Nothing can fully prepare a new teacher for their first year in the classroom—especially when it comes to the difficult conversations they’ll inevitably have with students and parents. But two former K-12 teachers are trying to take some of the guesswork out of those moments for new candidates entering the profession.
They’re doing this through mixed-reality simulations designed to help preservice teachers in North Carolina Central University’s school of education build social-emotional skills and practice navigating challenging situations. Mixed-reality simulations are becoming increasingly popular training tools in schools of education. At NCCS, student-teachers interact through avatars with actors playing parents and K-12 students in a virtual environment. The program does not use artificial intelligence.
The simulations are meant to give future teachers low-stakes opportunities to practice what to say and do before they’re in a real classroom. The exercises are designed to put them in tough situations, said Megan Lyons, an assistant professor at North Carolina Central University, and get them asking themselves:
“What do I need to do in order to be a better collaborator or better problem solver?,” she said, and to “realize their own skill sets and how to improve those competencies.”
Lyons was scheduled to present at ISTELive 25 + ASCD Annual Conference 25 in San Antonio, June 29 to July 2.
Preservice teachers in NCCU’s school of education use the mixed-reality simulations, which focus on managing student behavior and communicating with parents, in the first and last years of their degree program, said Lyons. NCCU instructors use a simulation platform made by Mursion, but write many of their own scenarios.
The mixed-reality simulations are valuable for several reasons.
First, teachers get the chance to practice teaching social-emotional skills, like emotion management and responsible decisionmaking in the difficult moments where they most matter: when students are acting out, said Lyons.
“If a kid is having a meltdown, saying, ‘remember to breathe or remember to think about what you’re going to say,’” she said. “We can actually write scenarios where the kids can be very combative.”
Second, the simulations help teachers build their own social-emotional skills, such as perspective-taking and empathy, especially in difficult conversations with parent avatars. The exercises also allow opportunities for preservice teachers to receive feedback from instructors and peers and rewatch the simulations and reflect on what they could do better, said Freda Hicks, who also teaches in NCCU’s school of education as the clinical experience and partnership director and presented with Lyons at ISTE.
“In the heat of the moment, it’s hard to notice or pay attention to what’s going on, what you’re doing,” Hicks said. “But after it’s over, they’ll say, ‘I wish I would’ve said this. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.’”
Third, Hicks said, the simulations help student teachers avoid common missteps, like accidentally sharing confidential information—perhaps the name of another child involved in a fight—during a meeting with parents.
So far, the mixed-reality simulations have been popular with her students, said Hicks. They’ve requested broadening the issues they tackle in the mixed-reality simulations, she said.
“They also wanted a chance to practice dealing with hard conversations with students, not just classroom management,” she said. “But the really hard topics, like for a kid who’s being bullied or for the death of a parent, those kinds of things.”
Hicks said her students especially like getting the chance to practice talking with parents in the simulations. As a former K-12 teacher and principal, she understands why. When she first started out as a 4th grade teacher, she had a parent-teacher conference for a student who she considered to be doing well in her class.
“The parent came in there and just came after me because a ‘B’ was not satisfactory to them,” she said. “It would’ve been their child’s first ‘B.’ I was shell shocked. I wish I could have practiced some of these hard conversations before I got into the classroom as a first-year teacher.”
