This week, we’re covering one of the most explosive education controversies in American history, the 1974 Kanawha County, WV “Textbook Wars.” What began as a school board vote over new reading materials in West Virginia eventually escalated into boycotts, firebombings, and a national debate over who decides what children learn. From the cultural divides rooted in West Virginia’s founding to echoes of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial and the rise of outside agitators, this episode traces how faith and identity can collide in America’s public school classrooms.

02:10 Setting the stage: The Civil War and West Virginia’s history of division

04:15 The Scopes trial: How America’s first classroom media circus reshaped public discourse

08:44 Labor and identity: Kanawha County’s legacy of protest and class tension

09:40 Alice Moore & the textbook controversy

23:30 Outside influence: How extremist groups amplified local outrage

25:55 Aftermath & legacy: What this fight tells us about freedom, pluralism, and fear in public education

For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website.

Culturally responsive teaching begins with the recognition that learning doesn't happen in a vacuum. Teachers must carefully navigate curricular needs while building a foundation of trust and respect with students, each of whom carries unique stories and experiences into the classroom. In this episode, we explore the work of scholars who study those intersections: between school and family, the individual and their culture, classroom lessons and the many other concerns crowding a young learner’s mind.

00:00 Intro + Announcements

03:30 The US Education System: A Pressure Cooker

05:00 Revisiting Social Learning Theory; Lev Vygotsky, Albert Bandura

06:30 Dr Luis C Moll & Funds of Knowledge

08:30 Research Contributions from Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, Dr. Geneva Gay; culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy

11:20 Culturally responsive pedagogy and practical applications in rural classrooms

18:20 Culturally responsive teaching with varied student populations

21:30 Discussion Questions

31:10 What we learned

For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website.

This week, our co-hosts (one a teacher, one a technologist) revisit ongoing discussions about the role of artificial intelligence in schools and classrooms with a focus on how institutions of higher education are addressing AI tools at a policy level. From Ohio State University's push for AI fluency to staunch opposition from other institutions over academic integrity concerns, we examine the varied approaches schools are adopting. The hosts also explore the personal impacts of these technologies within classrooms and the ethical considerations raised (think privacy, mental health, and the development of critical thinking skills in young learners) as AI expands its reach into academia and the workplace.

00:00 - Intro & Announcements

03:00 - 2025 AI Use Trends and Examples, Higher Education; Some Schools Enthusiastically Embrace AI Tools

09:00 - Skeptical Embrace: AI in College Admissions, Student Services, and Campus Safety

15:00 - Chat Tools and Mental Health Concerns

17:00 - Some Schools Reject AI Over Academic Integrity Concerns

20:00 Teacher Perspectives on AI: From Higher Ed Policy to Classroom Practice

30:00 Classroom Activities Using AI; The Educator's Role in AI Use Policy Discussions Discussions

37:20 What We Learned

For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website.

We’re back after the summer break with new episodes of 16:1! New episodes will now be released on a seasonal schedule. Thanks for subscribing and supporting the show as we evolve!

In the first episode of this season, we’re exploring Appalachian regional history and a story of community resilience in some of the country's remotest regions. You’ll hear how the pack horse librarians, women who traveled by horseback or mule over rough territory, traversed dozens of miles each day to deliver books to Kentucky families with few connections to neighbors and very limited access to public libraries. In the wake of Wall Street’s crash in 1929, pack horse librarians delivered books, mail, and other goods to fuel curiosities and help people gain critical new skills that put them back to work.

Thanks for listening, and welcome back to 16:1!

For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website.

In our final episode of the 2024-25 season, we reflect upon our year of learning and how our philosophies of education continue to evolve. We return to perennial questions: What's the purpose of education? Who gets to learn, and how? How do we best learn? What’s worth unlearning? And, where are we headed? From redefining student success to shifting attitudes on academic freedoms and institutional values, we’ve covered a lot of ground over the past year. We’ll revisit insights from guests on school leadership, student travel, pedagogy, rural education, and student-led local journalism. We’ll also grapple with what’s next for American schools and universities amidst so much uncertainty and turbulence. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back in September of 2025!

For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website at https://sixteentoone.com/archives

Something about the newsroom of The Reporting Project at Denison University in Granville, Ohio feels different. It’s energetic— humming, even when the lights are dimmed and the computer screens are turned off at the end of a long day of writing, collaborating, and crafting stories from the raw materials of community and change in rural Ohio. From Intel’s $20 billion arrival in the region to local election night coverage to the antics and attire of the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival, The Reporting Project weaves human connection together with a liberal arts approach to narrative journalism.

