Be a Better Ally: Critical Conversations for K12 Educators

What makes a monster? NYT bestselling author Claribel A. Ortega just finished the five-book Witchlings series, and she's got thoughts.

We talk about The Sims as a storytelling engine, why curiosity about death and darkness is something to welcome, and how kids are finding their first real friends through Seven, Valley, and Thorn. Claribel shares how she held a whole series in her head from day one, why "writing" includes walks with her dog Steven, and why she refuses to write about community without living it.

Educators: stick around for Ghost Squad Week and her classroom resources. Gamers: she leaves you with two indie picks that might eat your weekend.

• 00:00 Steven, her canine manager
• 02:38 Why raccoons are half monster
• 04:20 Respect across species
• 05:53 The Sims and worldbuilding
• 07:48 Why we're curious about the dark
• 09:56 What readers write to her
• 11:58 Planning five books from the start
• 14:14 Showing up for inspiration
• 15:53 Community, Ghost Squad Week, and Louise Penny
• 20:24 Design and crediting illustrators
• 24:33 Game recommendations
• 26:35 What's next: Thirty Ways to Kill Your Avatar

Claribel A. Ortega is a New York Times bestselling author born in the Bronx to a Dominican family. She wrote Ghost Squad, the graphic novel Frizzy, and the Witchlings series, which concludes with The Sea Witch Prophecy.

• Claribel's site: https://www.claribelortega.com
• Witchlings series: https://www.claribelortega.com/witchlings
• Educator resources + Ghost Squad Week: https://www.claribelortega.com/educators-teachers
• Paralives: https://www.paralives.com
• Dressmaker on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4019220/Dressmaker/
• Louise Penny: https://louisepenny.com
• Website designer Danika Corrall: http://www.danikacorrall.com

What helps a young person believe their creative ideas are worth pursuing?

New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory joins Tricia Friedman to discuss her first young adult novel, It's Only Dancing, inspired by Dirty Dancing. Together, they explore teenage friendship, artistic possibility, and what it means to write about young people with respect.

Jasmine shares how an encouraging friend helped her begin writing, why finishing an imperfect draft matters, and how her creative process changes from book to book. She also reflects on the joy of learning something difficult—a conversation with particular resonance for educators thinking about creativity in the age of AI.

In this episode, we explore:

• Taking teenagers' passions and perspectives seriously.

• How unexpected friendships help us try something new.

• Supporting a creative person through listening, questions, and encouragement.

• Making room for the struggle and discovery involved in learning.

• Valuing art for the joy it brings, alongside its career possibilities.

Listen with this question in mind: Who in your classroom or community needs encouragement to keep going with an idea they're still learning how to express?

Featured book: It's Only Dancing by Jasmine Guillory.

https://www.jasmineguillory.com/its-only-dancing

This short episode asks for your help.

In anticipation of the upcoming AAIE Institute in Atlanta, might your students want to weigh in and share their feedback on questions we will be using for focus groups and surveys?

If yes, share this link with them:

https://student-voice-questions.netlify.app/

Want to join me this November for an online series that begins the critical work of reimagining assessment?

Learn more:

https://cdlt.isa.nl/events/ai-attention-and-the-architecture-of-assessment

Does the world keep getting stranger, or are we hearing more about how strange it has always been?

Returning guest Brian Boone joins Tricia to explore curiosity, creativity, and human behavior through the stories in Uncle John's All-Knowing Bathroom Reader. From the ways horses reshaped human societies to a chimpanzee's place in early morning television, Brian shares stories that invite us to reconsider what we think of as normal.

We also go behind the scenes of the book's collaborative process. Brian explains how the team traces stories back to primary sources, checks claims, and turns a writer's enthusiasm for an unfamiliar subject into something readers want to explore.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why Brian believes greater access to information shapes our sense that these times are uniquely strange.

• What our relationships with other species reveal about human history.

• How unusual experiments and failed ideas open up conversations about creativity.

• Why fact-checking requires more work when stories circulate across multiple websites.

• How collaborators with different interests expand one another's curiosity.

• What decades of writing trivia have taught Brian about wisdom and our desire to learn.

For educators, this conversation offers a question worth bringing into the classroom: How might a surprising story get someone interested in a subject they thought wasn't for them?

Featured book: Uncle John's All-Knowing Bathroom Reader

https://bathroomreader.com/

What does it look like to be bold about AI in education while remaining humble enough to revise what does not work?

In this episode, Tricia Friedman responds to recent guidance from MIT by sharing a practical way to experiment with AI, assessment, and curriculum design. The challenge invites students to research a topic, develop the concept for a board game, select mechanics that support its theme, and pitch their idea.

Along the way, students must make five deliberate choices: three moments when AI could assist their work and two when the task should remain human. They then explain what each choice contributed, complicated, or diminished.

Tricia introduces a shorter version of her free GAMES Framework for educators who want to explore game design without committing to a complete game-development unit. Her example draws inspiration from the history of the Spokane River, but the structure can be adapted to almost any subject or local context.

