At the beginning of the year, we reached out on social media to ask what concerns parents and teachers most about the school their kids attend or where they teach. We got hundreds of responses from both groups and found a lot of overlap between the two. And while the responses were varied and ranged from the broad to the specific, we noticed a general worry about kids: they’re missing out on a love of learning.
We used that overarching concern to guide us for the fourth season of the MindShift Podcast. This season, we’ve produced six narrative-rich episodes that exist at the intersection of issues parents care deeply about and that educators are trying to solve. From the rise in anxiety among teens, to rethinking how school lunch is organized, to how teachers can integrate art throughout the school day, these stories focus on educators who are trying to bring the joy back to teaching and learning.
We’ll introduce you to social workers at El Cerrito High School that created an anxiety group to support the increasing number of students they saw struggling with it. And we’ll take you inside Global School Play Day, a movement to bring free play back into kids’ lives. You’ll meet Bret Turner, a first grade teacher weaving conversations about privilege and power into as many lessons as he can, and the middle schoolers who are redesigning the lunch experience for their school. We’ll tell you the story of how art helped move a school from the district closure list to a place sought after by both parents and teachers; and we’ll meet some impressive young people working for change on the issues that matter most to them.
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