RoboKind Implementation: Montour School District, PA

Montour School District is a highly rated, public school district located in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. It has 3,075 students in grades K-12 with a student-teacher ratio of 16-to-1. The district consists of an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school.

RoboKind Implementation Results

Montour School District’s decision to adopt RoboKind’s curriculum in their classrooms was based on research regarding the program’s efficacy, with results from over 1,000,000 RoboKind Social Skills lessons focusing on outcomes for learners who are neurodiverse.

Dr. Robert Isherwood (Director of Special Education at Montour School District, PA) read a doctoral dissertation on the use of humanoid robots in the education of children with Autism. 

“This lead me to do searches on companies that were developing this technology. When I compared companies it was clear that Robokind was the company that was leading the field. After viewing videos and reading content on the website I knew we had to have this product for our students.”

-Dr. Robert Isherwood

Director of Special Education

Montour School District, PA

Lessons Learned at Montour Elementary School

Montour’s team needed a curriculum to support their Special Education classrooms and early learners with developing essential behavioral, social, and communication skills. With a variety of diverse learner needs, they needed a solution that allowed for differentiation of instruction, the ability to tier supports in alignment with their students needs and IEP goals.

Since introducing RoboKind in their classrooms in Spring 2022, Montour School District has:

• Completed over 5,500 Virtual Avatar-led lessons

• Over 10,000 total lessons

• 56 students have participated in the program

• 16 facilitators (teachers and paraprofessionals)

• Upon completion of RoboKind lessons, students self-reported feelings of happy, excited, confident or calm 81.7% of the time.

Supporting Students with Virtual Avatars

Montour Elementary Schools' use of RoboKind’s Virtual Avatars has revolutionized the way that learning occurs in the classroom. Students are provided with the choice to select which Avatar character they would like to learn with, and the program is incorporated into one-on-one instruction and small groups depending on student needs. Avatar lessons can be run anywhere in the school, making them an accessible and engaging tool to support learners!