In “the most egoless newsroom” around, a growing cohort of student journalists works alongside veterans of the craft—seasoned educators like Jack Shuler (founder of The Reporting Project and Director of Journalism at Denison) and Alan Miller (former Executive Editor and 37-year veteran of The Columbus Dispatch)— to shine a light on stories of deep significance to surrounding communities. In this episode, we are also joined by Julia Lerner (managing editor of The Reporting Project) and Caroline Zollinger (recent Denison graduate, editor, and reporter) to discuss how the revitalization of community news is fostering trust, awakening civic life, and driving a new generation of students toward curiosity and community engagement.

To learn more about The Reporting Project, visit thereportingproject.org. Please support your local news organizations!

Additional Notes & Resources:

The Reporting Project

The Observers Collaborative

Center for Community News | The University of Vermont

WCLT Radio

This week we’re taking a break from the evolving civic situation in the U.S. to shine light on global stories in education that you may have missed.

Nepal’s National Teachers’ Strike Lifted: Teachers and Students in Nepal are resuming classes more than a month after teachers began demonstrating across the country in protests that included clashes with police over issues of teacher pay, sick leave, grading systems, and other issues. Negotiators had faced setbacks after several rounds of contentious negotiations with the country’s teacher unions. Educators have been turning up the pressure on the Nepalese government to enact legislation directed by the country’s 2015 Constitution that transfers control of the nation’s schools to regional and local authorities.

“AI tools are going to do to students’ critical thinking skills what social media has done to their attentive skills.”

AI in Global Classrooms: National Experiments in China and Estonia: Prompted by emerging policy statements on AI use in U.S. classrooms, we take a look at how other countries are faring as the pressure to adopt AI tools and lessons increases with the ubiquity of AI products. In China, AI in schools is almost old news; we’ll take a look at their aggressive stance on implementing the technology and compare it to that of Estonia, which has recently announced a partnership with OpenAI for the use of a custom version of ChatGPT for education within its public secondary schools.

Ashlie Crosson Named National Teacher of the Year: The Council of Chief State School Officers has announced the 2025 recipient of the National Teacher of the Year award. This year’s winner is Ashlie Crosson, an English teacher and media & journalism advisor at Mifflin County High School in Pennsylvania. Congrats, Ashlie!

Discussion Questions

High stakes make schools a precarious place to “move fast and break things,” but there are sometimes costs to falling behind. What is the appropriate pace of educational change?

When we worry about being “left behind” in the race to adopt artificial intelligence tools in our schools, have we considered the net impact of AI, or are we focused on individual benefits and risks?

As we adopt more AI tools, do we risk learning becoming “artificial”?

What does it mean to “personalize” the educational experience?

For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website and click on Archives.

Our conversation this week is with Vivian Van Gelder, Director of Policy & Research at the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition, a nonprofit that unites more than 50 community organizations, schools, parents, and caregivers behind advocacy for equitable education policy. Vivian is the lead author of a report called Left to Chance: Student Outcomes in Seattle Public Schools, A forensic history. It’s a sweeping and detailed analysis of one public school district’s leadership and policy choices over more than three decades and how those choices have shaped the educational experience of tens of thousands of students attending more than 100 schools.

In her report, Vivian uncovers the story of how Seattle Public Schools embraced an experiment in local control, allowing parents and students to “vote with their feet” for support of their local schools. In theory, competition drives innovation; in practice, the story was more complicated, and it produced a fractured district with a hundred mini-systems that were unevenly funded, under-supported, and almost invisible to central leadership.

We think there’s a lot to be learned from this report and from researchers like Vivian who are doing the hard work of holding intractable social problems up to the light in a way that can spark progress and ignite momentum behind reform. We spend significant time discussing Seattle Public Schools in this episode, but Katie and I were struck by just how familiar some of these tensions are to what we’ve heard from educators in Appalachian Ohio, or to friends in suburban Maryland and rural Alaska and the Deep South. Vivian’s work addresses universal questions of values and organizational leadership in public schools, and we encourage you to read it (we will link to it in our show notes).

Thanks for listening to 16:1, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter for the latest news, resources, workshop offerings, and episode announcements from Moonbeam Multimedia. For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website at sixteentoone.com/archives.