This Week with EdSurge

A few weeks into the school year, the adrenaline wears off and many teachers hit a wall that has a name: the October Blues. Ira Apfel sits down with author Mike Anderson, who crashed hard as a rookie teacher and swim coach working more than 100 hours a week. Together they explore why the slump hits new teachers hardest, how teacher stress can spill over to students, and what one year-long experiment revealed about where teaching time really goes. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN The October Blues are a predictable slump that arrives approximately three or four weeks into the school year, and they hit new teachers hardest because many have never been told the crash is coming. A study of roughly 400 fourth and fifth graders in British Columbia found that teachers who reported higher workplace stress had students with higher cortisol levels, which suggests that stress can travel in both directions in a classroom. Mike uses six intrinsic motivators from his book, “Rekindle Your Professional Fire” (autonomy, competence, purpose, belonging, curiosity and fun) to help teachers find the need in deficit and pick one small step, such as drinking a tall glass of water before coffee or a short walk after the last student leaves. A group of teachers in Fairfax County, Virginia, had a far better second October even with harder classes, and Mike credits concrete classroom management strategies and a stronger sense of competence rather than rest alone. STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE The “October Blues” Are Coming. Here’s How Teachers Can Beat Them. by Ira Apfel Books by Mike Anderson Rekindle Your Professional Fire: Powerful Habits for Becoming a More Well-Balanced Teacher Hugging Porcupines STAY CONNECTED Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters at www.edsurge.com/newsletters. Find the latest education news at edsurge.com/news. Follow EdSurge on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS Host: Ira Apfel, Editorial Director, EdSurge Featuring: Mike Anderson, Educational Consultant, Former Classroom Teacher, and Author

From tutoring tools to grading platforms, edtech vendors are frequently adding AI features to new and existing instructional materials. Almost every company selling these products says the features are educationally effective, so EdReports went looking for the evidence behind those claims. EdReports CEO Dr. Lewis Ferebee and Chief Academic Officer Courtney Allison join Ira Apfel to unpack what their new brief found and what district leaders should ask before signing their next vendor contract. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN AI is blurring the lines between core curriculum, supplemental materials, and standalone grading or tutoring tools, which makes it harder for district buyers to know what they are actually purchasing. Only one of the 10 providers in the EdReports scan cited third party evidence on student outcomes for its AI tool, and only two named an independent evaluator for their AI feature. Courtney Allison, a former New York City middle school math teacher, explains what is at stake when AI content reaches students in real time without a teacher reviewing it first. Lewis Ferebee, the longest serving chancellor in DC Public Schools history, shares the questions he would ask vendors, including whether a teacher can override the AI and whether the evidence covers the version a district is actually buying. STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Study: EdTech Is Rushing AI Integration Before Proving It Work by Ira Apfel STAY CONNECTED Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters at www.edsurge.com/newsletters. Find the latest education news at edsurge.com/news. Follow EdSurge on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS Host: Ira Apfel, Editorial Director, EdSurge Featuring: Dr. Lewis D. Ferebee, CEO, EdReports Courtney Allison, Chief Academic Officer, EdReports

A new workforce survey finds that men now make up less than a quarter of public schoolteachers, and the ones who do stay often walk into assumptions before they even introduce themselves. Meanwhile, a flood of AI generated videos aimed at toddlers is teaching young kids things that are not true, sometimes in unsettling ways. This week, Ed Finkel and Adam Stone join Ira Apfel to look at two very different classrooms, one in a school building and one on a screen, where nobody stopped to check the story before deciding it was true. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN Men now make up about 23% of public school teachers, down from 30% in 1988, according to a survey of 145 male teachers commissioned by the Male Educator Network & Policy Institute. Only 25% of the men surveyed said they experienced recruiting efforts aimed specifically at men, but 72% of those who did found those efforts effective. A children’s YouTube channel called Bright Tunes posted nearly 5,500 AI generated videos in under a year, and some of that content shows scenes that do not match reality, such as a school bus catching fire in the middle of a video about colors. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a Stop, Wait and Go framework to help parents and teachers evaluate AI generated video content before showing it to young children. STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE As Male Teachers Vanish From the Classroom, Schools Look for Ways to Bring Them Back by Ed Finkel AI Videos Are Warping Early Learning, Teachers Say. Here’s How They’re Responding by Adam Stone STAY CONNECTED Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters at www.edsurge.com/newsletters. Find the latest education news at edsurge.com/news. Follow EdSurge on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS Host: Ira Apfel Featuring: Ed Finkel, writer covering education and public policy for EdSurge Adam Stone, education technology journalist

