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Honesty. We need to be honest about where we are in education. Whether authentic, true, genuine learning is happening should be the question for all of us in education. None of us wants to pretend or participate in a farce. AI guilt is now "a thing" college graduates are talking about . College graduates who are not being "caught" but feel like they spent the last years pretending to learn. Dr. Christian Miller, author of The Honesty Crisis , has spent more than a decade running some of the largest funded research projects on honesty and moral character. He says that the internet was the first honesty crisis in education. AI is the second one. We talk about both sides of the desk on this one. Both the student writing their paper with AI and learning nothing, and the teacher giving AI-generated feedback without disclosing it to students. This is why an honest expert is staying up at night about the papers his philosophy students are writing (or if they are not)...

Wow, this is a sensitive topic. And remember that every person with autism has a different experience. But Claire O'Neill is a teacher and she's telling her story of school. Claire can see the roof of her old primary school from her classroom window. She remembers walking up to the school door with that gnawing, upset feeling in her stomach and the itchy, scratchy uniform that made her so uncomfortable. She says the room was either too hot or too cold. It was almost always too loud, and she says it was smelly. Claire got in trouble a lot. Now, that she's studied autism, she understands better why. Claire has spent more than twenty years teaching autistic students and is a PhD researcher at University College Cork (Ireland) studying what school is actually like for autistic teachers. Claire shares her story from an educational perspective. A full-circle moment of a PhD expert teacher reflecting upon the girl she used to be and advocating to help us all understand how ...

I find this conversation interesting because it tells a story from when ChatGPT was released about how a college student responded to it. Zach Kinzler was a junior in college. He was sitting in the front row of a systems engineering class when a friend punched him in the arm and said, "Look at this." The student had just used ChatGPT to solve the problem on the board. And Zach's journey began as he not only used ChatGPT to help him in his work but also talked openly with his professors about it. He did write his papers with ChatGPT. (OK, now I'm not for this, but this is Zach's story, and it is worth a listen.) Understandably, professors got upset. But when they did, Zach asked them to quiz him on what he wrote and what he had learned. He felt like he was learning faster. Zach leads academic sales strategies at Boodlebox and hosts the Smarter Campus Podcast. We discuss the difference between using AI to learn and using AI to skip learning. He also discusses A...

When you're busy, it can be impossible to see the smoke. The smoke of your own burnout. As a teacher, for so much of my career, I've been busy. There have been seasons when I described the feeling to my husband as "hyperventilation." There were times I wore the lack of sleep as a badge of honor. Today's guest, Dr. Jen Rafferty, was a middle school music teacher for fifteen years. Then, when she reached what she thought was the top of her career (she published her first book, was presenting all over the country) - her marriage was falling apart, her back was debilitated with pain, and she had odd red splotches on her skin that seven doctors couldn't explain. In the end, it was stress. Looking back, she realized it was burnout. So, in today's Motivational Monday, we talk about what can help a teacher move out of burnout without having to quit or just try to make themselves into a different person. I find her arguments about emotional intelligence intere...

Chronic absenteeism doesn't get fixed by counting absences. It gets fixed by asking why. Dr. Leah Marsh is Assistant Principal at Niles Middle School in Ohio and one of three finalists in the country for the National Association of Secondary School Principals Middle Level Assistant Principal of the Year. Under her leadership, Niles Middle School reduced suspensions by 32% while attendance and engagement went up. She did not relax a single standard to get there. SPONSORED: Ellis, a program of Children's Health Council, sponsored this episode. All opinions are my own and that of the guest. In this episode she walks through what her team actually did: pulling the absence data apart until it named real causes — a bus-driver shortage was one — building a Check & Connect mentoring program that pairs struggling students with one adult in the building who is glad to see them, and opening a room called the Dragon Den where a student can re-regulate and go back to class instead of...

How do we help this next generation with their relationship to screens, to each other, and to the adults in their lives? That's the question we're digging into today. Betty Ray talks about rites of passage — those moments that help children move from one stage to the next. She also has a genius way to work with children so they gradually earn more responsibility with technology. Lawrence C. Harris is a 20-year-old who looks back on his time in high school just a couple of years ago. He rose out of a traumatic childhood to become successful instead of a statistic, and now he helps other kids move forward. He has tips for reaching kids like him — the ones who don't act out, but need our attention all the same. Finally, Luddite clubs and screen-free activities are growing fast, and — gasp — here's one for you: bridge! Yes, bridge clubs are growing, and Patty Tucker shares how the ACBL Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, will help you get the cards, the supplies, and the ...