Episode 149: Creating Products that Support Teachers and Students with Alexandra Walsh of Amplify

Alexandra Walsh is the Chief Product Officer at Amplify. She develops, leads, and implements a strategic vision that delivers product coherence and common platform excellence across Amplify's math, literacy and science product suites. Previously, she was senior vice president and general manager of ELA curriculum, overseeing product development on the company's curriculum platform.

In this episode, we discuss how Alexandra started teaching in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and how she left the classroom for policy work. We also dive into how policy affects teachers and students, and the need for curriculum that is both research-backed and adaptable to diverse classroom contexts. Tune in to how Alexandra brings both a teaching and policy perspective to her work.

 
 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.


Alexandra Walsh is the Chief Product Officer at Amplify. She develops leads and implements a strategic vision that delivers product coherence and common platform excellence across Amplify's math, literacy and science product suites. Previously, she was senior vice president and general manager of ELA curriculum, leading ELA’s business and overseeing product development on the company's curriculum platform. Prior to Amplify, Alexandra was at the Bridgespan Group where she provided strategic advisory services to social sector leaders on a range of issues including education, child welfare and government effectiveness. She started her career with Teach For America as a high school biology teacher in Louisiana. Welcome Alexandra. So nice to have you here.


Alexandra Walsh  0:43  

Nice to be here. 


Lily Jones  0:44  

So I always start with the same giant question, which you can take in whatever direction you want, which is, tell us about your journey as an educator or your professional journey, whatever you want to start with.


Alexandra Walsh  0:56  

Yeah, absolutely. I guess that to start, I would start maybe very young, which is my aunt was a first grade teacher in public schools in Arizona where I grew up, and I would always help her, like, grade papers, and I always like, love decorating her classroom. Back to school, my parents were also really involved in our public school system. My dad ran the like bond and override elections, and so I'd go to school board meetings with him. So I feel like I was sort of always in schools, not just as a student, but like in the school system. That was just a big part of my of my family and my upbringing. And so then in college, and I was sort of deciding what to do. I had worked a lot with kids in different capacities, never as a formal teacher, but I taught at a science and writing camp. Speaking of Berkeley through eight to six, I don't know it's great, yeah, so I taught at eight to six Boston the summer before my senior year, and really loved it. And then when I was deciding what to do, decided to apply to Teach for America, where I ultimately, just like, ended up moving to New Orleans, a city I had literally never been to. It's a good one to choose, though it was, it was incredible. It was just such an incredible city to be in after college. Made great friends, but, you know, most importantly, really, found a home in that community with students who I'm still close with and talk to on a near daily basis. So I would say it was sort of, you know, very natural. It was something I'd always gravitated toward I really loved school, and I always have found that public schools in particular are like a real cornerstone of the community. And that was certainly true for my experience in New Orleans, where the community itself was rebuilding post Katrina, and it really rebuilt around the school system, the superintendent was like, the driving force of people moving back to the community, and they really rebuilt around having excellent schools. And yeah, so that really solidified that going into education was the right choice for me.


Speaker 1  3:16  

Amazing. And then what happened next after you were teaching in New Orleans,


Alexandra Walsh  3:21  

yeah. Um, so, like I said, I really enjoyed the community aspects of my job, I think, as much, if not more than some of the kind of classroom teaching aspects and even within the classroom, I always found that I, like, really bonded with students in tutoring time after school, or I was a high school teacher, so I coached swimming and running. Got to go to football games, basketball games, so I felt like I got to be a part of so much more of their experience than just the classroom. And in that, just saw a lot about the dynamics of the community and the impact of the policy landscape on on education. And that was particularly true in the Greater New Orleans area, where the shift toward charter schools had been such a massive change, and there was just a lot from a funding and public policy standpoint, both federally post Katrina, and also locally as it related to charter changes, that really just ignited an interest in things like beyond the classroom. So I went to policy school where I did primarily focus on children and families, so beyond education, but really anything related to children and families, a particular focus on the social safety net and programs that impact low income children and families. And then after that, worked at a consulting firm that that supports nonprofits and foundations. And so it was sort of still involved. Some I did some education clients, but some broader, i. Multi service organizations like foster care and adoption organizations. So always have been in the world of like kids families. But definitely did veer a little beyond education for a while, but joined amplify almost 10 years ago now, and so came back very squarely into education and haven't. Haven't looked back since. 


