TeachLab with Justin Reich
by MIT Teaching Systems Lab
TeachLab is a podcast that investigates the art and craft of teaching. There are 3.5 million K-12 teachers in America, and we want to explore how they can become even better at what they do. Hosted by Justin Reich, MIT Professor and director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab.
Episodes
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Introducing "The Advisory" with Andrew Frishman
In 1996, Rhode Island launched The Met, a high school built around relationships, student interests, and learning beyond the classroom. Advisor Andrew Frishman guided fifteen students through four years, helping them discover their passions and connect with mentors. Nearly twenty years after…
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Jesse Dukes on Teaching Through Emotions
One of the best parts of doing research on education is talking with students. Not only do we learn a great deal about what is happenign in schools, it's often inspiring. Betsy Burris agrees. She is a retired teacher educator and a psychotherapist who hosts Teaching Through Emotions, a podcast…
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AI Literacy Part II "What We Talk About When We Talk About AI Literacy"
Teachers are aware that AI is present in schools and learning environments, whether we like it or not. And many feel pressure, internally and externally, to learn and teach some form of "AI literacy". Justin has cautioned that it's too early for us to really understand what AI literacy is, and…
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AI Literacy Part 1 "Where Angels Fear to Tread" with Sam Wineburg
Over the last two years, teachers and schools have felt immense pressure to incorporate AI literacy into their curricula. In the fall of 2024, California became the first state to pass a law mandating AI literacy instruction in schools, and several others have since followed suit. In the summer…
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Click Here: Silencing a Kindergarten
We’re pleased to share powerful reporting from our friends at the show Click Here, from Recorded Future News and PRX. They tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. Over the past year, they’ve been documenting the digital – and cultural – erasure of Uyghurs in…
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The Homework Machine Ep 7: Break the Teacher
The timing of the arrival of AI has been bad for many schools and teachers. In the Fall of 2022, schools were just emerging from the extraordinary challenges brought by the pandemic. Teacher morale and turnover are at historic lows. Some school districts are on a good footing, and have the...
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Close All Tabs: Teens Under the Influence (Of Chatbots)
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15pFzNFcJ08xBSTnoE2-YJyoxsdIW5cKDnjrpBfBAf7U/edit
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The Homework Machine Ep 6 "Inviting AI to the Party"
We keep saying that most ed tech is invited into schools, but generative AI crashed the party. But the truth in, some teachers have invited AI into schools. Some think it’s been great, and others see opportunities as well as challenges. We visit four classrooms where students and teachers are…
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The Homework Machine Ep 5 "Winterset"
Education technology companies have been falling over themselves to provide AI powered tools for schools, and to convince schools to buy their product. The array of AI powered products is dizzying, and while some can likely be put to good use, it can be hard for school leaders to gauge which are...
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The Homework Machine Interlude: Justin Goes Back to School
We’re halfway through “The Homework Machine” series, and as our production team works to finish the final episodes, we check in with Teaching Systems Lab director Justin Reich, who is returning to the classroom after a full year of sabbatical. Justin has been nervous, since some of the…
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Mindshift: Why Poetry Is Making a Comeback in Schools
We’re about halfway through The Homework Machine min-series, and we have more episodes coming. We're taking a break this week, which gives us the opportunity to share an episode of one of our favorite education podcasts with you. Mindshift from KQED features in depth interviews and reports from...
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The Homework Machine Ep 4 "Busted!"
Students tell us that they know learning in schools is important. But sometimes, turning to ChatGPT to get their work done feels like the best option. AI might help with what they perceive as busy work, or they might be confused about what counts as a legitimate use, and what counts as cheating....
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The Homework Machine Ep 3 "The Duplicitous Nature of Humanity"
Teachers have all sorts of opinions about AI. Some are optimistic, some are pessimistic. But the most common topic that came up in our interviews was cheating. While students have always taken shortcuts to complete their work, ChatGPT and other generative AI have a historically unique power to...
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The Homework Machine Ep 2 "The Jagged Frontier"
ChatGPT is the most well known of the Large Language Models (LLMs) but what is an LLM? We go deep into how this remarkable new technology is built, and why their performance is inconsistent — or jagged — across similar tasks. We dive into the techniques AI engineers use to align these tools’...
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The Homework Machine Ep 1 "Buckle Up, Here it Comes!"
In late November of 2022, ChatGPT was released to the public as a free research preview. Students quickly realized ChatGPT was pretty good at doing their homework for them. Schools scrambled to figure out what to do: Ban it? Embrace it? Teachers and students found themselves adapting to a new...
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Coming Soon: The Homework Machine
Generative AI is not like other education technologies, which schools often invite into the classroom. This one crashed the party. And then, it started re-arranging the furniture. We wanted to learn more, so in a little over a year, the Teaching Systems Lab has talked to over 90 teachers and 30...
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Maybe We Should be a Little Worried About AI + Cheating?
