Category: school

  • Counslr Launches in Texas to Increase Access to Mental Health Support for Staff and Students

    Counslr Launches in Texas to Increase Access to Mental Health Support for Staff and Students

    New York, NY –  Counslr, a leading B2B mental health and wellness platform, announced today that it has expanded its footprint into the State of Texas starting with a partnership with Colorado Independent School District (ISD) in Colorado City, TX. This partnership will empower students and staff to prioritize their mental health by enabling them to access unlimited live texting sessions with Counslr’s licensed and vetted mental health support professionals, who are available on-demand, 24/7/365 and also utilize the app’s robust and curated wellness resources. By increasing accessibility to Counslr’s round-the-clock support, Colorado ISD aims to empower those silent sufferers who previously did not or could not access care, whether due to cost, inconvenience, or stigma.

    Texas is facing a critical mental health care crisis, with over 95% of its counties officially designated as Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. This alarming statistic underscores the severe lack of access to mental health services across the state, particularly in rural, border, and frontier communities. This resource scarcity underscores the urgent need for additional resources and innovative solutions to bridge this critical care gap for school communities.

    “We’re excited to partner with Counslr to bring innovative, accessible mental health resources to our school community,” said Alison Alvarez, Family and Community Engagement Coordinator, of Colorado ISD. “This partnership empowers our 6-12 grade students and staff with the support they need to thrive—both in and out of the classroom.”

    As factors such as academic pressures, social media influence, burnout and world events contribute to an increase in mental health challenges for young people, schools throughout the country are recognizing the growing need to offer more accessible, prevention-focused resources. A recent study found that digital mental health apps like Counslr can play an important role in expanding access to mental health support, especially for school communities. Most users turned to Counslr through on-demand sessions, showing just how valuable it is to have someone available in the moment when support is needed most. Interestingly, more than 80% of sessions happened between 7 PM and 5 AM, a time when traditional counseling services are usually unavailable. This suggests that Counslr helps fill a critical gap, offering students and school community members a reliable way to talk to licensed counselors around the clock. The app was also used for a wide range of concerns, highlighting its potential to meet diverse mental health needs through both immediate and scheduled support.

    “As we expand across the country, we’re proud to partner with new school communities to ensure that every student, regardless of location or background, has access to the mental health support they deserve,” said Josh Liss, Counslr CEO. Adding that, “With most of Counslr’s users being first-time care seekers, we’re excited to help reach those traditionally unreachable, who need help but do not or cannot access it, no matter where they are located.”

    ABOUT COUNSLR

    Counslr is a text-based mental health support application that provides unlimited access to robust wellness resources and live texting sessions with licensed professionals, 24/7/365. Users can access support on-demand within two minutes of opening the app, or by scheduled appointment. Through real-time texting, users enjoy one-on-one, private communication with a licensed counselor that can be conducted anytime, anywhere. Counslr was designed to help individuals deal with life’s day-to-day issues, empowering individuals to address concerns while they are “small” to help ensure that they stay “small”. Counslr partners with organizations of all shapes and sizes (companies, unions, nonprofits, universities/colleges, high schools, etc) so that these entities can provide Counslr’s services to their employees/members/students at no direct cost. For more information, please visit www.counslr.com.

    eSchool News Staff
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  • Wearable tech helps students overcome central vision challenges

    Wearable tech helps students overcome central vision challenges

    Central vision loss–a condition that impairs the ability to see objects directly in front of the eyes–can have profound academic and social impacts on K-12 students. Because this type of vision loss affects tasks that require detailed focus, such as reading, writing, and recognizing faces, students with central vision impairment often face unique challenges that can affect their overall school experience.

    In the classroom, students with central vision loss may struggle with reading printed text on paper or on the board, despite having otherwise healthy peripheral vision. Standard classroom materials are often inaccessible without accommodations such as large print, magnification devices, or digital tools with text-to-speech capabilities. These students might take longer to complete assignments or may miss visual cues from teachers, making it difficult to follow along with lessons. Without appropriate support, such as assistive technology, students may fall behind academically, which can affect their confidence and motivation to participate.

    As a result, they may be perceived as aloof or unfriendly, leading to social isolation or misunderstanding. Group activities, games, and unstructured time like lunch or recess can become sources of anxiety if students feel excluded or unsafe. Moreover, children with vision loss may become overly dependent on peers or adults, which can further affect their social development and sense of independence.

    While this may seem daunting, there are assistive technologies to help students navigate central vision loss and have fulfilling academic and social experiences.

