When Should Students Use AI? Let Them Design a Game
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Release Date: 10/01/2026
Googly Eyes, Big Feelings, and Asking for Help with Christy Mandin
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What can picture books teach us about helping children feel heard—and learning to ask for help ourselves? Author and illustrator Christy Mandin returns to explore Millie Fleur’s Pumpkin Problem and Millie Fleur’s Worst Day Ever. Through her imaginative characters, Christy opens up conversations about creativity, community, and respecting children’s emotional experiences. Together, we consider why a child’s “worst day ever” deserves our attention, even when the problem seems small to an adult. Christy shares how life in her neurodivergent household shapes her approach to...
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What Horror Teaches Us About Grief and Belonging—with Ryan La Sala
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What can a horror novel teach us about friendship—and why might surviving together be its most hopeful message? Author Ryan La Sala joins Tricia Friedman to explore the queer horror of The Dead of Summer, where estranged childhood friends must decide whether they can hold onto one another when disaster strikes. Their conversation moves beyond the scares to examine representation, found family, grief, and the surprising relationship between terror and joy. Ryan explains why he writes queer characters whose lives extend beyond coming out, how each novel challenges his creative process, and...
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Building a Firm Around People Who Need an Advocate
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What does it take to build a firm around the needs of people facing some of life’s most difficult circumstances? Tricia welcomes the founder of USA4ALL to explore the purpose behind its work, including serving survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. The conversation begins with the firm’s origin story and the question of what makes its approach distinctive. For educators and community leaders, this episode invites reflection on how compassion shapes the organizations we build—and how we recognize whose needs deserve greater attention. As you listen, consider: What...
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When Should Students Use AI? Let Them Design a Game
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What if your next assessment asked students to pitch a board game—and explain when they chose to use AI? In this episode, Tricia Friedman explores how game design can bring together research, persuasive writing, creativity, collaboration, and AI literacy. The central challenge: help students make thoughtful decisions about where AI supports their learning and where they want to work without it. You don’t need time to develop an entire board game. Tricia introduces a smaller game-pitch challenge, using the history of the Spokane River as an example that educators can adapt to their own...
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From Research to Collective Action: Dr. Camille Busette on Healthcare Advocacy
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What happens when the cost of healthcare forces someone to delay a doctor’s visit, skip a prescription, or take on debt? Tricia Friedman welcomes Dr. Camille Busette, executive vice president of Programs at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to discuss One Nation, Overcharged. The nationwide campaign brings people together to call for more affordable healthcare. The challenge is widespread, but it is not shared equally. In this conversation, Tricia and Dr. Busette examine what the data reveals about healthcare costs, whose experiences are too often overlooked, and how sharing those...
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Beyond Screen-Time Bans: Student Safety in the Age of AI
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
School districts are reaching a turning point in how they manage classroom technology. After years of rapid device adoption and policies that often responded to one risk at a time, leaders are asking a harder question: How can schools protect students from cyberbullying, data theft, AI-enabled scams, distraction and online harm without cutting them off from the learning, creativity and connection technology can provide? In this episode, Tricia speaks with Harrison Parker, Executive Vice President at , about the shift from reactive restrictions toward a more coordinated approach to student...
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Why the World Has Always Been Weird — and Why That Matters
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
Uncle John’s All-Knowing Bathroom Reader, Curiosity, and the Weirdness of Human History Brian Boone joins the show to talk about why the world has always been weird—not just now. The conversation ranges from animal history and television oddities to fact-checking, collaboration, and why curiosity is the engine behind good stories and human wisdom. In this episode, Tricia and Brian Boone discuss how access to information can make the present feel stranger than the past, even though human behavior has always been full of surprises. They also explore the storytelling and editorial work...
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From Super Bowl Champion to Literacy Champion | Malcolm Mitchell
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What if readers and writers received the same attention, celebration, and investment as star athletes? In this episode, Tricia speaks with Super Bowl champion, children’s author, and literacy advocate Malcolm Mitchell about his new picture book, My Super Duper Me. They discuss the lasting effect of a few encouraging words, the role librarians can play in helping children see their own possibilities, and why adults should never underestimate the power of simply showing up with a positive message. Malcolm shares his own journey from struggling reader to member of the Silverleaf Book Club,...
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Never Underestimate a Young Reader
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
What do young people understand that adults mistakenly believe they have hidden from them? Award-winning author Tiffany D. Jackson returns to the podcast to discuss Ghost in the Night, her haunting middle-grade novel set against the ghost tours, buried histories, and complicated beauty of Savannah, Georgia. Tiffany invites educators to take young readers—and their capacity to confront difficult subjects—seriously. We explore why children sometimes attach themselves intensely to a particular interest while processing grief, and what educators might discover if they look beyond the...
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The Humanoid Robot, the Headlines, and What Really Happened
Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators
When announced plans to bring a humanoid robot into its robotics program, the story quickly became something else entirely: “A school is replacing teachers with robots.” That was never the plan. In this episode, Jeff Utecht speaks with Superintendent Mark Beehler about what the district was actually trying to build—and what happened when an AI-generated image, alarming headlines, and social media outrage overtook the facts. Mark explains how students helped shape the project, why the district saw the robot as an opportunity to explore emerging technology, and how a locally controlled AI...
info_outlineWhat if your next assessment asked students to pitch a board game—and explain when they chose to use AI?
In this episode, Tricia Friedman explores how game design can bring together research, persuasive writing, creativity, collaboration, and AI literacy. The central challenge: help students make thoughtful decisions about where AI supports their learning and where they want to work without it.
You don’t need time to develop an entire board game. Tricia introduces a smaller game-pitch challenge, using the history of the Spokane River as an example that educators can adapt to their own curriculum and local context.
Together, we explore:
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A task that asks students to choose three moments to use AI and two to work without it—and justify those decisions.
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How matching game mechanics to a researched theme creates opportunities for testing, feedback, and revision.
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Connections to ELA, humanities, art, and mathematics through persuasive pitches, visual design, pricing, and material costs.
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How game reviews, playthrough videos, and crowdfunding pitches can become texts worth studying.
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What it means to approach assessment redesign with both boldness and humility.
A question to bring to your next planning meeting: How could an assessment make students’ judgment about AI as visible as their final product?
Explore Tricia’s free GAMES framework and consider where a game-pitch challenge could fit into an upcoming unit.
https://shifting-schools-games.netlify.app/
Reach out: tricia@shiftingschools.com