MindShift Podcast

Most teachers feel they have to hide negative emotions from students. That puts them in a tough situation because - as we showed in our episode on toxic positivity - research shows suppressing negative emotions can make stress worse. In this minisode, we look at what happens when teachers show their real emotions in class, from the highs to the lows.

Glenn Singleton is the author of “Courageous Conversations About Race,” which gives helpful ground rules when talking about race. One Florida school district taught Singleton’s techniques to all their educators so they could develop cultural competency and address systemic inequities. What can their experience teach others?

Gholdy Muhammad, a teacher and professor at Georgia State University, spent years researching Black literary societies of the early 1800s, where people debated ideas, cultivated a deeper understanding of themselves and thought critically about change needed in the world. From this model, Muhammad developed the historically responsive literacy framework to help teachers and parents raise the genius...

For many students, their mental health took a nosedive during the pandemic. But there are bright spots. One Oakland school was able to meet most students' mental health needs – and it didn’t call for anything too drastic.

There’s a growing movement to teach data science in schools. Some experts hope it will disrupt the dropouts caused by other math classes and even lead to more diversity in STEM. In this episode, we study how educators have designed the classes to be more engaging for women and people from groups underrepresented in STEM.

The pandemic has pushed many educators to their limits. And yet, some teachers are being told a better attitude could make the job easier. Some call this toxic positivity, which is when you focus on the positive and ignore the negative. In this episode, we look at how teachers can combat toxic positivity and help their classrooms avoid a culture of it.

By fall 2020, in districts around the country, high school students were failing classes at greater rates than before the pandemic, dragging down GPAs. Teachers are asking: is it time to reevaluate how we grade? Learn common misconceptions about grades in this episode and possible new directions.

As we begin a third school year in the coronavirus pandemic, the MindShift team examines sustaining teaching practices that can help educators and their students. This season, we’ll bring you stories and strategies that helped school communities prioritize what’s important in a child’s education. We also welcome Nimah Gobir as co-host!  The crises of 2020 created opportunities for change in how te...

For parents and teachers looking for a resource on how to talk about race with kids, there's a new book called "Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You." It's written by educator Dr. Sonja Cherry Paul and is for 7 to 12 year old children. This book is an adaptation of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds' book "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You."

Once schools went fully remote, learning online during the pandemic became a major struggle for so many students. However, for some students, being online and away from distractions at school helped them do better academically.

As a child, Connie Williams learned to read using the “whole word” strategy, which has since been disproven as an effective technique. She graduated high school in Oakland, Calif., but she was functionally illiterate. Since then, her children and grandchildren have attended Oakland public schools, all of them struggling to learn to read. And it wasn’t just her family -- the district is failing tho...

For many students, writing can be tedious, especially after years of boring grammar, spelling and structure drills. But for kids who have discovered fan fiction, writing about something they’re already passionate about can ignite countless hours of creative writing, music and art.

Culturally relevant teaching strategies help make learning more meaningful to the lives of students and address some of the equity issues in curriculum. When schools closed in March because of COVID-19, about 150 teachers from around the country began creating a resource document to share ideas that would engage students in learning through the events happening in their lives. Students at Washingt...

Seniors missed out on prom, signing yearbooks, sharing the news of college acceptances with friends and teachers in person, and walking across the graduation stage in front of their family and friends. Juniors took AP tests at home and worried what this would mean for their futures. Hear what students recorded in their audio journals as they adjust their expectations for this school year and the f...

When Ashanti Branch started the Ever Forward Club, he was a high school math teacher trying to figure out why the young men in his classes weren’t succeeding. He found they were craving what he desired as a kid too -- a safe place to be themselves, to show emotion, to get support without fear of judgment. When Ashanti gave them that, their success surprised everyone. It’s now his life’s work to su...

We’re here just in time to unpack some of the extraordinary circumstances created by emergency distance learning and the COVID-19 pandemic. This season, you’ll hear how teachers and students prioritized what mattered most as school closures dragged on during shelter-in-place. Ki Sung reports on a journal assignment that helped teachers stay in touch with students and check in on their welfare whil...

Teenagers are demanding to be heard on the issues that matter most to them including climate change, gun control, abortion and immigration. What's different now and what role does public education play?

Art has often been relegated as an additional activity in schools. But schools that put art at the center of a child's learning experience through arts integration are seeing kids thrive.

Adults have designed how kids eat at school for generations, directing students into single-file lines and seating them at long roll-away tables to eat mass-produced food. This is all about efficiency in order to feed hundreds of young people in a matter of minutes. However, baked into the process of feeding kids efficiently are bad food choices, waste, social anxiety and social isolation. Lunch h...

Privilege and power play out in the world all around us everyday. And kids notice. First grade teacher Bret Turner has decided not to avoid the difficult conversations and questions his students bring to class. Instead, he's weaving issues of privilege and power into everything he does.

The kind of free play grown-ups had in previous generations is looked at with nostalgia in today’s era of adult-supervised activities. Children are missing out on the benefits of unstructured play, but a group of dedicated educators are trying to give kids back their play time. For one day in February, class time is dedicated to play time via the Global School Play Day movement. In 2019, more than...

Anxiety is running rampant in high schools around the country, both rich and poor. The driving factors may be different, but it’s the same lonely, debilitating feeling. It makes it hard for students to learn and to deal with life. Katrina Schwartz takes us inside the experience of anxiety from two teens’ perspectives and shares strategies educators and parents can use to help them cope.

We asked what issues matter to you most and we listened. The fourth season of the MindShift podcast dives into the question: How can we bring joy back to learning and teaching?

Close to 24-percent of Oakland ninth graders drop out before their senior year of high school. Some of those young people ultimately decide that they need to go back to school in order to get ahead in life. We explore what it takes to support over-aged students to a high school diploma -- and college or a career -- when they’re facing homelessness, juggling family responsibilities, or are navigati...

Ask almost any teacher why they teach and they'll give you similar answers: they love the kids. But what does that love look like when it's a community value, shared by every adult in the building, no matter how difficult it feels? At Social Justice Humanitas Academy in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, love is baked into everything from academic probation to math class. And it's making a differen...