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Ep. 92: Avoiding the Middle School Cliff

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

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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Ep. 89: Mastering the Game of Writing

Marc and Nick sit down with Daniel Senn and Erlend Klouman Høiner, co-founders of We Will Write, the fast-paced, anonymous, team-based writing game already used by more than a million students worldwide. This conversation covers how two childhood friends from Oslo built a platform that is making students beg to write instead of avoiding it, and why the most important thing happening in the room might be the silence right after the timer starts.

Daniel and Erlend walk through the design decisions behind We Will Write: the timed challenges that level the playing field for every writer in the room, the visual prompts that eliminate the blank-page barrier, and why anonymity unlocks student voice in ways traditional writing instruction never could. The conversation also covers the unexpected classroom culture benefits teachers are reporting, what the teacher dashboard reveals about individual student confidence, and the surprising finding that students who use the platform start calling themselves writers.

If you are still trying to get students to care about writing, this one is for you.

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Ep. 88: Designing Schools of the Future…Today

Marc and Nick sit down with Dr. Sabba Quidwai, CEO and founder of Designing Schools, former education executive at Apple, lecturer at UC Irvine, and author of Designing Schools: How Design Thinking Makes You Irreplaceable in the Age of AI. This conversation covers what it actually means to lead schools through the current moment in AI, and why the fear of being replaced may be pointed in entirely the wrong direction.

Dr. Quidwai reframes the AI replacement conversation from the ground up, makes the case that we are not facing a critical thinking crisis but an agency crisis, and explains what the schools getting AI right all have in common. The conversation also covers why AI should be understood as a teammate and not a tool, what happens to people who never learn the language of AI, why educators are the most natural design thinkers in any room, and why the pockets of excellence we celebrate need to be scaled, not just celebrated. If you are a school leader trying to figure out where to put your energy right now, start here.

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Ep. 86: Rewriting the Rules of Student Engagement

Marc and Nick sit down with Stephanie Clinise, a ninth-grade English teacher at Hatboro-Horsham High School in suburban Philadelphia, to talk about what happens when a teacher leads with the hook every single time. Stephanie found We Will Write, a gamified writing platform out of Norway, got her students engaged in meaningful writing on their first try, and ended up featured at FETC 2026 sharing the story with anyone who would listen.

The conversation digs into the teaching philosophy underneath all of it: why context has to come before content, how a classroom timeline stretching from the Transcontinental Railroad to the birth of Taylor Swift unlocked Shakespeare and Roald Dahl for ninth graders, and how Stephanie is navigating AI in the writing classroom with real structure and genuine optimism. If you believe the lesson has to earn student attention before it can teach them anything, this one is for you.

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Ep. 85: The Power of Play in Serious Learning

Marc Isseks and special guest co-host, Karen Walsh sit down with Dan Thomas, a recently retired STEM teacher who spent his entire 32-year career at the same school he graduated from in Jamestown, New York. Now consulting and speaking under his Coach Thomas Tech brand, Dan brings a hands-on, PBL-driven philosophy to educators looking to make learning visible, meaningful, and yes, actually usable by Tuesday morning.

This conversation covers a lot of ground: why AI has finally moved past the shiny-new-thing phase and into real implementation, how the Tuesday Test reframes professional learning (if you cannot use it tomorrow without hand-holding, what is the point?), and why AI may be the first tool that makes genuine differentiation possible at scale. Dan and Karen, a veteran English teacher known for her commitment to creativity and reinvention, bring decades of classroom experience to a discussion that is as practical as it is forward-looking. The takeaway: the teacher who embraces this moment has more power than at any point in the history of education.

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Ep. 82: Human-Centered AI

In their ongoing FETC series, Nick and Marc sit down with Jeff Piontek, an education leader, author, and international speaker with more than 25 years of experience advancing early literacy, instructional design, and school leadership. Jeff is the former director of instructional and informational technology for the NYCDOE. His work focuses on protecting the human foundations of learning while thoughtfully integrating emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.

Jeff is also the creator of the AI, EI, O, and You framework, a practical model designed to help educators and leaders balance innovation with well-being, oral language development, and human agency.

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Ep. 81: Using AI to Grow MEGA Minds

In their ongoing FETC series, Nick and Marc sit down with Austin Levinson, Director of Learning at MEGAMINDS. They discuss the shifting landscape of edtech and how MegaMinds is leveraging artificial intelligence to create more meaningful learning experiences for students in schools.

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Ep. 78: Teaching in the Generative Age

Marc is joined by author, podcaster, speaker, and instructional technology expert, Alana Winnick. Recorded at the School Administrators Association of New York’s Annual Conference, amid the picturesque backdrop of Lake George, Marc and Alana discuss the role of AI in today’s classrooms, the challenges of implementation, and the incredible opportunity available to our schools and students in this generative age.

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Ep. 75: Better Blueprints – Improving Lesson Plan Design

In this conversation, Marc and Nick discuss the intricacies of lesson planning, emphasizing the importance of structured questioning and engagement techniques. They explore how to effectively plan lessons that foster student participation and understanding, while also considering the role of AI in education and the balance between creativity and structure in teaching.

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