Episodes

Send us Fan Mail We’re recording from the NCASA Conference in Wellington, North Carolina, and we sit down with Ashley, a fifth grade teacher from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools who’s stepping into a new season of education...

Send us Fan Mail We’re recording from the NCASA conference in North Carolina, and we sit down with Taylor Simmons, Director of Creative Design at Achievable Dream Urban Learning Leadership Center (AADULLC). If you’ve ever won...

Send us Fan Mail A surprise meetup at NCASA turns into a deep dive on what values based leadership looks like when you actually practice it every day. We sit down with Gina Watts, VP of U.S. Student Transformation at Growing ...

Send us Fan Mail Leadership doesn’t start the day you get the title. It starts in the rooms where you admit what you still need to learn, then go get it. From the NCASA conference in Wilmington, North Carolina, I sit down wit...

Send us Fan Mail A paid principal residency sounds almost too good to be true, but North Carolina is doing it and doing it with real rigor. From the floor of the NCASA Conference in Wellington, we sit down with Lauren, direct...

Send us Fan Mail A conference hallway can be louder than a classroom, but it can also reveal what great school leadership sounds like. From the NCASA conference in Wilmington, North Carolina, we sit down with Saida, principal...

Send us Fan Mail A student prevents a fight before it starts, and a principal turns it into a moment the whole class will remember. That’s the kind of fast, specific recognition that can shift school culture, and it’s the hea...

Send us Fan Mail You can feel it in the hallway conversations at KAST: schools are not asking whether technology belongs in the classroom anymore. The real question is how to make it matter. From Louisville, Kentucky, I sit d...

Send us Fan Mail Educational leadership can feel like a mystery from the outside, so we wanted to make it concrete. We talk with Jessica, a vice president in a statewide education technology organization, about what her role ...

Send us Fan Mail A school device rollout can look perfect on paper and still fail in the real world if support is slow, warranties are short, and deployment is a slog. That’s why we sat down with Garrett, an account manager a...

Send us Fan Mail A classroom should not feel like a different tech puzzle every time you walk into a new room, yet that’s the reality in many schools with a mix of projectors, older monitors, and newer interactive flat panels...

Send us Fan Mail Chromebooks are everywhere in K 12, but keeping them working is the part no one advertises. From the CAST Conference in Louisville 2026, we sit down with Kendal Shomura from Vivacity Tech to talk about what i...

Send us Fan Mail Water is the quiet thing we all depend on, until someone treats it like it’s sacred and suddenly you can’t stop paying attention. From the floor of the NCRA conference in Winston-Salem, we talk with author an...

Send us Fan Mail Reading growth doesn’t always come from a brand-new curriculum. Sometimes it comes from one small shift: letting students have real choice in what they read. From the floor of the NCRA conference in North Car...

Send us Fan Mail Letters can be surprisingly hard for young kids. They’re just shapes until a child can link each squiggle to a sound, then blend those sounds into real words. From the NCRA conference in North Carolina, we si...

Send us Fan Mail A lot of reading struggles aren’t about effort, they’re about abstraction. When phonics rules live only on a worksheet or a whiteboard, many kids never get a concrete “click” moment. From the NCRA conference ...

Send us Fan Mail Stories can change a kid’s life when they finally feel recognized on the page. From the NCRA conference in North Carolina, we sit down with middle grade author Bobbie Pyron to talk about why fiction isn’t “ex...

Send us Fan Mail A blue-and-white teacup doesn’t sound like a doorway into history, until you hear what it unlocks in Half Truths. Recording live from the NCRA conference in North Carolina, we sit down with author Carol Baldw...

Send us Fan Mail AI is everywhere in students’ lives, but what if we used it to push them outside instead of pulling them deeper into screens? From the floor of NCRA in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, we sit down with author J...

Send us Fan Mail Literacy is getting rewritten in real time and educators don’t have the option to sit it out. From NCRA in Winston-Salem, we sit down with Hiller Spires, Professor at NC State University and NCRA president-el...

Send us Fan Mail A dandelion wish sounds small until it spins into a full-blown adventure. From the NCRA floor in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, we sit down with children’s author Darren Farrell to hear how Dandelion Magic tu...

Send us Fan Mail A children’s picture book can start in a surprising place: a string quartet performing a concert for plants. From the NCRA conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, we sit down with Tonnye Fletcher, a vete...

Send us Fan Mail Recording live from NCRA in North Carolina, we talk with Gina Mays, the owner of Gigi’s bookstore, about what happens when a lifelong educator decides she’s not done serving schools, she’s just changing tools...

Send us Fan Mail A single “oh!” from a student can change everything, and it’s the feeling that keeps many of us teaching. From the NCRA Conference in North Carolina, we sit down with Grace, a fifth grade teacher who traces h...