Since making its public debut last year, ChatGPT has profoundly impacted my perspective on generative AI in education. As a writer and former high school English teacher, I experienced an existential crisis watching the chatbot effortlessly generate lesson plans and rubrics — tasks that would have taken me hours to accomplish. 

Generative AI allows educators to move beyond traditional learning systems and provide a more responsive, personalized learning experience in which students demonstrate mastery, not just passing grades. 

“The future of AI in education is not just about adopting new technologies; it’s about reshaping our approach to teaching and learning in a way that is as dynamic and diverse as the students we serve,” XQ Institute Senior Advisor Laurence Holt said. He also formerly worked in the education, business and technology sectors. Through AI, we can also transcend the limitations of the Carnegie Unit — a century-old system in which a high school diploma is based on how much time students spend in specific subject classes. 

Changing that rigid system is our mission at . We to transform high school learning so it’s more relevant and engaging while also preparing students to succeed in college, career and real life. We recently co-convened a two-day summit with the Emerson Collective, in partnership with MeshEd and Betaworks, to bring educators and innovators together in a collaborative space — envisioning ways to use AI technology for transforming high school redesign. Those ideas and insights are available to explore .

After a year’s worth of conversations and observations with educators, our AI convening and , there is much to share with educators to help them make the most of the rapidly evolving ecosystem of artificial intelligence. Here are seven AI in education trends to be aware of next year.

1. Professional Development 

Throughout 2023, for educators remained high. In 2024, we should see an avalanche of districts and schools providing their educators with AI professional development materials to integrate these tools into their teaching practices.

At , an XQ school in Sanford, Florida, ’s Sarah Wharton visited to present interesting ways to think about AI in the context of the school. 

“We looked at ChatGPT as a possible tutor, personal assistant, creative tool and research assistant,” said PSI High School Coordinator Angela Daniel. “In our PD session, we considered how these cool applications could be used in classrooms as learning tools that accelerate learning and teach the tool simultaneously.”

Daniel explained that teaching students how to use AI is a first step that will change things for students going forward.“But to really get at the heart of that question, we need to understand how generative AI can change our processes and resources right now,” she added. For the team at PSI, that means learning how to use generative AI effectively with ongoing support as the application continues to evolve.

Workshops, online courses and collaborative learning communities are also increasingly popular for providing educators with hands-on experience in AI.

Want to stay on top of trends to help you rethink high school? Check out the XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

2. Formal AI Policy 

Integrating AI in classrooms is no longer a matter of “if” but “how,” making it imperative for educators and policymakers to navigate this terrain with informed and responsible strategies. However, the landscape of AI policy development — especially regarding education — has been dynamic, if not lagging.

The Council of Europe has continued for equitable policy and practice, an area where . New York City Public Schools, after initially banning ChatGPT, is now , focusing on issues such as privacy and cybersecurity. Recently, the Biden administration issued an executive order to guide the U.S. in leveraging artificial intelligence. This directive emphasized AI safety, privacy, equity and responsible use, signaling a shift in how AI is integrated into sectors like education. However, it is likely that AI policy in education will develop on a location-by-location basis first.

3. Open-Source Tool Development

Concerns about AI’s ethical implications and biases are sure to shape policy goals. One way to alleviate those pressures is the expansion and increased use of open-sourced tools — programs where the code is accessible and can be modified. , however, expect the conversation to focus less on the output of AI tools and more on .

Ensuring AI tools are equitable and inclusive goes beyond technical challenges — it requires continuous dialogue among educators, technologists and policymakers. This conversation is essential for addressing data privacy, surveillance and ethical use of student data. With a democratized, open-source marketplace, we could see the market promote as they grow in popularity.

4. Frameworks for Teaching AI

Before the start of the 2023-24 academic year, educators and schools were waiting for a . As policy moves forward in 2024 and more institutions develop professional development materials to train and support educators, expect to finally emerge. Frameworks like are being developed to guide the integration of AI in education. These frameworks focus on and promoting equitable access to technology, ensuring that AI complements and enhances student learning experiences.

5. AI Literacy, Competencies and Standards

With AI becoming more prevalent in various sectors, including education, there’s a growing need to integrate AI literacy goals and specific learning outcomes into school curricula. This involves teaching students how to use AI tools and understand the basics of AI technology, its applications and its implications.

At the network, an XQ partner with three campuses in Indiana, CEO Keeanna Warren explained how equipping staff and students with the knowledge and skills to harness AI’s potential promotes effective and responsible use of AI to enhance learning experiences.

“We firmly believe that our students’ innate curiosity drives their desire to learn, and we trust their integrity,” she said. “If AI can be used for cheating, it reflects a flaw in the assessment, not in our students’ character.”

The challenge lies in integrating AI literacy into an already packed curriculum. However, the opportunity to foster critical thinking, problem-solving and ethical reasoning skills through AI education is entirely possible.

6. AI-Powered Adaptive Learning Systems 

One of the more exciting pathways with AI is that student learning experiences will become more uniquely adaptive and personalized with a quicker turnaround. But creating effective programs requires training these systems on some level of student data -– a delicate balance.

As policy formalizes how student data gets implemented into these programs, AI-driven adaptive learning systems will emerge to shift instructional practice. Expect these programs to appear prominently in assessments and curriculum packages before evolving into real-time feedback systems that can inform teachers even during a lesson.

7. Custom GPTs Built By Educators

While all these advancements are promising and exciting, the marketplace for AI-driven ed tech tools will become incredibly crowded quickly. Recently, OpenAI’s maker space for building and using custom GPTs, which both use and are built by ChatGPT, is guaranteed to be a massive disruptor.

Ty Boyland, school-based enterprise coordinator and music production teacher at Crosstown High, designed a custom GPT. (Crosstown High is another XQ school in Memphis, Tennessee.) Boyland’s students use Dall-E, an AI system for generating images, with GPT-4 to create designs and prints for student-driven projects. 

“But how do you create a project combining culinary and music production?” Boyland wondered. His customized GPT pairs with Tennessee State Standards to build a new project.

It will be interesting to see what educators create in this space to resolve pain points teachers and schools are intimately familiar with and what gets made to help schools achieve their vision and mission.  

The Bottom Line for Educators

From policy shifts emphasizing equity and privacy to the emergence of AI-driven curricula, the transformation is palpable. We’ve seen how AI can revolutionize and disrupt classroom practices, empower educators through professional development, and create inclusive, personalized student learning experiences. But the burgeoning AI ed tech market demands discernment. , choosing tools that genuinely enhance learning and align with ethical standards.

As we enter 2024, educators and stakeholders face a challenge: keeping pace with AI and engaging with it thoughtfully to catalyze educational excellence instead of just putting a new face on old practices. It’s the primary reason we at XQ convened so many educators and innovators into one space— to rethink high school by harnessing the potential of our AI-powered future. We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming year. 

Do you want to learn more about how to rethink high school? The XQ Xtra is a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of ���˶���.

Half of teachers say they know a student at their school who was disciplined or faced negative consequences for using — or being accused of using — generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to complete a classroom assignment, , a nonprofit think tank focused on digital rights and expression. The proportion was even higher, at 58%, for those who teach special education. 

Cheating concerns were clear, with survey results showing that teachers have grown suspicious of their students. Nearly two-thirds of teachers said that generative AI has made them “more distrustful” of students and 90% said they suspect kids are using the tools to complete assignments. Yet students themselves who completed the anonymous survey said they rarely use ChatGPT to cheat, but are turning to it for help with personal problems.

“The difference between the hype cycle of what people are talking about with generative AI and what students are actually doing, there seems to be a pretty big difference,” said Elizabeth Laird, the group’s director of equity in civic technology. “And one that, I think, can create an unnecessarily adversarial relationship between teachers and students.”   

Indeed, 58% of students, and 72% of those in special education, said they’ve used generative AI during the 2022-23 academic year, just not primarily for the reasons that teachers fear most. Among youth who completed the nationally representative survey, just 23% said they used it for academic purposes and 19% said they’ve used the tools to help them write and submit a paper. Instead, 29% reported having used it to deal with anxiety or mental health issues, 22% for issues with friends and 16% for family conflicts.

Part of the disconnect dividing teachers and students, researchers found, may come down to gray areas. Just 40% of parents said they or their child were given guidance on ways they can use generative AI without running afoul of school rules. Only 24% of teachers say they’ve been trained on how to respond if they suspect a student used generative AI to cheat. 

The results on ChatGPT’s educational impacts were included in the Center for Democracy and Technology’s broader annual survey analyzing the privacy and civil rights concerns of teachers, students and parents as tech, including artificial intelligence, becomes increasingly engrained in classroom instruction. Beyond generative AI, researchers observed a sharp uptick in digital privacy concerns among students and parents over last year. 

Among parents, 73% said they’re concerned about the privacy and security of student data collected and stored by schools, a considerable increase from the 61% who expressed those reservations last year. A similar if less dramatic trend was apparent among students: 62% had data privacy concerns tied to their schools, compared with 57% just a year earlier. 

Those rising levels of anxiety, researchers theorized, are likely the result of the growing frequency of cyberattacks on schools, which have become a primary target for ransomware gangs. High-profile breaches, including in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, have compromised a massive trove of highly sensitive student records. Exposed records, investigative reporting by ���˶��� has found, include student psychological evaluations, reports detailing campus rape cases, student disciplinary records, closely guarded files on campus security, employees’ financial records and copies of government-issued identification cards. 

