New Episode

What happens when a reader’s first friends are characters in a book?

Author Claribel A. Ortega joins Tricia to talk about the Witchlings series and the connections readers build through stories. She shares how gaming shaped her worldbuilding, why fantasy gives us room to explore frightening questions, and what young readers have taught her about loneliness, anger, and belonging.

The conversation also explores the creative work that happens away from the page: making playlists, walking the dog, spending time in nature, and giving an idea space to grow. Claribel reflects on crediting illustrators, designing playful online spaces for readers, and practicing the kindness and community she writes about.

In this episode:

• How The Sims helped Claribel develop as a storyteller.

• Why stories need room for difficult feelings and darker questions.

• How Witchlings readers find friendship and see their experiences reflected.

• What educators can notice about creativity, play, and reader communities.

• Why artists and illustrators deserve recognition.

• How Steven, Claribel’s puppy and unofficial manager, keeps her writing life on schedule.

Books discussed include Witchlings, Ghost Squad, and Frizzy, plus a preview of Claribel’s forthcoming graphic novel, Thirty Ways to Kill Your Avatar.

Learn more:

https://www.claribelortega.com/

Learn more about the Shifting Schools cohort:

https://www.shiftingschools.com/ai-for-curriculum-instruction-cohort

New Episode

What can picture books teach us about helping children feel heard—and learning to ask for help ourselves?

Author and illustrator Christy Mandin returns to explore Millie Fleur’s Pumpkin Problem and Millie Fleur’s Worst Day Ever. Through her imaginative characters, Christy opens up conversations about creativity, community, and respecting children’s emotional experiences.

Together, we consider why a child’s “worst day ever” deserves our attention, even when the problem seems small to an adult. Christy shares how life in her neurodivergent household shapes her approach to communication and why supporting someone involves both expressing our needs and noticing the needs of others.

We also go behind the scenes of her creative process—from gardening and escaping chickens to a beloved shed character—and hear her refreshingly honest three-day rule for processing feedback.

In this episode, we explore:

• Respecting children as whole people with experiences that matter.

• Asking for help and challenging the fear of burdening others.

• Using picture books to spark conversations and build community.

• Finding characters and creative inspiration in everyday life.

• Making space to process feedback before deciding what comes next.

For educators, librarians, parents, and anyone nurturing creativity, this conversation offers an invitation to notice more, listen closely, and make room for support.

Explore Christy’s books and work:
https://www.christymandin.com

Discover the Millie Fleur series:
https://www.scholastic.com/site/millie-fleur.html

New Episode

What can a horror novel teach us about friendship—and why might surviving together be its most hopeful message?

Author Ryan La Sala joins Tricia Friedman to explore the queer horror of The Dead of Summer, where estranged childhood friends must decide whether they can hold onto one another when disaster strikes.

Their conversation moves beyond the scares to examine representation, found family, grief, and the surprising relationship between terror and joy. Ryan explains why he writes queer characters whose lives extend beyond coming out, how each novel challenges his creative process, and what it means to see The Honeys adapted for film.

For educators, librarians, readers, and writers, this episode opens up questions about whose stories young people encounter—and how fiction can invite deeper conversations about belonging, loss, and care.

In this conversation:

• Why horror creates room for creative experimentation and queer storytelling.

• How friendship and community shape survival in The Dead of Summer.

• How humor and joy coexist with fear.

• Exploring grief across The Honeys, Beholder, and The Dead of Summer.

• Anticipatory grief: how fear of future loss can interrupt the present.

• Ryan’s collaborative role in the film adaptation of The Honeys.

Explore the books: The Dead of Summer, The Honeys, and Beholder by Ryan La Sala. Ryan also discusses Bodies of Water, the sequel to The Dead of Summer.

A question to carry forward: Which stories help young people imagine that they don’t have to face difficult things alone?

 Share this episode with a reader or educator who would appreciate a different perspective on horror.

Content note: Discussion of grief, sibling death, cancer, and fictional horror.

New Episode

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 we recognize whose needs deserve greater attention.

As you listen, consider:

• What can an organization’s origin story reveal about its values?

• How does compassion influence everyday decisions about whom we serve and how?

• Whose needs might be overlooked by the systems we work within?

• What would it take to strengthen connections between our communities and people who can offer informed support?

Learn more about Renata Castro and USA4ALL, and use this conversation as a starting point for thinking about what purposeful, compassionate leadership can look like in practice.

New Episode

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, using the history of the Spokane River as an example that educators can adapt to their own curriculum and local context.

Together, we explore:

• A task that asks students to choose three moments to use AI and two to work without it—and justify those decisions.

