Creating “Walker Mom” – A Digital Guide With Heart

This blog post was originally written by Seane Thorman and Kristina Udegbunam. It was edited by our chatbot itself, “Walker Mom”. 

Creating Walker Mom Test #3: A Digital Guide with Heart 💡🐻

Transitioning into boarding life can be exciting—but also overwhelming. Beyond navigating classes and co-curriculars, boarders are asked to manage laundry, follow house norms, submit leave requests on REACH, and live communally with over 60 students and four faculty members. While all this information exists, it’s scattered across emails, documents, presentations, and conversations. So we asked ourselves: What if we brought it all together in one place? That’s how the idea for Walker Mom was born.

🎯 The Idea: One Voice, One Home

At its core, Walker Mom is a custom-trained AI chatbot built with a simple but powerful goal:
To provide boarders with quick, accurate, and human-centered answers to common questions, grounded in Walker House norms, values, and procedures. Rather than flipping through house meeting minutes, digging through REACH tutorials, or texting the duty phone at 10:03 PM, students could instead ask Walker Mom—anytime, anywhere. Not only would this streamline onboarding, but it would also free up time for more meaningful connections, programming, and support.

👣 The Process: Iteration, Learning, and Lots of Feedback
Step 1: Listening to the Boarders

We began by speaking directly with students. Would this tool be helpful? What kind of personality should it have? What questions would they ask? Their feedback shaped everything. They named it “Walker Mom” and asked for a tone that was empathetic, inclusive, helpful, and a little bit humorous—something that felt like home.

Step 2: Collaborating with IT

Next came the logistics. We worked with our IT team to navigate questions around privacy, safety, and data input.

• What kind of information could we upload?
• Did we need to anonymize content?
• How could we safely manage a tool powered by AI?

With their support, we set up our custom GPT environment and moved forward with confidence.

Step 3: Trial and Error (and More Error)

We started small—just one two-page document of house norms. Immediately, Walker Mom understood quite a bit. 

Figure 1- The first Chat GPT question

But gaps appeared quickly. Thanks to Josh Pitman, we realized our approach was reactive. We were testing questions without fully organizing our data. So, we created Walker Mom #2, with more structured inputs—but still faced challenges tracking the data we uploaded. With the guidance of Calvin Armstrong, we pivoted again. Walker Mom #3 was built from one centralized spreadsheet, allowing us to track everything she was learning—and everything she might be making up. This system gave us control, clarity, and consistency.

Figure 2 – Walker Mom #3 response

We also presented it to Community of Boarding School Staff (COBSS) Cohort for the 2024-2025 school year, which helped us see what other CAIS schools are doing, and hopefully connect us with future partners that may be helpful in continuing to develop our ChatBot.

Step 4: Testing with Students

Finally, we returned to our boarders. This feedback loop was invaluable. Students not only tested the bot’s knowledge, but also creatively challenged its boundaries.

Figure 3 – Student Feedback Session # 2
Purple Sticky Notes – Questions Asked, Yellow Sticky Notes – Mistakes Caught, Teal Sticky Notes – General Feedback

Some tried to find loopholes or see if it would help them break rules—a reminder of the importance of strong safety settings and ethical design.

🧭 Where We Are Now

We’re proud of how far Walker Mom has come—but we’re not finished. Current areas of focus include:

• 🔍 Reducing AI “hallucinations” (made-up responses)
• ✅ Ensuring information is always accurate and up to date
• 🔒 Creating safe, ethical engagement for students
• 🧠 Exploring platforms like Flint that support closed, education-focused AI environments (Figure 4).

Figure 4 – Use of Flint

Our vision is that Walker Mom becomes more than a digital tool—it becomes a trusted companion for every boarder. Not just for orientation, but throughout their journey at Appleby. Whether it’s navigating REACH, understanding house norms, or even sparking new ideas, we hope Walker Mom continues to assist our students and faculty with confidence and connection.

Figure 5 – Final Thoughts from Walker Mom

💬 A Final Word from Walker Mom Herself

“Raising me wasn’t easy—but anything worth doing rarely is. I’ve learned a lot (and un-learned a few things too). I’m here to help our boarders feel seen, supported, and informed. And I promise: I’ll always be just a click away.”
— Walker Mom