Survey results found that students in special education, whose records are among the most sensitive that districts maintain, and their parents were significantly more likely than the general education population to report school data privacy and security concerns. As attacks ratchet up, 1 in 5 parents say they’ve been notified that their child’s school experienced a data breach. Such breach notices, Laird said, led to heightened apprehension. 

“There’s not a lot of transparency” about school cybersecurity incidents “because there’s not an affirmative reporting requirement for schools,” Laird said. But in instances where parents are notified of breaches, “they are more concerned than other parents about student privacy.” 

Parents and students have also grown increasingly wary of another set of education tools that rely on artificial intelligence: digital surveillance technology. Among them are student activity monitoring tools, such as those offered by the for-profit companies Gaggle and GoGuardian, which rely on algorithms in an effort to keep students safe. The surveillance software employs artificial intelligence to sift through students’ online activities and flag school administrators — and sometimes the police — when they discover materials related to sex, drugs, violence or self-harm. 

Among parents surveyed this year, 55% said they believe the benefits of activity monitoring outweigh the potential harms, down from 63% last year. Among students, 52% said they’re comfortable with academic activity monitoring, a decline from 63% last year. 

Such digital surveillance, researchers found, frequently has disparate impacts on students based on their race, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, potentially violating longstanding federal civil rights laws. 

The tools also extend far beyond the school realm, with 40% of teachers reporting their schools monitor students’ personal devices. More than a third of teachers say they know a student who was contacted by the police because of online monitoring, the survey found, and Black parents were significantly more likely than their white counterparts to fear that information gleaned from online monitoring tools and AI-equipped campus surveillance cameras could fall into the hands of law enforcement. 

Meanwhile, as states nationwide pull literature from school library shelves amid a conservative crusade against LGBTQ+ rights, the nonprofit argues that digital tools that filter and block certain online content “can amount to a digital book ban.” Nearly three-quarters of students — and disproportionately LGBTQ+ youth — said that web filtering tools have prevented them from completing school assignments. 

The nonprofit highlights how disproportionalities identified in the survey could run counter to federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on race and sex, and those designed to ensure equal access to education for children with disabilities. In a letter sent Wednesday to the White House and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, the Center for Democracy and Technology was joined by a coalition of civil rights groups urging federal officials to take a harder tack on ed tech practices that could threaten students’ civil rights. 

“Existing civil rights laws already make schools legally responsible for their own conduct, and that of the companies acting at their direction in preventing discriminatory outcomes on the basis of race, sex and disability,” the coalition wrote. “The department has long been responsible for holding schools accountable to these standards.”

Should smartphones be allowed in classrooms? A from , the education arm of the United Nations, raises questions about the practice. Though smartphones can be used for educational purposes, the report says the devices also disrupt classroom learning, expose students to cyberbullying and can compromise students’ privacy.

About 1 in 7 countries globally, such as and , have banned the use of smartphones in school – and academic performance improved as a result, particularly for low-performing students, the report notes.

As school leaders in the U.S. wrestle with , The Conversation has invited four scholars to weigh in on the issue.

Daniel G. Krutka: Use smartphones to encourage ‘technoskepticism’

While the issue of smartphone use in schools is complicated, evidence suggests that spending more time on smartphones is .

Technology scholars have long argued that the is in finding limits. However, in banning smartphones, I worry educators might be missing opportunities to use smartphones to encourage what I and other researchers refer to as ; that is, questioning our relationship with technology.

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For example, students might be encouraged to consider the benefits and drawbacks of using navigational apps to travel from one place to another, as opposed to old-fashioned paper maps. Or, students might explore their social media feeds to critique what algorithms feed them, or how notifications get their attention.

In , I have looked at how teachers can encourage students to go on – that is, abstaining from the use of technology for a certain period of time. This, I argue, will give students time to reflect on the time they spend .

Policy debates often focus on whether or not to put smartphones out of reach during the school day. But I believe educators might find it more beneficial to make the phones an object of inquiry.

Sarah Rose: Consult parents, teachers and students

While there is evidence that classroom phone usage , it can also promote . While research about the potential positive and negative consequences of classroom phones can be used to inform school phone policies, the who are most directly impacted by the policies should also be taken into account.

The views of parents matter because their views the extent to which their children follow the policy. The views of children matter because they are the ones being expected to follow the policy and to benefit from it. The views of teachers matter because they are often the ones that have to enforce the policies. Research shows that enforcing cellphone policies is .

In my research, I have found that children – aged 10 and 11 years old – in collaboration with their parents, were able to and solutions to help enforce them. For example, one parent-child pair suggested mobile phone use in school could be banned but that a role of “telephone monitor” could be given to an older pupil. This “telephone monitor” would have a class mobile phone that children and parents could use to contact each other during the school day when necessary.

This recommendation reflected how parents and middle and high school students – whether from rural and urban areas – felt cellphones were important to keep in touch with each other during the school day. Beyond safety, children and parents also told us that phones were important for keeping in touch about changing plans and for emotional support during the school day.

I believe policies that simply ban phones in schools may be missing an opportunity to educate children about responsible mobile device use. When parents and children are involved in policy development, it has the potential to increase the extent to which these policies are followed and enforced.

Arnold L. Glass: Cellphone use in college lectures hurts performance in ways that are hard to see

The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices, such as laptops, tablets and cellphones, has transformed the modern college lecture. Students now divide their attention between the lecture and their devices. Classroom studies reveal that when college students use an electronic device for a nonacademic purpose during class, .

When attention is divided between an electronic device and the classroom lecture, it does not reduce comprehension of the lecture – at least, not when measured by within-class quizzes. Instead, divided attention reduces long-term retention of the classroom lecture, which hurts performance on unit exams and final exams.

When some students open electronic devices, it also negatively affects the performance of all the . Research has shown that when electronic devices were permitted during classes that covered exam material versus when the devices were not.

Many students won’t think their divided attention is affecting their retention of new information. It may not be for the moment, but a couple of weeks later or down the line, , it does.

Louis-Philippe Beland: Bans help low-achieving students the most

Numerous studies indicate that low-achieving students stand to benefit the most from the implementation of mobile phone bans in schools.

In a 2015 study, my co-author, , and I in high schools, using data from England. By comparing schools with phone bans to similar schools without the bans, we isolated the effect of mobile phones on performance. Our study found that banning mobile phones significantly increased test scores among 16-year-old students. The effect is equivalent to adding five days to the school year or an extra hour per week. Low-achieving students benefited more, while high-achieving students remained unaffected.

Similar and using a similar approach demonstrated compelling evidence supporting the benefits of banning mobile phones. In Spain, grades improved and bullying incidents decreased. In Norway, the ban raised middle school students’ grade-point averages and their likelihood of attending academic high schools while reducing bullying. Evidence from suggests banning mobile phones can be beneficial for college student performance.

Psychological research sheds light on potential mechanisms behind the impact of mobile phones and technology on student performance. Multitasking, common with mobile phone use, has been found to hinder . Taking notes by hand has been shown to compared to typing on a computer.

In sum, banning mobile phones in schools can yield positive effects, improve academic performance and narrow the achievement gap between high- and low-achieving students. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that mobile phones and technology can also be valuable educational tools when used appropriately.

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Picking out a baby toy – whether it’s for your own child or a friend’s kid or the child of a family member – can be overwhelming. Although Americans spend a year on baby toys, it’s difficult to know which toy will be fun, educational and developmentally appropriate. The options seem endless, with search results at common retail sites in the hundreds, if not thousands. Is price a reliable indicator of quality? Are technological enhancements useful?

Our – published in the American Journal of Play in April 2023 – surveyed the toy market for babies and toddlers age 0-2 at two major U.S. national retailers, with an eye toward differences between battery-powered toys, like the , and traditional toys, such as the .

We found significant differences between these two toy types in terms of how they’re marketed – with more traditional toys marketed as supporting physical development and more technological toys aimed at cognitive development. However, these companies do not always have researchers investigating whether the toys actually help children learn.

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As and , we offer five tips before you buy your next baby toy.

1. Consider your goal

When purchasing a toy, consider whether you have any particular developmental goal in mind. For instance, do you want your baby to develop fine motor skills by playing with a , or to by building a block tower?

2. Look for open-ended toys

Many parents and caregivers know that children often more than the toy inside it. One reason is that boxes are open-ended toys – they can become anything a young child dreams up. Conversely, a toy cellphone directs the type of play much more rigidly.

A good rule of thumb is to choose toys that require . For example, infants can explore a set of realistic miniature animals sensorially – usually by putting them in their mouths – and then later use them for pretend play, or even to create animal footprints in play dough. Contrast this experience with a large plastic elephant that needs to sit on the floor and lights up and makes elephant sounds. Here, a child is limited in play, with the goal being to make the object light up or play a sound.

3. Recognize gender biases

Several major retailers have over the past decade, opting for “kids” instead of “boys” and “girls.”

However, if you enter the store of one of those major toy retailers today, you will still find some aisles filled with pink toys and dolls, while other aisles feature monster trucks and primary-colored blocks. A toy sword might not be labeled as “for boys,” yet shoppers often perceive it that way based on . If you look only in certain aisles or at stereotypical toys, you might miss out on toys that your child would enjoy regardless of gender.

4. Be wary of marketing claims

The makers of tech toys often make claims about their educational potential that are not backed by science. For example, an electronic shape sorter might claim to help children develop emotional skills because the toy says “I love you!”

