The 2024 Election is anything but easy to teach in a classroom today  where fears range from community backlash, restrictive state policies, and job security. For many teachers, the election is a topic to avoid, but Eric Soto-Shed, lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, insists we're missing a real opportunity by doing so.

“We’re at a crisis right now in terms of Americans belief in our fundamental democratic system – not for this candidate or that candidate but does the system work…” Soto-Shed says, noting a recent Gallup poll shows only 28 percent of Americans are satisfied with democracy. “I think that’s a tragic number. And I think schools are the place where we can get folks not only engaged in the process, but also connected to the process, believing in the process.”

He sees teacher expertise and classrooms as a place to create a nurturing learning environment for students. Teaching the election can foster civic engagement, as data shows students are more likely to vote and trust democratic processes when educated on them.

“We can't avoid these hard conversations because they're going to happen anyway. It's just a swipe away on a phone or click on the dial. And students are going to be exposed to these rhetoric charged topics, really disparaging comments, different points of view. Why don't we use our schools as a place where we can really have real meaningful deep conversation around differences, around important issues?” he says.

In this episode of the EdCast, Soto-Shed offers strategies for navigating these challenges, such as focusing on critical thinking skills, connecting election topics to broader course themes, and presenting issues factually without heavy bias. Finally, he highlights the emotional and logistical challenges of post-election classroom discussions, particularly during highly contentious election cycles.

As millions of students prepare for summer vacation, many parents may worry about endless time spent on the screen. Michael Rich, pediatrician and Director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, says children spend more time on the screen during the summer but that the real challenge is balance between screen time and offline activities.

“Now, the issue with screen time also should not be that the time you spend on screen is toxic, but that it is displacing something else. And if it is displacing something that is arguably a richer, more positive experience, then one should be thoughtful about that and make that choice,” he says. “The problem with screens as we use them is that we use them in such an open-ended way, such a way that it's a default behavior.”

He discusses the challenges of setting screen time limits in today's digital environment and offers practical strategies for structuring days with both screen and non-screen activities. One of the best ways, he says, is for parents to set good examples. “When we get home, we should put down our devices and focus on them, really look at them, listen to them, be silent with them, but not be distracted by our phones. Work is over ostensibly, although we don't remember that most of the time, and it's a time when you can actually enjoy them,” he says. “They're not going to be this old forever. They are constantly changing before us. So, in some ways, we need to value that time with them even more. And by doing so, we are modeling for them valuing time with us.”

In this episode, Rich shares insights on navigating screen time in children's lives, and addresses concerns about the impact of screens on mental health, advocating for a nuanced approach that considers individual readiness and understanding.

With looming threats of high teacher turnover rates during COVID-19, Olivia Chi, an assistant professor at Boston University, wanted to study how the pandemic shaped who decided to become a teacher.

Many states foresaw serious disruptions to the teacher pipeline as testing centers and schools closed around the county. While teacher requirements differ by state, many require a bachelor’s or master’s teacher education program, student teaching, state teaching exams, or some type of alternative certification program. Massachusetts sought innovative solutions to sustain their teaching workforce by issuing emergency teaching licenses. “In order to prevent a stopgap essentially in the teacher pipeline, Massachusetts issued what they called emergency teaching licenses. And these began in June of 2020, in response to all of the closures during the pandemic,” Chi says. “And the emergency teaching license is different from the others because it only requires a bachelor's degree to be eligible for the license. In other words, you did not have to complete and pass these teacher licensure exams in order to get the license. So if you have a bachelor's degree and you went through the typical checks, you could get that license and be eligible to be a Massachusetts classroom teacher in a public school.”

Chi's research, conducted in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, demonstrates how emergency licenses influenced the demographics and effectiveness of the teaching workforce.

“I think our results would put forth to consider more flexibility, particularly for those who have already engaged in the teacher pipeline or may already have lots of experience working in public schools as paraprofessionals or in other staff positions,” Chi says. “That being said, I don't necessarily think our results suggest we should just do away with all of the requirements and let anybody in.”

In this episode of the EdCast, we discuss the study’s findings and what emergency teaching licenses can tell us about teacher requirements given the current state of the teaching workforce today. 

While most schools in the United States do not report using corporal punishment – the use of pain as punishment -- it still impacts tens of thousands of students annually, particularly in states where it remains legal. 

