MindShift Podcast

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 geniuses of tomorrow.

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 teachers grade and how school leaders treat their staff. But not everyone made adjustments, and that led to a spike in Fs on report cards and teacher burnout.   Ki Sung fact-checks some entrenched beliefs about grading practices and reports on more helpful – and more accurate – ways teachers can grade what students learn. Nimah takes us to a school that’s been proactive about student mental health and seeing the benefits of local partnerships. You’ll also hear from teachers who are struggling with toxic positivity and how to overcome it. We’ll also cover data science in math education, cultivating genius in all students and how school communities can have real conversations about race. 

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 thousands of kids. Now, Connie Williams is part of a movement of families advocating for phonics instruction, hoping that different teaching strategies will help their kids finally learn how to read well enough to access the rest of their education. After all, equal access to education is supposed to be a civil right.