Hello Alpaca Team!

We’ve always believed that listening to teachers is critical to teacher retention. But what we’ve learned over the past year is that without action, the listening isn’t quite enough.

The real challenge — and the real opportunity — is what happens next.

How do we help teachers share not only how they’re doing, but also what they need? And what action does a school leader take after a teacher shares feedback?

How quickly can a principal and their teams turn voice into change that builds trust, improves culture, and keeps great educators in the classroom?

This release set out to answer a couple of audacious questions:

How might the survey itself feel supportive to a teacher? Could a survey even do that? We think so. So we gave educators more context about the words they’re choosing, asked better questions about what would help them, and started asking what’s going well right now. We want teachers to come away from the survey feeling just a little bit lifted up.
Could every insight be tied to action? How might we help a principal or school leader never wonder what to do with the insights they gained from their teachers? So we connected our vast resource library to the words teachers use to describe work, giving leaders instant actionability.

When teachers say they need more recognition, leaders don’t just see a chart — they see a resource they can try tomorrow. When staff share a positive win, leaders don’t just smile — they get a celebration idea they can build into culture right away. Every data point comes with a path forward, and every teacher can know their voice matters.

What’s new in Pulse 2.0

With this release, educators have more voice, and leaders have more action. Check out the newest features:

✨ A Check-In that Teachers Love – the new interface is just. wow. Cleaner, simpler, and faster for teachers to share input all year long.

📊 Positivity Pulse – a simple snapshot of how positive school culture feels right now.

The Positivity Pulse gives leaders quick insight on the level of positivity their teams are experiencing right now, and how that’s changing.

🔍 Theme Deep Dives – Alpaca’s dashboard breaks down feedback into 10 themes so that you can see where teachers need support the most.

Dive deeper to understand where sentiment is most positive, and where to lean in.

💬 Smart Comments – Each comment is analyzed for sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) and aligned with one of 10 themes of wellbeing.

Sentiment analysis on every comment means that principals get growth feedback, not “gotcha” feedback.

🌟 Celebrations – We’re highlighting what’s working so leaders can double down on the good.

🚀 Instant Action Steps – Every data point is tied to a resource or idea leaders can try today. The “Try This” tab gathers them all in one game plan.

Alpaca Pulse 2.0 features the TRY THIS tab, where leaders can find resources, actions, and conversation starters based on the input from their educators.

Built Collaboratively, Tested by Educators

So many different talents and voices went into the build of Pulse 2.0. We started early in the year with product workshops with the team at Workshop Ventures. We iterated on ideas for our “smart comments” feature with smarties like John Grange. We designed the new survey through our extraordinary experience with The Summer Studio. And then the queen herself Maci McWilliams, together with Alissa Christensen and our educator team, Nicholas Petersen of Less.Is, and Tyler Halstead, worked their magic, VERY quickly, to bring the entire thing to life ahead of the new school year. (There is no amount of thanks enough for this crew!)

Best of all, we got the opportunity to test Alpaca Pulse with educators at Camp Alpaca this summer, helping us make critical changes to the interface ahead of release, and strengthening the product even further.

What’s Next

Now, it’s time to take Alpaca Pulse out on the road! In the next 7 weeks we’ll be presenting and exhibiting at 7 conferences, where we’ll have the opportunity to see this product in action.

As you’re out on the road, I ask you this: keep listening to educators! Listen for the features that resonate. Write down the questions they ask about the product. Note where there might be some confusion, so we can continue to tweak and refine. Our work is strengthened by each insight an educator brings our way, and we will continue to iterate on Alpaca Pulse throughout the year.

I could not be more proud (do I say that every week? I feel it every week!) of this company and this team. Thank you for imagining and building something (that didn’t exist into the world!) to solve big problems and answer audacious questions.

Onward!

KB

Team Letter

Voice, Insight, Action: Pulse 2.0 is LIVE!