School leaders, education researchers, and others often point to a study conducted by Stanford researchers that suggested the arrival of generative AI in K-12 school has not meaningfully increased the percentage of students who acknowledge some kind of academic dishonesty. Sometimes, school…
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AI Summarizes Our Paper About AI
Justin Reich and researcher and producer Jesse Dukes argue that AI in requires a new theoretical framework. Generative AI, unlike many teaching technologies, is an "arrival" technology, meaning it will be present in school environments regardless of what choices school leaders make about whether…
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Back to School with AI: Are Teachers Getting the Training They Need?
Jesse Dukes reports from a two day training one school district offered its teachers, all to help them adapt to the arrival of generative AI in schools. That training proved helpful to teachers, but it’s not clear how much professional development most American teachers are getting, and it…
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Bot Fun in the Summertime: Teachers Adapting to AI
We've just wrapped up a school year, so our team researching the arrival of generative AI in classrooms shares some fun and inspiring moments of teachers adapting to the new reality. We hear from teachers who role modeled the use of as a tool or resource for students, or to generate amusing and...
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Dispatches From the Integrity Trenches
The Arrival of AI powered tools like ChatGPT (now GPT4) in schools has generated concerns that students would use the tool to bypass cognition, or, “cheat” as we colloquially call it. And, it appears many students are doing just that. Early on in our research project about generative AI’s arrival...
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The Arrival of the Homework Machine
Justin spoke at the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education in November of 2023. You can see his graphics and outline.tsl.mit.edu/AI/ has more generative AI related resources, including our SURVEY for educators, school leaders, students, and parents. Jesse Dukes is leading our current...
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Upper MiddleBrow - Tales of Teachers
Today we share another great episode from our friends at Upper MiddleBrow. As students, parents, and teachers happily (or wrenchingly) returned to school, Upper MiddleBrow invited TeachLab host Justin Reich to talk about stories with teachers. They identify many examples of bad teachers and bad...
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Civics 101: Civics Education 2 - When the Curriculum is Against the Law
Civics 101 is a podcast refresher course on the basics of how the U.S. government works, born from the brain trust at New Hampshire Public Radio and hosted by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice. This is the second part in their series about the state of civic education in the US. In this episode,...
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Civics 101: Civics Education 1 - What Do We Teach?
Civics 101 is a podcast refresher course on the basics of how the U.S. government works, born from the brain trust at New Hampshire Public Radio and hosted by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice. Today is the first part in their series about the state of civic education in the US. In this episode,...
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Iterate: Haley McDevitt
In our final episode in our Iterate series, we are joined by one of our favorite collaborators here at the Teaching Systems Lab: artist, creative professional and graphic recorder, Haley McDevitt. Haley is a master of listening, synthesizing, and creating visuals that support big ideas. And…
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Iterate: Mel Ching
This week on TeachLab, we continue our series of conversations with innovative educators with Mel Cheng, a lifelong educator and learner. Mel is the Director of Engagement at What School Could Be, and before that worked as a classroom teacher, technology facilitator and coach, and administrator…
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Iterate: Ronni Moore
This month on TeachLab, we’re releasing a series of conversations with innovative educators to celebrate the release of our host Justin Reich’s new book, Iterate: The Secret to Innovation in Schools. This week we’re lucky to be joined by Ronni Moore, an educator who is passionate about...
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Iterate: Erik Burmeister
This week, our host Justin Reich released his new book, Iterate: The Secret to Innovation in Schools. To celebrate the launch and dig into the themes of the book, we’re releasing a series of conversations with innovative educators. In this episode, we’re joined by Erik Burmeister, an…
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: Katie Rinderle
In the eighth and final episode of our series on Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we talk with Katie Rinderle, a 10 year veteran educator from Cobb County, Georgia. Katie is the first teacher in Georgia to be terminated for violating the state's divisive concept laws. What did Katie do? She…
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: Book Bans Revisited
In the seventh episode of Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we dive back into our exploration of book bans and challenges throughout the United States. We sit down with Jen Varney and Barb Fecteau of the Massachusetts School Library Association, to hear about how the current climate is impacting...
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: Difficult Conversations
In the sixth episode of Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we turn our attention to Guilford, Connecticut. Guilford is a small town with a big commitment to equity for their students, and serves as a microcosm for the debates surrounding schools in the US. Our host Justin Reich sits down with…
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: Book Bans
In the fifth episode of our new series, Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we’re taking a look at book bans in schools. We head off to Florida, the epicenter of this conflict, to find out more about what books are being removed, how this affects students, teachers, and the community, and the...
