,

the union wouldn't allow it.

I mean,

there's just no way

that this is ever going to happen.

You know,

these factors are less at play.

It's still never going to happen.

AI will never replace teachers.

Yeah.

So good to hear that

because I, you know,

I know some listeners

are out there going,

oh,

oh, here's, you know,

here's an ed tech guy.

He was a teacher.

He's moved into ed tech.

And now,

you know,

he's going to start selling

the replacements of teachers.

And,

yeah,

just give you a sense

to first kind of talk about that,

like that.

Yeah.

It seems impossible.

I will say that,

I think that,

some of the instruction

can happen by AI.

And even one day in the classroom,

that's not really what super teacher does.

It's not sort of,

you know,

designed to be,

you know, on the,

the smart board in the front of the classroom.

It's really a one and one tutor,

which we talked about more later.

And it's primarily used at home,

although it also gets used in the classroom

for one and one instruction.

But I've seen some,

some teachers want to put something up there

and carry out a little conversation,

sort of a,

you know,

a lecture or back and forth,

Colin responds the way,

you know,

good teachers might,

might be teaching.

And that might happen a little,

but it's not going to replace the,

replace the teacher,

any more than video,

replace teachers.

I mean,

teachers actually,

and typically end up being the first ones

to embrace this type of thing.

You know,

when we were kids,

or at least when I was a kid,

we would have teachers who push in a,

you know,

a VCR and a TV and play a video tape sometimes.

And that doesn't replace the teacher.

That's something that augments the experience

where you can show,

you know,

you know,

like Ken Burns,

Civil War,

you know,

documentary or something like that.

It's a,

it's a great addition.

And that might happen,

even at the classroom level.

Yeah.

But it's not going to replace teachers.

No, no way.

I like the way you said that to the augment

because I've,

you know, I've been talking about it.

And just, you know,

there's a little bit of a history here.

We talk about AI,

Tim and Johnny have the conversation.

I'm,

I'm more of the absolutely accepting

and love the fact that I think

it's a cultural shift.

Johnny's more on that.

You're drinking the cool aid.

Yeah.

You're always drinking the cool aid.

Not,

and then he'll come back

because I'm not.

And, you know, he's like,

he was a math teacher too.

And he talks about,

you know,

when the calculators came in.

And so, you know,

in the fact that those augment

and they didn't replace him as a math teacher

and things like that.

Yeah.

You know,

I though continue to just be inspired

by the potential of how it could really make

teachers even better,

giving more opportunities

that we haven't even been,

we may have imagined that we wanted to do,

but just because of the workload

and the realities of what it means

to be a classroom teacher with 25, 30 students,

you know,

how to individualize instruction.

It might be our goal,

but the reality is it's so,

so hard.

I'm thinking about that,

you know,

in fact,

if you've had to have that individualized instruction

and the challenge we're talking about is a teacher,

but we'd like to hear from you.

That's why we have our mail back,

6085578577,

608557855777.

I'd also say that, you know,

and if you have a concern about AI and teaching,

we also want to hear about it.

And remember too,

there's also the text line 8557524842.

Important note there.

Just quick before we move on.

The text line is for those of you

who are listening to the broadcast

right now across civic media.

If you're listening on the app,

that means you can send us a text with one click.

If you're not,

you can still text us in at 8557524842.

If you're listening to the podcast though,

you can text us or call

and leave us a voice message at 6085578577.

Yeah, thank you, Jess.

I knew I was making a mess of that.

Oh, so Tim,

where then though,

the question because we're not a super teacher yet,

but how do you make the transition

because before super teacher,

you work,

you create your own

a vision entrepreneurial in Google,

talk a little bit about how you get

from teaching to super teacher that midpoint.

Yeah, so when I went to graduate school,

you know,

I explored a few things

and, you know,

kind of to skip to the punchline,

I was experimenting a little

with making educational software

when the iPhone first came out in 2007

when the SDK came out in 2008,

made a little app called Flash of Genius

as a little Flashcards app.

And I started getting interested

in the algorithms behind that.

And so that ended up being my dissertation.

So I actually spent a lot of time

in graduate school

making an iPhone app.

And I'm also studying

and proving theorems about the algorithms behind it.

And that was my entree into the tech industry.

Sort of effectively,

I was in graduate school,

but, you know,

learning to code and making apps

and figuring out entrepreneurship.

And so after grad school,

I decided to take the plunge

instead of doing a postdoc

and try to become a professor,

just, you know,

started a little startup.

It was unrelated to education

or sort of maybe a regret.

I took a wayward path away from education,

making a video editing app

is acquired by Google.

And while I was at Google,

I started doing a lot of AI.

So if you use Google Photos

and you get a collage

or a video of your child growing up,

sets in a nostalgic music,

I was the person behind those features.

And so that was my entree into AI.

And at some point,

I said,

you know what?

I'm just going to quit Google.

Use this AI knowledge.

I have picked up

and make an AI tutor

for elementary school kids.

And that's where we're headed.

It's our guest,

it's Tim Novakov.

Yeah, CEO of Super Teacher.

Got a lot to talk about here.

And the segment three,

it's supposed to pencil.

