A note from our founder on screens, AI, and why real practice still matters most.
A few years ago, during COVID, a first-year university student messaged me before her online presentation, panicking. She hadn't presented in front of anyone since grade 6.
With everything online for those years in between, she'd simply never had the chance. I told her that was exactly why she needed to do it today, not despite the fear, because of it. She did the presentation, and was relieved and a little proud of herself afterward. So was I.
I think about her a lot, because she's not unusual. I've spent more than 15 years teaching at the post-secondary level, and I've watched this same gap show up again and again. Students who can write a beautifully organized paragraph will freeze when I ask them to explain their thinking out loud. COVID is part of that story, a few years where an entire generation lost the everyday, low-stakes practice of just talking to people in a room. But the shift started before the pandemic and it hasn't slowed down since. Kids do their schoolwork on Chromebooks starting in kindergarten now. They message their friends on tablets instead of calling them or knocking on their door to see if they can play.
AI is the newest version of the same problem. I have nothing against it, it's a genuinely useful tool, but I see students reach for it to skip the hard part: the thinking, the drafting, the saying-it-out-loud-until-it-makes-sense part. That's the part that actually builds the skill. My student couldn't shortcut her way out of that presentation. She had to just do it, scared, and that's exactly what built something real.
Here's what I want every parent to know: this is fixable. These are skills, not personality traits, and they're built the same way they always have been, through real practice, with real people watching and cheering you on.
Kathleen has spent more than 15 years teaching, from young children in grades 1–3 to university students and working professionals. Tutoring was her very first job, even before babysitting, and it's what carried her through high school, university, and the years since. She's led workshops for schools, university classes, and organizations along the way, and has always believed that communication is one of the most important foundational skills a child can build, often the one that gets the least direct attention.
Outside of teaching, Kathleen is a mom of two raising her kids right here in Durham Region. She's a regular at school field trips, sits on her kids' school council, and can usually be found with a coffee in hand. On a good sunny day, you might catch her in the backyard with a book, or attempting (with mixed results) to grow a green thumb. She started Future Minds Collective because she wants every family in this community to have access to the same kind of patient, genuine support she wants for her own kids.