Lily Jones  5:20  

That's such an interesting journey, and I appreciate hearing about the policy part of it, too. I'd love to hear a little bit more about kind of going into the policy world, moving a little broader than just education, then coming back to education. How did that inform your thinking?


Alexandra Walsh  5:34  

Yeah, I mean, I think it's been helpful, even to this day, to be honest, amplify does a lot of policy work. In the end, all of our customers are school systems, and school systems are government organizations, and that means that they are impacted by laws like legislation from the federal level all the way down to school boards and like local tax measures. So it's something I use frequently, and just my general knowledge and understanding of how those processes work certainly has benefited even my job at amplify that's obviously much more curriculum product focused now. But the other part that I would say is probably most front of mind to me is like, the ways in which there are so many external forces on any given classroom teacher. That's why I wanted to go into policies. Understand, like, sometimes you feel like you're in an ocean treading water, and you're just like, Why can't all these things around me change, and I think I got a better understanding of that as you learn a little bit more about the macro forces of government, and that's true still today for teachers. I you know, I've worked now across, really all 50 states, some of them quite deeply, and try to really keep front and center as we build products that we are like such a tiny part of their overall ecosystem, and a lot of what we want to try to do is make the teacher's life easier recognizing they already have so many complicated pressures on them and so many other external forces. So I do. I think my ability to situate our products within a broader landscape of policy has been useful in so far as making sure that I don't, I never let us, you know, amplify or our teams, feel like we're too much the center of the universe. We try to really make sure that we're playing within the universe that impacts teachers on a daily basis.


Speaker 1  7:48  

And that's so important realizing and knowing the complexity of what it's like to be a teacher, right? Like, I think that unless you have been a teacher or studied policies that affect teachers and even teachers in the classroom, like when I was in the classroom, there were so many things were so many things that were affecting me that I had little knowledge of. And so it was just like, Okay, now we're doing this, but why, or where did that come from? Or, you know, why this change in direction that it felt kind of like I was getting whiplash sometimes, of like, Wait, what are we doing now? And so I think that acknowledgement of the realities of being a teacher and then supporting teachers within this system that is complex and has all these moving parts,


Alexandra Walsh  8:27  

Yeah, and I think, you know, so many industries, but education in particular, has a lot of it's very emotional for people and for politicians, and so It can often feel challenging because it becomes, you know, it can become political quickly. And I think part of what we try to make sure we're doing is that we're really partnering with districts, partnering with teachers, and making sure that we're, you know, that we're there for them, and that we're a strong partner and and really an organization that they can rely on and trust in, in what is inevitably just such a challenging job. The other, the other thing that I was, I was so young, right out of college, and that's true for so many teachers. And not only that, the teacher turnover today is so high that so many teachers aren't brand new to the profession, and so we also try to think a lot about that. And even though I'm far from my classroom experience now, and I often do think I need to, like, go back, so that I have that visceral emotion that I had even when I started at amplify 10 years ago, I definitely still have the experience of being a new teacher, which I think is so unique, even relative to being a veteran teacher, and because not only do you not know all the forces that are operating, but like you don't even basically know how to have a job at that point,...


Lily Jones  9:54  

or how to actually teach children...


Alexandra Walsh  9:57  

and you know you might have had varying. Prep programs, different school structures that are more or less supportive. So we really try to design products that can support people who are in that position, recognizing that, you know, it's a really scary place to be, and one with enormous responsibility to really help try to guide and support kids.


Speaker 1  10:22  

Absolutely. I think about that all the time as a curriculum designer too. Of like, great curriculum is a teaching tool, and it can, absolutely, like, not just tell teachers how to teach content, but it can teach them how to teach. And so having that lens on it too. And...


Alexandra Walsh  10:38  

 Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more.


Speaker 1  10:41  

 I'd love to hear a little bit more about your journey at amplify. I know you've been there for a decade. I think your role has changed over time. Can you talk to us about the different roles you've held in your role now? 


