Back to School Looks Different Now

Six years ago, I started working at Kids Discover during one of the strangest back-to-school seasons any of us had ever experienced. Before joining the Kids Discover team, I spent six years in the classroom, primarily teaching third and fourth grade. For most of my career, back to school meant freshly sharpened pencils, new name tags, carefully arranged desks, and that particular mix of excitement and nerves that comes with meeting a new group of students. In 2020, it meant something entirely different. Schools were figuring out remote and hybrid learning in real time, teachers were learning new platforms almost overnight, and parents suddenly had a front-row seat to the school day. Educational technology went from something that supported classroom instruction to, in many cases, the classroom itself.

I joined Kids Discover right in the middle of it. At the time, I was making the transition from classroom teacher and learning an entirely new side of education. Over the six years since, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with teachers, librarians, administrators, and districts across the country, which has given me a very different view of what happens beyond the walls of an individual classroom. As another school year begins, I’ve been thinking a lot about just how much has changed since that first unusual back-to-school season, both in education as a whole and in the way schools think about the resources they put in front of teachers and students.

Technology Has to Earn Its Place

The way schools think about technology may be one of the biggest changes I’ve witnessed. During the pandemic, schools needed digital resources quickly. Teachers needed content students could access from anywhere, and districts were solving problems they had never encountered before. There was an understandable rush to get technology into the hands of teachers and students, sometimes without much time to think about what implementation would look like after the purchase was made.

Today, the conversation is much more thoughtful. Schools aren’t simply asking, Can we use this? They’re asking whether teachers are actually using it, whether students are engaging with it, whether it aligns with their curriculum, whether it’s accessible to their learners, and ultimately, whether it’s worth the investment. I think those are good questions. Technology shouldn’t be in the classroom simply because it’s technology. The best digital resources solve a real problem, support what teachers are already trying to accomplish, and provide enough value to earn their place in the school day.

Teachers Don’t Need One More Thing

This is something I understood as a classroom teacher, but I probably understand it even better now. Teachers have an incredible number of things competing for their attention. There is curriculum to cover, data to review, assessments to administer, parents to communicate with, meetings to attend, accommodations to provide, and, of course, a room full of students who all arrive with different strengths and needs. When we introduce a new resource into that environment, we have to recognize that we’re asking for some of a teacher’s very limited time.

Over the last six years, I’ve seen schools become much more intentional about looking for resources that fit into the work teachers are already doing instead of creating another thing for them to manage. A teacher shouldn’t need hours of training just to figure out how to get started, nor should a digital tool require them to redesign a lesson simply to use it. Some of the most valuable conversations I have with educators now aren’t about every single thing Kids Discover can do. They’re about what that particular teacher is teaching next week and how we can make their job a little easier.

Accessibility Is No Longer an Afterthought

When I think back to my own third- and fourth-grade classrooms, there was never a point when every student walked through the door reading at the same level or needing the same kind of support. That’s obvious to anyone who has spent time in a classroom, but I think the technology we use in schools has gotten much better at acknowledging that reality. Accessibility and differentiation increasingly aren’t treated as extras added onto a resource after everything else has been built. They’re becoming part of the conversation from the beginning.

For informational text especially, that matters. Students need opportunities to engage with meaningful, rigorous content without reading ability becoming an unnecessary barrier to learning something new. Tools like differentiated reading levels, text-to-speech, translations, and other accessibility supports can help more students participate in the same learning experience while still giving teachers flexibility to meet individual needs. I’ve loved watching this part of educational technology evolve because it reflects something teachers have always known: giving students access to the same ideas doesn’t necessarily mean giving every student the exact same path to get there.

Content Knowledge Matters

One of the shifts I’ve been particularly excited to see is a renewed conversation around background knowledge and the role it plays in literacy. For years, science and social studies could sometimes feel squeezed into the margins of the elementary school day as schools understandably devoted significant time to reading and math. But we’re increasingly talking about literacy as more than practicing isolated reading skills. What students know about the world matters enormously when they’re trying to understand what they read.

This is one of the areas where my classroom experience and my work at Kids Discover have come together in a way I didn’t necessarily anticipate when I left teaching. A fascinating article about Ancient Egypt, ecosystems, the American Revolution, or the human body isn’t separate from literacy development. Students are reading informational text, encountering new vocabulary, making connections, asking questions, and building knowledge that they’ll carry into the next thing they read. Six years into working for an organization built around science and social studies content, I appreciate more than ever how important it is to give children plenty of interesting things to know about.

The Human Part Still Matters Most

For all the changes I’ve seen since 2020, this may be the thing I feel most strongly about: educational technology still works best when there are actual people behind it. A school can have access to an incredible resource, but access alone doesn’t guarantee that it will become a meaningful part of teaching and learning. Teachers need to know what’s available to them, how it can support what they’re already teaching, and where to turn when they have a question or need a little extra help.

One of the things I value most about my work at Kids Discover is the opportunity to work directly with educators across the country. Every conversation teaches me something. I get to hear what teachers are struggling with, what librarians wish they could offer their students, what administrators are prioritizing, and what schools need from the resources they invest in. Those conversations have shaped the way I think about education far more than any trend or new feature ever could. The better we understand what educators actually need, the better we can support them and, ultimately, the students they serve.

Six Back-to-School Seasons Later

Every August, I still get a little bit of that back-to-school feeling. I’m no longer setting up a classroom or wondering what my new group of students will be like, but I still spend this time of year thinking about teachers and students and what the year ahead will bring. After six years at Kids Discover, I also understand their needs differently than I did when I first left the classroom. I’ve seen education respond to a crisis, embrace technology at an extraordinary pace, reconsider some of those choices, and emerge with much better questions about what we actually want technology to accomplish in our schools.

A lot has changed since I joined Kids Discover in 2020, and I’m sure the next six years will bring changes none of us can predict. But some of the most important things feel remarkably familiar. Teachers still want to give their students something worth learning. Kids are still endlessly curious when you put something fascinating in front of them. And the best educational resources are still the ones that help a teacher do their job while giving a student the chance to understand something about the world that they didn’t understand before. Six back-to-school seasons later, that’s still the part that excites me most.