Day: July 19, 2023

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
Lauren Williams took a job with Paper, one of the biggest virtual tutoring companies used by U.S. schools, because she wanted to help kids.
Williams, a self-described English and history buff who lives just south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, liked the work at first. As she helped students with their writing, it felt like students were getting personal attention they badly needed.
But as Paper ratcheted up the pace and volume of her tutoring assignments last year, Williams grew alarmed.
By this spring, she was routinely working with five students at once on the company’s online platform, which resembles a text-based instant messenger. She found herself toggling between kindergarteners learning to read and high-schoolers writing college essays, frantically trying to respond to each student’s message within Paper’s 50-second time limit.
Her breaking point came as Paper put new pres..

Updated July 18, 2023 at 9:51 AM ET A version of this story originally appeared on the Student Podcast Challenge newsletter. Learn more about the contest here.
Grace Go’s award-winning podcast starts with her favorite comfort food, budae jjigae, which she describes as “ham, sausage, spam, a packet of instant noodles all cooked in a spicy broth topped with American cheese and chopped scallions.”
Budae jjigae, which means army stew in English, became popular in South Korea in the 1950s, during a time of poverty following the Korean War. “It contains traditional Korean staples such as gochujang and kimchi but with a twist of American foods,” Grace explains.
Grace’s podcast, which explores her complicated relationship with budae jjigae and her own body, is the winner of the Best Mental Health Podcast Prize in this year’s Student Podcast Challenge. Her podcast is called Discomfort Food.
“This was the first piece that I’ve made where I put myself in the spotlight,” says Grace, a student ..