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, published author, and founder of Share the Magic Foundation. He explains why reading is not only an academic skill, but also a source of confidence, community, opportunity, and belonging.
The conversation also considers what schools and communities could learn from the cultural power of sports. If young people see athletes celebrated everywhere, how might their aspirations change if readers, writers, books, and libraries were made just as visible?
Malcolm also offers a candid look at his writing practice and the connection between athletic and creative training: show up, make the most of each repetition, and be willing to try again tomorrow.
In this episode:
• Why brief words of encouragement can stay with a young person
• The librarian at the heart of My Super Duper Me
• Malcolm's journey from struggling reader to passionate literacy advocate
• How a welcoming book club helped change his life
• Why reading can build confidence, connection, and belonging
• What it would mean to celebrate literacy as loudly as sports
• How educators can participate in free Share the Magic reading challenges
• What football taught Malcolm about writing, practice, and persistence
Learn more about Malcolm Mitchell, Share the Magic Foundation, and its free reading programs at readwithmalcolm.com.
We also talk about:
📚 Librarians as guides, bridges, and heroes
📚 Reading as a source of confidence, community, and belonging
📚 What schools can learn from the visibility and cultural power of sports
📚 Why creative practice is not so different from athletic training
📚 The willingness to show up and try again

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 fascination and ask what need it may be meeting.
We also discuss the importance of grief literacy, the trust created when adults acknowledge what children already know, and the difference between protecting young people and underestimating them.
The conversation moves beyond the ghosts of Savannah to examine whose histories become tourist attractions, whose stories remain untold, and how literature can inspire students to investigate the overlooked histories of their own communities.
Tiffany also shares why young characters need opportunities to form friendships without constant adult choreography, how she calibrates horror for middle-grade readers, and the deceptively simple practice she recommends to every aspiring writer: read closely enough to notice how a story works.
This episode explores:
Why educators need to take children's inner lives seriously

How intense interests can sometimes help young people process grief

The role of grief literacy in schools and classrooms

How honest conversations can build trust between adults and children

Why young people need agency in friendship and problem-solving

Whose histories are preserved, promoted, ignored, or buried

How place can function as a character in a novel

What horror offers middle-grade readers

How students can learn the craft of writing by reading like writers

At its heart, this conversation asks educators to consider what becomes possible when we stop assuming young people cannot handle the truth—and begin giving them stories that honour their intelligence, curiosity, and humanity.

When Salamanca City Central School District 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 platform could give students in an underserved rural community greater access to personalized academic support.
The conversation also examines a harder question: What does it cost a school leader to pursue responsible innovation when public fear moves faster than the truth?
You'll hear about:
Why Salamanca invested in a humanoid robot for its advanced robotics students

How students influenced its appearance, identity, purpose, and safeguards

The difference between the physical robot and the district's customized AI learning platform

How the technology was designed to scaffold learning—not provide answers or replace teachers

What happened when an AI-generated image distorted the story

Why even some edtech leaders helped spread the misinformation

How students who initially wanted AI banned became some of the project's most thoughtful contributors

The leadership lessons Mark learned about communication, control, and public trust

How the backlash gave him a new understanding of what young people experience when social media turns against them

This is not simply an episode about a robot. It is a candid conversation about educational risk-taking, media literacy, rural equity, and what it means to prepare students for a future that many adults are still struggling to imagine.

What if students didn't simply complete an assessment—but designed an experience for someone else?
In this episode of Shifting Schools, Tricia Friedman pitches Jeff Utecht a new approach to assessment for the AI era: invite students to become game designers.
Games are memorable, social, challenging, and full of consequential choices. Designing one asks students to think about systems, understand an audience, establish meaningful constraints, gather feedback, solve problems, and defend the decisions they make. Those may be precisely the capabilities that matter most when AI can help produce a polished final product.
Tricia introduces the GAMES learning-design framework:
• Goal: What should players understand, practise, or accomplish?
• Audience: Who is the game being designed for?
• Mechanics: What rules, choices, and constraints make it work?
• Engagement: When do players experience agency, challenge, or frustration?
• Show It: How did testing and revision improve the game?
Check it out: https://shifting-schools-games.netlify.app/
 