Jaime Peterson, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued a call this fall to end such practices in school. “As pediatricians, we don't recommend corporal punishment. We know it's not an effective form of discipline. Spanking and hitting a child might help a behavior in the short term. They might be fearful and obedient,” she says. “But in the long term it has a lot of negative consequences. But if it's how you discipline your child at home, parents are often teachers, and school personnel, and school board members that that's a practice in their community at home that seems acceptable. It may be hard to change it.”

It also disproportionately impacts certain demographics such as Black students and students with disabilities. 

With 17 states remaining where corporal punishment is still legal today, Peterson urges parents, educators and policymakers to mobilize and push for abolition of this practice. Calling this form of punishment ineffective, she urges parents and schools to adopt more supportive and positive disciplinary practices that work. 

“Saying that it's not allowed isn't going to change a school culture entirely. We don't know what other forms of discipline will come in,” she says. “I think really in the simplest forms when I talk with families, I remind them that our goal is no pain-- so that's corporal punishment-- no shame, and no blame when we discipline children. No pain, no shame, no blame.” 

In this episode of the EdCast, we discuss the prevalence and effects of corporal punishment in schools, and what it’s going to take to end it for good.

Family engagement plays a pivotal role in combatting chronic absenteeism.

The number of students who are chronically absent – missing 10% or more of the school year – has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Eyal Bergman, senior vice president at Learning Heroes, studied this issue and was surprised to discover how schools with robust family engagement had significantly lower rates of chronic absenteeism. “It shows that the strength of a school's family engagement is actually more predictive of a school's chronic absenteeism than their rates of poverty,” he says. 

But fostering strong home-school partnerships has been a challenge for many school districts. “What we find is that schools often, despite really good intentions, have not really been designed to promote really strong partnerships with families,” he says. “This is why families are often treated as spectators to the work of schools. This is why their cultural wisdom and their expertise about their children aren't necessarily woven into the fabric of schooling. It's why we see that schools often apply assimilationist practices.”

Bergman emphasizes the need for trust-building between educators and families, personalized approaches to student learning, and systemic infrastructural support to enhance family engagement. In future work, Bergman will dig deeper into the data and try to gather more information about what certain school districts with strong family engagement did to keep chronic absenteeism down and a possible tool down the line to help schools with family engagement. 

In this episode, he explains the soaring numbers of chronic absenteeism while underscoring the transformative potential of prioritizing family engagement in ensuring student well-being and academic success.

For many first-generation college students, the dream of pursuing a college degree is often accompanied by financial uncertainty and adversities that keep it as just a dream. The faulty rollout of a new, more simplified Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form may only keep this student population from even trying.

“The intent of simplifying it and making it 'Better FAFSA' was actually very much right-footed to really make sure that it can go to the intent of providing and expanding more access to young people who would be least likely to go to college, largely because they also think that they can't pay for it,” says Heather Wathington, the CEO of iMentor. “So what the challenge then is that something that was created to ameliorate a problem is stuck. So then you have young people that remain stuck. They aren't necessarily able to provide the financial information that they need, and they're discouraged about going.”

Wathington acknowledges that the FAFSA changes were intended and may eventually help first generation college goers, but the delays, technical glitches, and math mistakes of the new FAFSA have only added a layer of adversity. 

“For the seniors, my heart aches for them because it's not feeling like they're going to college,” Wathington says. “And as we're trying to build a college going identity, particularly with young people who might be on the fence about whether they belong, whether they should go, whether they can pay for it, all the ‘whethers.’ We want to be able to make it feel possible, and this kind of serves to stymie them a bit.”

How can we make college feel more accessible for these student populations? What is the role of mentors in not only getting students to apply to college but also matriculating to college? In this episode, we explore the hurdles faced by these individuals and explore strategies to help them overcome the barriers to accessing higher education.

Math has a problem when it comes to equitable learning. The way math is taught and how students are tracked is part of the issue, according to Kentaro Iwasaki, a former math teacher who led new math standards in California and now works with school districts nationwide to overhaul their math programs. Tracking in math contributes to segregation, with Black and brown students often placed in lower-track classes compared to their white and Asian counterparts, he says.

“When we go into classes or schools, almost every high school is tracked. With the doors closed and just looking through the window of a classroom, if you just look inside, you can pretty much tell what is a high track class and what's a low track class just based on the student demographics. And that's really unacceptable in our education system today, and particularly this is problematic in math.” 

The negative impact of tracking carries over into students' self-concept, classroom dynamics, and overall educational experiences. 