The lowest-performing middle school readers aren't just behind, they're falling further behind every year, even as reading scores recover elsewhere. On This Week with EdSurge, NWEA's Megan Kuhfeld shares new research that explains why the K-3 literacy laws that fixed early reading aren't reaching the middle school. Then Dacia Toll, who spent years running schools before co-founding the AI literacy platform Coursemojo, describes what she calls the comprehension wall, the point where a middle schooler can read every word on a page and still miss the meaning, and makes the case for AI tools built to ask questions instead of just answering them. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Megan Kuhfeld's NWEA research shows the same decline at the 10th percentile of middle school reading scores across three separate assessments: NWEA's MAP Growth, i-Ready and NAEP, drawing on data from more than 20 million K-8 students. Dacia Toll's "background knowledge problem" means two students with identical reading skills can perform two full grade levels apart on the same text, depending on how much they already know about the topic. K-3 literacy laws mostly stop at third grade and many didn't take effect until 2022-2024, so they miss students who are already behind by the time they reach middle school. An individual struggling reader typically needs two to three years of above-average growth to catch up to grade level, and building a system that catches every student takes even longer. There's a meaningful difference between "indulgebots," AI tools that just answer a student's question, and purpose-built instructional AI that responds to a wrong answer by sending the student back to a specific sentence or paragraph to work it out themselves. STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Reading Scores Continue to Drop for Many Middle Schoolers by David Weldon AI Can Help One of K-12's Biggest Challenges: Middle School Reading by Dacia Toll STAY CONNECTED Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters at edsurge.com. Find the latest education news at edsurge.com/news. Follow EdSurge on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS Host: Ira Apfel Featuring: Megan Kuhfeld, PhD, Director of Growth Modeling and Data Analytics, NWEA Dacia Toll, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Coursemojo

Two Voices of Change Fellows had the same kind of moment this year, when a student comment that could have been brushed off as attitude turned out to be a warning sign. On This Week with EdSurge, Melinda Medina explains what happened when a student answered a literature question with "I use ChatGPT, how am I supposed to know that?" and what it revealed about students quietly outsourcing their own thinking. Then Beth Yirga describes the eighth grader who asked her, "If AI will do everything, then what's the point of learning?" and how that question sent her looking for answers outside of education entirely. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Melinda Medina cites a Brown University economics class where students averaged nearly 96% on a take-home midterm, then under 49% once the professor switched to an in-person proctored exam, a trend she now sees echoed in her own classroom. When Melinda's 11th graders were asked how author Kate Chopin uses irony, one replied that she'd used ChatGPT instead of working through the text, a moment Melinda says worried her less as cheating and more as a sign students no longer wanted to engage with productive struggle. Beth Yirga's question came from an eighth grader during a planning meeting for a new career exploration program at Freire Charter School Wilmington, and it sent her to the Women Who Code Summit in New York, where she was the only K-12 educator in a room of more than 500 people. Beth is building an "identity year" for students, pairing AI literacy with outdoor hikes, a trip to the opera, and a visit to the state capitol, on the belief that students need to know who they are before they can direct any tool toward a future worth having. STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Protecting Student Cognition in the Age of AI by Melinda Medina The K-12 Silo Won't Survive AI, But Our Relationships Might by Beth Yirga STAY CONNECTED Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters at edsurge.com. Find the latest education news at edsurge.com/news. Follow EdSurge on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS Host: Ira Apfel Featuring: Melinda Medina, English and Special Education Teacher, Brooklyn, NY Beth Yirga, Assistant Head of School, Freire Charter School Wilmington, DE