Hey Tappsters!
Welcome to the USA Teacher Tapp blog 🎉 Eight weeks in and our Teacher Tapp community continues to grow!
Teacher Tapp becomes even more valuable as more teachers join! Share the app with your colleagues and help grow the community. The easiest link to spread the word is onelink.to/teachertapp – it takes them straight to the app store! 📲✨
Let’s jump into this week’s roundup of fresh education data insights…
1. The genie has appeared!
The Teacher Tapp genie has made its first appearance on the US panel!
Hypothetical questions are a great way to present a ‘forced choice.’ If we asked, “Would you like $1,000?” and everyone said yes, we wouldn’t learn much. But when we ask you to choose between different hypothetical options, your responses help us understand the trade-offs and preferences that matter most—especially in education, where resources are always limited.
To bring these scenarios to life, we enlist the help of the Teacher Tapp genie! This magical helper can grant anything from trivial treats like cookies during breaktime to significant benefits like pay raises.
This week, the genie offered to boost your proficiency in one area. So what did you wish for?
7% of you turned down the genie altogether! These teachers said they had no areas they wanted to improve—impressive confidence!
Calm classrooms were TOP of the list (and by a long way!) with 31% wishing for better behaviour management. Next were planning skills ( 14%) and better questioning/in-class assessment skills (13%).
If you’re wondering, “Why these wishes?” – it might be explained by looking at our question on what causes teacher anxiety from day-to-day.
When asked what caused anxiety that day, the responses matched closely to wishes:
- Student behaviour was the main source of anxiety (37%)
- Assessment concerns came next (32% felt behind on grading)
- Lesson prep followed with 20% saying they felt underprepared for lessons.
Would these results look different for teachers of various subjects? Quite possibly! From our English panel, we know that grading is a bigger source of anxiety for those teaching essay-heavy subjects like English and history.
Help us grow the panel so we can uncover even more insights! Share Teacher Tapp with your colleagues using our handy link: onelink.to/teachertapp and help them join the conversation.
2. Teenage dreams…of teaching
There is a stereotype that teaching is full of people who were model students. But how true is that cliche?
When we asked teachers about their own school days:
- 53% said they ‘never’ waited outside the headteacher’s office for punishment.
- Another 48% admitted they were ‘rarely’ or ‘sometimes’ in trouble.
- Just 5% owned up to being in trouble ‘most days’ or ‘often.’
Yet, if a time machine appeared and you visited your teenage self, it seems your younger self might be surprised by your career choice—54% of teachers said their teenage self would be shocked to learn they became a teacher!
Teenage years are tough, and as teachers, we often see how things can go very right or terribly wrong for students. But how much does the school you attend really shape the rest of your life?
The responses were mixed:
- 32% strongly agreed that attending a different high school would have significantly changed their life path.
- Another 29% agreed, though less strongly.
- But 39% disagreed (with 15% strongly disagreeing).
It’s fascinating to see how our reflections on the past can shape our perspective on teaching today. What do you think—would a different school have changed your life?
3. What would happen if the teachers disappeared?
The Day the Crayons Quit might be a classic Elementary storybook – but what if it wasn’t the art supplies, but the teachers who vanished one day? How much learning would take place?
We posed the question: “Given access to quality resources, students can progress equally well in my subject without a teacher”.
The results were striking:
- NOBODY strongly agreed. 😳
- The majority strongly disagreed (69%), with another 23% disagreeing.
- Only 8% agreed that students could progress just as well without a teacher.
Here’s the unique thing about Teacher Tapp: we can compare how teachers in other countries feel about this too.
In England, the picture was different:
- Fewer teachers strongly disagreed (56%), but this was balanced by a higher percentage who disagreed (36%).
- But overall, the combined total of those who disagreed in the US (92%) matched the same level of disagreement in England (92%).
But will that remain true as AI comes along? We shall keep asking…!
➕ Who are the biggest readers?
On Teacher Tapp, not only do you answer intriguing education questions and see yesterday’s results, but every single day you also get a bite-sized piece of CPD—a blog, podcast, or video designed to inspire and inform.
With panels in the US, England, the Netherlands, and Flanders in Belgium, you might wonder—where are the Tapsters most engaged with CPD?
Last week, the average percentage of those clicking the tips went…
🥉 3rd place the Netherlands (8%)
🥈 2nd place Flanders (9%)
🥇 and joint first place – England and USA! (11%)
Daily Reads
We know lots of teachers on Teacher Tapp LOVE the daily reads, if you have ideas of reads we could feature, get in touch by emailing usa@teachertapp.com and we will check it out!
This week our most-read blog was…the Thanksgiving special from George Lucas!
