I taught at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and Vermont Commons School in South Burlington. Along with history, I taught economics, philosophy, current events and filmmaking, and built and ran our Model United Nations program. Some of my favorite teaching involved helping students take on a real project, work through a difficult question and discover what they could do.
In a classroom, you can often tell when a student needs a small hint, a clearer explanation or a question that helps them see an idea differently. Students don’t always have that help when they’re studying on their own. That is the gap I wanted to address.
It started with a question at home
During a school break, I coded a practice tool to help my son with his AP Statistics class. I wasn’t trying to launch a company that day. I was trying to solve a real problem for someone I cared about. As I worked on it, I began to see how tools like this could give students more opportunities to practice and receive useful feedback.
Practice that helps students think for themselves
I believe students learn by doing the thinking. They need to interpret, choose, question, test an idea, receive feedback, revise and try again. A correct answer can be part of learning, but it is not the same thing as understanding.
That belief guides Coach. In the individual AP history courses, students can review lessons, practice questions and work on historical writing. When they choose to ask for help, AI can offer a hint or feedback on a draft. Its job is to help them see what to work on next while leaving the ideas, reasoning and writing to them.
I don’t see this as a replacement for a teacher or the relationships that make learning meaningful. I hope it gives students a useful place to practice, make mistakes and grow more confident in their own ability. Feedback, including an estimated AP rubric score, is practice guidance. It is not an official AP score and can be wrong.
If you’re considering Coach for your student, please read the family information and my letter, along with the privacy information. You should understand the help it offers, where AI is involved and what happens to the student’s work before deciding.
I hope you find Coach useful, and I’d like to hear what could make it better.
Mark Cline Lucey
Founder, CL Learning Labs