Meet the Original Milo,
the OG Teacher's Pet

I've been a junior teacher in Ontario for ten years, mostly split-grade classes. But my path here wasn't exactly straightforward.

My work in education began at the age of fifteen, providing special needs support in high school, then moving into summer camps, group homes, and learning centres as an autism support worker and ABA therapist. I studied yoga, moved to India and started a pop-up vegetarian restaurant. I learned to speak French after doing a working holiday visa in France, where I worked with isolated minor refugees at the Red Cross and later in group homes for youth with autism.

Eventually I came back to Toronto, got my teaching degree, and worked with youth at risk in Windsor. That's where I saw it clearly: every neighbourhood in Ontario is different. Every demographic has their own needs, their own barriers, their own strengths. The disparity in learning experiences across communities isn't subtle, it's glaring. And it stuck with me.

I'm neurodivergent and wear multiple hats. Self-taught chef, DJ, projection mapper, music producer. I've used projection mapping in my classroom to teach kids about geometry, perspective, and art. I have synesthesia, colours and sounds have always been tangled together for me. Music has always carried me forward.

When I finally landed in a French immersion classroom, teaching was where it all came together. I loved making birthday poems for my students, coding games for them, having fun while learning together, creating class community, appreciating our differences. I created custom learning content, AI-powered projects where each student got their own personalized research guides based on the curriculum. They made incredible things in Canva. I watched them find their passions.

But the paperwork was killing me.

Report cards alone would take forty to sixty hours. I'd fill every comment box to the last character. Administrators would send them back, but parents loved reading them. I wanted to put my voice in there, align everything with Growing Success, actually say something meaningful about each student. It was exhausting. I would have rather spent that time looking at their actual work.

Then came November 2022. The first time I used ChatGPT.

I realized: if I could couple curriculum content with the right grounding knowledge, teachers could differentiate AND fulfill all the requirements. The Ontario curriculum is remarkable when it's taught well. But no single teacher can adapt for 25 different kids with 25 different needs. That's not a personal failing, it's just the reality of an impossible job.

I believe AI can help bridge that gap. Not by replacing teachers, but by helping us adapt content to the learners in front of us, whoever they are, wherever they come from.

So I started building. I painstakingly created my own database of the entire Ontario curriculum. Marley had watched me teach during the pandemic, working out of my apartment, and together we built the first prototype. Then Aidan spent many late nights building Milo from the ground up.

I named it after my dog.

Milo is twelve now. He's a Lhasa Apso Shih Tzu — a rescue whose original owner passed away. He landed in my lap as a foster. I refused to let him go, and we've been joined at the hip ever since. He's stubborn, picky about food, but the calmest, most beautiful dog. He melts in everyone's arms. He's been a therapy dog for a lot of people. (He's still figuring out how to use the camera, by the way. As many photos as I have of him, he doesn't return the favor, even though I gave him the camera.)

Right now I'm on a leave of absence. I miss teaching, I really do. But I took this time for two reasons: teachers deserve tools built by someone who actually understands what they're going through, and Milo is getting older. I want to spend as much time with him as I can while I still have him.

Milo drafts. You decide.

If you've ever felt buried under paperwork while the things you love wait by the door, I built this for you.