How connecting with education, EdTech and impact professionals helps me solve everyday learning problems
The coffee ring on my kitchen table was starting to bleed into the edges of my 10-year-old’s IEP printout last month when I finally caved and posted a question to my old college alumni Facebook group. My son’s elementary school only has one part-time dyslexia specialist for 320 kids, and the three reading apps local mom groups had recommended were either overpriced, full of distracting pop-up ads, or so gamified he finished the whole “learning” section in 20 minutes and spent the rest of the time playing built-in minigames. I stared at the screen for five minutes, deleted three overly formal versions of my post, and wrote: “I’m a parent of a 10-year-old with dyslexia stuck on finding decent free reading tools. Anyone here work in education, EdTech, nonprofits or something related that might have a lead?”
I didn’t expect much. I’d spent the previous six months troubleshooting his reading gaps on my own, bouncing between conflicting advice on parenting forums and waiting months for a slot with the school’s specialist. I figured people in those fields were too busy doing their jobs to talk to a random parent. But within 24 hours, three people had commented and messaged me. One was a former classmate who worked in corporate social responsibility for a big education publishing company, another was a former teacher who’d quit to build free learning tools for rural schools, and the third was a startup founder testing a new accessible reading app.
The CSR lead sent me a link to a free subscription program her team runs for families that qualify, no fine print, no hidden auto-renewal tricks. The teacher-turned-developer sent me a folder of free printable phonics activities she’d made that worked well for kids who get overwhelmed by screens. The startup founder added me to their beta tester group for parents, so I got full access for free in exchange for sending a 1-paragraph note every few weeks about what worked and what didn’t. None of this would have popped up in my Google searches, and none of the mom groups I was in had heard of any of it.
After that, I started thinking more about why I’d never tried this before. I’d always seen connecting with people in education, tech, or impact work as something only people looking for jobs did. I was just a parent, I thought—what could I offer? But over the past couple months, as I’ve started going to free casual virtual meetups for people working in these spaces (I found most of them on Eventbrite, just searching “free education social impact meetup”) I’ve learned most people in these fields are hungry for input from regular parents and teachers. Startups need real people to test their products before they launch. CSR teams need to know which of their programs are actually helping people, not just looking good on annual reports. NGOs and community builders need parents to tell them what gaps they’re missing, because most of their teams don’t sit in kitchen tables stressing over IEPs every night.
I’ve picked up a few small things that work for me, if you’re also looking to connect with people in these spaces for your own kid or classroom. First, always lead with a specific question or problem, not a generic “I want to connect.” People are way more likely to respond if you say you’re looking for free after-school STEM programs for middle schoolers in your area than if you just say you’re interested in education. Second, you don’t need to pay for big conferences or fancy memberships. Most local community colleges host free education impact events, and most cross-sector meetups are free to join virtually right now. I’ve never paid more than $5 for a coffee at an in-person meetup, and most of my connections are from 20-minute Zoom chats I squeeze in while my kid is at soccer practice. Third, don’t be afraid to offer something small back. I send a quick note when a tool works for my son, I share local nonprofit events on my neighborhood Facebook page, I give honest feedback on new program ideas. It doesn’t take much time, and it makes the connection feel like a two-way street, not just me asking for favors.
Last week, I talked to a woman who runs community building for a national literacy NGO. She told me that half of their most popular new programs came from random parents reaching out with a problem, not from their internal planning team. They added a set of bilingual take-home reading kits for Spanish-speaking families after three parents from a small town in Texas emailed them saying all their existing resources were only in English. That’s the thing no one tells you: your experience as a parent or teacher is useful to these people, even if you don’t work in the field.
It’s not all perfect. I still connect with people who can’t help with my specific problem, and I still have weeks where I’m too tired to go to a meetup or answer an email. My son still struggles with reading out loud in class, and we still hit new problems every few months that I don’t have an answer for. But now, instead of scrolling Google for an hour at 9 PM after he goes to bed, I can shoot a message to a handful of people who know the space, and more often than not, I get a lead I never would have found on my own. This weekend, we’re checking out a new free sensory play space for kids with learning differences that an NGO worker I connected with told me about. I don’t know if it’ll be a good fit, but it’s one more option than I had before.
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