Alexandra Walsh  10:51  

Sure, I will do a short version, and then you can tell me if you want to know more, but I don't want to get for you or people with that. So I started at amplify, working directly for our CEO, who's a really visionary leader. He started our company at this point is our 25th anniversary. So 25 years ago. Thank you. And you know, I think has always been on the cutting edge of bringing technology to classrooms, but is a really unique leader in the education technology space, in that he's not just obsessed with like the flashy new technology, but really wants to make sure that we're bringing technology to bear in a way that meets A genuine need and helps the physical experience of learning, and I feel like he's always sort of driving toward that great classroom discussion moment, or the moment that, like the human interaction between a teacher and a kid really comes to life. And that's that's very clear through all of our product development. And so I started working directly for him, and basically got to shadow him for two years every day. And that really influenced a lot of how I thought about product development, which I confess is a career I literally didn't know existed amplify, because in some ways it was still, at least tech product development was still, you know, relatively new, obviously, sure, building products forever, but and then moved into run our ELA core curriculum business after that. So that was our k8 English language arts core curriculum business. I had majored in History and Literature in college, so had a personal kind of interest and passion, but did not know anything about the science of reading or how to teach younger kids to read. I had taught high school, and so I just learned a tremendous amount. We had such brilliant people, both internally, but also in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation and just really strong academic partners at University of Oregon and others. And so that was just a fascinating personal journey. And now I have a three year old, so seeing the way that language development works, and even him starting to hear sounds and letters. And you know, that's that's been a whole new, whole new lens on that. And then after running that single product, move to run our whole product portfolio. So the journey has been, you know, pretty natural. And I said I would be short, but that was actually quite long.


Speaker 1  13:31  

So no, that's great. I love hearing about it, and I love the parent perspective too. I taught kindergarten in first grade for many years, and then now I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old. And it's like, when my daughter was born, my 13 year old, it just was like, what, this is what happens before they get to school. I knew cognitively, but like being involved in somebody's life every day and seeing them go through these stages, it's such a different perspective.


Alexandra Walsh  13:55  

Yeah, I confess I thought things happened much slower, like, I think I thought they were beings. Were like, sort of, you know, not real humans until maybe, like, four and then. But yeah, that's been absolutely shocking to me how young it really developed personalities and perspectives. And I definitely find myself messaging Susan Lambert, our early reading guru, all the time with things I observe about the way my son is acquiring language and and sound patterns that are like more or less challenging for him to say. And even when I was naming my kids, I was asking her about things that like first name, last name combos that feel hard to say. You know, have something. Yeah, interesting. I was asking her sort of why that was so. Anyway, it has interesting. It's come in handy to work at a company that's that's very good at early reading.


Lily Jones  14:57  

Absolutely. And I'm sure it'll continue to be so as your kiddo gets Y


Alexandra Walsh  15:19  

He's still very little. And I think, you know, kids don't listen to their parents as they do to teachers. Sometimes, at least my kids awesome. So we talked about this a little bit, but I'd love to hear a little bit more from you just about how amplifies products support both teachers and students, and how you kind of, either you individually or you as a company, think about managing both of those things, like teaching teachers, supporting teachers, and also having great instructional outcomes for students.


Alexandra Walsh  15:44  

Yeah, it's, you know, it's interesting, because that has, there have been times where there's been, like, live debate within our product teams about the relative balance between focus on teachers focus on students. And I've heard really compelling arguments around around both. Obviously, you have to address both, but you know, kind of where your primary focus is. I mean, certainly our whole mission statement is a letter, kind of a love letter to teachers. We, as a primarily curriculum company, the vast and even our assessments are teacher administered. The vast majority of what we do is teacher led instruction, teacher led assessment. You know, even the data from our student on machine supplementals is is intended to help teachers as they, you know, then go to work with their students in teacher led environments. So we really believe that the teachers are the key, not just to, first and foremost, deciding whether or not we ever get in front of their students like they decide Lily what program is right for their kids. And so the first, the first thing is you have to convince them that what we have made is something that they want in their classroom. And so in that way, they are the ultimate decision maker and certainly the implementer and leader of their classroom with our materials, but also our stuff is only as good as it is teachable. You know, if we make things that are like beautiful in the abstract, or if you delivered it to one student, it would be lovely and totally unlock their mind. That's not that interesting, because you need it to be highly teachable. Work in such a variety of contexts, no two classrooms are even the same, even for the same teacher, your second period has a super different dynamic, because there's like this class clown who's been best friends with the other kids since they were five, and all of a sudden it's chaotic. And so you might be able to do things a second period you can't do with seventh because, you know, they're just different dynamics. So we really do try to make things that work in real classrooms, and that's certainly my personal interest, is in building things that people use and love and and that work in real classrooms. And in order to do that, think you have to really design with the teacher in mind, recognizing that that teacher has such a variety of students, and their goal is to reach all of them. So I think if you do it that way, then you can ultimately serve both the teacher and all of their students.


