When Michael Essien became an administrator at Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Middle School in San Francisco he saw right away that he needed to help teachers get behavior issues under control. If students acted out in class, teachers were sending them to an in-school detention, where they waited for disciplinary action. Pretty soon, any kid who struggled with a lesson was trying to get sent to detention, just to avoid challenging work that might be embarrassing. Essien was seeing too many kids not learning in this dysfunctional system.

Then Essien has an “ah ha” moment, and things start to get interesting. Q’ed Up presents the first episode of the MindShift podcast’s new season, where we find out how Essien and his staff hit upon a way to support teachers in the classroom, so kids can actually learn.