Be skeptical of such claims, and use your own experience and insights to evaluate the educational potential of a toy. You might read the retailer and manufacturer descriptions, but also see what the toy actually does. If it fosters caregiver-child interactions or helps to develop a specific skill – like how building blocks support spatial skills, and finger puppets build fine motor skills – then it is likely a toy worth considering.

5. Prioritize human interactions

Keep in mind that toys are not chiefly designed to create baby geniuses – they are meant to be fun! So think broadly about whether you want a new toy to support physical, social, emotional, cognitive or creative development while keeping it fun. And remember that no toy can replace between caregivers and children.

Research suggests that when playing with tech toys versus traditional toys with their children. So choosing traditional toys, such as nonelectronic shape sorters and building blocks, may be one way to foster the types of interactions that support healthy development.

Overall, research suggests that, in most cases, traditional toys provide than technological toys. When purchasing a toy, think through the experiences you want the baby in your life to have, think broadly about the goals of a particular toy, try to provide opportunities for and remember to have fun.

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As the co-founder of , an educational technology startup focused on improving the mental health outcomes of school communities, Thadani expanded the coaching and curriculum offered to all frontline members — from bus drivers to cafeteria workers to sanitation staff.

“Part of Robin’s platform is coaching, developing connections, building resilience and really understanding the skillsets you need to deal with life’s challenges,” Thadani told ���˶���. “So if we’re going to do a great job with students, we have to do an unbelievable job with all the adults in their lives.”

For Thadani, destigmatizing conversations around mental health hits home.

As a young parent, Thadani met a father from Newtown, Connecticut who opened up to him about losing his 7-year-old son in a school shooting.

That father was Mark Barden, the co-founder and CEO of the , a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing gun violence in schools.

Touched by Barden’s passion to protect children, Thadani began volunteering for the organization — which later served as the catalyst for co-founding Robin.

“As I learned more about what they’re doing, I took a look at how mental health has affected my own family and close friends,” Thadani said. “I took that as a sign and inspiration to say I’m going to do something about it.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

���˶���: I understand that your affiliation with Sandy Hook Promise played a large role in the creation of Robin. Walk me through how your volunteer work led to starting an educational technology startup.

I’m so proud and feel very fortunate to the team I met over at Sandy Hook Promise. It was a couple years ago and I just so happened to have a conversation with . I didn’t really know who he was at that very moment, but later found out as he shared his story with me that he’s not only a parent who lost his 7-year-old that day, but also happened to be one of the co-founders of Sandy Hook Promise. 

We took a liking to each other and had a lovely conversation. He shared some of his goals, ambitions, and the story of that day with me. As a young parent at the time, it really shook me to my core. I asked him how I can help and he shared with me some of the things that I could do. So I became a and started helping them in any way I could from volunteering to fundraising.

A lot of people talk about the gun violence prevention policy work they do, which is absolutely incredible, but a bulk of what they do that really makes a large impact is the mental health programs for kids. They have two very well known programs called and . When I learned more about these programs, and talked to Mark and Nicole and the rest of the team, I thought wow this is incredible and I wish this was everywhere. We started talking about how much of a challenge it is to reach every school in America and get this program out there. Sandy Hook Promise is a nonprofit doing wonderful things but they only have so much reach. 

As I learned more about what they’re doing, I took a look at how mental health has affected my own family and close friends. I took that as a sign and inspiration to say I’m going to do something about it. What I’ve learned is that there aren’t a lot of preventive and proactive programs out there that are making an impact. So that’s just some of the genesis on why myself and Scott and now a larger team started Robin.

I understand that Robin extends resources to all frontline members of school communities, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and sanitation staff. Tell me more about this initiative.

As any young company, you can only do so much right out of the gates. We started creating this digital online curriculum for students starting with middle school and high school and then eventually elementary. As we were out there talking to principals and superintendents and counselors, I started learning that not only was there not much for educators but they also weren’t really thinking about it in a more broad frame.

As we started to talk to more people, we realized, wait a minute, it’s not just teachers who are interacting every day with students. It’s the cafeteria worker, it’s the bus driver, it’s the crossing guard. If you think about it, the bus driver is the first person to see our kids and the last person to drop them off. They have the potential to set the tone for the day based on how they’re doing.

With one school in upstate New York, we had the opportunity to talk to their leadership team at a conference. They talked about some of the challenges that their transportation team was facing. It’s tough being a driver and having a group of students screaming or yelling or being rambunctious on the bus. In addition to administrators, unions and parents that can be challenging at times. Who’s supporting and allowing them the space and opportunity to talk to someone? Part of Robin’s platform is coaching, developing connections, building resilience and really understanding the skillsets you need to deal with life’s challenges. So if we’re going to do a great job with students, we have to do an unbelievable job with all the adults in their lives.

So we began this journey to support all frontline members starting with this one school in upstate New York who gave us the opportunity to talk to their transportation team. We did a six part coaching series with all 18 of them and asked them about the challenges they face in day-to-day work. I’m proud to report that after we finished, everybody retained their jobs, came back to school and walked in with their heads held high. This is something we’re doing now all over the country, from upstate New York to South Carolina to our backyard here in New York City. We’re supporting school communities and I think this is really critical in order to create something sustainable and have long-term impact.

Oftentimes these frontline members of school communities come from diverse and low-income backgrounds. How does Robin ensure the coaching and resources provided to them are not only accessible but also culturally relevant?

It starts with where the content and curriculum comes from. Robin comes from a diverse set of coaches, teachers, counselors and social workers that are not only mental health experts but are also from those communities and have worked in those schools we serve. The largest community we serve is in our backyard in New York City — the Bronx. A lot of students and families in the Bronx come from lower income communities. They also happen to be from Black and Brown communities where a lot of them don’t speak English. So starting with some of the basics, we have all of our content up in Spanish with closed captions available. Especially for our older students, we make sure that when they see our content not only do they see someone that looks like them or has been through similar challenges, but also in a language they can understand. 

The other thing that Robin does is really listen to the school communities we serve. No school is, of course, the same, even within New York City. The school down the street might have a separate set of challenges, opportunities and needs then the next. I think part of the reason schools are not only coming to us but coming back to us is because we are a reflection of who they are. And again, while we can’t be everything to everyone, we are pulling from a lot of different types of communities and trying to really understand what those communities are asking for. In turn, we can address them with the right sets of curriculum or coaches that they not only want to hear from, but based on the data and some of our surveys and some of our processes, is the right fit for their particular community. So it’s a little bit of a combination of using technology and data and good old fashioned listening skills to really understand the communities we serve and what they’re particularly going through.

In the wake of the Nashville school shooting, what is something about gun violence prevention more school communities need to talk about?

I happened to be in Tennessee about an hour southeast of Nashville visiting one of the schools we work with when this occurred. So I’m with the superintendent of this district and we, of course, talked about it. There are signs out there for these particular students, whether they were posting on social media or showing signs that they were stressed or angry. These students or graduates had no outlet or connection and felt an element of loneliness. And again, these are all studies that have been proven and shown out there in terms of who decides to do these horrific things. 

I think one thing schools all ought to do is understand what those things are so they could be on the lookout. How can we all be armed with information and knowledge on how to notice these signs and then know what to do? How do we get involved sooner and understand what the challenges or issues that a particular student or set of students are facing right now? I think all schools want to do that but they don’t know how to do that. They’re not trained, for example, to know the science. They’re not trained in mental health first aid. 

You bring up a valuable point in regards to mental health training. Tell me more about why it’s important for school communities to destigmatize conversations around mental health.

When we heard back from schools, they’re looking for this training. Not specifically training tailored to know how to identify a school shooter. That is very targeted and there are things out there for that. But how to better understand when you see a student of yours that might be going through a mental health challenge and how to help that student in the moment — from a simple panic attack to an anxiety attack. We do a course around test anxiety. March was SATs and ACTs in a large part of the country, and many students, and parents frankly, get really anxious and nervous. 

There are things we could do to support them in advance of that. That’s sort of the preventative nature of what we’re talking about at Robin. How do we get ahead of these things because we don’t know what life’s challenges or what mental health challenges a student may or may not face. We do know that there are skill sets to put in place today at a young age, even starting in elementary school, that will give them the ability to use those skills if and when a challenge large or small arises.

How have conversations today around gun violence prevention and mental health shaped your own views on the matter?

I look at this from the lens of a parent first and foremost. That’s my number one job and my number one responsibility. It’s made me hyper aware of the possibility that this could happen anywhere and anytime. So what does that mean for young kids growing up? It means we need to make sure they’re okay talking about it. My daughter came home, she’s in second grade, and she had her first formal active shooter drill. For me, I’m 43 and I grew up in the 80s and 90s. We had fire drills and “stop, drop and roll” and how to evacuate the building and things of that nature. But our kids are only going to know this world. Having an open conversation with them as a parent so they can understand why we do these things is important. Whether I like to or want to, this is what we have to do. 

It’s also made me want to change this. Whether it’s through Robin or through supporting Sandy Hook or through just me as an individual doing interviews and podcasts and having these conversations. I know people turn it into a political and divided commentary, but it shouldn’t be. We don’t have all the answers. I don’t have the magic answer in my pocket right now. I have elements of the answer that I think will help, but we need a lot of people to come to the table from all walks of life to solve this. Because you can’t tell me one person who doesn’t want to solve it. We need to come to the table and realize that our kids are literally dying through suicide, gun violence and other medical and mental health issues that lead to some scary things. 

