Brett Roer came in ready to talk about what an AI moratorium breaks. Rebecca Bultsma wanted to talk about what the rush toward AI already broke.

He had just left a New York City middle school, two weeks into the year, trying to live inside a pause that showed up after the summer work was done. The curriculum is on screens. The approved tools are off. Students can still open an unvetted tool at home. Brett wants a way to teach this without getting students in trouble for the assignment.

Rebecca will not let that scramble settle the question. Schools have stacked vendors, screens, and spending, and she thinks a pause might be how you find out which of it was ever for students. A moratorium, she argues, is only as useful as the year a school spends inside it. Brett wants the answer. She holds the question open on purpose.

John Schembari, a school improvement consultant who advises student teachers at Brooklyn College, steps into that argument. Fire is his comparison for AI. He does not want teachers to become the AI police. He does think they have to teach the difference between AI that extends a student's thinking and AI that replaces it. Brett says that line pushed him in a way he was not hoping to be pushed.

Do not stop there. Brett still has the Briarcliff story: students who once called AI rules a rollercoaster, and who now say there isn't one. A few of them add the line a policy memo never includes. They are not sure they need the AI their teachers just allowed. Then the guest takes the host chair, and the questions belong to Brett and Rebecca.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• A pause, as it felt in one school two weeks into the year
• Where Brett and Rebecca refuse to land
• An equity question that is not about access
• Students who got clear rules and still hesitated
• The stretch where the hosts have to answer

Subscribe to AmpED to 11, and stay through the chair switch. That is the part worth the rest of the episode.

How can state education leaders create consistent standards without limiting local innovation? Brett Roer and Rebecca Bultsma welcome Dewayne McClary, Deputy State Superintendent at the Virginia Department of Education, to explore the policies, partnerships and practical decisions shaping the future of learning across the commonwealth.

Dewayne traces his path from teaching at the rural South Carolina middle school he once attended to leadership roles in Arlington Public Schools, DC Public Schools and Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools. He explains his approach of “creating floors and not ceilings”: setting a strong statewide standard while giving school divisions room to go further.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How flexible seat-time policies can support competency-based learning
• Why micro-credentials should connect directly to what students need beyond the classroom
• What Dewayne means by designing systems at the margin
• Why auditing screen time can be more useful than debating it
• What AI cannot replace in education, explained through Dewayne’s muffin, icing and cupcake analogy
• How an AI-powered transportation tool changed his thinking about student tracking
• Who belongs in Dewayne’s “Ocean’s 11” network of trusted education leaders
• What happens when Dewayne takes the host chair and questions Brett and Rebecca

Tune in for a candid conversation about innovation, AI, accountability and building education systems that give every learner a strong foundation without placing a ceiling on what is possible.

Subscribe to AmpED to 11 and share the episode with an education leader in your network.

When a superintendent told Babak Mostaghimi, “I think we’re Blockbuster Video, and Netflix is coming,” it became a warning, and an invitation, to rethink education before the future arrived.

In this episode, Babak joins Brett Roer and Rebecca Bultsma to explore why improving the existing school system is no longer enough. He breaks down LearnerStudio’s three horizons of education, from the industrial factory model to a future designed around human flourishing, agency, and lifelong learning.

They also unpack the growing tech clash in education: nostalgic humanists who want to remove technology altogether, techno-nihilists who want to automate everything, and the human-centered middle way between them. From screen time and AI literacy to creativity, collaboration, data sovereignty, and the skills students need for an uncertain future, the conversation asks a bigger question: Are we using AI to deepen humanity, or replace it?

Midway through, Babak takes over as host and puts Brett and Rebecca in the hot seat.

What you’ll learn:

• The three horizons of education, and why reform can only go so far
• Why changing the architecture matters more than adding new content or tools
• How the “swim, snorkel, scuba” framework explains different levels of AI literacy
• Why blanket screen bans and unrestricted technology use both miss the point
• How schools can design for agency, lifelong learning, and human flourishing
• Why the right questions may be more useful than one standardized AI policy

Tune in for a wide-ranging conversation about redesigning education for the world students are already entering.