Meet Niyoka

Niyoka McCoy: What do teachers always say? They don’t have enough time. So anything that’s managing their time, managing their tasks, helping them get through the day, I think has really helped them become more open to using generative AI.

Kevin P. Chavous: Remember when a classroom had four walls, a blackboard, and rows of desks? Not anymore.

With online schools growing by over 30 percent in recent years, virtual education is reshaping learning for millions of students across the country. How is online learning and AI transforming student learning? How can teachers prepare for the virtual landscape? And what does the future of online education hold?

Niyoka McCoy: I think learning is going to look more like game-based learning, more inquiry-based learning. I think it’s going to be more personalized. Today we’re

Kevin P. Chavous: joined by Niyoka McCoy, the Chief Learning Officer at Stride Incorporated. With decades of experience, Nyoka has been a driving force in online education, leading the design of one of the nation’s top teacher training programs, tailored for effective virtual instruction.

She’ll walk us through how education is evolving and what this transformation means for students, teachers, and families everywhere. Nyoka, welcome to the show. We’re very excited to have you here.

Naoka McCoy: Once again, welcome to the show. You know, Naoka, this is almost unfair. We know each other too well. I’ve always been proud of your work. You run, I think, the best teacher training program in America. You were a Teach for America alum, and they’ve developed an amazing reputation over the last 20-25 years in terms of developing teachers who have a strong belief system around what’s possible for kids, and they are willing to go wherever they need to go, even in some of the most challenged schools in the country.

Niyoka McCoy: So when I was at Spelman, I used to do some work at the YMCA and another local school in the area. And so I knew I wanted to be a teacher. TFA came to our school and kind of gave us some information about what they were doing. I felt like I needed to apply. I was like, this might be my great way, a segue into getting into a school quickly, right out of undergrad.
I went through the application process, which is very extraneous. There was a lot that you had to do to answer a lot of questions, go through a lot of interview processes, and then I did my student teaching, which is what they called it back then in Houston. And so I felt like that was a great experience for me, to be around other people who were trying to do the same thing, and we were all learning together, all nervous and stuff.

that we were going to be in classrooms by ourselves and actually be able to lesson plan and come up with great ideas for students late at night, but together, and to be prepared and then teach with a cohort of people that had the same passion. It’s almost a missionary mindset, right? You want to go into these inner-city schools and turn things around.

And so we all had that same mindset and we were able to collaborate and work together. And I think that’s where I see. I had some of my most creative ideas. We didn’t have a lot of resources either. We were back then cutting circles out of construction paper by hand to engage students. It was a lot of math manipulatives.

You were making those and then preparing to deliver a new lesson to brand new students that you’ve never met before. So it really helped me become more confident in being a teacher and also more confident in what I was actually teaching. I was teaching ELA and social studies back then.

Kevin P. Chavous: Well, since you left TFA and your experience in Houston, you’ve worked in several schools.

You’ve run schools and now you’re at Stride Incorporated, the largest online education company in the country. You’re the chief learning officer, and you have been doing amazing work even during the midst of the online education boom that we all experienced post-COVID. Talk a little bit about the online learning process and your transition, you know, teaching in a traditional brick and mortar environment to trying to understand, develop, learn.

And excel in teaching in an online setting.

Niyoka McCoy: Yeah, I think that’s an interesting question. And I get that a lot, Kevin. They’re like, how did you make that transition? Why online learning? And I think for me, when I left brick and mortar, it was just so enticing for me to come into an online space and work.

On a screen and work with students who are also on the other side of a computer. But I think one of the most important things is being an edutainer in this space. It’s very different than being in a classroom where you can actually put your hand on a child’s shoulder and wake them up.

You have to wake them up across the screen. Which means you have to be still super engaging. You have to be ready to compete with all the things that are happening in their home. And so edutainment is something that we really lean into, especially when we’re talking to our teachers, especially when we’re preparing them for the online classroom.

Kevin P. Chavous: You know, what’s interesting when, I joined Stride, about the time we met many years ago and I was sitting in those classes, I had my own sort of reawakening because like a lot of folks, I wondered how can you engage a classroom full of students, 20, 30 students.

And when I heard you, of course, I think you coined the phrase, but when I heard you say edutainer, and then I saw how you developed the professional development program for teachers, it was like a light bulb went on. Talk about this whole professional development area and how, based on the circumstances of how and where kids learn, it’s all changing.

This idea of changing. Teacher’s mindset from that traditional stand in front of the classroom. Kids sit still and be quiet. Lecture to them. Kids take notes. They spit it back to you in a test a couple of weeks later. Then they forget it. I mean, how do you move from that?

Niyoka McCoy: So I think you also have to have, the curriculum to support it, right? You have to have the resources. And so what we do is we really focus with teachers on a lot of different strategies. One, you know, you’re just thinking about being on camera. What are some of the best practices? Think about your lighting.

