Q&A with Alex Magiera, Senior Director of Innovation

While focusing on addressing immediate needs, it can also be hard to think about how education might and should evolve further into the future. How can we prepare students for a future that feels almost beyond comprehension? And how can we help educators navigate and contribute to those changes? That kind of foresight is at the heart of our innovation work.

For Alex Magiera, senior director of innovation at Leading Educators, imagining new futures isn’t just professional—it’s deeply personal.

From foundational experiences teaching K-2 students to coaching educators and piloting initiatives at TNTP to developing frameworks like Leading Educators’ Value Add of Technology on Teaching (VATT) framework and Open Up Opportunity, the journey has always been about empowering teachers and students to reach their full potential. In this conversation, Alex reflects on how education can evolve in a new era to better meet all learners’ potential.

You’re on a team tasked with thinking about the future. What are you currently working on?

I’m part of a team that designs and tests new ideas, tools, and approaches. In 2023, our team developed the Value Add of Technology on Teaching (VATT) framework alongside a global community of educators and Google for Education to help educators make more deliberate choices about how to use the more than 8,000 edtech tools and platforms on the market to improve student learning.

• This framework led to a pilot program in New York City focused on how tech-enabled instruction can advance the science of reading.
• Most recently, I’ve been leading the national School Teams AI Collaborative, designed in partnership with The Learning Accelerator to position educators to lead in the AI era. It’s exciting work because it’s uncharted territory—we’re thinking about the future of education and how we can prepare for it.

Last August, I completed a strategic foresight program in Houston that has really influenced my thinking. There are countless possible futures for education in the next 10, 20, or 30 years. The question is, how do we prepare for those futures? We can’t predict the future, but we can plan for the possibilities we would prefer. That’s the work I’m most passionate about—exploring those possibilities and shaping strategies to move us forward.

What are some of those possibilities you are exploring?

The rapid pace of technological advancement makes it fascinating—and a little daunting—to imagine how different the world might look in 5 to 10 years, let alone 15 to 20 years.

One central area of exploration is the ethical implications of AI in education. For example, students at Valley New School, a participant in the AI School Team Collaborative, shared their reluctance to use AI. That hesitation was eye-opening for all of us. We’re also hearing important questions about AI’s role in creative fields—how might it shape artistic expression, innovation, and career opportunities?

These conversations highlight a crucial challenge: How do we prepare students for a future that is still unfolding? While we can’t predict the exact jobs they’ll have or the full impact of AI on their lives, we know these technologies will shape their world. Our role is to help educators navigate these shifts and ensure students are equipped to thrive.

I’m excited about LE’s potential to engage in short-term solutions and bigger-picture conversations about where education is headed. It’s a unique space where we can address today’s challenges and influence what’s possible in the future.

How is AI already shaping the future of learning?

AI is a big deal—but not the thing. It’s front and center right now, but I think it’s a doorway into much bigger questions. Right now, the conversation may be about how we use AI, and we need to also explore how learning itself will change because of it.

We need to talk more about the student experience. So much of school still looks and feels like it did decades ago—to be clear, there are examples of amazing things happening in classrooms and schools—but there’s still a mismatch between our overall design and structures for school and the future. The world students are walking into is way more interdisciplinary, uncertain, and fluid. That disconnect feels like something we can’t ignore.

When we don’t know the jobs students will have or what work may look like, we need to consider the skillsets they will need. This is a shift from ‘career readiness’ to ‘change readiness’—careers may not stay constant, but change will.

Students will need more than content knowledge—they will likely need a mix of tech literacy, human skills, and systems thinking. We’re not just preparing students to use AI but to think critically about it, collaborate, and shape it. While doing so, they’ll need to know how to work with AI, navigate ambiguity, and stay grounded in their humanness (and awesomeness). That changes what we need to be preparing them for.

How can we design for an uncertain future?

I’m thinking a lot about designing for the unknown. This is where foresight work comes in—it’s not a luxury, but rather, it’s becoming essential for any education team looking to navigate the next 5–15+ years intentionally.

Foresight combined with intentional design helps us stretch our sense of what’s possible, builds ways for us to experiment, learn, and adapt (not just execute/do!), and gives teams tools to move toward the futures we actually want.

“School” probably won’t stay contained in classrooms. Learning is already happening across so many spaces—community, digital platforms, informal networks. That raises big questions about access, opportunity, and how we support coherence across all of them.

The teacher’s role is evolving fast. This challenges many of the things we might currently put a lot of weight on (teachers being content experts) and also speaks to things I’ve heard teachers say they really wish they could do more of (being learning designers and guides to their students).

If tools can help carry some of the instructional or admin load, then what’s left is the really human stuff—building trust, sparking curiosity, and making space for big questions. But that also means we need to support educators in stepping into those new roles.

I’ve talked to so many teachers who’ve expressed overwhelm with the volume of tools out there, learning new content, new curriculum, admin tasks, etc., and simultaneously, teachers light up when they talk about working with their students, guiding their learning, creating experiences, and connecting with students. If this is where the joy, the meaning-making, and the humanness of learning and education come to life, how can we support teachers in this evolving role?

It’s not just about tools; it’s about mindsets. Educators need space to explore, be uncertain, and test things out. The systems around them don’t always make that easy. So, how do we design support that meets that reality?

How can leaders equip and inspire others to not just adapt but actively shape new futures in education?

This question may be the biggest of all: who will shape the future of education?

While we may not be able to predict the future, foresight work allows us to not just be passengers in it but participants in shaping it. We can create space for educators, students, and communities to not just be along for the ride but imagine the futures they want and begin building toward them now.

I don’t share this as a pie-in-the-sky naive point of view. This takes work, focus, intention, and fun! But I continually meet students, educators, parents, and leaders who are all in and ready to do this work with us, and if I have the lucky opportunity to do this work with them, you better believe I will.

I’ll leave you with this: Fun isn’t a nice-to-have–it’s a necessity. In the face of complex novel challenges, fun is our fuel and resilience for innovation.