Month: October 2026

Ep. 93: Leading Past the Fear

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Post date October 15, 2026

Marc and Nick enthusiastically welcome back Dr. Tracey A. Benson, founder of the Anti-Racism Leadership Institute and co-author of Unconscious Bias in Schools, just weeks before the release of his new book, Antiracism Phobia: Overcoming the Fear and Getting to Work (Harvard Education Press). Dr. Benson shares his take on Nikole Hannah-Jones’s essay about her daughter’s education, a school funding experiment no one has tried yet, and why, even now, he refuses to lose his optimism about the future of America.

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Tags anitracism, education, leadership, marc isseks, nick simone, podcast, racial equity, schools, Tracey Benson

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Ep. 92: Avoiding the Middle School Cliff

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Post date October 8, 2026

Marc and Nick welcome back Katie Powell, Director for Middle Level Programs at the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) and author of Boredom Busters and Frustration Busters. Katie unpacks the middle school cliff, the steep fall in engagement that shows up between elementary and high school, and why it predates phones. She explains why every technology panic, from the printing press to AI, is the same fear in a different costume, why she is wary of abstinence models for screens in school, and why attention is a finite bank kids spend all day long.

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Ep. 91: Ringing in ’26-’27… A Year of Possibilities

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Post date October 1, 2026

Marc and Nick open the 2026-27 season the way they rarely get to: just the two of them, eleven years and ninety-one episodes in, catching up on where September finds them. Then the conversation turns to the story every school is talking about, the one-year AI pauses announced by New York City and Los Angeles, and what a year actually costs a student.

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