Learning Network: Ask a journalist questions about A.I. and education (for teens)

August 28, 2026

Good morning! Reporter Dana Goldstein joins us for our first Ask a Journalist of the new school year to chat with teenagers about artificial intelligence and its impact on education. Students should post their questions by Sept. 18. — The Learning Network

Ask a Journalist

An illustration of hands holding a newspaper. On the pages of the newspaper are various people with speech bubbles coming from their mouths.

César Debargue

In our 2026-27 Ask a Journalist series, we invite students to join us for monthly discussions about different topics with New York Times journalists. For September, we ask students to read one or more of Ms. Goldstein’s articles about teaching, learning, writing and cheating in the age of generative A.I., and then post their thoughts and questions. After Ms. Goldstein responds to a selection of student comments, we encourage teens to come back to read highlights from the conversation and some of our favorite student comments. Here’s how to get started.

On Happiness, Politics, Language and the Universe: The Week 10 Winners of Our Summer Reading Contest

The moon’s surface in the foreground and a crescent-shaped Earth in the background.

The view of home from the other side of the moon. NASA, via Getty Images

Our 17th annual Summer Reading Contest has come to an end!

For 10 weeks, we invited teenagers around the world to tell us about the New York Times articles, essays, videos, podcasts, graphs and photos that got their attention, and explain why in a short written response or video.

We received 10,642 entries in total, and this week, we crowned our last collection of finalists, including four top winners: Chloe Sohn for her video, and Alex Krystelle Boral, Dohyoung Kim and Valerie Herman for their written responses.

Here is the beginning of Alex’s response to the Opinion piece “To Find Happiness, I Stopped Talking. It Helped.”:

Though my perspective has changed, I know I would’ve felt personally attacked if I read the article “To Find Happiness, I Stopped Talking. It Helped.” a year ago.

TMI wasn’t a thing in my world. My friends had the privilege of hearing every detail about my life, whether it be my crushes or my test scores. Other times, it was a dance rehearsal or a slip-up in my French class.

While this habit has passed with time, Fishman’s words got me thinking about where it came from. His article had an answer: the noise of social media and daily life.

Read and watch this week’s winners here.

Recent Times reporting about education

Photo illustration by Alex Merto

A Times Magazine article explores the question of how “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” one of our greatest and most controversial novels, should be taught.
Big Tech has captured American schools: The Times reports that companies like Google and Microsoft have used their money, their might and their massive reach to influence nearly every step of the education supply chain.
College applications are changing again, thanks to A.I. and politics.
A guest essay argues that “there’s really only one way to stop students from cheating,” and it requires activating students’ moral identity.

We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to LNfeedback@nytimes.com. More next week.

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