Transforming Together: How Educator Feedback Fuels Innovation and Impact

Over the past few months, I’ve been on the road, meeting with educators, school and district leaders, and partners across the country. These conversations have reaffirmed what I shared earlier this year: transforming and evolving to meet our customers’ needs is more important than ever. From quick hallway coffee chats, to in-depth strategy sessions, it’s clear this is a pivotal moment in edtech.

Here are a few themes that rose to the top during my hundreds of conversations:

1. AI is everywhere – and educators and administrators are paying attention

AI is the top topic in nearly every conversation. Whether it’s in relation to instructional planning, student work, or the need for district-wide policy implementation, there is a palpable amount of both excitement and caution around the technology. Even the federal government is taking notice, with the recent executive order signaling more support and regulation to come.

Luckily, AI isn’t new to us – it’s in our DNA. We have over a decade of experience in building proven AI ecosystems for the high-responsibility world of K-12 education, meaning we’re uniquely positioned to help customers navigate this moment. From AI-driven proxy detection and self-harm prevention, to instant lesson plan generation and data visualization, we’re not just talking about AI we’re actively building it into our products across the entire educational ecosystem in responsible and educator-friendly ways.  

More importantly, we’re here to help educators and administrators answer the tough questions that come with AI adoption. Our role is to demystify AI for educators, provide clear guidance, and build features that solve real-world problems.

2. Excellent products come from listening to educators

Educators expect high-quality, time-saving, easy-to-use tools, and they should. That’s why our team builds directly from customer feedback and district-specific requests. We don’t just collect input; we create with it.

A few of our recent feature launches are the result of educators telling us what they need, and our product and engineering teams responding quickly:

• Pear Start: The only AI tool that lets teachers plan, create, and deliver lessons and assessments within seconds—all in one place. We were thrilled to see 90% of surveyed teachers in our Alpha group say they plan to use Pear Start at least weekly in the 2025-26 school year.
• Smart Alerts for Proxies: GoGuardian Admin, which scans over 689 million web pages per day, now automatically detects and blocks new proxies in real time before they become a problem. Even students agree GoGuardian’s proxy blocker is the toughest to beat.
• Mobile-friendly Beacon alerts: Beacon, which processes 451 million events per day, now provides easy access to alerts on mobile devices — meaning customers can quickly and easily review and respond to alerts from anywhere. Since launch we saw an immediate 16% jump in customers’ mobile alert usage and faster time to action alerts.
• Progress Learning Assessment Content Addition: Pear Assessment now offers Progress Learning item banks with 150k+ standards-aligned items that mimic the rigor and design of state summative tests and college entrance exams.

2025 is shaping up to be our most ambitious year yet for new products and features, and we’re really excited about what’s still to come later this year. We’ll keep listening and building with a customer-first approach.

3. Data needs to be actionable, not overwhelming 

Educators and administrators are swimming in data. The challenge isn’t collecting more, it’s making it useful. That’s why we’re rethinking how data is visualized and used across our platform, helping schools use information to drive action.

With solutions like Data Studio and a NEW product launching this summer, we’re focused on turning product usage data into real ROI measurement for schools and districts…just in time for the back-to-school season.   

I always return from my trips wishing I could be in even more places at once. I’m committed to listening, learning, and continuing to share my perspectives throughout the year. If you have feedback, ideas, new challenges, or just want to share what you’re seeing in your school or district, I would love to hear from you – reach out to me at any time.

As always, thank you to our educator partners for your continued commitment to student success and for the vital role you play in shaping the future.