    One such technology, eSight Go from Gentex Corporation’s eSight, uses an advanced high-speed, high-definition camera to capture continuous video footage of what a user is looking at. Algorithms optimize and enhance the footage and share it on two HD OLED screens, providing sharp, crystal-clear viewing. The user’s brain then synthesizes the images to fill any gaps in their vision, helping them to see more clearly, in real time.

    “The ability to have central perception brought back into your set of tools for education is critically important,” said Roland Mattern, eSight’s director of sales and marketing. “Ease of reading, ease of seeing the board, using tablets or computers–all of these things [lead to] the ability to complete an academic task with greater ease.”

    One key feature, Freeze Frame, lets the user capture a temporary photograph with the device’s camera, such as an image on an interactive whiteboard, a textbook page, or a graphic. The student can magnify the image, scan and study it, and take what they need from it.

    “This eases the ability to absorb information and move on, at a regular pace, with the rest of the class,” Mattern noted.

    Socially, central vision loss can create additional barriers. A major part of social interaction at school involves recognizing faces, interpreting facial expressions, and making eye contact–all tasks that rely heavily on central vision. Students with this impairment might have difficulty identifying peers or teachers unless they are spoken to directly. The glasses can help with these social challenges.

    “There’s a huge social aspect to education, as well–seeing expressions on teachers’ and fellow students’ faces is a major part of communication,” Mattern said.

    What’s more, the glasses also help students maintain social connections inside and outside of the classroom.

    “Think of how much peer-to-peer communication is digital now, and if you have central vision loss, you can’t see your phone or screen,” Mattern said. “The educational part is not just academic–it’s about the student experience that you want to enhance and optimize.”

    Educators, parents, and school staff play a crucial role in fostering inclusive environments–by educating classmates about visual impairments, encouraging empathy, and ensuring that students with central vision loss are supported both academically and socially. With the right accommodations and social-emotional support, these students can thrive in school and build strong connections with their peers.

    “If we can make daily living, hobbies, and education easier and facilitate participation, that’s a win for everybody,” Mattern said.

    For more spotlights on innovative edtech, visit eSN’s Profiles in Innovation hub.

    Laura Ascione
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  • Why Teachers Can’t Afford to Wait on the Sidelines

    Why Teachers Can’t Afford to Wait on the Sidelines

    Tired of talking about AI? That’s too bad. The technology remains the most impactful force in education. The challenge becomes avoiding all the Claptrap. Thankfully, that’s where Denise Pope, Co-Founder of Challenge Success at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, comes in.

    I had the chance to explore the current AI state-of-play from her perspective. One striking disparity I haven’t heard talked about: While AI usage among students has skyrocketed—from 25% to 60% at the middle school level and 45% to 75% at the high school level over just two school years—only 32% of teachers report using AI for academic purposes.

    This gap has created what Denise describes as an educational “La La Land,” where students are experimenting with AI tools while many schools lack clear policies or guidance. The absence of structured approaches is breeding anxiety among both educators and students, who are left wondering when and how AI should appropriately be used in academic settings.

    Click through to hear how Denise believes this issue can be addressed:

    Kevin Hogan
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  • Teacher stress levels have surpassed pandemic-era highs

    Teacher stress levels have surpassed pandemic-era highs

    Key points:

    America’s K-12 educators are more stressed than ever, with many considering leaving the profession altogether, according to new survey data from Prodigy Education.

    The Teacher Stress Survey, which polled more than 800 K-12 educators across the U.S., found that nearly half of teachers (45 percent) view the 2024-25 school year as the most stressful of their careers. The surveyed educators were also three times more likely to say that the 2024-25 school year has been the hardest compared to 2020, when they had to teach during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Student behavior challenges (58 percent), low compensation (44 percent), and administrative demands (28 percent) are driving teacher burnout and turnover at alarming rates. Public school teachers were more likely to report stress from unrealistic workloads, large class sizes, school safety concerns, and student behavior issues than their private school counterparts.

    “The fact that stress levels for so many teachers have exceeded those of the pandemic era should be a wake-up call,” said Dr. Josh Prieur, director of education enablement at Prodigy Education and former assistant principal in the U.S. public school system. “Teachers need tangible, meaningful, and sustained support … every week of the year.”