Some of the things that we don’t think about when we are on camera. You don’t think about your lighting, your microphone, whether or not it’s loud enough. Can the kids hear you? But then also that it’s okay to dress up, right? So, you know, when you were in the classroom, you know, And you had a book day, you came in dressed up as Alice in Wonderland.

You can still do that on screen and engage our kids. And I think it’s important to also then pull in some of that engaging content and curriculum that we also have to serve students. Um, and then also making sure that we lean into game-based learning and gamified learning. So, you know, this idea of like having kids join you in a Minecraft world to play a game, to learn about Jamestown.

Interesting. They spend all their time on their phones, on their tablets, whether it’s in Minecraft or Roblox, they’re doing something. So why aren’t we meeting them where they are? So we have to meet their energy, but also meet them in the spaces where they’re spending most of their time. So we train teachers how to be comfortable with that.

Kevin P. Chavous: Well, you know, this idea of being an edutainer in terms of your teaching approach to students in an online setting. It encompasses so many things. You mentioned game-based learning. Talk a little bit about that. I know at the schools that you, sort of oversee the learning process, they use Minecraft.

Uh, you know, there’s Dungeons and Dragons. There are all these games that, Parents are used to their kids, playing after school, but now in the online setting, teachers are integrating it into the learning process. Talk about that because for old school educators, that’s almost blasphemy. They’re like, wait a minute, what are you talking about there?

But, there are studies that show the benefit of it. So talk a little bit about that process.

Niyoka McCoy: Definitely. I mean, you have to think about it. Pac Man was my favorite game. If my teacher would have brought Pac Man in the classroom, I would have probably been way more engaged. And so what we do, Minecraft is the number one game played in the world.

The average player is 26 years old. So you think about it, it’s like, why wouldn’t we be spending our time there? And so what we did is we really focused on building Minecraft worlds that align with our curriculum. And so instead of it being a remediation tool, which most gamification or game-based learning pieces are, we really want to teach brand new skills to students in-game.

So connecting play and learning is very important. And so that’s why we really lean into working with Minecraft first because they’re the number one game, right? So our partnership now is we’re moving towards working on some game builds using Roblox to again, engage students. That’s the number two game.
Um, and so just really trying to lean into where our kids are spending their most of their time, but then also not using it a tool to just kind of get them to practice and do remote, you know, skills and think about all of the new skills and higher order thinking that they can do within those games. So that’s really where we’re leading and where we’re leaning towards.

And that’s where we’re heading. And I think a lot of other schools are looking around and saying, Oh, that’s really cool. Like, why didn’t we think about that? So we’re also creating lesson plans to go along with that. So if you’re in a brick-and-mortar building and you decide that you want to use one of our Minecraft worlds, we have lesson plans that go along with that.

So we can help you stand that up so that you can understand how game-based learning works and how it will increase academic achievement.

Kevin P. Chavous: You mentioned something that really, uh,  resonated with me, and that’s this idea of using Minecraft is not a remediation to tool, but it’s a tool to begin that learning process and that learning journey on how you understand and develop knowledge around the basics and, uh, when online learning started, it was viewed by many school districts as an alternative education, but Uh, vehicle for remediation, but we’ve kind of over the years and COVID again helped with this flip the script where it’s not just a remedial tool, it is a tool that can be the entry point to the learning journey.

Niyoka McCoy: Yep, I agree with you there. I wholeheartedly, we want our students to actually learn new skills in game and not necessarily to remediate. Our goal is to capture them before they need remediation, right? So make sure that we have the best teaching strategies, the best teachers, the best curriculum and content in front of them that’s teaching them those initial skills that they need to know right now, and trying to eliminate the need for remediation, offering them numerous chances to master their skills and objectives in different ways and also understanding that every child learns differently.

We can’t keep putting the same things in front of children.

Kevin P. Chavous: You’ve been ahead of the game in terms of integrating this approach to AI in the school community. Talk a little bit about what you’re doing as the Chief Learning Officer for Stride in making sure that AI is used the right way and not misused in the process.

Niyoka McCoy: Yep, I think that’s very important. So what we’re trying to do is actually enable technology through AI to help students reach academic achievement. And that means helping, with tools, create tools to help them actually either deepen their learning. But also help teachers remove some of the administrative practices that they have to do on a daily basis.

So if you’re creating lesson plans, you know, and you’re using AI, you still have to review those lesson plans, even if it’s AI-generated. You still have to put your eyes on it. There’s still a human element to every piece that we’re doing. And we try to make sure that we have a human factor, even if you’re creating assessment questions or creating a project, right?

Making sure that we have the right level of rigor. That means a teacher, our content experts’ eyes need to be on that AI-developed asset. And so I think that’s one of the things that we’re really trying to lean into and then also making sure our students understand what generative AI is, how to be responsible when using it.

And then also, I think changing out the way that we assess. Assess students, you know, everyone’s like, oh, well, they’re using and putting in the questions and getting the answer. Well, if you give them an assignment that forces them to use and then they have to either use higher order thinking to, you know, reorder paragraphs or do something different with something that was created in a, you’re putting a spin on it and it’s not becoming.

