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PODCAST

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators

Jeff Utecht & Tricia Friedman

Shifting Schools is a thought-provoking podcast that explores the latest trends, strategies, and tools in K-12 education. Hosted by educators Jeff Utecht and Tricia Friedman, the podcast provides a platform for teachers, administrators, and education thought leaders to share their experiences and insights on how to improve teaching and learning. From innovative approaches in classroom management to leveraging technology for personalized learning, Shifting Schools tackles the most pressing issues

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All Episodes

31:45

Building a Firm Around People Who Need an Advocate

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/10/05

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

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11:31

When Should Students Use AI? Let Them Design a Game

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/10/01

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,

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12:41

From Research to Collective Action: Dr. Camille...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/09/28

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

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32:17

Beyond Screen-Time Bans: Student Safety in the Age of AI

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/09/21

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

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18:52

Why the World Has Always Been Weird — and Why That...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/09/14

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

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22:36

From Super Bowl Champion to Literacy Champion |...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/09/07

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

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28:31

Never Underestimate a Young Reader

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/08/31

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

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57:39

The Humanoid Robot, the Headlines, and What Really...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/08/28

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

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49:54

Game Design Could Transform Assessment in the AI Era

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/08/24

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

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44:31

What will be your anchor for wellness this school year?

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/08/19

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

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27:31

Lisa Gardner on Creativity and Curiosity

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/08/17

What can ELA teachers learn from a bestselling suspense novelist who begins writing without knowing who the villain is? In this episode of Shifting Schools, Tricia Friedman speaks with Lisa Gardner about the habits, questions, and research behind her novels. Their conversation offers ELA teachers a fresh way to think about character development, suspense, inquiry, and the creative conditions young writers need. Lisa explains that she does not begin with characters divided neatly into heroes and

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26:24

How to Raise a Reader from Birth with Sandra Magsamen

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/08/10

What can a board book offer a baby who cannot yet speak or even hold it independently? Award-winning author, illustrator, and art therapist Sandra Magsamen joins Tricia to discuss Hello, Baby, her new board book created for children from birth to age three. With bright illustrations, melodic language, playful terms of endearment, and a mirror that places the baby inside the story, the book is designed to support far more than early literacy. Sandra explains how reading with a baby can build

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39:15

Who Gets to Lead? Expanding Student Voice with Rachel...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/08/03

When schools picture a student leader, they often imagine the confident speaker, the high achiever, or the student who already understands how to succeed within existing systems. But what about the students who are rarely invited to lead? In this episode, Tricia speaks with educator and author Rachel Thrash about expanding student leadership beyond the familiar few. Her book, Let the Learners Lead: Empowering Student Voice to Co-Create School Culture, presents leadership as something every young

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23:48

How do we teach students to sit with evidence longer?

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/07/27

What happens when historical research uncovers a truth you are not sure you want to know? In this episode of Shifting Schools, Tricia speaks with author Christine Kuehn and her husband and research partner, Mark Schiponi, about Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor. Christine's investigation began with a startling discovery: members of her family had been deeply involved with the Nazi Party, and her grandfather had been

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13:27

How Nolan's Odyssey and Cover Songs Help Us Talk...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/07/22

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey just earned nearly $300 million retelling a 3,000-year-old story — so what actually separates imitation from transformative interpretation? In this episode, Tricia makes the case that cover songs are the perfect entry point into the AI and creativity conversation for educators. You'll trace how Aretha Franklin re-authored Otis Redding's "Respect," why translator Emily Wilson's critique of Nolan's film proves that interpretive choices matter, and how three human skills —

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19:02

Ted Lasso's Cristo Fernández: Fútbol Is Life, and...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/07/20

You know him as Dani Rojas on Ted Lasso. He's also a professional footballer with El Paso Locomotive FC, a filmmaker, and now the author of a bilingual picture book, Fútbol Is Life! / ¡Fútbol es vida!, illustrated by James Rey Sanchez. But before all of that? He was a life insurance salesman who sold nothing for a year. This conversation is about what happens between the dream and the arriving. About injuries that turn out to be redirections. About why "be curious, not judgmental" might be the most

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32:28

When Students Go After Real Problems

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/07/18

When Alex Campbell set out to teach sociology through true crime, he wasn't trying to catch a murderer. He was trying to make the stakes real. Nine years later, his high school students in Appalachia have restored names to victims of the "redheaded murders," helped families, and become the subject of a limited series with a perfect critic score. But as Alex tells it, the thing that mattered most was never on the syllabus: how much his students came to care

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14:51

Do you want to better understand your team?

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/07/15

Every team has communication habits, but how many of those habits have ever been discussed out loud? In this episode, Tricia introduces The Shared Kitchen, a free reflection and facilitation tool designed to help teams understand how each person prefers to communicate, receive feedback, make decisions, ask questions, and work through a project. Using stories about getting fired from a bartending job and accidentally adding unwanted sriracha to breakfast, she shows how easily we can mistake our own

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21:45

The perfect middle grade book for readers during The...

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/07/13

Award-winning author Christina Diaz Gonzalez joins Tricia to discuss Offside, her new bilingual middle-grade graphic novel about soccer, friendship, ambition, identity, and finding the courage to use your voice. Although soccer brings the characters together, Offside is also a story about young people learning to form their own opinions rather than simply inheriting the assumptions of the adults around them. Christina explains why she wanted her characters to have real agency, including the ability

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13:44

AI Literacy Is Problem-Solving Literacy

Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators ·

2026/07/07

Tricia Friedman shares a real-life story about a flooded basement, an insurance claim, and what it revealed about AI literacy. After a major storm in Ottawa caused basement flooding, Tricia found herself facing the kind of problem many people recognize: too many damaged items, too many documents, too many decisions, and a process that can quickly become overwhelming. But this time, compared with a similar flood two years earlier, the experience felt different. Using AI tools, Tricia organized photos

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