A district drops six figures on a new platform to fix student disengagement. Eight months later, the numbers haven't moved, but the vendor rep still checks in every quarter asking for a testimonial. (LOL.)
Erin Collins, Director of Alternative Education at Bremen High School District 228, watched that routine repeat enough times to build something smarter and more effective at Delta Academy: a staff trained to talk to kids like actual people.
"My mission in life is connection," she says, "before anything else, above all, at all times."
Twenty minutes and a decent question turned out to be the fix, and somehow that's the one line item EdTech forgot to build. Here, we break down her full method, R.O.O.T.S., letter by letter.
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Get back to our R.O.O.T.S.
Reading Rainbow: Drones, AI and fact-checking kids
From Our Desk: Hot new EdTech has entered the villa
Watch of the Week: Capes, cousins and classroom ideas
Partner Highlight: From 60% to 90%
Get back to our R.O.O.T.S.
Every staff handbook has a section nobody reads twice. Erin Collins wrote one people actually might — and because it’s that useful.
Erin runs the Delta Academy, a program built for students who checked out of regular classrooms a long time ago, and was able to get them not only excited to learn, but all caught up.
Her method for bringing them back fits on a sticky note and spells something out: R.O.O.T.S.
R for Relationship comes first, no exceptions, in every interaction — before anything else gets attempted.
O for Observe what a student already cares about, whether that's a Cubs game or a good burger, before assigning anything new.
O for One-on-one time gets scheduled on purpose instead of hoping it happens by accident.
T for Tech stays in a supporting role, useful when it creates more room for a person to talk to another person and useless the second it doesn't.
S for Show up treating a student's resilience as the headline instead of whatever's sitting in their case file.
You don’t need any new software or dashboard to make R.O.O.T.S. work for your district. It only requires staff that's been trained to hire for empathy and protect time for it. Collins built her entire program on the idea that trust isn't a soft skill you squeeze in around the curriculum.
It is the curriculum, and it comes before anything else does.
Struggle Is Apparently Where the Fun Lives: A Virginia principal makes the case that joy in education doesn't show up despite the hard days. It shows up because of them, usually right after the toughest conversation in the building. Somewhere, a burnt-out staff meeting just got a little more bearable.
A Second-Grade Teacher and Claude Walk Into a Classroom: An elementary teacher describes feeding lesson ideas, sample plans and her own writing into an AI tool until it could churn out custom leadership guides and printable resources built around her own style. Turns out the robot just needed context, much like every substitute teacher ever.
McGill Researchers Teach Kids to Stop Trusting Everything on the Internet: A digital literacy program tested across 216 elementary students in Quebec improved their ability to spot credible websites and sort through conflicting information, proving that even nine-year-olds can be trained to raise an eyebrow at a sketchy source.
Oklahoma Kids Are Building Robots That Swim Before They Can Drive: A charter network in Tulsa and Oklahoma City has students coding in kindergarten, flying drones in middle school and building aquatic robots for competition, all on the way to a 100% college acceptance rate. Somewhere, a school science fair volcano is feeling extremely inadequate.
We brought the villa to HQ, and we had WAY too much fun with it. Catch up on Subject Island here.
We hit 70,000 subscribers on YouTube, and you better be one of them.
Our July conference schedule is coming to a close, but there’s still a chance to connect with us in person. Email [email protected] if you want to meet up at either of the below:
July 14 - 16: NMCEL 2026 Summer Conference
July 19 - 21: MAEN State Conference
Our pick of the week: Supergirl
Why We’re Obsessed: A superhero who spends half her life hiding who she really is while everyone around her assumes she's just fine? That's just like most of your quietest students on a Monday. Supergirl gives you a built-in metaphor for identity, pressure and the gap between what a kid shows you and what's actually going on underneath the cape.
Recommended lesson integration:
Secret identities and dual lives in literature: Students compare how a character's public self differs from their private self across a text. Supergirl hides an entire alien heritage under a pair of glasses and somehow fools an entire newsroom, which really lowers the bar for what counts as a disguise.
Immigrant and displacement narratives: Students examine a character who arrives in a new place and has to rebuild an identity from scratch. Kara landed on Earth with zero paperwork and figured out an entire life anyway, making her the most dramatic transfer student in television history.
Journalism ethics and the free press: Students learn how reporters verify sources and separate fact from rumor before publishing. Kara works as a journalist by day, which means she could theoretically fact-check a story by flying to the scene herself, a luxury most local newsrooms do not currently offer.
Power, responsibility and decision-making: Students explore how a character's choices affect the people around them in an ethics-focused discussion. The old line about great power and great responsibility does more classroom management in four words than most seating charts manage all semester.
Gender and heroism in pop culture: Students analyze how female leads get written differently than male leads across genre fiction. Supergirl gives you a genuine case study instead of a thesis statement, which finally earns a permanent retirement for the phrase "strong female character."
Our partnership results at Upland High School prove that Subject doesn’t just help students test better — it changes the whole ball game. Hear their story here.
Thank you for joining us for another edition of On The Subject. We’ll see you again in a week, with more stories from the hallways.
The Subject Team
Want to learn more about our curriculum offerings? Contact us today.