Lily Jones  18:33  

Yeah, it's so interesting hearing you articulate that I absolutely agree. And I think that you know as when you create a curriculum or any product for use in the classroom. You're thinking about diverse students at the end of it, and you know, students who learn in various different ways, but also teachers who learn in various different ways, and who are teaching in different settings, and who have different strengths in different areas of growth. And so I think it's interesting having this kind of like meta mindset of like differentiating that curriculum or that experience for teachers as well as students.


Alexandra Walsh  19:04  

Yeah. I mean, we just released our new platform, amplify classroom, which is an evolution of other platforms that we've had in the past, but at its core is Teacher editability capabilities, like we believe that we publish best in class programs that are aligned to the research, but ultimately have to fit the teacher, their context and their personality. Like, one of the things I always say about teaching is that it's like such a strange profession, because you have to be both, like academically rigorous, but also sort of like an actor and like, also a manager, and also, you know, and so there's so much about just the person's personality alone, whether or not they would feel comfortable delivering those words or that's like, that's not how I would ever say that to my kids. And so they might not want to change the core of the question, but they. To insert a funny joke before it, because that's how they are, or they don't like the funny joke we tried to make, so they want to take that out. So So I think we believe that we provide, like a very high bar on what, you know, excellent research backed pedagogy looks like. But ultimately, want teachers to feel that they have the ability to make it their own in a way that hopefully reflects or honors who they are as a professional and reflects who they are as people in all the ways that that manifests itself in a classroom.


Lily Jones  20:35  

I think that's perfect too, because teachers like I think teaching is inherently creative, right? And we need. Sometimes teachers leave teaching or get burned out because they can't be creative, because they're given a curriculum that's too rigid, and they don't feel like they can adapt it to the needs of their students or their own needs. And so on the flip side, sometimes teachers feel lost, right, and don't know exactly the structure in which to teach literacy or whatever it is, right? Like we need both. We need the structure and the ability for teachers to adapt and be creative. So I appreciate that you all are creating those products.


Alexandra Walsh  21:08  

Yeah. I mean, you know what? It can be hard for our teams. We have people who like pour their heart and soul into a lesson, and they love it. I mean, you know this from people who create curriculum really care about it, and know, they've done like, all this research and made this perfect, perfect, beautiful lesson. And so I, you know, I think I'm often reminding them that giving a teacher the ability to edit it doesn't degrade your your your beautiful lesson, like you have given them such a great foundation and a great starting point that standards align, research backed, and ultimately they will make it their delivery will be that much better if they feel really confident in in the fact that it's kind of their own


Lily Jones  21:56  

Absolutely. I mean, same thing with her students, right? Like when they can own their learning when teachers can own their teaching like it plays a huge role in engagement and achievement. Yeah, absolutely. So shifting a little bit to your experience, you know, moving out of the classroom, doing all these interesting things, oftentimes, teachers that I work with, they feel overwhelmed. They're like, well, I don't have the skills to do this. I don't have that experience. Can you talk a little bit about how you gained these skills or this knowledge through the journey?


Alexandra Walsh  22:25  

Yeah, I mean, I guess what I would say is that that probably isn't true. I totally understand why they think that. But, like, I was just saying, being a teacher, you're a public speaker, and so you have like, all these great public speaking skills. You have to do a lot of planning, and that's project management. You have to, you know, I, like I said, I didn't know product management was a career when I started at amplify. But when I worked here for about a year, I realized that I loved product management when I was a teacher, because what I did, I created curriculum for my school, and I would do it over the summer, and then, like all the science, biology teachers would use it and left it behind when I left and the and I loved that, like I and that is product management. You're researching the topic, you're packaging something, you're seeing users use it like you see your kids use it. You get a lot of feedback. Did not work well, you're pivoting based on the feedback, and then you're implementing it and like, ultimately that that is the core of product management. So I guess I would say that more likely than not, in or in a job like teaching you actually have a lot of skills that are applicable to many different office jobs, particularly at education companies. So I would just try to, like, zoom out a little bit from how you might define your current day to day, and think about the underlying skills in terms of, like, what you're actually doing to approach it.