    Additional key findings include:

    • The vast majority of teachers (95 percent) are experiencing some level of stress, with more than two-thirds (68 percent) reporting moderate to very high stress. K-5 teachers were the most likely to feel extremely/very stressed (33 percent). Sixty-three percent of teachers report that their current stress levels are higher than when they first started teaching. 
    • Nearly one in 10 teachers surveyed (9 percent) are planning to leave the profession this year, while nearly one in four (23 percent) are actively thinking about it. One-third of teachers do not expect to be teaching three years from now, likely because nearly half (48 percent) of teachers don’t feel appreciated for the work that they do.
    • Teachers are finding ways to prioritize their well-being, but time limits and job pressures often get in the way. Seventy-eight percent of teachers say they actively make time for self-care, but nearly half (43 percent) feel guilty for spending time on self-care and 78 percent have skipped self-care due to work demands. Implementing school-provided self-care perks and mandatory self-care breaks would appeal to teachers, with 85 percent and 76 percent taking advantage of each benefit, respectively.
    • Top solutions that would reduce teachers’ stress include a higher salary (59 percent), a four-day school week (33 percent), stronger classroom discipline policies (32 percent), and smaller class sizes (25 percent). Public school teachers were more likely to prefer a shorter week, while private school educators opted for higher pay. 

    “Teacher Appreciation Week should serve as the starting point for building systems that show we value teachers’ time, talent, and well-being,” said Dr. Prieur. “Districts can do this by investing in tools that reduce the burden on teachers, prioritizing time for self-care and implementing policies that reinforce teachers’ value as an ongoing commitment to bettering the profession.”

    This press release originally appeared online.

    Laura Ascione
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  • Students learn the basics of AI as they weigh its use in their future careers

    Students learn the basics of AI as they weigh its use in their future careers

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    On a recent Thursday morning, Michael Taubman asked his class of seniors at North Star Academy’s Washington Park High School: “What do you think AI’s role should be in your future career?”

    “In school, like how we use AI as a tool and we don’t use it to cheat on our work … that’s how it should be, like an assistant,” said Amirah Falana, a 17-year-old interested in a career in real estate law.

    Fernando Infante, an aspiring software developer, agreed that AI should be a tool to “provide suggestions” and inform the work.

    “It’s like having AI as a partner rather than it doing the work,” said Infante during class.

    Falana and Infante are students in Taubman’s class called The Summit, a yearlong program offered to 93 seniors this year and expanding to juniors next year that also includes a 10-week AI course developed by Taubman and Stanford University.

    As part of the course, students use artificial intelligence tools – often viewed in a negative light due to privacy and other technical concerns – to explore their career interests and better understand how technology could shape the workforce. The class is also timely, as 92% of companies plan to invest in more AI over the next three years, according to a report by global consulting firm McKinsey and Company.

    The lessons provide students with hands-on exercises to better understand how AI works and how they can use it in their daily lives. They are also designed so teachers across subject areas can include them as part of their courses and help high school students earn a Google Career Certificate for AI Essentials, which introduces AI and teaches the basics of using AI tools.

    Students like Infante have used the AI and coding skills they learned in class to create their own apps while others have used them to create school surveys and spark new thoughts about their future careers. Taubman says the goal is to also give students agency over AI so they can embrace technological changes and remain competitive in the workfield.

    “One of the key things for young people right now is to make sure they understand that this technology is not inevitable,” Taubman told Chalkbeat last month. “People made this, people are making decisions about it, and there are pros and cons like with everything people make and we should be talking about this.”

    Students need to know the basics of AI, experts say

    As Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, graduate high school and enter a workforce where AI is new, many are wondering how the technology will be used and to what extent.

    Nearly half of Gen Z students polled by The Walton Family Foundation and Gallup said they use AI weekly, according to the newly released survey exploring how youth view AI. (The Walton Family Foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat. See our funders list here.) The same poll found that over 4 in 10 Gen Z students believe they will need to know AI in their future careers, and over half believe schools should be required to teach them how to use it.

    This school year, Newark Public Schools students began using Khan Academy’s AI chatbot tutor called Khanmigo, which the district launched as a pilot program last year. Some Newark teachers reported that the tutoring tool was helpful in the classroom, but the district has not released data on whether it helped raise student performance and test scores. The district in 2024 also launched its multimillion project to install AI cameras across school buildings in an attempt to keep students safe.

    But more than just using AI in school, students want to feel prepared to use it after graduating high school. Nearly 3 in 4 college students said their colleges or universities should be preparing them for AI in the workplace, according to a survey from Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse’s Student Voice series.

    Many of the challenges of using AI in education center on the type of learning approach used, accuracy, and building trust with the technology, said Nhon Ma, CEO of Numerade – an online learning assistant that uses AI and educators to help students learn STEM concepts. But that’s why it’s important to immerse students in AI to help them understand the ways it could be used and when to spot issues, Ma added.