So make sure you come back

here more from Tim.

Make sure you come back

here more from Tim.

I tried to block the mouse.

I tried to touch the cow.

I tried every night.

I tried every night.

I tried every night.

I tried every night.

Waiting for something to happen.

But nothing is snapping

inside of this trend.

But there's always something happening here.

It's busted pencils.

Holy.

Let it education talk.

Educated educators talking education.

Yeah, that's rise against people out there.

Who is that?

That's Tim McElriff.

Rise against.

Man, we didn't have enough time.

We didn't have enough.

Tim is on the stage.

I don't know.

That would have really made just.

Actually, you know,

Tim early on did a little 10 minute interview with me.

One time Tim Novakov.

So, you know,

again, but in one of the reasons too,

we say the music,

the music does make a difference for the show,

because we really want to kind of,

you know, talk about this from,

from the standpoint of,

you know, it's a little bit of pushing

against the system,

pushing against the grain,

pushing against the status quo,

because that's what we do here.

So Tim,

okay.

So you make the move,

then,

from teaching into development,

developing an app for the iPhone,

working with Google,

saying,

though,

okay, wait a minute.

I want to come back,

though,

to teaching and,

and that's just leads you into super teachers.

Give us a little bit of a sense of saying,

so really,

like,

why?

Why?

Why would you leave Google

when I'm sure life was good?

Yes.

It's a good question.

And life,

life was good.

The, you know,

there was sort of a few tributaries

to the idea of super teacher.

You know,

one was during the pandemic.

You know,

I saw that,

you know, wealthy families were just paying,

you know,

$1,000 a month

for online tutoring for their kids

to make up for learning loss.

But most people can obviously not afford

$1,000 a month.

That's ridiculous.

And I thought,

wouldn't it be cool

if families could get unlimited tutoring

for $10 a month?

You know,

something that most families can afford.

And I also knew from my work at Google

and at Google Research

that the AI was now ready for this.

There's better speech recognition for children.

There's natural language processing.

There's, you know,

synthetic voices.

You could really make a,

an AI tutor that was capable of,

you know,

sort of automatically delivering private tutoring.

So I felt this was a whole in the world

that for the first time could be filled

thanks to AI that was just,

just about coming,

coming out.

And, you know,

I,

I thought I wanted to do another startup

and I knew that once I do a startup,

I'll just be obsessed with it.

I'll be, you know,

thinking about it all the time.

And I didn't want to not be working with my kids

who are three and five at the time.

And so part of the reason I made super teacher

was so that working on a startup

could be sort of part and parcel of spending time with my kids.

And, you know, my kids,

not only have they taken over a thousand lessons

and super teacher,

and learned a huge amount of,

you know, math, multiplication,

division,

reading, reading comprehension,

just from,

just from super teacher,

the AI tutor that we developed.

But, you know,

now my eight-year-old,

you know,

files bugs with the engineers.

Hey, there's a bug.

This thing's not working correctly.

So it's become a little bit of a family affair.

And, you know,

there's sort of various reasons why I did it.

But, you know,

once you do it,

you know,

it's like, you've jumped off.

You can't go back.

And now I just got to,

just got to make it work.

And that's,

that's where we are right now.

Thankfully, it's going well.

So this,

yeah, so this is a tutor.

It's an app then.

So, you know,

that's right.

And what's,

you know,

what's interesting.

I think people might,

might find this is that,

I mean,

and you develop this for

early elementary,

elementary area.

That's right.

And I would imagine that there's a question out there going up.

But,

I mean,

you know,

that's where you're going to be,

that's what you're going to be.

So,

I,

I mean,

I can hear some people going,

geez,

really,

we want to get them on an app already.

Or them,

the ability,

do they even have the skill set

and the ability to work with this?

And,

yeah,

you brought along,

you know,

a little show and tell for us.

Yes.

The day.

And then,

you wanted to.

So,

we're all set.

Okay.

We're all set.

So, what I'll do is I'll play,

I'll play a little video and you'll be able to hear it.

And what it is is a,

this is a six-year-old.

It's actually my six-year-old.

She might have been five at the time.

And this is just a little clip.

It's actually one of the ads we run on Facebook.

It's a little clip of super teacher doing some reading

with my daughter and listening to what she's saying.

She's trying to read a sentence off the screen.

She doesn't quite get it correct.

You know,

read it correctly.

She's trying to read the teacher,

reads it for her,

helps, you know,

her do it again.

Let me just play.

You'll be able to hear it.

If you're on video,

you can watch it.

But it's pretty self-explanatory.

What's going on?

Just listening.

I'll play it now.

Michelle,

can you read the sentence?

The chair is blue.

So close.

Let's try it together.

The chairs are blue.

Your turn.

The chairs are blue.

Michelle, that was great reading.

Perfect.

And that's,

that's the basic idea.

You know,

each lesson is conversational.

And that's what makes super teacher unique

compared to any sort of educational app that came before it.

Here, the child speaks back and forth with an avatar.

It's an animated teacher character.

And each lesson is about 10 minutes.

And super teacher is capable of teaching children to read,

to add, to subtract,

multiply, and divide.