• How matching game mechanics to a researched theme creates opportunities for testing, feedback, and revision.

• Connections to ELA, humanities, art, and mathematics through persuasive pitches, visual design, pricing, and material costs.

• How game reviews, playthrough videos, and crowdfunding pitches can become texts worth studying.

• What it means to approach assessment redesign with both boldness and humility.

A question to bring to your next planning meeting: How could an assessment make students’ judgment about AI as visible as their final product?

Explore Tricia’s free GAMES framework and consider where a game-pitch challenge could fit into an upcoming unit.

https://shifting-schools-games.netlify.app/

Reach out: tricia@shiftingschools.com

New Episode

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 about healthcare costs, whose experiences are too often overlooked, and how sharing those experiences can help communities push for change.

Learn more about the campaign: https://onenationovercharged.org/

New Episode

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 Linewize, about the shift from reactive restrictions toward a more coordinated approach to student digital safety and well-being.

Harrison explains why this work cannot sit solely with a district’s technology department. Effective digital safety connects IT leaders, educators, safeguarding teams, administrators, students and families. It also brings together prevention, early detection, intervention and education rather than treating each new platform or threat as a separate problem.

Their conversation examines three changes taking place across K–12 education:

• Moving beyond screen-time bans toward digital-health strategies that address distraction and burnout while preserving useful learning
• Replacing panic-driven AI bans with practical guardrails for privacy, safety and classroom use
• Managing the “3 PM hand-off” by helping families understand and supervise what happens on school-issued devices after students leave campus

Harrison also discusses how districts can identify concerning online behavior earlier, understand which applications students are actually using and give families greater visibility into children’s digital experiences.

In this episode:

• Why banning the latest technology rarely provides a lasting solution
• What schools need to know about student screen time and app use
• How AI is changing online risks for students and districts
• Why data privacy must be part of classroom AI decisions
• How schools can distinguish productive technology use from distraction
• What early detection and intervention can look like
• Why digital safety should not belong exclusively to the IT department
• How responsibility shifts when students take school-issued devices home
• Ways schools and families can develop a more coordinated approach
• How districts can protect students without abandoning technology-supported learning

Questions for your leadership team:

• Who owns digital safety in our school or district right now?
• How well connected are our technology, safeguarding, instructional and family-engagement teams?
• Do we know which digital tools students are using and how they are using them?
• Are our policies teaching students to navigate digital environments, or only restricting access?
• What happens to our duty of care when a school-issued device goes home?
• Are our AI policies based on specific risks, or on a general fear of the technology?
• How quickly could our current approach respond to a new digital threat?

About Harrison Parker

Harrison Parker is Executive Vice President at Linewize, the K–12 online safety division of Qoria. He works with district leaders across North America on digital safety, student well-being, technology management and family engagement.

Learn more:

Linewize: https://www.linewize.com/
Harrison Parker on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrison-parker-02951921

Subscribe to Shifting Schools for more conversations about AI, technology and the changing needs of learners.

Topics: student digital safety, screen time in schools, AI in education, cyberbullying, student mental health, online safety, data privacy, school-issued devices, digital citizenship, family engagement, educational technology and K–12 leadership

#StudentSafety #AIinEducation #DigitalCitizenship #SchoolLeadership #EdTech

New Episode

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 has always been full of surprises. They also explore the storytelling and editorial work behind Uncle John’s All-Knowing Bathroom Reader, including how the team verifies claims, chooses topics, and turns obscure facts into accessible reading.

Key topics

• Why the world has always been weird, even if modern media makes us more aware of it
• Why dogs have so many breeds while cats have comparatively few
• How horses helped shape agriculture, travel, trade, language exchange, and city states
• Why fact-checking is more important—and more difficult—in an age of copied information
• The story of J. Fred Muggs, the chimp who co-hosted Today in the early days of television
• How risk-taking and strange ideas contribute to human innovation
• Why fads are much older than mass media
• How writers, editors, designers, and marketers collaborate on the bathroom reader
• How colleagues’ different passions can make unfamiliar subjects fascinating
• Why curiosity may be the engine behind wisdom and connection

Timestamps

00:00

— Why the world feels weirder now than it used to

00:42

— The case for “the world has always been weird”

01:55

— Why cats have far fewer breeds than dogs

03:18

— How horses helped shape the modern era

05:23

— Why fact-checking is harder in an age of copied information

06:41

— The strange story of J. Fred Muggs on Today

08:42

— Why risk-taking and weird ideas are part of human progress

10:23

— Fads are older than mass media

12:51

— How the bathroom reader team collaborates

14:21

— Learning from coworkers with radically different interests

15:46

— Curiosity as the engine of wisdom

New Episode

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

New Episode