The episode also considers:

• Why AI literacy requires judgment, not simply tool proficiency

• How game design can bring together research, writing, creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration

• Why the relationship between a game's theme and mechanics matters

• How playtesting gives students useful feedback about difficulty, clarity, and engagement

• What board-game boxes, reviews, playthrough videos, and Kickstarter campaigns can teach us as contemporary texts

• How the challenge could extend into mathematics, economics, visual art, media literacy, or local history

• Why alternative forms of assessment can help students make their thinking more visible

The goal is not to use AI throughout the assignment. It is to give students genuine practice deciding when AI adds value, when it distracts from the work, and what evidence supports that judgment.

Explore the free GAMES Framework: https://shifting-schools-games.netlify.app/salmon-challenge

Read the MIT report referenced in the episode: https://aiandeducation.mit.edu/

Have a unit that does not seem to connect naturally with game design or AI literacy? Send Tricia the topic and challenge her to find the connection.

Contact Tricia: [email protected]

What do young people understand that adults mistakenly believe they have hidden from them?

Award-winning author Tiffany D. Jackson returns to the podcast to discuss Ghost in the Night, her haunting middle-grade novel set against the ghost tours, buried histories, and complicated beauty of Savannah, Georgia.

Tiffany invites educators to take young readers—and their capacity to confront difficult subjects—seriously. We explore why children sometimes attach themselves intensely to a particular interest while processing grief, and what educators might discover if they look beyond the fascination and ask what need it may be meeting.

We also discuss the importance of grief literacy, the trust created when adults acknowledge what children already know, and the difference between protecting young people and underestimating them.

The conversation moves beyond the ghosts of Savannah to examine whose histories become tourist attractions, whose stories remain untold, and how literature can inspire students to investigate the overlooked histories of their own communities.

Tiffany also shares why young characters need opportunities to form friendships without constant adult choreography, how she calibrates horror for middle-grade readers, and the deceptively simple practice she recommends to every aspiring writer: read closely enough to notice how a story works.

This episode explores:

• Why educators need to take children's inner lives seriously

• How intense interests can sometimes help young people process grief

• The role of grief literacy in schools and classrooms

• How honest conversations can build trust between adults and children

• Why young people need agency in friendship and problem-solving

• Whose histories are preserved, promoted, ignored, or buried

• How place can function as a character in a novel

• What horror offers middle-grade readers

• How students can learn the craft of writing by reading like writers

At its heart, this conversation asks educators to consider what becomes possible when we stop assuming young people cannot handle the truth—and begin giving them stories that honour their intelligence, curiosity, and humanity.

What happens when we stop treating unaffordable healthcare as an individual problem—and recognize it as a shared crisis?

In this episode of Be a Better Ally, Tricia Friedman speaks with Dr. Camille Busette about One Nation, Overcharged, a people-powered movement demanding a healthcare system that puts people over profits.

Dr. Busette explains why so many people experience the rising cost of healthcare privately, even as families across the United States face the same impossible choices: medication or groceries, an inhaler or gas, necessary care or financial security. When these struggles remain isolated, it is easy to mistake a broken system for a personal failure.

But sharing our stories can change that.

Together, Tricia and Dr. Busette explore how personal experiences can build collective understanding—and how conversations in book clubs, faith communities, community gatherings, and even art spaces can help transform that understanding into action.

They also discuss:

• Why asking "Whose perspectives are missing?" can change how we define a problem

• How healthcare costs affect people far beyond the person receiving care

• Why storytelling is essential to building people-powered solutions

• What those with greater financial privilege need to understand about healthcare affordability

• How seemingly small necessities, such as access to an inhaler, can prevent medical and financial trauma

• Why we are all responsible for one another

• How listeners can speak up, share their experiences, and organize within their communities

As Dr. Busette reminds us, when one person cannot afford the care they need, the consequences reach their family, neighbors, community, and all of us. Healthcare affordability is not someone else's issue. It is a social and economic responsibility we share.

Learn more, share your story, or find and organize a local event through the One Nation, Overcharged campaign.

My guest today is immigration attorney Renata Castro,ESQ. founder of USA4All, a law firm focused on helping immigrants, survivors of domestic violence, and victims of human trafficking. We talk about the role educators can play when families are facing immigration stress, how to recognize real professional competence, and why empathy matters most when it is paired with expertise.

Renata also shares the personal story behind her work, the emotional toll of immigration law, and the habits that help her keep going through difficult cases. The conversation widens into a bigger lesson about learning, resilience, and refusing to let other people define your potential.