Uh, something that’s so scary to use in the classroom. So we’re really trying to help people get comfortable with it. Students as well, parents, and teachers. So everybody has to have that conversation to understand how we’re using it. And we’re really transparent about what that looks like. So having those conversations about, you know, where we’re using it, how we’re using it.
But we’re not using it to replace any human. It’s supporting and making things a little bit easier. And really removing some of the administrative tasks for teachers.

Kevin P. Chavous: Years ago when Google became popular, kids could use Google to sort of look up an answer. Like they get a history question and you know, you had to make sure they didn’t have those, you know, those phones next to them when they were taking those exams because they could easily get the answer.

And this is next-level stuff. So the question I, I pose, Nyoka, is, even with sort of the guardrails you’re putting on students’ usage with AI, is the utilization of the AI tool for students still a means by which they can develop their cognitive thinking and critical thinking skills? Or does it replace it?

You know what I mean? Because even if you’re talking about their reordering paragraphs, how do you make sure they’re getting those skills while they have this sophisticated tool?

Niyoka McCoy: Yeah, so it’s important for us to train our teachers to be able to use those tools effectively as well, right? So we’re talking about having them.
Take something that’s been created in AI and then create, you know, draw your own image from it. Or so really thinking about other ways that they can show their, one, their creativity, but also show their work. So moving into more project-based learning where it’s real-world applications, so really utilizing that to help put a spin on it.

Uh, one, it removes the surface level of just me, just asking a question and getting an answer, but it forces me to think beyond that. And so I think that that’s one of the ways that we’re trying to lean To when we’re using generative AI when it comes to assessing students or working with students, but then also having them, you know, we, I think we ran a contest for them to actually create images using AI with certain prompts.

Right? So then they have to understand what the, what the engineering of prompting. What does that look like? Prompting is hard. I try to use AI almost every day and I tell you, prompting I get better and better at it. But at the beginning, I wasn’t getting anything that I wanted. Right? So having to trying to show them those skills as well because we live in a technical space.

Our children are on devices all day. They’re, they’re experimenting and downloading different apps. So trying to help them really be responsible around that. But then also trying to figure out how do we direct that. To have them think more critically about what they’re doing and what they’re learning as they’re using generative AI.

Kevin P. Chavous: Many teachers were afraid of AI, but that one piece of it taken off the administrative burdens. That’s huge because for teachers, that was their big number one complaint. But you’ve seen generally now that the teachers at, uh, at Stride are more adept at using it. Is it working?

Niyoka McCoy: Yes, I think that teachers are coming around, right?
Like you said, it was a bad word. Everybody’s like, I don’t want to use it. I don’t know how to use it. I don’t even want to get into that space, right? But once you start showing them, Tools that can help them manage their day, that can help them manage their schedules. Managed emails are tools that can help them quickly script an email that they need to send out to all their families or create a satisfaction survey, you know, to get feedback directly from your parents.

It becomes a little bit easier as they’re kind of walking, not necessarily running, but walking into this space and really trying to take some time to understand. How all the tools work. Um, I think that that has alleviated some of the stress and some of the anxiety around it, especially if they’re using it on their daily, in their daily basis, on their phones, you know, especially calendaring.

All of those things using AI have become easily accessible and it helps you manage your time. And what do teachers always say? They don’t have enough time. Yeah. So anything that’s managing their time, managing their tasks, helping them get through the day, I think has really helped them become more open to using generative AI.

Kevin P. Chavous: So what advice would you give to parents, who are now faced with the idea of checking homework, going to a whole different level because of AI?

Niyoka McCoy: Yeah, I think for parents, one thing I as a parent myself, I have a 13 year old who is definitely already using AI. Think for her, like if she’s using it, you know, my questions to her are all about what did she actually learn?
Right? So I actually have downloaded a few apps and then I’ll test them out myself. And then I test them with her to see how does, how does she like it? You know, is it, uh, is it an app that’s actually just giving her the answer to a question? Or is it using a similar question to teach her that skill? There are some apps that do that.

They don’t give you the exact answer. They’ll flip that, flip that question around and give it to you in a different, a different way, but you’re still solving for the same skill. Um, and so those are the apps that you want to look into and really utilize with your children. And then also just have conversations with them about how to use it responsibly, how to make sure that they’re actually learning and critically thinking about the way AI is presenting ideas.

And in some cases, after a while. If AI is, if your kid is constantly using AI, they start to kind of sound alike. So you think about things that you could really catch, uh, always the little images that come before a paragraph, dark, bolded letters and topics. There are some things that you can catch to see, but then that’s just a teachable moment for you to have a conversation with your child about how they can use it better and more responsibly before submitting anything to their teacher or in the school, in the school setting.

Kevin P. Chavous: Niyoka McCoy, I’m so proud of you, honored to know you, and thank you so much for joining me on what I want to know.

Niyoka McCoy: Thank you so much for having me.

Kevin P. Chavous: Thanks for listening to what I want to know. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. So you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education and write a review of the show.

I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know What You Want to Know.