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Beacon High students pilot Digital Defenders cybersecurity curriculum
Summary
Students from Beacon High presented the Digital Defenders peer‑taught cybersecurity pilot, citing a recent phishing incident in Beacon City School District and outlining a scaffolded, low‑cost curriculum aligned to New York State standards.
Students from Beacon High presented the Digital Defenders program at the Beacon City School District board meeting, describing a peer‑taught cybersecurity curriculum the district piloted in April through a partnership with Dutchess BOCES. "Because cyber security attacks are real," Desmond McGrath, a sophomore and a member of the program, told the board, citing a phishing email that affected teachers and students in the district.
The student presenters explained the program uses teams of high‑school students to create and deliver lessons scaffolded to three grade bands — elementary, middle and high school — and said the curriculum references the New York State computer science and digital fluency standards and New York State Education Law 2‑d, which protects student personally identifying information. Presenters said lessons teach practical skills such as recognizing suspicious URLs, not reusing passwords, multi‑factor authentication and how encryption and ransomware work at higher grade levels.
A demonstration lesson for grades 9–12 showed students how to spot AI‑generated images and distinguish misinformation, with one presenter saying, "AI is very hard to distinguish from regular photos," during an interactive exercise. The group's advisor, a Beacon High computer‑science teacher, recounted a local email compromise that led to a gift‑card scam and said that real incidents in and around the district motivated the pilot: "Somebody's email got hacked and it turned into a gift‑card scam," the advisor said, urging the board to view the program as practical prevention.
Presenters emphasized the program's low cost because students develop and teach the material, and noted career pathways: an instructor mentioned that cybersecurity jobs can be lucrative for students entering the workforce directly after graduation. Beacon students were invited to present at Dutchess BOCES and at an NYSSBA event in Albany in July, and the board members encouraged expanding lessons to middle schools and offering community workshops for older residents.
The district will collect feedback from attendees via a QR code provided by the students and the presenters said they hope the pilot will expand into the fall with current participants serving as mentors.