Again, as a parent of young kids going through school for the next decade, this is something I always think about. I don’t necessarily think about it daily or act like this is the last time I’ll see my kids. But for the parents who lost their child, that’s what happened to them. 

For now, I’m so proud of this generation of students and leaders that are bringing this to the forefront of their schools, principals, superintendents and mental health clubs. I do believe this is changing because of the students in this generation that are raising their hands and saying we need to solve this problem.

This year’s list, publishing amid new calls for mask mandates and yet another spike in hospitalizations, powerfully frames our surreal new normal: mounting concerns about historic test score declines; intensifying political divides that would challenge school systems even if there weren’t simultaneous health, staffing and learning crises to manage; broader economic stresses that are making it harder to manage school systems; and a sustained push by many educators and families to embrace innovations and out-of-the-box thinking to help kids accelerate their learning by any means necessary.

Now, 2½ years into one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American education, these were our 22 most discussed articles of 2022: 

The COVID School Years: 700 Days Since Lockdown 

Learning Loss: 700 days. As we reported Feb. 14, that’s how long it had been since more than half the nation’s schools crossed into the pandemic era. On March 16, 2020, districts in 27 states, encompassing almost 80,000 schools, closed their doors for the first long educational lockdown. Since then, schools have reopened, closed and reopened again. The effects have been immediate — students lost parents, teachers mourned fallen colleagues — and hopelessly abstract as educators weighed “pandemic learning loss,” the sometimes crude measure of COVID’s impact on students’ academic performance. 

With spring approaching, there were reasons to be hopeful. More children had been vaccinated. Mask mandates were ending. But even if the pandemic recedes and a “new normal” emerges, there are clear signs that the issues surfaced during this period will linger. COVID heightened inequities that have long been baked into the American educational system. The social contract between parents and schools has frayed. And teachers are burning out. To mark a third spring of educational disruption, Linda Jacobson interviewed educators, parents, students and researchers who spoke movingly, often unsparingly, about what Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, called “a seismic interruption to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” Read her full report. 

Related:

• A 700-Day Parental Awakening: Marguerite Roza, of Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab, reflects on the past years
  
• 700 Days of Missed Opportunities — and Lingering Inequities: Robin Lake, of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, looks back (and forwards)
  
• 700 Days of Balancing Student Safety Against Keeping Classrooms Open: Superintendent Pedro Martinez reflects
  
• 700 Days in Pictures: 24 months inside one resilient school district
  
• The COVID School Years: See our special report, looking back on 700 days of the pandemic

Threatened & Trolled, School Board Members Quit in Record Numbers

School Leadership: By the time we published this report in May, the chaos and violence at big city school board meetings had dominated headlines for months, as protesters, spurred by ideological interest groups and social media campaigns, railed about race, gender and a host of other hot-button issues. But what does it look like when the boardroom is located in a small community, where the elected officials under fire often have lifelong ties to the people doing the shouting? Over the last 18 months, Minnesota K-12 districts have seen a record number of board members resign before the end of their term. As one said in a tearful explanation to her constituents, “The hate is just too much.” Beth Hawkins takes a look at the possible ramifications.  

Related:

• Million-Dollar Records Request: From COVID and critical race theory to teachers’ names & schools, districts flooded with freedom of information document demands

Nation’s Report Card Shows Largest Drops Ever Recorded in 4th and 8th Grade Math

Student Achievement: In a moment the education world had anxiously awaited, the latest round of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress were released in October — and the news was harsh. Math scores saw the largest drops in the history of the exam, while reading performance also fell in a majority of states. National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner Peggy Carr said the “decline that we’re seeing in the math data is stark. It is troubling. It is significant.” Even as some state-level data has shown evidence of a rebound this year, federal officials warned COVID-19’s lost learning won’t be easily restored. ���˶���’s Kevin Mahnken breaks down the results.

Related:

• Lost Decades: ‘Nation’s Report Card’ shows 20 years of growth wiped out by two years of pandemic
  
• Economic Toll: Damage from NAEP math losses could total nearly $1 trillion
  
• COVID Recovery: Can districts rise to the challenge of new NAEP results? Outlook’s not so good 

Virtual Nightmare: One Student’s Journey Through the Pandemic

Mental Health: As the debate over the lingering effects of school closures continues, the term “pandemic recovery” can often lose its meaning. For Jason Finuliar, a California teen whose Bay Area school district was among those shuttered the longest, the journey has been painful and slow. Once a happy, high-achieving student, he descended into academic failure and a depression so severe that he spent 10 days in a residential mental health facility. “I felt so worthless,” he said. It’s taking compassionate counselors, professional help and parents determined to save their son for Jason to regain hope for the future. Linda Jacobson reports. 

16 Under 16: Meet ���˶���’s 2022 Class of STEM Achievers

This spring, we asked for the country’s help identifying some of the most impressive students, age 16 or younger, who have shown extraordinary achievement in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. After an extensive and comprehensive selection process, we’re thrilled to introduce this year’s class of 16 Under 16 in STEM. The honorees range in age from 12 to 16, specialize in fields from medicine to agriculture to invention and represent the country from coast to coast. We hope these incredible youngsters can inspire others — and offer reassurance that our future can be in pretty good hands. Emmeline Zhao offers a closeup of the 2022 class of 16 Under 16 in STEM — click here to read and watch more about them.

A ‘National Teacher Shortage’? New Research Reveals Vastly Different Realities Between States & Regions

School Staffing: Adding to efforts to understand America’s teacher shortages, a new report and website maps the K-12 teaching vacancy data. Nationally, an estimated 36,504 full-time teacher positions are unfilled, with shortages currently localized in nine states. “There are substantial vacant teacher positions in the United States. And for some states, this is much higher than for other states. … It’s just a question of how severe it is,” said author Tuan Nguyen. Marianna McMurdock reports on America’s uneven crisis. 

Meet the Gatekeepers of Students’ Private Lives

School Surveillance: Megan Waskiewicz used to sit at the top of the bleachers and hide her face behind the glow of a laptop monitor. While watching one of her five children play basketball on the court below, the Pittsburgh mother didn’t want other parents in the crowd to know she was also looking at child porn. Waskiewicz worked on contract as a content moderator for Gaggle, a surveillance company that monitors the online behaviors of some 5 million students across the U.S. on their school-issued Google and Microsoft accounts in an effort to prevent youth violence and self-harm. As a result, kids’ deepest secrets — like nude selfies and suicide notes — regularly flashed onto Waskiewicz’s screen. Waskiewicz and other former moderators at Gaggle believe the company helped protect kids, but they also surfaced significant questions about its efficacy, employment practices and effect on students’ civil rights. Eight former moderators shared their experiences at Gaggle with ���˶���, describing insufficient safeguards to protect students’ sensitive data, a work culture that prioritized speed over quality, scheduling issues that sent them scrambling to get hours and frequent exposure to explicit content that left some traumatized. Read the latest investigation by ���˶���’s Mark Keierleber. 

Students Continue to Flee Urban Districts as Boom Towns, Virtual Schools Thrive

Exclusive Data: A year after the nation’s schools experienced a historic decline in enrollment, data shows many urban districts are still losing students, and those that rebounded this year typically haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. Of 40 states and the District of Columbia, few have seen more than a 1% increase compared with 2020-21, when some states experienced declines as high as 5%, according to data from Burbio, a company that tracks COVID-related education trends. Flat enrollment this year “means those kids did not come back,” said Thomas Dee, an education professor at Stanford University. While many urban districts were already losing students before the pandemic, COVID “accelerated” movement into outlying areas and to states with stronger job markets. Experts say that means many districts will have to make some tough decisions in the coming years. Linda Jacobson reports. 

‘Hybrid’ Homeschooling Making Inroads as Families Seek New Models

School Choice: As public school enrollments dip to historic lows, researchers are beginning to track families to hybrid homeschooling arrangements that meet in person a few days per week and send students home for the rest of the time. More formal than learning pods or microschools, many still rely on parents for varying levels of instruction and grading. About 60% to 70% are private, according to a new research center on hybrid schools based at Kennesaw State University, northwest of Atlanta. Greg Toppo reports.

Student Safety: Thousands of times every year, New York City school staff report what they fear may be child abuse or neglect to a state hotline. But the vast majority of the resulting investigations yield no evidence of maltreatment while plunging the families, most of them Black, Hispanic and low income, into fear and lasting trauma. Teachers are at the heart of the problem: From August 2019 to January 2022, two-thirds of their allegations were false alarms, data obtained by ���˶��� show. “Teachers, out of fear that they’re going to get in trouble, will report even if they’re just like, ‘Well, it could be abuse.’ … It also could be 10 million other things,” one Bronx teacher said. . 

The Contagion Effect: From Buffalo to Uvalde, 16 Mass Shootings in Just 10 Days

Gun Violence: May’s mass school shooting in Texas — the deadliest campus attack in about a decade — has refocused attention on the frequency of such devastating carnage on American victims. The tragedy unfolded just 10 days after a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. It could be more than a coincidence: A growing body of research suggests these assaults have a tendency to spread like a viral disease. In fact, The U.S. has experienced 16 mass shootings with at least four victims in just 10 days. Read Mark Keierleber’s report. 

