EP327 Screens, schools, and the future of childhood: a candid dialogue with Jonathan Haidt
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Release Date: 06/15/2025
EP356 The digital delusion: Is classroom tech hurting how kids learn? (with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
"My toaster has undergone more safety and efficacy testing than any piece of ed tech that's been put in front of our kids in the past 20 years." That's according to Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist, university professor, and former classroom teacher whose book "The Digital Delusion" has become the center of a national conversation about screens in schools. He's testified before the U.S. Senate, and parents are handing out copies at school board meetings. Jared's argument is that we've spent decades and $400 billion building an ed tech industry on a promise that never materialzed, and...
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EP355 A short history of the 8-hour workday (and how to protect yours)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
A third of your day (apart from work and sleep) is supposed to be yours. So where does it go? In 1817, labor movement activist Robert Owen coined this rallying cry: "Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for what we will." But if you've ever tried to make that math work as a teacher, you know the catch. In those "eight hours for what you will," we have to fit commuting, cooking, cleaning, errands, caregiving, homework help, and all the invisible labor of running a life. How do we actually make space for the things that bring us joy? In this episode, I unpack the labor...
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EP354 You don't have to teach like an influencer.
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
If you scroll social media right now, you'll probably land on a teacher revamping their reading corner like it's a home renovation reveal, then a TikTok Shop haul of classroom must-haves you didn't know you needed nine seconds ago, then someone who built an entire year's curriculum with AI in under a minute. And somewhere underneath all of it is this creeping feeling that you're already behind, and the school year has hardly even started. In this episode, I'm telling a story about a veteran teacher I worked next door to early in my career, and why I think about my mistake in emulating her...
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EP353 Think out loud: teaching the hidden skills of planning and prioritizing
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
You make dozens of invisible decisions every class period. Should I squeeze in one more activity or leave time for questions? Do I spend more time on this concept or move on? Is this the best use of our remaining five minutes? You weigh options, estimate time, and reprioritize on the fly, and you do it so automatically that you barely notice anymore. But here's the problem: your students have no idea any of this is happening. They just see you move seamlessly from one thing to the next. If kids never see how you plan, prioritize, and adjust, how are they supposed to learn to do it...
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EP352 Why distress tolerance is the missing piece in classroom management
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Do your students seem less and less able to sit with anything uncomfortable, whether that's boredom, confusion, frustration, or the feeling of not immediately knowing the answer? The research backs up your anecdotal evidence: distress tolerance in young people is measurably declining. In this episode, I dig into why this is happening and what teachers can actually do about it. We’ll talk about the biology behind why comfort reduces resilience (and why that's not anyone's fault), why our students are more stressed than ever but building less capacity from it, and practical strategies...
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EP351 What does learning science actually say about AI in the classroom? (with Erin Mote)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Everyone has an opinion about AI in classrooms right now, but very few of those opinions are grounded in what we actually know about how kids learn. In this episode, I sit down with Erin Mote, CEO and founder of InnovateEDU and co-founder of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, to cut through the noise and talk about what the evidence actually shows about AI as a learning tool. This isn't a conversation about ChatGPT, cheating, whether to ban devices, or what kids are doing with AI at home on their own time (which are separate topics worthy of their own discussion). We're talking specifically...
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EP350 The power of regret: using hindsight as a tool for growth
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Teaching gives you a lot of opportunities to look back and wish you'd done it differently, and most of us carry those regrets way longer than we need to. In this episode, I'm sharing what I learned from Daniel Pink's book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, and how his research applies to the unique kind of regret that teachers carry. I'll walk you through the four categories of regret most people have, the difference between "if only" and "at least" thinking, and a three-step process for actually processing a regret instead of just ruminating on it at 2 a.m. I'll...
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EP349 Re-awakening kids' curiosity & connection to real food through sensory learning (with Bee Wilson)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Food writer Bee Wilson has been in classrooms across the UK, and what she's discovered is startling: many children have completely lost their sensory connection to real food. They know the peach emoji but not the fuzzy feel of actual peach skin. They recognize mint from shampoo but have never smelled a fresh mint leaf. When asked where food comes from, kids used to say "the supermarket." Now they say "mommy's iPad." This slow shift is revealing a new gap in child development that affects how kids observe, describe, and engage with the world around them. In this episode, Bee explains...
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EP348 Stuck in survival mode? Here's how to calm your nervous system.
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Most of us are walking around in a low-grade state of fight-or-flight all the time, and we don't even realize it. It looks like the tight jaw in the morning, the exhaustion that doesn't lead to sleep, or the feeling of being on edge even on a good day. These are signs of a nervous system that never got the signal that it's safe to come down. In this episode, I'm sharing a lesson from my new free video course called Everything is Terrible: An Anxiety Toolkit for the Age of Doomscrolling. It's a five-lesson toolkit for people who care deeply about the world and are quietly exhausted by the...
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EP347 An artful approach to exploring identity and fostering belonging (w/ Rebecca Bellingham & Veronica Scott)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
When the world feels this heavy, this broken, it can feel almost frivolous to make space for art. And in the classroom with so much content to cover, can we really slow down enough to create and take an artful approach to learning with students? Who has time to write poems or pause over a beautiful image when we're al barely keeping our heads above water? But think about what we're left with if we don't. If we strip away beauty and creativity and connection, all we have left is the grind. The compliance. The systems that are exhausting us in the first place. I recently talked to Rebecca...
info_outline“We have overprotected kids in the real world and underprotected them online.”
Jonathan Haidt believes we have bubble-wrapped childhood: cut back on recess, banned kids from walking to school alone, and filled every spare moment with structured, adult-led activities.
But at the same time, we gave kids 24/7 access to social media, smartphones, and one-to-one devices—with very little guidance or boundaries.
And now, we’re seeing the results.
Rising anxiety. Fragmented attention. Lost confidence. Social disconnection.
This quote about overprotecting in the real world and underprotecting onloine hit me hard, because it puts into words what so many teachers have felt for years but couldn’t always articulate. If our kids seem less resilient, less focused, less ready to learn... maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s the environment we’ve created.
The good news? We can change that. We ARE changing it.
More schools are rethinking tech. More parents are drawing tech boundaries. More teachers are advocating for what kids truly need. We can bring balance back.
Today’s guest is Jonathan Haidt—a social psychologist, professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, and author of several influential books, including most recently, The Anxious Generation. You may have seen Jonathan in recent interviews talking about how smartphones and social media are impacting kids’ mental health. But I wanted to bring him on the show to go deeper—specifically from an educator’s point of view.
This conversation builds on some of the past episodes I’ve done around screen time, attention spans, and how tech is changing the way kids show up in the classroom. It’s a true back-and-forth conversation where we learn from each other, and I think it’s going to validate so much of what you’ve already sensed as a teacher.
Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.
Later this summer, I'll share a different perspective from someone who sees personalized AI tutoring as the future of school, and I have to admit, I find that vision just as compelling as what Haidt has shared. Stay tuned!