Shifting Schools Update and a Surprise
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Release Date: 09/23/2022
How to Raise a Reader from Birth with Sandra Magsamen
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What can a board book offer a baby who cannot yet speak or even hold it independently? Award-winning author, illustrator, and art therapist Sandra Magsamen joins Tricia to discuss Hello, Baby, her new board book created for children from birth to age three. With bright illustrations, melodic language, playful terms of endearment, and a mirror that places the baby inside the story, the book is designed to support far more than early literacy. Sandra explains how reading with a baby can build connection, vocabulary, attention, curiosity, and a growing sense of belonging. She also shares...
info_outline
Who Gets to Lead? Expanding Student Voice with Rachel Thrash
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
When schools picture a student leader, they often imagine the confident speaker, the high achiever, or the student who already understands how to succeed within existing systems. But what about the students who are rarely invited to lead? In this episode, Tricia speaks with educator and author Rachel Thrash about expanding student leadership beyond the familiar few. Her book, , presents leadership as something every young person can practice, not a privilege reserved for students who already fit a traditional leadership profile. Rachel explains how educators can move from simply asking for...
info_outline
How do we teach students to sit with evidence longer?
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What happens when historical research uncovers a truth you are not sure you want to know? In this episode of Shifting Schools, Tricia speaks with author Christine Kuehn and her husband and research partner, Mark Schiponi, about Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor. Christine’s investigation began with a startling discovery: members of her family had been deeply involved with the Nazi Party, and her grandfather had been convicted for his role connected to the attack on Pearl Harbor. What followed was a 30-year search...
info_outline
How Nolan's Odyssey and Cover Songs Help Us Talk About AI
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Christopher Nolan's Odyssey just earned nearly $300 million retelling a 3,000-year-old story — so what actually separates imitation from transformative interpretation? In this episode, Tricia makes the case that cover songs are the perfect entry point into the AI and creativity conversation for educators. You'll trace how Aretha Franklin re-authored Otis Redding's "Respect," why translator Emily Wilson's critique of Nolan's film proves that interpretive choices matter, and how three human skills — reflect, re-envision, rework — map directly onto UNESCO's vision of students as AI...
info_outline
Ted Lasso's Cristo Fernández: Fútbol Is Life, and It's Never Too Late to Dream
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
You know him as Dani Rojas on Ted Lasso. He's also a professional footballer with El Paso Locomotive FC, a filmmaker, and now the author of a bilingual picture book, Fútbol Is Life! / ¡Fútbol es vida!, illustrated by James Rey Sanchez. But before all of that? He was a life insurance salesman who sold nothing for a year. This conversation is about what happens between the dream and the arriving. About injuries that turn out to be redirections. About why "be curious, not judgmental" might be the most useful thing we can teach — and keep learning ourselves. In this episode: (00:01)...
info_outline
When Students Go After Real Problems
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
When Alex Campbell set out to teach sociology through true crime, he wasn't trying to catch a murderer. He was trying to make the stakes...
info_outline
Do you want to better understand your team?
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Every team has communication habits, but how many of those habits have ever been discussed out loud? In this episode, Tricia introduces a free reflection and facilitation tool designed to help teams understand how each person prefers to communicate, receive feedback, make decisions, ask questions, and work through a project. Using stories about getting fired from a bartending job and accidentally adding unwanted sriracha to breakfast, she shows how easily we can mistake our own habits for shared expectations. The tool begins with individual reflection before helping a team create its own...
info_outline
The perfect middle grade book for readers during The World Cup
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Award-winning author Christina Diaz Gonzalez joins Tricia to discuss Offside, her new bilingual middle-grade graphic novel about soccer, friendship, ambition, identity, and finding the courage to use your voice. Although soccer brings the characters together, Offside is also a story about young people learning to form their own opinions rather than simply inheriting the assumptions of the adults around them. Christina explains why she wanted her characters to have real agency, including the ability to challenge gender stereotypes, rethink competition, navigate conflict, and sometimes help...
info_outline
AI Literacy Is Problem-Solving Literacy
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Tricia Friedman shares a real-life story about a flooded basement, an insurance claim, and what it revealed about AI literacy. After a major storm in Ottawa caused basement flooding, Tricia found herself facing the kind of problem many people recognize: too many damaged items, too many documents, too many decisions, and a process that can quickly become overwhelming. But this time, compared with a similar flood two years earlier, the experience felt different. Using AI tools, Tricia organized photos of damaged belongings, created an insurance-ready inventory, reviewed policy details, searched...
info_outline
Jerry Spinelli: What Young Writers Need to Know About Stories
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Newbery Medal-winning author Jerry Spinelli joins the podcast for a conversation about writing, perseverance, childhood, and the stories that stay with young readers. Known to many elementary and middle school teachers through books such as Maniac Magee, Stargirl, Wringer, and his latest book, Fifth Grade Top Dogs, Spinelli reflects on the long road to becoming a published author. Before his first book found a home, he wrote four novels that were rejected and spent nearly twenty-five years working toward publication. His story offers a useful reminder for K–12 classrooms: writing is not only...
info_outlineOff script and off the cuff Jeff and Tricia hit record and then talk about some of the updates happening at Shifting Schools. New website layout, new logos, and new social media. Please a FREE give a way to the first 10 people who leave us a auido recording at https://podinbox.com/shiftingschoolspod tell us what you like about the Shifting Schoosl podcast or if you have a recommendation for an episode you'd like to hear...we're all ears....
NYTimes article: Gen Z Tiktok Search Engine of Choice
Find us on Tiktok at: https://www.tiktok.com/@shiftingschoolspod?lang=en
Jeff at https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffutecht
Tricia at https://www.tiktok.com/@tricia_fried