CoLab Education founder and CEO Ariella Racco always knew she wanted to be a teacher. What she didn’t know was that her career as an educator would lead to founding CoLab Education, an edtech startup that is creating an online community for educators around the world.
Even though she’s now a startup founder, Racco is quick to note that she will always be an educator. After graduating with a Bachelor of Education from McGill University, she taught elementary school in Montreal before moving back to Ontario to teach middle school math and science at Appleby College and The York School.
“It’s a privilege and joy to be a teacher, but I was also experiencing the impact of having a limited network. Even with the most supportive and collaborative colleagues, it can feel isolating at times,” Racco says.
According to Racco, the challenge for many teachers is that while they have colleagues at school, they might be the only French or Biology teacher at a specific grade level at their school.
She says teachers are constantly having to come up with ways to teach the curriculum by creating content from scratch and without a network to draw on for perspective, expertise, support, or shared resources.
“In your city, if there are five elementary schools, that means there is one grade 5 English teacher at each school. They're each doing the exact same thing, entirely alone in their own little box,” Racco says. “They have the same curriculum, the same expectations of what they're supposed to be doing, but they often don’t have opportunities to connect and share ideas.”
Racco’s “aha” moment was working on a grade 8 science project-based learning unit.
“We were researching and looking up ideas, and we realized we surely can't be the only people to have done this right? There must be other teachers who've tried to teach this with a project-based learning framework. Where are they and how do we ask them questions? There was no clear answer to that,” she says.
After speaking with hundreds of educators across Canada, Racco launched CoLab Education to create a professional networking space for teachers. The platform includes a community space and collaboration features designed to foster connections and share resources and content.
“Teachers are the original content creators,” Racco says. “They’ve tried to solve this problem for themselves using social media, but all the content is scattered across platforms and very surface level, making it hard to apply meaningfully in the classroom.”
At the same time, Racco says teachers want a clearer divide between work and personal life, something social media doesn’t do well.
“They don’t want to waste time scrolling through ads and unrelated posts just to find one useful idea or find someone to ask a question to. This is taking away from the time they could be spending improving their teaching and the learning experience for their students, she says.
As a first-time founder, Racco has found support and community through YSpace. CoLab Education is one of ten startups in the current tech accelerator cohort of the entrepreneurship and innovation hub.
“It's been a really great opportunity for us,” Racco says. “I have two mentors and a mastermind group that I work with regularly, and that's been essential to our progress. I'm a teacher turned software founder, so I'm constantly upskilling in various areas. Having their entire network and support system has been really essential for us, and it also keeps us very accountable.”
Today, CoLab Education has teachers from ten different countries and partners with schools, districts, and teaching associations, right here in Ontario and across North America.
“Although curriculum is regional, education transcends national and regional divides. Most teachers I speak with are excited about being able to connect and gain professional expertise from one another.”