    “We want to prepare our youth for this competitive world stage, especially on the technological front so they can build their own competence and confidence in their future paths. That could potentially lead towards higher earnings for them too,” Ma said.

    For Infante, the senior in Taubman’s class, AI has helped spark a love for computer science and deepened his understanding of coding. He used it to create an app that tracks personal milestones and goals and awards users with badges once they reach them. As an aspiring software developer, he feels he has an advantage over other students because he’s learning about AI in high school.

    Taubman also says it’s especially important for students to understand how quickly the technology is advancing, especially for students like Infante looking towards a career in technology.

    “I think it’s really important to help young people grapple with how this is new, but unlike other big new things, the pace is very fast, and the implications for career are almost immediate in a lot of cases,” Taubman added.

    Students learn that human emotions are important as AI grows

    It’s also important to remember the limitations of AI, Taubman said, noting that students need the basic understanding of how AI works in order to question it, identify any mistakes, and use it accordingly in their careers.

    “I don’t want students to lose out on an internship or job because someone else knows how to use AI better than they do, but what I really want is for students to get the internship or the job because they’re skillful with AI,” Taubman said.

    Through Taubman’s class, students are also identifying how AI increases the demand for skills that require human emotion, such as empathy and ethics.

    Daniel Akinyele, a 17-year-old senior, said he was interested in a career in industrial and organizational psychology, which focuses on human behavior in the workplace.

    During Taubman’s class, he used a custom AI tool on his laptop to explore different scenarios where he could use AI in his career. Many involved talking to someone about their feelings or listening to vocal cues that might indicate a person is sad or angry. Ultimately, psychology is a career about human connection and “that’s where I come into play,” Akinyele said.

    “I’m human, so I would understand how people are feeling, like the emotion that AI doesn’t see in people’s faces, I would see it and understand it,” Akinyele added.

    Falana, the aspiring real estate attorney, also used the custom AI tool to consider how much she should rely on AI when writing legal documents. Similar to writing essays in schools, Falana said professionals should use their original writing in their work but AI could serve as a launching pad.

    “I feel like the legal field should definitely put regulations on AI use, like we shouldn’t be able to, draw up our entire case using AI,” Falana said.

    During Taubman’s class, students also discussed fake images and videos created by AI. Infante, who wants to be a software developer, added that he plans to use AI regularly on the job but believes it should also be regulated to limit disinformation online.

    Taubman says it’s important for students to have a healthy level of skepticism when it comes to new technologies. He encourages students to think about how AI generates images, the larger questions around copyright infringement, and their training processes.

    “We really want them to feel like they have agency in this world, both their capacity to use these systems,” Taubman said, “but also to ask these broader questions about how they were designed.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more on AI in education, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub.

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  • Empowering school staff with emergency response protocols

    Empowering school staff with emergency response protocols

    Key points:

    Safety response protocols are foundational to creating a culture of safety in schools. District leaders should adopt and implement response protocols that cover all types of emergencies. Schools should have building-level response protocols and protocols for incidents when first responders are needed. These practices are critical to keeping the community safe during emergencies.

    When staff members are empowered to participate in emergency planning and response, their sense of safety is improved. Unfortunately, many staff members do not feel safe at school.

    Thirty percent of K-12 staff think about their physical safety when at work every day, and 74 percent of K-12 staff said they do not feel supported by their employer to handle emergency situations at work.

    Staff disempowerment is a “central problem” when it comes to district emergency planning, said Dr. Gabriella Durán Blakey, superintendent of Albuquerque Public Schools: “What does safety mean for educators to really be able to feel safe in their classroom, to impact student achievement, the well-being of students? And how does that anxiety play with how the students feel in the classroom?”

    School leaders should implement response protocols that empower staff to understand and participate in emergency response using a two-tiered system of emergency response:

    • A building-level emergency planning and response team should develop an Emergency Operations Plan, which includes an emergency response protocol
    • Administrators should adopt protocols to follow when they need first responders to intervene

    For guidance on crafting emergency response protocols and plans, click here.

    Laura Ascione
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  • How 4 districts use AI tools to transform education

    How 4 districts use AI tools to transform education

    Key points:

    • School districts turn to AI to improve personalized education for students
    • With AI coaching, a math platform helps students tackle tough concepts
    • 5 practical ways to integrate AI into high school science
    • For more news on AI in education, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub

    Simply put, AI can do a lot–it can personalize learning, help students expand on ideas for assignments, and reduce time spent on administrative tasks, freeing up educators to spend more time on instruction.