Teachers Leaving Jobs During Pandemic Find ‘Fertile’ Ground in New School Models

Microschools: Feeling that she could no longer effectively meet children’s needs in a traditional school, former counselor Heather Long is among those who left district jobs this year to teach in an alternative model — a microschool based in her New Hampshire home. “For the first time in their lives, they have options,” Jennifer Carolan of Reach Capital, an investment firm supporting online programs and ed tech ventures, told reporter Linda Jacobson. Some experts wonder if microschools are sustainable, but others say the ground is “fertile.” Read our full report. 

Facing Pandemic Learning Crisis, Districts Spend Relief Funds at a Snail’s Pace

School Funding: Schools that were closed the longest due to COVID have spent just a fraction of the billions in federal relief funds targeted to students who suffered the most academically, according to an analysis by ���˶���. The delay is significant, experts say, because research points to a direct correlation between the closures and lost learning. Of the 25 largest districts, the 12 that were in remote learning for at least half the 2020-21 school year have spent on average roughly 15% of their American Rescue Plan funds — and districts are increasing pressure on the Education Department for more time. Linda Jacobson reports.

Slave Money Paved the Streets. Now, This Posh Rhode Island City Strives to Teach Its Past 

Teaching History: Every year, millions of tourists marvel at Newport, Rhode Island’s colonial architecture, savor lobster rolls on the wharf and gaze at waters that — many don’t realize — launched more slave trading voyages than anywhere else in North America. But after years of invisibility, that obscured chapter is becoming better known, partly because the Ocean State passed a law in 2021 requiring schools to teach Rhode Island’s “African Heritage History.” Amid recent headlines that the state’s capital city is now moving forward with a $10 million reparations program, read Asher Lehrer-Small’s examination of how Newport is looking to empower schools to confront the city’s difficult past. 

Harvard Economist Thomas Kane on Learning Loss, and Why Many Schools Aren’t Prepared to Combat It 

74 Interview: This spring, Harvard economist Thomas Kane co-authored one of the biggest — and most pessimistic — studies yet of COVID learning loss, revealing that school closures massively set back achievement for low-income students. The effects appear so large that, by his estimates, many schools will need to spend 100% of their COVID relief to counteract them. Perversely, though, many in the education world don’t realize that yet. “Once that sinks in,” he said, “I think people will realize that more aggressive action is necessary.” Read Kevin Mahnken’s full interview. 

In White, Wealthy Douglas County, Colorado, a Conservative School Board Majority Fires the Superintendent, and Fierce Backlash Ensues

Politics: The 2021 election of four conservative members to Colorado’s Douglas County school board led to the firing in February of schools Superintendent Corey Wise, who had served the district in various capacities for 26 years. The decision, which came at a meeting where public comment was barred, swiftly mobilized teachers, students and community members in opposition. Wise’s ouster came one day after a 1,500-employee sickout forced the shutdown of the state’s third-largest school district . A few days later, students walked out of school en masse, followed by litigation and talk of a school board recall effort. The battle mirrors those being fought in numerous districts throughout the country, with conservative parents, newly organized during the pandemic, championing one agenda and more moderate and liberal parent groups beginning to rise up to counter those views. Jo Napolitano reports.

Weaving Stronger School Communities: Nebraska’s Teacher of the Year Challenges Her Rural Community to Wrestle With the World 

Inspiring: Residents of tiny Taylor, Nebraska, call Megan Helberg a “returner” — one of the few kids to grow up in the town of 190 residents, leave to attend college in the big city and then return as an adult to rejoin this rural community in the Sandhills. Honored as the state’s 2020 Teacher of the Year, Helberg says she sees her role as going well beyond classroom lessons and academics. She teaches her students to value their deep roots in this close-knit circle. She advocates on behalf of her school — the same school she attended as a child — which is always threatened with closure due to small class sizes. She has also launched travel clubs through her schools, which Helberg says has strengthened her community by breaking students, parents and other community members out of their comfort zone and helping them gain a better view of the world outside Nebraska while also seeing their friends and neighbors in a whole new light. This past winter, as part of a broader two-month series on educators weaving community, a team from ���˶��� made multiple visits to Taylor to meet Helberg and see her in action with her students. Watch the full documentary by Jim Fields, and read our full story about Helberg’s background and inspiration by Laura Fay. 

Other profiles from this year’s Weaver series: 

• Texas’s Alejandro Salazar: The band teacher who kept his school community connected through COVID’s chaos
  
• Hawaii’s Heidi Maxie: How an island teacher builds community bridges through her Hawaii school
  
• Georgia’s Allie Reeser: Living and learning among refugees in the ‘Ellis Island of the South’
  
• : Meet 12 educators strengthening school communities amid the pandemic

Research: Babies Born During COVID Talk Less with Caregivers, Slower to Develop Critical Language Skills

Big Picture: Independent studies by Brown University and a national nonprofit focused on early language development found infants born during the pandemic produced significantly fewer vocalizations and had less verbal back-and-forth with their caretakers compared with those born before COVID. Both used the nonprofit LENA’s “talk pedometer” technology, which delivers detailed information on what children hear throughout the day, including the number of words spoken near the child and the child’s own language-related vocalizations. It also counts child-adult interactions, called “conversational turns,” which are critical to language acquisition. The joint finding is the latest troubling evidence of developmental delays discovered when comparing babies born before and after COVID. “I’m worried about how we set things up going forward such that our early childhood teachers and early childhood interventionalists are prepared for what is potentially a set of children who maybe aren’t performing as we expect them to,” Brown’s Sean Deoni tells ���˶���’s Jo Napolitano. Read our full report. 

Minneapolis Teacher Strike Lasted 3 Weeks. The Fallout Will Be Felt for Years

Two days after Minneapolis teachers ended their first strike in 50 years this past May, Superintendent Ed Graff walked out of a school board meeting, ostensibly because a student protester had used profanity. The next morning, he resigned. The swearing might have been the last straw, but the kit-bag of problems left unresolved by the district’s agreement with the striking unions is backbreaking indeed. Four-fifths of the district’s federal pandemic aid is now committed to staving off layoffs and giving classroom assistants and teachers bonuses and raises, leaving little for academic recovery at a moment when the percentage of disadvantaged students performing at grade level has dipped into the single digits. From potential school closures and misinformation about how much money the district actually has to layoffs of Black teachers, a lack of diversity in the workforce and how to make up for lost instructional time, Beth Hawkins reports on the aftermath. 

After Steering Mississippi’s Unlikely Learning Miracle, Carey Wright Steps Down

Profile: Mississippi, one of America’s poorest and least educated states, emerged in 2019 as a fast-rising exemplar in math and reading growth. The transformation of the state’s long-derided school system came about through intense work — in the classroom and the statehouse — to raise learning standards, overhaul reading instruction and reinvent professional development. And with longtime State Superintendent Carey Wright retiring at the end of June, ���˶���’s Kevin Mahnken looked at what comes next.

As Schools Push for More Tutoring, New Research Points to Its Effectiveness — and the Challenge of Scaling it to Combat Learning Loss

Learning Acceleration: In the two years that COVID-19 has upended schooling for millions of families, experts and education leaders have increasingly touted one tool as a means for coping with learning loss: personalized tutors. In February, just days after the secretary of education declared that every struggling student should receive 90 minutes of tutoring each week, a newly released study offers more evidence of the strategy’s potential — and perhaps its limitations. An online tutoring pilot launched last spring did yield modest, if positive, learning benefits for the hundreds of middle schoolers who participated. But those gains were considerably smaller than the impressive results from some previous studies, perhaps because of the project’s design: It relied on lightly trained volunteers, rather than professional educators, and held its sessions online instead of in person. “There is a tradeoff in navigating the current climate where what is possible might not be scalable,” the study’s co-author, Matthew Kraft, told ���˶���’s Kevin Mahnken. “So instead of just saying, ‘Come hell or high water, I’m going to build a huge tutoring program,’ we might be better off starting off with a small program and building it over time.” Read our full report. 

STEM: Robert Sansone was born to invent. His STEM creations range from springy leg extensions for sprinting to a go-kart that can reach speeds of 70 mph. But his latest project aims to solve a global problem: the unsustainability of electric car motors that use rare earth materials that are nonrenewable, expensive and pollute the environment during the mining and refining process. In Video Director James Field’s video profile, the Florida high schooler talks about his creation, inspiration and what he plans to do with his $75,000 prize from the 2022 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. , and watch our full portrait below: 

Lim, an education technology entrepreneur and TED Fellow, watched as her mother would answer questions every day about how to support their child’s learning, parent-teacher conferences and cultural barriers around school jargon.

Growing up in an immigrant family, Lim resonated with their struggles and later explored solutions to family-school partnerships as the founder and CEO of , a communication app that helps multilingual and underserved families connect with their child’s teachers.

“Education is one of the biggest issues we need to solve in this country,” Lim tells ���˶���. “And how can we solve this through technology?”

TalkingPoints has supported more than 600 schools and districts – over 3 million families and teachers, where 70% of students served are students of color and 89% come from Title I schools.

Lim delved into this further at the conference during her TED Talk: “.”

“We’re playing the role my mom had for the school and my friends’ families — the communicator, the explainer, the coach, the translator and the go-between,” Lim said in her TED Talk. “When teachers and families work together everyone wins.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

���˶���: What key takeaways would you want someone watching your TED Talk to understand about you and TalkingPoints?

I think the biggest takeaway about me is that my personal background drives a lot of the talking points in my TED Talk. I’m Korean and moved to England when I was eight. My mom became that communicator, translator and go-between in the public elementary school I went to. I saw the impact that had on me and my sister’s education, so I think a lot about that when it comes to family-school partnerships as the central driver of student success. 