As a math teacher, Iwasaki dismantled an honors math program at Mission High School in San Francisco. This change resulted in increased AP enrollment and passing rates for all students, challenging the notion that tracking is necessary for academic success.

“Math is being used as a vehicle to maintain segregation in our education system and that it's more comfortable for parents, particularly parents with social, cultural, political capital, to argue for segregation under the guise of mathematics and saying, ‘Well, my student is at this level, so therefore should be in this class,’ and really kept away from Black and brown students,” Iwasaki says. “No parent is going to outright say that, but in my work with parent communities and listening in and attending school board and school committee meetings, that very much is the underlying conversation and that is what district leaders, district systems, really need to confront.”

In this episode, we discuss the concept of complex instruction, the value of de-tracking math, and how like-minded educators can forge a new identity for math in schools. 

Janet Patti and Robin Stern joined forces decades ago when they recognized the crucial role of emotional intelligence for school leaders. How educators understand and manage emotions can positively impact the entire school community, contribute to better leadership, well-being, and resilience. The problem though is that for many education leaders developing emotional intelligence is low on the to do list. 

“People can burn out. People can be exhausted. And we hear that from leaders. It really takes a bite out of well-being when you're constantly in the state of emotion labor and you're not attending to that,” says Stern, a senior advisor for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

High rates of stress and turnover in school leader positions only point to more need for emotional intelligence training in leadership development. In their book “Emotional Intelligence for School Leaders,” they push for social-emotional learning as a required skill for school leaders. They also share how educators can develop a conscience practice incorporating emotions, and how coaching and professional development can only help sustain educators in the field.

“Many people just see it as, ’I'm not going to spend my money on me.’ That's number one. I'm not going to spend my money on adults. I'm going to spend it where we need it on kids. We understand that,” says Patti, a professor emeritus at Hunter College. “But if they only realize that by the investment in the principals and the assistant principals and even the superintendent who also is not faring well in terms of long lasting, they would have such a different outcome. Such a more productive environment. Kids would be able to achieve. Adults who would be happy going to work. It would be a different world.”

In this episode, we discuss the need for training in emotional intelligence, sharing real-life examples of leaders who have successfully integrated these skills into their roles, and how it can change a school culture. 

Over the past few years, a battle is taking place on many school grounds – one being driven by mothers that is inevitably shaping the future of schools. Laura Pappano – a journalist with decades covering education – couldn’t ignore the growing influence of these movements on education policies and challenging public schools. 

In her book, “School Moms,” she reports on the well-organized efforts of far-right movements, such as Moms for Liberty, in framing attacks on schools, influencing language and mobilizing local communities. As a result, these movements have flipped school boards, banned books, and changed curriculums.

“There is a lot of organized money on the far right. They see schools as a political opportunity. I mean, one of the reasons that I have been reporting on this and wrote this book is because I have viewed public schools-- and I think many people share this view-- that this is a place that is nonpartisan,” she says. “I never knew what people's politics were in my school. We're here for all children. We're here to support their learning. We're here to support the teachers, the librarians. And what the far-right extremists have done is recognize that because schools gather everyone, they are a great platform for gaining power.” 

In this episode of the EdCast, we explore the historical parallels to these movements, the challenges faced by teachers, and the significance of public engagement in preserving democracy and inclusive education.

In a world increasingly dominated by structured routines and adult supervision, renowned psychologist Peter Gray is not surprised that children’s mental health challenges and anxiety has been on the rise for decades.

“We are so overprotecting children, because we are so always there to solve their problems for them, they're not developing the sense that they can solve their own problem,” Gray says, adding that clinical questionnaires conducted throughout the latter half of the 20th century showed a decline in locus of control for school-aged children as mental disorders rose. “How can you have an internal locus of control if you don't have experience controlling your own life? One thing that clinical psychologists have long known is that if you don't have a strong internal locus of control, that sets you up for anxiety and depression. No surprise. If I believe something can happen at any time, and there's nothing I can do about it, that's a very anxiety-provoking world. Things are frightening. I'm constantly anxious.”

He cites many reasons for how we got to this place, including societal shifts and an education system focused on accountability. Gray, a professor emeritus at Boston College, advocates for the urgent need to reclaim the simple yet profound act of independent play, emphasizing its impact on children's happiness and long-term well-being. 

In this episode, we explore the critical role of independent play in fostering resilient, self-reliant, and mentally healthy young individuals.