Jim Szewc, co-founder of Cohesion Education, said his startup saw more growth over two days in the last week than it did the first two months of the year.
It's the "best scenario in a terrible situation," he says. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to raise concerns across the nation, millions of schools are being cancelled for weeks, leaving parents to entertain, or even teach, their children.
It's a situation he didn't exactly expect when founding Cohesion Education, a website compiling over 600 educational videos three years ago. As a former fourth grade teacher, he and his two other co-founders, also fourth grade teachers, wanted videos "by teachers, for parents."
"We've been told and asked by parents since we started (our jobs in education), 'How can we help our kids?' Szewc said. "And the answers are usually limited. You could read this book, go to tutoring, but once the parent leaves tutoring they still don't know how to help their kid."
But when schools began to close, he took to social media: commenting a link to access the resources for free until the end of the year within Facebook statuses and teacher groups.
"We wanted the parents to be more engaged in education," he said. "That was before (coronavirus). Now, the need is desperation, because parents are being forced to teach their kids and they're not prepared for what that involves. A home school parent is an unbelievable skill to have and parents aren’t used to it."
The videos are for children K-5, five to 10 minutes each. They are never meant to replace instruction with teachers, simply an addition, but with the programs teachers can "assign" parents videos to teach and show their children during the break.
During a Monday afternoon interview, Szewc said Cohesion Education, funded entirely off boostrapping, is now being used in 46 out of 50 states, but that number continues to grow.
"I was just trying to explain to my dad how the growth happened," he said. "Everything has just been truly viral."
He is eyeing making a "freemium" model to kick in this summer, which will cost a small fee but have additional tools and resources. He is hopeful COVID-19 will end and when it does, the parents and teachers will continue to use his service.
"That's the beauty of being a startup in this environment, you get validation for your blood, sweat and tears," he said. "We've been working on this tirelessly. But I believe in it. I wouldn't have put this time and effort for something there isn't a need for and now people are seeing it. Once things get back to “normal,” the people using this over a number of months, if they see the value in it, I don't see why it won’t continue to grow rapidly."
He believes after the dust has settled among the pandemic, it will cause a shift in teacher and administration's mindset to become more digital-thinking.
"There is such disconnect between the traditional school system and innovation; who’s fault that is, I don't know," he said. "We all know the public systems are cash dry. They can only do so much and can only do so much with their time with kids. I think this will be extremely valuable to inform parents in what they can do with their kids and when they go back to traditional school, the safety net will already be there."
