Industry Love for our SuperBetter EdTech Expansion

An Epic Problem

We’ve been telling our story a lot lately. The story starts with an epic problem that is threatening our world. This epic problem is the decade-long decline in youth mental health — now made much worse because of the pandemic. Children are our future. Rates of anxiety, depression and suicide are growing. This problem is a boss.

Heroic Characters

The main characters in our story include teachers and school leaders. These heroic characters are on the front lines. They profoundly influence the lives of young people. Educators feel the weight of the mental health burdens on their students nearly every day.

Any serious battle strategy to stem the rise in youth anxiety, depression and suicide must include two fronts. One is improving access to treatment and early intervention for those who already have a mental illness. The second is working upstream to implement a population-wide approach that reduces the prevalence by preventing its onset.

Educators are uniquely positioned to impact prevention. Equipped with the right tools, teachers can help students proactively develop self-awareness, resilience & coping skills. Educators have a big role to play to defeat this boss.

A Rapidly Changing Landscape

Our story takes place in the education industry which is in the midst of unprecedented change in response to the pandemic. One of the positive changes is how educators are increasingly prioritizing the whole student.

The pandemic shown a light on a number of urgent problems in education. One of the biggest is the under-prioritization of whole child development.
Keith Wakeman, SuperBetter CEO

Change drives innovation. When that change is rapid, breakthrough innovation often comes from outside an industry. It’s a safe bet that the most effective educator tools to empower whole person development will not look like a traditional curriculum. The psychology of creating social, emotional, physical and mental wellbeing is very different from the cognitive science of learning math or history.

Equipping Heroes for Success

Of course, our story is also about SuperBetter and how our evidence-based methodology empowers teachers to empower their students.

The hero of this part of the story is a new group play experience in our product roadmap that makes it simple for teachers to host games that help students develop their social-emotional skills, strengths and mental health coping skills in the real world.

SuperBetter brings social-emotional learning to life for middle & high school classrooms in a way that’s practical & engaging. Teachers host SuperBetter games that students play in real life to develop social-emotional skills and improve their resilience & mental health.

For a sneak peak of what we’re working on, watch our CEO Keith Wakeman share our story in this 5-minute pitch from the Milken-Penn Graduate School of Education Business Plan Competition Finals.