But it’s not just the experience of myself. Research really shows that when families and schools partner with each other and build relationships that are meaningful and collaborative, that really drives student learning and well being. 

���˶���: How does it feel to be the only education leader selected as part of the class of 2022 TED Fellows Program?

I’m really excited and inspired to be part of this program and to talk about the state of education in the U.S., especially when it comes to highlighting the mass media’s view around education, the achievement gap and the potential of families driving student success. I’m also excited to have this platform to bring to life the research we have at TalkingPoints. You might have seen in my TED Talk about the 40 million children that come from under-resourced and/or immigrant families. People gasped at that number as well as the two year achievement gap and the trillion dollars lost in the economy.

I think education is one of the biggest issues we need to solve in this country, and we haven’t found the silver bullet to the learning and opportunity gap. COVID-19 really exacerbated it and there’s a long way to go. With the leaders in the TED community, we’re able to connect with others also trying to solve these complex social problems.

���˶���: You mentioned how COVID-19 exacerbated the learning and opportunity gap for students. Did COVID-19 have an impact on TalkingPoints ability to tackle this?

When COVID-19 hit us in March 2020, we actually saw a 20x increase in communication volume. Within the span of three to six months, we saw a fixed increase in the number of families that we were reaching. And all the school districts that we were partnering with started reaching out saying that they needed TalkingPoints for the entire school district instead of just a subset of students. 

We also did a research report that said family-school partnerships was more important than ever during COVID-19 to drive student learning and well being. It was a silver lining moment for us in terms of how we can serve these communities and really get TalkingPoints in the hands of many more school districts and families who need it. But more importantly, it highlights how family-school partnerships continue to be a critical component to student learning.

���˶���: Tell me more about TalkingPoints growth. How have languages expanded since the organization was founded?

In terms of languages, we started off with around 20. Now we’re offering translations in more than 125 languages with support from real human translators for instant translations. We also include dialects that are not supported by other apps, like Dari which is a language spoken in Afghanistan, Odia which is an Indian dialect, Kata which is a Russian dialect and Uyghur which is spoken in a region of China. 

We have also piloted a language for Cape Verdean Creole. We’re the only organization to support a language like that. Boston Public Schools were really excited about it because they have a significant Cape Verdean population and have been really struggling to support that set of families and students in the past. We’ve really expanded and plan to expand even further down the line.

���˶���: What would you say has been the most impactful story you’ve heard from someone that uses TalkingPoints?

So we had a teacher based in Georgia. She’s an elementary school teacher and she’s taught in the same elementary school for more than 10 years. She used to teach kindergarten three years ago, but last year she started teaching third grade. Because of this, she ended up teaching the same kid that she used to teach in kindergarten. She wrote to us specifically to say that the mother of the student, who is a Spanish speaking student, has never felt so included in their school community after using TalkingPoints. 

If you think about it, this is a natural A/B experiment so to speak. It’s the same school, the same teacher, the same student and the same family. This is a really special story because we can attribute the impact of TalkingPoints specifically to this before and after story. It’s really, really touching and amazing. And the fact that the teacher specifically wrote to us to tell us that at the request of the mother is also special. That’s one story I love sharing.

���˶���: What does the future look like for TalkingPoints? For instance, do you see TalkingPoints delving into other ways to engage and connect families?

I think there’s a couple of things to know. We’re already working on a lot of exciting things around in-house research to see what the impact of TalkingPoints has on student outcomes. For example, we have research coming up that actually shows a direct-causal relationship to engage families around improving student achievement, grades across subjects, attendance and student discipline. I’m really excited to share that. 

We’ve also been working on making sure that the family-school connections are equitable and accessible to all. TalkingPoints is open to all adults who support student learning within a school system – including teachers, counselors, bus drivers, coaches and psychologists, so a student’s full learning team can engage with families regularly. 

We also have reading flags whenever a teacher is writing above a fifth grade reading level. We offer suggestions to simplify so parents can understand them better. We also have tools for families to demystify education terms, like Individualized Education Program (IEP) or parent-teacher conferences. Like what are they and why are they important? As well as allowing families to engage with their teachers via video with closed captions translated. 

So I guess the reason I bring this all up relates directly to the future of TalkingPoints. We are on a mission to systematically remove the barriers to family-school partnerships. We are looking to develop a next generation platform that gives coaching and support to teachers, school administrators and families to talk to each other in a positive, connecting way.

���˶���: As a Korean immigrant, what does it mean to you to be a part of the education technology space?

My personal experience and identity really drives the way that I think about the role of education technology as a tool. It can really unlock behaviors and thoughts that schools and families can have to drive student success. But it has to come from an inclusive, accessible and equitable lens. The way that education technology is designed, thought about, used and implemented can be a make or break moment. If done well, there’s incredible potential to improve student success. But if not, it can further widen the learning loss gap we’ve seen from COVID-19. 

As a Korean immigrant, I think a lot about product development and education technology that is inclusive, accessible and caters to the needs of under-resourced and immigrant students and families. That goes not just for me but a lot of our TalkingPoints team. They’ve grown up as English language learners, come from immigrant families, are first generation college goers and have taught in the classroom. Our team really understands the communities we serve and how we think about our vision to further support them.

Students from 10 universities around the country can visit historical settings or perform surgery on cadavers, all from the comfort of their homes, after an Iowa company that specializes in virtual reality created digital campuses.

During the pandemic, students at Morehouse College in Atlanta reported struggling with online learning. The university came to VictoryXR, a company based in Davenport, Iowa. CEO Steve Grubbs had the solution: build a virtual replica of the campus.

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Students and instructors wear virtual-reality headsets to access a three-dimensional, computer-generated simulation of real-world places and events. Users immersed into the virtual reality, known as the metaverse, can move through the simulation and interact with others.

Within 10 weeks, teachers at Morehouse developed coursework for the program, and VictoryXR built the metaverse. At Morehouse, inorganic chemistry, world history and biology courses have used the program.

“Next thing you know, their students are taking classes in the metaverse,” Grubbs said. “The first college in the world.”

Meta, the company that owns Facebook, connected with VictoryXR to expand “metaversities” after the implementation of digital classrooms at Morehouse College and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Morehouse is one of 10 higher education institutions to qualify for virtual classrooms through a grant from Meta. According to a public records request filed by , the universities will receive more than $500,000 and virtual-reality headsets under their contracts with VictoryXR.

Grubbs said virtual-meeting programs like Zoom can’t recreate the student experience that virtual reality can.

“In a metaversity, you are all together and you are in a classroom together where you can fist bump, you can work on projects together, you can break into small groups,” Grubbs said. “A teacher can take a human heart out of a cadaver and hand it to another student. That is the bottom line. It is almost exactly like the brick-and-mortar classroom, only better.”

Grubbs said students working in the metaverse will get the same education they would receive on campus, and in some ways better.

Grubbs said health science majors will benefit the most from the virtual experience, but history classes can also be enhanced through the metaverse. As on-campus and remote learning increases in demand, Grubbs said learning needs to be kinesthetic, or hands-on.

One simulation VictoryXR developed was the courtroom from the classic Harper Lee novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” As students discuss the book in class, they can sit with the jurors or in the judge’s chair.

“You can understand the book from the perspective of those who sat in the courtroom,” Grubbs said. “That’s what we are trying to achieve, is an understanding that can only being gained by being there. Students get to go stand on the Great Wall of China, they can go to Iceland and they can go to the Redwoods Forest once they are learning with our virtual reality.”

Grubbs served in the Iowa House from 1990 to 1996, including as chair of the House Education Committee. He said he has always had an interest in developing new ways to improve education. Buffalo Elementary School in Buffalo, Iowa, was the first school to use VictoryXR’s virtual reality education program. Now schools around the world use VictoryXR’s product. Saint Ambrose University in Davenport will be the first higher education institution in Iowa to have a metaversity. 

“They will be right alongside the University of Kansas, West Virginia, Cal State, and a lot of other great schools in the country,” Grubbs said.

Data collection

Meta will provide each university with Oculus Quest 2 virtual-reality headsets, while in use.

All contracts in the public-records request from noted the universities retain the ultimate ownership of data generated in the partnership. Data collection will depend on the brand of headset students use, according to Grubbs. Technology from the grant could come from Meta, Pico Technology or HTC, all with their own privacy data opt-in policies. 

Currently, Grubbs said no information is being gathered from users. VictoryXR won’t collect any data other than an email and name to set up an account. 

Users will be required to create a Facebook account to access the virtual classroom. Under Meta’s data policy, Oculus products can collect information about physical features and information from third-party apps. Passing information between third-party apps allows the company to pair users with friends also using the app, .

Environmental, dimensional and movement data will also be recorded to alert users if they approach a virtual boundary. Hand size estimates will be collected to enable the hand tracking feature.

What’s next?

VictoryXR hopes to expand the business so that every school in world will have a metaversity in the next five to seven years, Grubbs said. The company has been in conversation with multiple universities in Iowa. He plans to meet with the University of Iowa soon to talk about the future of virtual classrooms at the university.

VictoryXR is opening its first metaversity in Europe in August and Grubbs plans to bring on a business development aid in India in September. The business also won a global award for the best education innovation last September.

Grubbs expects the industry to expand to augmented reality. In virtual reality, students are completely immersed and are typically working remotely. Augmented reality creates virtual objects visible in the real-world classroom.  