Jeff and Tricia also explore how teachers and students can intentionally decide where AI belongs in the design process—and where the thinking should remain entirely human.
Along the way, they discuss centaur chess, systems thinking, authentic audiences, collaborative games, playtesting, vibe coding, and why assessment should increasingly examine a learner's judgment and reasoning rather than only the finished product.
You'll also hear about Bark Park, Tricia's AI-assisted dog-park simulator, where limited budgets, overflowing bins, rainy weather, unhappy visitors, and a neighbouring pickleball court turn one small public space into a surprisingly complex systems challenge.
In this episode:
• Why games often remain in our memories longer than individual lessons
• How game design develops systems thinking and executive function
• Why creating for a real audience builds empathy
• How playtesting makes feedback, failure, and revision feel natural
• What human-only and AI-supported stages might look like
• Why students need to explain and defend their design choices
• How AI can expand what students are capable of creating
• Why play may bring greater joy and meaning to assessment
Explore the GAMES framework, student design kit, research, standards connections, printable resources, and Bark Park through the links accompanying this episode.
We would love your feedback. Could this approach work in your classroom, course, or curriculum? Better yet, send us the unit you believe could never become a game. We would love to test the framework at its edges.
Thank you to our show sponsor: Unfurl
Learn more with Unfurl: https://unfurl.sh/
Connect with us:
Tricia Friedman: tricia@shiftingschools.com

General inquiries: info@shiftingschools.com

The beginning of a school year often arrives with a familiar message: do more, organize more, and somehow become a brand-new person before the first bell rings.
This episode offers a different invitation.
Instead of attempting a total wellness overhaul, we explore four small anchors that can help educators, students, colleagues, and families start the year feeling a little more grounded: sleep, movement, attention, and connection.
We talk about the habits that quietly shape how we show up—including where our phones sleep, how we build movement into an ordinary day, what helps us recover our attention, and the small acts of connection that make a school community feel human.
Along the way, we share some of the tools we've been trying to support better rest, breathing, mobility, focus, and time together. The goal isn't to add another obligation to your list. It's to notice what genuinely helps—and choose one small place to begin.
In this episode, we explore:
Why educator wellness shouldn't become another performance metric

The relationship between our own habits and what we ask of students

Simple ways to make sleep feel more restorative

"Movement snacks" that don't require a gym or workout plan

Screen-free tools for breathing, focus, and nervous-system regulation

Small, playful ways to strengthen connection with students, colleagues, and family

A four-week challenge that adds one manageable anchor at a time

You don't need to reinvent your life before school begins. Pick one category, make one small choice on purpose, and start there.
Explore the complete Start the Year Well guide, product recommendations, listener discounts, reflection prompts, and printable four-week tracker:
https://www.shiftingschools.com/start-the-year-well
A big thanks to the following brands for offering us a chance to test out their products, and offering listeners a discount:
SLEEP
Loftie Clock — code SHIFTINGSCHOOLS for 20% off
https://byloftie.com/discount/SHIFTINGSCHOOLS
Slip Silk Sleep Mask
https://slipsilkpillowcase.ca/collections/sleep-masks
TUO Fara Circadian Bulb
https://www.thetuolife.com

MOBILITY
Backpod
https://buybackpod.com
Naboso — Standing Mat + Neuro Ball — code SCHOOL for 20% off
https://www.naboso.com
Gokhale Stretchsit Cushion
https://shop.gokhalemethod.com/bbhqox

ATTENTION
Komuso — The Shift — code SCHOOL15 for 15% off
https://www.komusodesign.com
Pso-Rite — code SHIFTINGSCHOOLS for 30% off
https://pso-rite.com/shiftingschools
Moonbird & Moonbuddy — 20% off applied automatically at checkout (or code SHIFTING10 for 10% off)
https://moonbird.life/discount/?ref=wusymhxf&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=goaffpro

CONNECTION
Global Grub — code ShiftingSchools for 40% off (first 10 orders, through Sept 7)
https://globalgrub.com
eat2explore — code EE10 for 10% off
https://eat2explore.com
A note on transparency: Brands featured in this episode provided samples, and some of the links may be affiliate links or include listener discounts. We only share tools we genuinely use and would recommend to a friend.