The project
Built on one idea.
UpwardTeaching is the software companion to After Effort, a professional-development course on the disciplined use of AI in teaching. The idea underneath both is simple, and it changes everything: a tool helps a student most when it arrives after their own effort, not in place of it.
The idea
Difficulty is the mechanism, not the bug.
Reached for after a student has wrestled with something, a tool can genuinely extend them. Handed over before that struggle, the same tool quietly removes the occasion on which they would have grown. The prompt can be identical in both cases. What changed is the timing, and that is where most of the moral action lives.
So UpwardTeaching is not a content generator, and it never speaks to a student. It sharpens the teacher's judgment, hardens assignments so productive struggle survives, and admits the machine as a servant the teacher wields, never a master that thinks for the room.
The course that inspired it
After Effort.
The tool grew out of a course taught to teachers and school leaders. After Effort gives educators a shared vocabulary, a six-question diagnostic for deciding when to admit a tool or refuse it, and a one-page Settlement a school can sign and stand on. It borrows its working discipline from Shippable States Development: ship something real every session, try it in a real classroom, and keep a human in the lead rather than in the loop.
UpwardTeaching turns that practice into software, so the judgment the course builds shows up in the daily work and the evidence of it collects itself. You can read the full course at insanelygreat.com.
Who's behind it
Alex Horovitz.
Alex has spent more than thirty years building software, at NeXT and Apple working directly with Steve Jobs, and across Disney, Intel, Symantec, Ford, and the NFL. Today he leads manufacturing operations and test at a deep-tech computing startup, where he ships AI-amplified software every day using the SSD methodology he developed.
He also holds an M.A. in philosophy and writes on the civic stakes of technology. The warning behind this project lands harder because it comes from someone who loves the machine and still insists the line between servant and master is real. UpwardTeaching grew out of two of his essays, The Machine Is Not Ms. Hill and The Machine That Arrives Too Early, and out of close proximity to real classrooms through his spouse Torri Horovitz, Ph.D..
NeXT · Apple · Disney · Intel · Symantec · Ford · NFL · M.A. Philosophy
Put your name on the beta list.
Tell us where you teach or lead, and we'll be in touch as places open.
Private beta, by invitation.
Thanks — you're on the list.
We've got your request. We open places as the beta grows and will reach out when one fits. Questions? Email alex@alexhorovitz.com.