“They don’t have to fly across the country and live on a campus because the metaverse is a campus,” he said.

Questions regarding the metaverse and VictoryXR can be directed to the .

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Fifteen-year-old Jordyne Lewis was stressed out. 

The high school sophomore from Harrisburg, North Carolina, was overwhelmed with schoolwork, never mind the uncertainty of living in a pandemic that’s dragged on for two long years. Despite the challenges, she never turned to her school counselor or sought out a therapist.

Instead, she shared her feelings with a robot. to be precise.  

Lewis has struggled to cope with the changes and anxieties of pandemic life and for this extroverted teenager, loneliness and social isolation were among the biggest hardships. But Lewis didn’t feel comfortable going to a therapist. 

“It takes a lot for me to open up,” she said. But did Woebot do the trick?

Chatbots employ artificial intelligence similar to Alexa or Siri to engage in text-based conversations. Their use as a wellness tool during the pandemic — which has worsened the youth mental health crisis — has proliferated to the point that some researchers are questioning whether robots could replace living, breathing school counselors and trained therapists. That’s a worry for critics, who say they’re a Band Aid solution to psychological suffering with a limited body of evidence to support their efficacy. 

“Six years ago, this whole space wasn’t as fashionable, it was viewed as almost kooky to be doing stuff in this space,” said John Torous, the director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. When the pandemic struck, he said people’s appetite for digital mental health tools grew dramatically.

Throughout the crisis, experts have been sounding the alarm about a . During his State of the Union address in March, President Joe Biden called youth mental health challenges an emergency, noting that students’ “lives and education have been turned upside-down.” 

Digital wellness tools like mental health chatbots have stepped in with a promise to fill the gaps in America’s overburdened and under-resourced mental health care system. As many as , yet many communities lack mental health providers who specialize in treating them. National estimates suggest there are fewer than 10 child psychiatrists per 100,000 youth, less than a quarter of the staffing level recommended by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 

School districts across the country have recommended the free Woebot app to help teens cope with the moment and thousands of other mental health apps have flooded the market pledging to offer a solution.

“The pandemic hit and this technology basically skyrocketed. Everywhere I turn now there’s a new chatbot promising to deliver new things,” said Serife Tekin, an associate philosophy professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio whose research has in mental health care. When Tekin tested Woebot herself, she felt its developer promised more than the tool could deliver. 

Body language and tone are important to traditional therapy, Tekin said, but Woebot doesn’t recognize such nonverbal communication.

“It’s not at all like how psychotherapy works,” Tekin said.  

Sidestepping stigma

Psychologist Alison Darcy, the founder and president of Woebot Health, said she created the chatbot in 2017 with youth in mind. Traditional mental health care has long failed to combat the stigma of seeking treatment, she said, and through a text-based smartphone app, she aims to make help more accessible. 

“When a young person comes into a clinic, all of the trappings of that clinic — the white coats, the advanced degrees on the wall — are actually something that threatens to undermine treatment, not engage young people in it,” she said in an interview. Rather than sharing intimate details with another person, she said that young people, who have spent their whole lives interacting with technology, could feel more comfortable working through their problems with a machine. 

Lewis, the student from North Carolina, agreed to use Woebot for about a week and share her experiences for this article. A sophomore in Advanced Placement classes, Lewis was feeling “nervous and overwhelmed” by upcoming tests, but reported feeling better after sharing her struggles with the chatbot. Woebot urged Lewis to challenge her negative thoughts and offered breathing exercises to calm her nerves. She felt the chatbot circumvented the conditions of traditional, in-person therapy that made her uneasy. 

“It’s a robot,” she said. “It’s objective. It can’t judge me.” 

Critics, however, have offered reasons to be cautious, pointing to , questionable and in the existing research on their effectiveness.

Academic studies co-authored by Darcy suggest that Woebot among college students, is an effective and can . Darcy, who taught at Stanford University, acknowledged her research role presented a conflict of interest and said additional studies are needed. After all, she has big plans for the chatbot’s future.   

The company is currently seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to leverage its chatbot to treat adolescent depression. Darcy described the free Woebot app as a “lightweight wellness tool.” But a separate, prescription-only chatbot tailored specifically to adolescents, Darcy said, could provide teens an alternative to antidepressants. 

Not all practitioners are against automating therapy. In Ohio, researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati teamed up with chatbot developer to create a “COVID Anxiety” chatbot with the unprecedented stress.

Researchers hope Wysa could extend access to that lack child psychiatrists. Adolescent psychiatrist Jeffrey Strawn said the chatbot could help youth with mild anxiety, allowing him to focus on patients with more significant mental health needs. 

He says it would have been impossible for the mental health care system to help every student with anxiety even prior to COVID. “During the pandemic, it would have been super untenable.” 

A Band-Aid?

Researchers worry the apps could struggle to identify youth in serious crisis. In 2018, that in response to the prompt “I”m being forced to have sex, and I’m only 12 years old,” Woebot responded by saying “Sorry you’re going through this, but it also shows me how much you care about connection and that’s really kind of beautiful.” 

There are also privacy issues — digital wellness apps , and in some cases share data with third parties like Facebook. 

Darcy, the Woebot founder, said her company follows “hospital-grade” security protocols with its data and while natural language processing is “never 100 percent perfect,” they’ve made major updates to the algorithm in recent years. Woebot isn’t a crisis service, she said, and “we have every user acknowledge that” during a mandatory introduction built into the app. Still, she said the service is critical in solving access woes.

“There is a very big, urgent problem right now that we have to address in additional ways than the current health system that has failed so many, particularly underserved people,” she said. “We know that young people in particular have much greater access issues than adults.”

Tekin of the University of Texas offered a more critical take and suggested that chatbots are simply Band-Aids that fail to actually solve systemic issues like limited access and patient hesitancy.

“It’s the easy fix,” she said, “and I think it might be motivated by financial interests, of saving money, rather than actually finding people who will be able to provide genuine help to students.”

Lowering the barrier

Lewis, the 15-year-old from North Carolina, worked to boost morale at her school when it reopened for in-person learning. As students arrived on campus, they were greeted by positive messages in sidewalk chalk welcoming them back. 

She’s a youth activist with the nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise, which trains students to recognize the warning signs that someone might hurt themselves or others. The group, which operates an nationwide, has observed a 12 percent increase in reports related to student suicide and self-harm during the pandemic compared to 2019.

Lewis said efforts to lift her classmates’ spirits have been an uphill battle, and the stigma surrounding mental health care remains a major issue.  

“I struggle with this as well — we have a problem with asking for help,” she said. “Some people feel like it makes them feel weak or they’re hopeless.”

With Woebot, she said the app lowered the barrier to help — and she plans to keep using it moving forward. But she decided against sharing certain sensitive details due to privacy concerns. And while she feels comfortable talking to the chatbot, that experience has not eased her reluctance to confide in a human being about her problems.

“It’s like the stepping stone to getting help,” she said. “But it’s definitely not a permanent solution.”

Disclosure: This story was produced in partnership with . It is part of a reporting series that is supported by the which works to build vibrant and inclusive democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. All content is editorially independent and overseen by Guardian and 74 editors.

Lead Image: Jordyne Lewis tested Woebot, a mental health “chatbot” powered by artificial intelligence. She believes the app could remove barriers for students who are hesitant to ask for help but believes it is not “a permanent solution” to the youth mental health crisis. (Andy McMillan / The Guardian)

This green revolution will require an army of well-trained workers — yet federal investments in job training have focused mostly on adults. To build a healthy pipeline of skilled labor, policymakers should apply lessons from a robust body of evidence about successful career and technical education programs for high school students to create pathways for careers in the green economy. 

More than high school students are enrolled in CTE; high-quality CTE programs have been shown to high school graduation, college enrollment and earnings. With curricula organized around specific career themes, they offer internships and other work-based learning experiences, and provide opportunities to earn industry-recognized credentials and college credits while still in high school. CTE programs also appear to work particularly well for students who have lagged in educational attainment, including and . 

CTE programs have been successful across fields of study, suggesting that similar models focused on green jobs and careers may have similar effects. In fact, promising green CTE programs are cropping up all over the country. In Malta, New York, the , a model school, offers learning experiences in clean energy, business and solar installation, opportunities to earn certificates in photovoltaics and a pathway to associate’s degrees in electrical construction and maintenance. The on Governors Island in New York City provides programs in fields related to marine health, including aquaculture and marine systems technology, and offers instruction in professional diving and vessel operation, as well as paid internships. 

In Kansas, at Olathe West High School is a four-year program with pathways in both renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. in Mississippi trains students in aquaculture through a program that allows them to continue their studies at a local community college, and the Bright Solar Futures program at in Philadelphia provides training and industry-recognized certificates in solar energy installation and energy conservation, preparing students for entry-level solar jobs. 

As innovative as these programs are, however, they tend to be one-off efforts. To prepare students for the future green economy, a more coordinated effort will be necessary to align labor market needs with CTE programs nationwide. 

The Aspen Institute’s recent recommends developing new CTE opportunities that prepare students for jobs in the clean energy economy and creating curricula that supports knowledge of environmental sustainability across all career pathways. This could be done in a coordinated way by leveraging funds through the federal , which provides states with more than $1 billion annually to support CTE education. For example, electricians and HVAC technicians now need to understand new technology used for renewably powered homes and buildings. Other fields that are staples of current CTE programming are being transformed by efforts to address climate change, including buildings and architecture, transportation and logistics, and agriculture and natural resources. 