Lily Jones  24:04  

I absolutely agree. Oftentimes, teachers I work with, we look at job postings and like, really dig in, of like, what have you done that's similar, and it's pretty amazing, not that everything connects, right? But so many things do when we really think about it, of like, oh, like, you scaled this professional development program. And so putting in this new frame or this new language can be so helpful.


Alexandra Walsh  24:27  

yeah, and I think if you know that you're thinking about either leaving the classroom or wanting to do something different, the other thing I would look for is opportunity. I mean, I know this is what you all do a lot, but like opportunities over the summer, companies like amplify, hire teachers all the time for seasonal jobs. Like, obviously, our peak is at back to school, and if you're a teacher, like, on the east coast, you could do a ton of our trainings in early August in the south like, right? Like, there's a lot of these sort. Of seasonal type jobs that we hire people for that would give you a like, a foot in the door, and also looking for opportunities within your district, like, like I said, mine had the opportunity to kind of package up all the lesson writing I had done and make it more usable by teachers, other teachers, those kinds of things, offering to do a professional development course for your peers, you know, saying yes to those opportunities gives you some of those things on your resume that that I think can be transferable.


Lily Jones  25:37  

Yeah, and I think doing those things too, gives you an idea of if you like them. Like, sometimes we just don't know until we try it out and you're like, oh, actually, I love coaching teachers, or, actually I hate writing curriculum or whatever it is, right? Like, trying it out rather than just being like, in our heads all the time. I think could be so helpful.


Alexandra Walsh  25:55  

Yeah. And I, you know, I also think if you do leave the classroom, whether for a job within your school or your district, or totally outside of your district. Give it a little time. One of my best friends left the classroom after a decade and was shell shocked, like, Oh my gosh. What do I do? Because it's so quiet. Sure, I started an office shop, I was like, it's so quiet here. Schools are amazing. They're so loud, they're bustling, they're fun, wild, and most jobs aren't like that. And that's really nice. Like, your cortisol levels probably don't ever get quite as high, but it can be really jarring. And you know, you probably don't have to be at your office job at 7am or 6:30am and so you can feel like, what am I doing? Like, this is your schedule is different. So, yeah, I think you have to give yourself a little a little bit of time to adjust, because I did find the speed My first job was not right for me. It was too slow relative to school my first non teaching job, but I but this one is much closer to that. So I think that the mode of working is also really different when you're not in front of people all the time. 


Lily Jones  27:22  

Yeah, I definitely had that experience. I left the classroom when my daughter was born and I was teaching Kinder teaching kindergarten, and I was just like, I can't have that experience throughout the day, right? Like, I love teaching in kindergarten, but then having a little time your child, I was like, I just have to be on all the time. And so that didn't work for me. And I loved the quiet of like, just quietly writing curriculum while she was napping? Yeah.


Alexandra Walsh  27:42  

Oh, totally. And to your point, so much of it, so much of it, depends on where you are in your life, too. Yeah, I think that is I can't imagine having the classroom full of kindergarteners and a newborn that would and I know so many people do do it all the time but... 


Lily Jones  28:03  

I agree mean, hats off to them, absolutely. And I think it's just so powerful to know that educators, I mean, anybody has options, right? Like, we have valuable skills. If you're looking for a way to, you know, like I was to be like, I just need some quiet time and I want to work in education, right? Like, there are options of ways that you can do it. If you're like, Oh, I really want to be in school, it's like, there are obviously ways that you can do that. And so knowing, like, depending on what season of life you're in, you have options. Yeah, awesome. Well, Alexandra, it's so nice to talk with you. Can you tell folks how they can connect with you?


Alexandra Walsh  28:33  

Yes, absolutely. The best place would be LinkedIn. And then also, you know, follow, amplify on various social media accounts. I'm sure we can link that after for you, yeah, and I really hope that people enjoyed our conversation. 


Lily Jones  28:52  

I certainly enjoyed meeting you. 


Alexandra Walsh  28:54  

Yes, me too. Thank you so much. 


Lily Jones  28:56  

Thank you. Bye.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai



Lily Jones