"I Naturally Shared with the Chatbot Emotions I Couldn''t Say to Teachers or Friends"
"Because the Chatbot Empathized with Me First, I Got Better at Understanding Others'' Emotions"
"I Discovered My Strengths I Didn''t Know Before Through Conversations with the Chatbot"
Chatbots Are Tools That Extend Teachers'' Eyes and Ears

Paper: "Effects of AI Chatbot-Based Class Counseling Programs on Elementary Students'' Self-Esteem and Socio-Emotional Competencies" (Yang Ju-won, Lee Jae-yong, 2025). This research focuses more on how to compensate for the structural limitations that school counseling inherently has than on the mere fact of introducing AI chatbots into educational settings. Despite being a short-term intervention, it achieved dramatic improvement in self-awareness domain. Core design: AI chatbot used as pre-counseling tool before teacher counseling; chatbot handles volume (all students can interact anytime) while teachers handle depth (focusing attention on students showing concerning patterns in chatbot data); Mizou platform selected (no sign-up/installation required, web-accessible, teacher creates customized chatbot, students interact within teacher-connected structure without separate accounts; COPPA/GDPR compliant with student data in dedicated security servers). Key findings: self-esteem improvement most significant in "self-awareness" dimension — recognizing own strengths, weaknesses, emotions; improvement weaker in "social" and "family" dimensions (requiring real relationships, not just self-reflection); students reported expressing emotions to chatbots they couldn''t share with teachers or friends; chatbot''s unconditional positive response created psychological safety for self-disclosure. The "chatbot as teacher''s assistant" positioning: chatbots accumulate student conversation data enabling teachers to understand students'' emotional states more deeply; chatbots are not counseling subjects but auxiliary devices extending teachers'' observational and intervention capability. The privacy dimension: counseling chatbots collect sensitive data about children''s emotional states — the research''s careful attention to data protection frameworks (COPPA, GDPR) reflects the genuine sensitivity of this application even when the technology shows educational benefits.