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- 🛝 Middle Schools and Math Time, Stand Up Comedy in High School, and Teens Using AI
🛝 Middle Schools and Math Time, Stand Up Comedy in High School, and Teens Using AI
What these mean for you
Welcome to Playground Post, a bi-weekly newsletter that keeps education innovators ahead of what's next.
Here's what we have on deck for today…
Middle Schools Are Cutting Math Time by 40%
This High School Just Replaced Therapy with Stand-Up Comedy
Teens Are Walking Through an AI Minefield Without a Map
The Judges' Decision Is In Your Hands

The innovation lab doors are closing.
Our Pitch Playground podcast has showcased entrepreneurs pitching, workshopping, and refining their breakthrough education solutions - now it's time for the final verdict.
10 finalists. $50,000 prize. Your vote decides everything.
Whether you've been following along or this is your first time hearing about these brilliant minds tackling education's most pressing challenges, we want your input.
🗳️Vote now using this form.
Listen, decide, and vote for the idea you believe will change education forever.
Time's running out - June 30th is the deadline!
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Middle Schools Are Cutting Math Time by 40%

La Grange School District just made a bold move, slashing daily math and English instruction from 72 to 44 minutes to make room for science and social studies.
"It felt like we were shortchanging them," says Superintendent Chris Covino about the old schedule where kids only got science one semester and social studies the next.
The scheduling battle playing out in La Grange reflects a bigger middle school dilemma.
Federal data shows 8th graders spend 19.4% of their weekly time on English and 14.8% on math, but only 12% each on social studies and science. Elementary schools are even worse, while high schools balance subjects more evenly because of graduation requirements.
The opportunity for education innovators is massive. Schools need integrated curriculum tools that teach reading through science content and math through social studies data as well as adaptive learning platforms that maximize impact in shorter class periods.
This High School Just Replaced Therapy with Stand-Up Comedy

Welcome to Laughing Together, where 6,500 students across 26 schools are using comedy to tackle a mental health crisis that saw anxiety and depression rates spike 70% among California kids between 2017 and 2022.
The results are striking. At one high school where over half the students have IEPs, teachers report that focus and attention (skills decimated by COVID) improved dramatically after just a few workshops. Students who spent the pandemic doom-scrolling say the improv exercises deliver the engagement they craved from their phones but never found.
The program shows that innovators who help schools with engaging, screen-free tools that rebuild the social skills students lost during COVID can have an impact.
Teens Are Walking Through an AI Minefield Without a Map

A groundbreaking study from UC Irvine reveals that teens are surprisingly cautious about AI but have no idea what the rules are. Researchers surveyed over 1,500 adolescents and found only 7% use AI daily, with most accessing it through search engines rather than chatbots.
Perhaps most surprising: researchers found no equity gaps in AI usage among different demographic groups. Unlike most new technologies that widen achievement gaps, AI appears to be an equal-opportunity mystery, likely because even college-educated parents don't fully understand it yet.
Innovators can help with understanding and by developing straightforward AI ethics frameworks and tools so educators and families can navigate this new frontier.
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We’ll be back with another edition on Friday. See you then!
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