Season Two opens with the three of us dusting off the microphones, forgetting how to introduce ourselves, and immediately diving into the deep end: mental health in schools, the crisis facing students and teachers, and why everything seems to be on fire. We talk SEL, trauma, the impossible pressure on educators, and the growing push toward community schools as a way to actually meet human needs instead of just…performing education.

There’s history, there’s snark, there’s a surprising number of references to cannons, and there’s a whole lot of honesty about the state of things. If you work in a school, send a kid to a school, or ever went to a school, you’ll probably relate.

Season Two starts by asking the same question we always end up circling back to: How do we build systems that actually help people thrive?

In this episode, Three Educators Who’ve Seen Too Much™ dive headfirst into the mess that is FAPE: Free and Appropriate Public Education. We unpack how “appropriate” too often means “sit in a class you can’t access,” why canned curriculum is a billion-dollar confidence trick, and how grade levels still haunt us like a bad group project. From misinterpretations of special education law to the systemic forces pushing students toward frustration or checked-out disengagement, we trace how schools keep setting kids up to feel broken when it’s the system that’s cracked. We also explore what real inclusion should look like, why research doesn’t back most of what districts insist on doing, and how learning actually works when we’re not torturing children with timelines that exist only on paper.

In this warm and candid conversation, Kyle, Jen, and Stuart welcome Dawn—one of Vermont’s Teachers of the Year—to reflect on two decades in middle school classrooms. Together, they explore how the modern emphasis on teacher-student relationships differs from traditional models, the emotional weight of holding space for disregulated students, and the fine line between mentorship and friendship. From reimagining middle school as a “kibbutz”-style learning community to embracing hope through local advocacy, this episode invites educators and caregivers to rethink what truly matters at this pivotal stage of development.