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Crossover: Upper Middlebrow - Summer Reading for Teens
This week, we’re giving the floor to our friends Jesse Dukes and Chris Bagg at UpperMiddleBrow to share one of their summer reading episodes. You’ll listen to teachers offer their summer reading recommendations for teens, and a great conversation about teaching literature. Heads Up…
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: Teacher Autonomy
In the fourth episode of our new series, Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we’re taking a look at autonomy. How much autonomy do K-12 teachers really have, how is teacher autonomy being reduced… and what’s being lost as a consequence? We share a profile of David Graf, a veteran educator from...
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: Recent Cases that Impact Teachers
In the third episode of our new series, Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we take a look at a few of the recent court cases that impact teacher’s freedom of speech, like Kennedy v. Bremerton and Kluge vs. Brownsberg. Our host Justin Reich talks with Derek Black, Professor of Law at the…
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: The Legal History of First Amendment Rights for Teachers
In the second episode of our new series, Teacher Speech and the New Divide, Justin takes a look at the history of teacher’s first amendment rights, with the help of experts Brock Boone, senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center and Sara O'Brien, researcher at Harvard Graduate…
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Teacher Speech and the New Divide: Understanding Divisive Concept Laws
Our host Justin Reich kicks off our new series, Teacher Speech and the New Divide. To get a sense of the current landscape of divisive content laws, we talk to Brock Boone, senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Then, we’re joined by Sarah Kaka, Associate Professor and...
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Crossover: Upper Middlebrow Discusses The Diamond Age
TeachLab is doing a crossover episode with the book podcast Upper Middlebrow hosted by Jesse Dukes and Chris Bagg. Justin Reich was invited on as their guest and are graciously letting us repost the episode under TeachLab. Upper Middlebrow Notes: We hit pause on recapping, and talk the…
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Subtraction in Action: Wrap Up
Our host Justin Reich wraps up our series on Subtraction in Action with his reflections, along with highlights from conversations about the act of subtraction with education thought leaders from around the country. “We're just not that good as human beings at thinking about subtractive solutions....
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Subtraction in Action: Matt Kraft
In our latest episode of Subtraction in Action, our host Justin Reich is joined by Researcher and Professor Matt Kraft to discuss his latest paper “Instructional Time in U.S. Public Schools: Wide Variation, Causal Effects, and Lost Hours”. Subtraction in action is all about getting the stuff that...
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Subtraction in Action: Larry Ferlazzo
Justin sits down with the wonderful and prolific Larry Ferlazzo, an English and Social Studies teacher, author and education blogger. How might subtracting field trip permission slips help address chronic absenteeism? Tune in to find out. Resources and Links Visit Larry Ferlzzo’s Website...
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Subtraction in Action: Curriculum
Teach Lab’s Subtraction in Action series continues as our host Justin Reich explores subtraction in curriculum. Justin reflects, “One of the things that happened during the pandemic is that educators had to reduce. There has just not been a way in the last few years to teach everything that we...
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Subtraction in Action: Admin
In today’s episode, host Justin Reich continues our series on Subtraction in Action in conversation with education leaders around the country. We reflect on the ways that administrators relate to subtraction, and hear stories from the field. Justin is joined by: Beth Rabbitt, CEO of the Learning...
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Subtraction in Action: Nat Vaughn
In today’s episode, host Justin Reich continues our Subtraction in Action series with Nat Vaughn, Principal of the Blake Middle School in Medfield, Massachusetts. Together they discuss how Blake Middle School managed the pandemic by reflecting on the purpose of school, identifying what really...
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Subtraction in Action: Leidy Klotz
Host Justin Reich and Jal Mehta from the Harvard Graduate School of Education continue our Subtraction in Action series with Leidy Klotz, Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia, and the author of Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. Together they discuss Leidy’s book, his...
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Subtraction in Action: Introduction
Our host Justin Reich is joined by Jal Mehta from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to kick off Subtraction in Action, our new series about the positive impact that subtraction can have on school communities. Justin and Jal have been talking to teachers, school leaders, and design experts...
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Game Changers with What School Could Be
In this episode of TeachLab, we present a selection from our host Justin Reich’s recent appearance on What School Could Be’s Game Changer Series. In the interview, Justin is joined by the filmmaker Aimee Corrigan and educator Angela Daniel, to discuss the making of the Teaching Systems Lab’s new...
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Subtraction in Action Teaser
TeachLab is excited to introduce Subtraction in Action, a new series about the positive impact that subtraction can have on school communities. How do we make school simpler? How do we give teachers and students some room to breathe? Can we clear out the marginal to focus on the most important...
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We Have to Do Something Different
In this episode of TeachLab, our host Justin Reich goes behind the scenes of the Teaching Systems Lab’s new documentary film We Have to Do Something Different: Teachers on the Journey to Create More Equitable Schools. The 35-minute film provokes important conversations about the big challenges...
About this show
TeachLab is a podcast that investigates the art and craft of teaching. There are 3.5 million K-12 teachers in America, and we want to explore how they can become even better at what they do. Hosted by Justin Reich, MIT Professor and director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab.
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MIT Teaching Systems Lab
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