• In this episode, Renata shares how her own experience as an immigrant and survivor of abuse shaped the creation of USA for All.
• She explains that the firm has 5 working attorneys and a total staff of 90 across several countries, with about 3,200 active cases and roughly 2,000 new calls each month.
• We discuss why educators are often the first people families turn to, and how the best support is to listen, show empathy, and avoid giving legal advice.
• Renata suggests educators can help by referring families to more than one attorney when possible and by offering practical handouts from trusted nonprofit or pro bono sources.
• She makes a strong case that empathy alone is not enough in legal work - clients should prioritize competence, clear strategy, and honest communication over chemistry.
• We talk about why immigration law is demanding, multidisciplinary, and often emotionally draining, yet also deeply rewarding.
• Renata describes the importance of resilience, detachment from personal criticism, and not letting one loss define a whole mission.
• She shares the routines and supports that keep her grounded, including family, a partner who helps her stay objective, exercise, mentors, therapists, and a mindset of not spiraling.
• She encourages young people to stay intellectually curious, read widely, and treat learning as a privilege rather than a chore.
• The conversation closes with a reminder that success takes time, effort, and a willingness to sit with adversity.

00:00 - Why educators are often the first support line for immigrant families

00:34 - Renata's personal immigrant story and the origin of USA for All

01:58 - Serving survivors of domestic violence and trafficking

03:31 - What educators should do instead of giving legal advice

04:27 - Why listening and school counseling matter in crisis situations

07:25 - Competence versus empathy when choosing a lawyer

11:24 - Why the best legal work comes from challenge, not cookie-cutter cases

13:45 - Not taking client or public criticism personally

15:07 - Active caseloads, new inquiries, and the reality of immigration practice

18:16 - How family, exercise, mentors, and therapy help Renata stay grounded

21:49 - Why immigration law stays intellectually exciting

23:16 - Learning as a privilege, not a chore

26:01 - Kim Kardashian, persistence, and the myth of instant success

28:48 - A final reminder to keep going and trust your own path

• If you work with immigrant families, listen first and avoid offering legal advice.
• Refer people to qualified attorneys instead of trying to solve the legal issue yourself.
• Encourage access to school counselors or psychological support when families are overwhelmed.
• When choosing professional help, look for competence, clarity, and honesty.
• For your own resilience, build support outside of work and protect time for recovery.

What can a suspense novelist teach educators about empathy, creativity, and the danger of reducing people to simple labels?

In this episode of Be a Better Ally, Tricia Friedman speaks with bestselling author Lisa Gardner about the psychology behind her novels and her enduring fascination with the nature of evil. After 35 years of researching crime and human behaviour, Lisa no longer sees good and evil as an either-or question. People are layered, shaped by experience, relationships, choices, and generational trauma.

That understanding guides her approach to character development. Lisa begins writing without knowing who the villain will be. Instead, she allows each character to reveal more of themselves as the story develops. Even a villain, she argues, needs a moral code.

Their conversation moves beyond writing to consider the conditions that make creative thinking possible. Lisa discusses hiking with her dogs, letting her mind wander, cold-calling experts, learning through games and puzzles, and giving characters enough room to surprise her. She also explains why publishing is a team sport and why accomplished writers benefit from supporting one another rather than treating creativity as a competition.

For educators, this conversation raises questions about the space students are given to wonder, investigate, revise their assumptions, and create without already knowing the answer.

In this episode:

• Why suspense helps readers explore fear and human behaviour

• What fiction can teach us about empathy and moral complexity

• Why Lisa does not decide who the villain is before she begins writing

• How walking and unstructured time support creative thought

• What careful research adds to imaginative work

• Why games, puzzles, and reading mattered during Lisa's childhood

• How collaboration supports even highly accomplished artists

• What educators can learn from Lisa's distinction between individual craft and collective support

• The real-life research and creative process behind You'll Be Sorry

Lisa Gardner's latest novel, You'll Be Sorry, brings together a missing family, a decades-old mystery, small-town secrets, a witchy rhyme, complicated characters, and one especially important dog.

Learn more:

https://www.lisagardner.com/

What if readers and writers received the same attention, celebration, and investment as star athletes?

In this episode, Tricia speaks with Super Bowl champion, children's author, and literacy advocate Malcolm Mitchell about his new picture book, My Super Duper Me. They discuss the lasting effect of a few encouraging words, the role librarians can play in helping children see their own possibilities, and why adults should never underestimate the power of simply showing up with a positive message.

Malcolm shares his own journey from struggling reader to member of the Silverleaf Book Club, published author, and founder of Share the Magic Foundation. He explains why reading is not only an academic skill, but also a source of confidence, community, opportunity, and belonging.

The conversation also considers what schools and communities could learn from the cultural power of sports. If young people see athletes celebrated everywhere, how might their aspirations change if readers, writers, books, and libraries were made just as visible?

Malcolm also offers a candid look at his writing practice and the connection between athletic and creative training: show up, make the most of each repetition, and be willing to try again tomorrow.

In this episode:

• Why brief words of encouragement can stay with a young person • The librarian at the heart of My Super Duper Me • Malcolm's journey from struggling reader to passionate literacy advocate • How a welcoming book club helped change his life • Why reading can build confidence, connection, and belonging • What it would mean to celebrate literacy as loudly as sports • How educators can participate in free Share the Magic reading challenges • What football taught Malcolm about writing, practice, and persistence

Learn more about Malcolm Mitchell, Share the Magic Foundation, and its free reading programs at readwithmalcolm.com.