Introducing Teacher’s PET: Who, What, Why
Introduction
Hey teachers. I’m Dr. Hayley Blackburn–the founder and creative director of Teacher’s PET: a collective for templates, a place for course design services, and an ed tech start-up being built with my spouse, Preston.
I want to take a few minutes to tell you the who, what, and why of our business.
Who We Are
We met in college at Colorado State University. I was starting a master’s program and Preston was finishing his chemical engineering degree. Even back then, we were working together to transform my teaching practice as I tested assignments, lectures, and activities on him. Nearly a decade later, he is still supporting my ambitious ideas to rebuild, rethink, and redesign my classrooms each semester to adapt to the changing landscape of learning.
I’ve worked across the higher education landscape as a video editor for online divisions. An advisor specializing in academic probation. A professional development strategist for student success staff. A faculty fellow for communication with the Office of the Provost. And a full-time faculty member (non-tenure track with a 4/4 (and sometimes more) load at an R2 university. In all of that time and experience, I’ve been watching, listening, and living through the challenges of course preparation, grading, and managing our responsibilities as educators. Every time I found frustration, annoyance, or a headache– I looked to solve it. And I’ll tell you so much more about all those stories and examples as we get to know each other.
(hint, hint subscribe the newsletter, YouTube channel, and Instagram).
I started sharing my activities and course design tools with colleagues a few years ago because building classes and helping others with their content is my favorite part of the job. Over and over, I found and received feedback that the super concrete and applied examples I was giving were helpful. My pet peeve is when we stick to the abstract instead of giving folks the tools and grounded ideas they need to accomplish their goals.
Now, I want to help you–all of you from K12 through instructor and tenure track positions– bring your subject expertise back to the center by taking the creative pressure off of course design and prep.
Let me do what I love (creating educational content) so you can get back to what you love–sharing your expertise and interacting with students.
What is Teacher's PET?
I founded Teacher’s PET with a vision to empower all educators with tools, services, and personalized technology that make course design and prep management productive.
As I always tell my students, create things that are useful, usable, and enjoyable: that is exactly what I want to be for you.
I’ve loved school for 25 years. Every activity, lesson plan, and project was my new favorite thing if I got to create, engage, and absorb information. It didn’t surprise anyone when I pursued graduate school and decided to stay within education for my career. To this day, my favorite part of working in education is creating content (assignment sheets, page designs, slide decks, videos, study guides… all the things) and dreaming up new classes.
The name Teacher’s PET embodies that spirit. I was the student always helping my teachers, sitting in office hours, and taking on extra projects…all with strong grades and easy understanding of what was being asked in the assignment. Every template, video, and tool I make aims to bring that same energy to help you and your classroom.
Now, our name is also an acronym. It stands for Personalized Education Technologies. We are building three branches of support to help you at Teacher’s PET.
On-demand content such as templates and guided courses. Right now, you can grab free Canvas pages to jumpstart small stakes assignments and course designs. I’m always adding more paid teaching packs that include assignment details, rubrics, and HTML code for Canvas. All you need to do is insert your information and edit for your preferences.
Products centered on educator needs. We are on the development roadmap for exciting LLM-powered products: PAL and PAT. Currently, PAL– my personal assistant in learning–is deployed in my classrooms as a chatbot trained on my course materials to support students. PAT, my personal advisor in teaching, draws on my course materials combined with upgrading principles to jumpstart the assessment process. Right now, PAT can analyze my assignment sheets, start an ungrading-informed rubric, and–most importantly–provide an editable copy that I can export directly for Canvas. Sign up for the newsletter for updates on our PET suite of tools.
Consulting and speaking engagements on course development strategies. If you want direct help on your materials, contact me for a consulting package starting at 20 bucks. I can copyedit and redesign your existing written materials (your syllabus, slide decks, or assignment sheets), produce video content based on your scripts, or help you set up a full multi-media unit. If you want someone to audit and create examples of your projects, we can talk about that service too. I can also lead your department or a teaching circle in a workshop on upgrading practices or other custom training topics.
Overall, I want to improve your workflow and help you deliver engaging, accessible content to help your students reach your learning outcomes.
Why Teacher's PET?
We want to disrupt the system by creating tools engineered by and for educators. Let me help you because I am a teacher who specializes in multi-media communication. Let me combine my experiences in academic advising, which taught me a lot about how students perceive and think about their classes, with my skill in technology and creativity.
If you don’t want the pressure and time to create video, podcasts, redesigning contents, and all the prep work for the next semester, then use your Teacher’s PET to take the load off.
Let me end with a bit more on the ethos of our company.
With Teachers' PET, teachers create high-quality, rigorous, and engaging instructional materials using generative AI tools that save them time and energy without expertise-dependent prompting. We build tailored apps that foster rigorous, effective instruction with a re-imagined interface focused on individually-tailored document management, usable outputs, and guided support towards pedagogy. Each product is designed, built, and tested around the actual experience of a university professor and K12 educator.
Simply: we know what is helpful and necessary in modern course prep. We don’t want to add more work to your plate. We want to help you build the class you envision by supporting the technical aspects so you can focus on the content.
Conclusion
I hope this blog post has given you a better understanding of who we are, what we do, and why we do it at Teacher's PET. I am passionate about helping educators create high-quality, engaging, and accessible learning materials that help students reach their full potential. I love and believe in education; I also know that changing your courses to integrate more multi-media content and shift pedagogy towards less traditional systems is intimidating and overwhelming. I am here to help you push towards a new classroom.
At Teacher’s PET, we believe that by providing teachers with the tools and resources they need, we can help to improve education for everyone.
If you are interested in learning more about Teacher's PET, please explore the website or sign up for our newsletter. I also encourage you to follow us on social media to follow along with my day as a professor (Instagram @teachersedtech) and watch longer-form content on tech tips and a vlog (YouTube, @teachers_edtech).
Vibes, educators! See you in class.