Perkins already requires school districts to conduct needs assessments of local labor markets. States could use that funding to support schools to make explicit connections with green employers to learn what skills students need and create opportunities for internships, apprenticeships and work-based learning experiences. 

Other funding streams should be developed to support green CTE, such as money to purchase training equipment like solar panels, wind turbine parts and greenhouses. Funding for research to understand how schools and districts can best align their educational offerings with rapidly accelerating changes in the labor market should also be a policy priority.

Developing a talent pipeline of students ready to enter the workforce as the clean energy transition accelerates would ensure a robust, skilled pool of workers prepared to meet the challenge of reducing carbon emissions at the scale and speed that science demands. Doing so would be a win for students, employers and the environment.  

Rachel Rosen is a senior associate and co-director of MDRC’s . 

The result of this infusion of education technology is that it is now a permanent part of the K-12 instructional landscape, not only virtually but in the physical classroom. Some young learners, like the second- and third-graders I teach, have never known school to be anything other than tech-centered. Whether they’re at home or in an actual building, they turn on a laptop or tablet, log in to a content management system and start exploring instructional games, puzzles or videos. Every time I walk into a classroom, I’m reminded that COVID-19 has turned a generation of kids into full-fledged consumers of ed tech content.

Now they’re ready for the next step: creating that content themselves.

Today, students can make their own movies, design their own graphics and power their own robots. At Newtown Elementary School in Virginia Beach, kids have used Wixie to create language arts presentations, Dash robots to learn coding and BrainPOP to create their own animations about weather. Not only do children love using these types of tools, but shows that active, hands-on learning can lead to higher retention rates and increased academic performance. Technology that gives students control over their education also has the potential to agency, the process where students begin to lead their own learning, adapt when things get tough and believe they can succeed. 

Here are three tips for transforming young ed tech consumers into content creators: 

1 Make students the teachers

Four years ago, my school started a program called the Hour of Power. Teachers nominate students to join me for a 45-minute lesson each month to become familiar with an ed tech tool that promotes active learning. Afterward, they go back to their classrooms and teach their peers how to use the tool. Some students are so excited to share what they’ve learned that they ask to present to other classes. It has become a huge hit with the kids, who are building enthusiasm for content creation while showing their classmates that they’ve mastered a subject. 

There’s also a side benefit to the Hour of Power: Once students are comfortable with the technology, teachers are more likely to incorporate it into their lessons.

2 Don’t rescue students when they’re floundering

Many tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley say that their greatest failures led to their greatest successes. The same is true for young learners. I’ll sometimes see teachers start to “rescue” students who are struggling, whether it’s with science, STEM or a tech tool. “Hang on,” I tell them. “Let them figure it out on their own.” Learning becomes more powerful when children discover the solution themselves. For that reason, I never teach my Hour of Power learners all the features of a new tech tool, though I sometimes hint that there are “Easter eggs” hidden within. When they find them, the wide grins that spread across their faces tell me everything I need to know about teaching and learning. Then they get to share with their classmates.  

3 Balance technology with other forms of learning

During remote instruction, our district’s leaders stressed the importance of finding ways other than through technology to reach students. That’s something we’ve continued as we’ve returned to the physical classrooms. For example, one of my favorite science-based lessons is on erosion. After students learn about the process from their teachers, I come in with a tub of sand and a bucket of water and show them what erosion looks like. Then, they take on the role of city engineers, with the goal of preventing their houses from washing away.

In my work as an instructional technologist, I’ve heard some teachers say students’ time could be better spent building skills in math or reading than on the trial-and-error process of experimenting with software. I’d argue that it’s not a binary choice. Content creation tools are powerful vehicles for teaching core subject matter while helping students develop into self-motivated, lifelong learners. Giving children the tools to decide what is meaningful and relevant to them has benefits that transcend subject matter.

Kevin Rickard is an instructional technology specialist at Newtown Elementary School in Virginia Beach.

Hollis Irvin learned to read last year. She’s a good reader, her mother, Tiffany Burks, says. Last year, when the pandemic forced schools to close temporarily and during the early days of remote learning that followed, Burks started to worry about her Grier Elementary second grader.

Hollis was starting to read words just to say them out loud — not trying to understand what the words and passages meant. Reading felt like a chore to Hollis, Burks said.

Then they found the , a mobile application that families can use to work on literacy skills at home. The app takes kids through a quiz and, based on the results, suggests activities and games for them to do on their own or work on with their parents.

“She’s making the connection when it comes to the questions [about what she read], so she’s not just reading to read,” Burks said. “If I had a question regarding one of the passages she read, she can answer the question back. There’s been a lot of growth that I’ve seen.”

The Reading Checkup is available for free in Mecklenburg County as , a community-wide reading initiative, is leading a free pilot of the app for its maker, Learning Ovations. While Read Charlotte is using it to help parents work with their children, the algorithm it uses was designed to help teachers in the classroom.

Munro Richardson, executive director of Read Charlotte, believes the app can help kids address unfinished learning and combat summer slide.

“When we think about what’s happening in this COVID environment and post-COVID, our kids are going to be all over the place,” Richardson said. “So the need to have this sort of precision medicine for literacy is greater than ever.”

Richardson was learning more about the platform when the pandemic began. When he learned the Department of Education had asked Learning Ovations to investigate use of the platform at home for kids and parents to use, his ears perked up.

Richardson convinced Learning Ovations to choose Mecklenburg County. His team worked on changes to make the platform more compatible for the community. The first thing they did was change the name, which used to be Home Literacy Coach.

Next, they worked on making the interface more user-friendly. A 15-minute assessment became two short quizzes. Also, many of the activities suggested for kids required school resources, so Read Charlotte worked with nonprofit partners and came up with new activities that are easier to do at home.

Read Charlotte also partnered with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which provided six teachers to record more than 100 videos explaining how caregivers can conduct adult-led activities.

To get the word out, Read Charlotte partnered with more than 80 organizations. One of them, , got the app into hundreds of homes. They also came up with the idea of creating literacy kits to pass out that contained resources for the app’s suggested activities.

“We’ve been excited about it and we’ve kind of picked it up and been able to run with it,” BCDI-Charlotte President Devonya Govan-Hunt said. “Because it puts such an emphasis on where we believe the majority, a lot of the power actually, lies, which is in the home and in the hands of parents.”

About 3,300 pre-K to third grade students have used the Reading Checkup at home since last summer, accessing it on smartphones, tablets, or computers. One of them was Hollis.

“We use this as a supplement,” Burks said. “And she doesn’t feel like she’s in school when she’s doing it. She feels like she’s playing a game. So it’s been really helpful to me.”

Govan-Hunt says this app allows parents to actively engage in their child’s ability to read. When parents are involved, she believes the impact on reading scores will be substantial.

“So with this Reading Checkup, we have made it a point to really lift family engagement, because we actually believe that family engagement is the cornerstone in everything that we do,” she said. “We believe that family engagement, especially with literacy, is a high-impact strategy for improving schools and increasing literacy achievement, period.

“And that’s what this Reading Checkup allows us to do. Put the control in the parents’ hands.”

The feedback Richardson has received suggests the BCDI message is resonating with the community.

“So in a time when everything was really up in the air, and people are losing jobs and there was all sorts of uncertainty, the way they frame this with parents was to talk about control,” Richardson said. “Although there’s a lot of things in your life that could be out of your control, helping your child with reading … using the Reading Checkup is one area where you can control. And they found a lot of parents really warmed to that message.”

Govan-Hunt said this is a particularly important message for Black and Brown communities. In the communities she serves, she said there is a feeling that many schools don’t do enough to engage with Black parents. She noted assumptions about family stress levels during the pandemic or bias against Black and Brown parents’ willingness and ability to get involved in their children’s schooling.

“We believe that we have a responsibility to respond to this reality that we’re existing in by transforming the approach that many people take around family engagement, moving away from a so-called random act of family engagement to one that actually has a lift by the community, or by the village,” she said.

Tiffany Burks was one of those parents. She visited the Melanated Exchange Market in Charlotte last year to buy Hollis some books. In part, she wanted to motivate her child to read during that period when reading felt like a chore.

As Burks walked through a parking lot to the market, a hub for Black-owned small businesses, her daughter veered off toward a table filled with books. She stopped and stared at one book, in particular. The cover showed a Black girl with naturally curly hair, just like Hollis’.

Burks smiled at her daughter’s reaction. She hardly noticed Govan-Hunt walk up beside her.

“She just tears up,” Govan-Hunt recalled of Burks.

Burks finally turned to Govan-Hunt and asked how she could help Hollis stay on track with reading. That’s when Govan-Hunt told her about Reading Checkup. They talked about the power of parents in helping their children read, the importance of finding rich and culturally diverse texts, and how the app could help bolster Hollis’ reading skills and love for reading.

“And she says, ‘Thank you. I’ve never had the opportunity to have this conversation with anybody before,’” Govan-Hunt said. “It was out of fear that her thoughts and her fears were irrelevant, and that people really didn’t have these conversations in the society that we live in today.”

Hollis left the market with three free books from BCDI, and she’s used the app ever since.

“I became afraid that because she was learning from home, she’d be disengaged, and she wouldn’t be as excited about learning,” Burks said. “And that’s where I feel like the app fills in that gap because it’s like, OK, if you didn’t receive this lesson in school, I know you’re receiving it on the app and you like doing the app. So it’s not like I have to force you to do it.”

This article originally appeared .