Shifting Schools is co-run by Jeff Utecht and Tricia Friedman, long time educators with global experience.
External link for Shifting Schools
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My peers who see the power of picture books to be a curriculum on how to be a good human, you will love the new work from Dr. Brittney Cooper. I loved getting the opportunity to ask her more about her career, and why collaboration and building community has always been at the heart of her work. Our full conversation is out now. Susan KS Grigsby, Ed.S, Anne van Dam
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Tricia Friedman and Shifting Schools facilitate some fascinating conversations - join us for this one!
You're standing in front of three doors… The first opens onto the model most of us inherited, one built for a specific moment in global mobility that shaped curriculum design, branding, and mission language for decades. You look to the right… The second is the one your enrollment data has already walked through. ISC Research (2026) confirms that local and nationally based families now form the majority in most international school markets. The community you serve has evolved, and the question is whether your institutional definition of "international" has evolved with it. You look further… The third door looks blurry from here, you can just barely make out an abstract frame, waiting for a leadership team to get more curious about what it might be. This fall, AAIE is running a Future Foresight Cohort Challenge built around this exact inquiry. Three 30 minutes sessions grounded in Futures Literacy methodology, designed for school leaders ready to sit with the identity question long enough to get it right. Which door does your school need you to open? Join us - using research, strategy, and our collective imagination to knock down new necessary pathways for our community. Tricia Friedman, thank you! Register here: https://buff.ly/DJWLZDG
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What a time to speak with one of the most influential authors of dystopian fiction... Veronica Roth’s Divergent series inspired so many young people in my life. For many of my former students, it made reading feel deeply social. Out today on the Shifting Schools podcast, Veronica talks about her new book, Seek the Traitor Son, and the creative reckoning that came from an unexpected place: watching Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. We talk about what it means to look back at earlier work, to understand your own growth, and to keep making new things after the world has already decided who it thinks you are. For educators, librarians, writers, and anyone looking for permission to reinvent their creative self, this conversation is well worth your time. Veronica gets candid about artistry, audience, and what it takes to begin again. Think you'd dig this full dialogue: Paula G. Plaza-Ponte, Ana María Torres, Nicki Hambleton
Looking to inspire creative writers? This advice from Billy Ray will do that and more: https://lnkd.in/e9nQgVic
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Across our work with #parents and #schools, we’re hearing a consistent set of questions about how friendship and belonging are evolving for young people. Educators and parents are observing: - A rise in digital relationships - Fewer unstructured social spaces, alongside increased loneliness - Trust, belonging, and connection are increasingly shaped by algorithms That’s why we’re hosting The Future of Friendship: A Futures Literacy Lab at The Nueva School on July 28th, from 5:30–7:00 PM. This interactive session is designed for educators, school leaders, and anyone thinking deeply about how students (of all ages) connect, today and into the future. This is not a lecture, it’s a hands-on experience where participants will: ❤️ Explore the real signals reshaping friendship and belonging ❤️ Design an artifact from 2036 ❤️ Leave with practical strategies to support students, along with sharper questions to guide their work Hosted by The Institute for Social and Emotional Learning, with guest facilitator Tricia Friedman, Director of Learning at Shifting Schools. We’d love to have you join us: https://lnkd.in/gHtkwakr
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Super excited for next weeks opportunity to keynote the Washington Workplace Summit hosted by Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce. A great day of learning for businesses across the state and an honor to bring my message to more organizations! If you know any business owners in Washington State make sure they know about this great day of learning. https://lnkd.in/gKAYufeH
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I bet at some point this week, you’ll see or hear someone say: AI can never understand the human experience. I’ve been coming across that sentiment a lot, and respectfully I always think: Sure, and how many humans genuinely understand the human experience? Engagement with our tools is and always has been an opportunity to learn more about ourselves. The choice to engage with that reflection hasn’t always been one we’ve done the best job of making… In plans for the upcoming The Institute for Social and Emotional Learning (IFSEL) Summer Institute, the topic of Dog Intelligence has come up often between Rush Sabiston Frank, M.S. , Nick Haisman-Smith and I. Like plants that grow best when rooted together, humans too need a collaboration in order to thrive. Dogs remind us to slow down, to play more, and to appreciate a big slobbery show of affection now and then. What happens when we intentionally use AI to heighten our awareness of self? When we intentionally use AI to help us connect with other living creatures? To intentionally question the unhelpful scripts we’ve inherited? Join us this July to explore those questions and more at The Nueva School Dr. Sonia Bustamante, Ed.D. , Anneke Emerson , Stéphane Vermeulin, Ph.D.
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IFSEL’s Summer Reading Res is back! As the school year winds down and educators have a little space to breathe, we wanted to share a collection of books our team has been discussing, reflecting on, and learning from together. This year’s list explores timely topics in education, relationships, belonging, technology, and what it means to stay human in a rapidly changing world. We hope these books offer inspiration, fresh perspectives, and maybe even a little renewal over the summer months. From authors: Geoffrey Cohen, Loretta J Ross, Wendy Turner M. Ed., Tricia Friedman, Stephen Taylor, Mark Finnis, Richard V. Reeves, Cindy Cohn, Charles Duhigg, Julia Hotz, Robert Waldinger, Marc Schulz, Marjan Kamali, Shawn Achor We’d also love to hear from you, what’s on your summer reading list, and which books would you add? Check out all of the books: https://lnkd.in/eqGZE9dh Nick Haisman-Smith Elizabeth McLeod Rush Sabiston Frank, M.S. #books #sel #summerreading #bookrecs #educationbooks
Looking for ways to support the parents and caregivers in your community? https://lnkd.in/eh7HEB-U
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Are book reports robbing us of our creative thinking? Are timed math quizzes eroding our critical thinking? Do pre-packaged SEL programs undermine our interpersonal skills? Seriously, I'm asking. The questions about what #AI will or will not do to learning do little to contextualize the current state of education. That's because we've already been underserved in terms of creative, critical, and connection-worthy learning for a long while. Tomorrow, when the Central & Eastern European Schools Association cohort comes together, I'll be kicking things off with a look at what artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst have done with 'The Call.' The Call turns the process of training an AI model into a collective musical ritual. Community choirs contributed voices through a structured songbook and recording process, making the dataset itself part of the artwork. The project asks how AI can be built with consent, shared governance, in order to do something deeply creative. TL;DR: It is beautiful, it is deeply human, and it is interdisciplinary. It is a signal of where the future of education must go if it wants to survive. If you'd like to join a conversation that questions the same tired song and dance about AI and is informed by research rather than moral panic, join us for a different beat: https://lnkd.in/e729H_Pd Tonia Whyte Potter-Mäl, Dr. David "Cal" Callaway, Ruth Buckley, Brett Gray, Verena Zimmer Photo by David Beale on Unsplash