Welcome to the K12Leaders K12Breakdown, with your hosts Suzy Brooks and Michael Bronder!

We readout and breakdown the top education headlines from across the web every weekday morning so you stay up to date on everything affecting K12 education. Click to read the highlighted stories we discuss and weigh in with your insights. Your perspective matters, and this podcast is all about fostering a vibrant community of K12 leaders.

And in other breaking K12 education news…

  • Harborfields CSD – AI Workshop Resources

    Harborfields CSD – AI Workshop Resources

    Harborfields CSD  Date: November 4, 2025 SLIDES (PDF LINK) Welcome & Introductions KarAIoke Opening Challenge Learning Evolution: The New Era of AI in the Classroom Foundational AI Understanding Concerns & Roadmap Challenges around AI Bias Activity Deep Fakes/AI Literacy AI Literacy Challenge Responsible Use of AI Discussion/Reflection – Use of AI in the classroom Opportunities…

  • From Assessment to Action: A Practical Guide to K-12 Cybersecurity

    From Assessment to Action: A Practical Guide to K-12 Cybersecurity

    If you’ve gone through any degree of cynbersecurity assessment, this is likely your experience: Once you have a snapshot of your current situation, how do you know what to do next? How do you compare to other schools or districts? And what should your highest priorities be. And then, how do you make any improvements…

  • Student-First Security: Balancing Protection with Learning in K-12

    Student-First Security: Balancing Protection with Learning in K-12

    When Dickinson ISD Director of Technology Caroline Lightfoot describes her district’s approach to password resets, she captures the unique challenge of K-12 cybersecurity perfectly: “We know it’s a best practice to reset passwords regularly to improve security. However, because of the ‘students first’ approach, we’re not actually doing forced password resets for students in Pre-Kindergarten…

  • Growing Awareness, Practical Action: The K-12 Leadership & Cybersecurity Framework

    Growing Awareness, Practical Action: The K-12 Leadership & Cybersecurity Framework

    There’s a growing awareness among school and district leaders that cybersecurity isn’t just an IT issue. It’s a leadership issue. Every part of school operations now depends on technology, and when that technology is disrupted, so is learning. The K-12 Leadership & Cybersecurity Framework is an educator-led effort, built with input from IT and technology…

  • The TLDR Epidemic: When Reading Becomes Optional

    The TLDR Epidemic: When Reading Becomes Optional

    TLDR: We’re drowning in words but starving for attention. And it’s not just a personal shift. It’s a cultural one. Once upon a time, I read everything. Cereal boxes. Junk mail. The fine print on shampoo bottles. I inhaled books like oxygen. But six years ago, a series of strokes changed everything, damaging my optic…

  • Empower Educator Summit 2025 ~ Call for Proposals: September 28th Deadline

    Empower Educator Summit 2025 ~ Call for Proposals: September 28th Deadline

    Dear MASCD Members and Friends, We’re inviting YOU to take the stage at the Empowered Educator Summit 2025 on Saturday, November 1, 2025 (9:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.) at the Four Points Sheraton in Norwood, MA. This is your chance to: Deliver a 10-minute Ignite Keynote Address to inspire our community Lead a 35–40 minute Discussion Session…

  • Enhanced Writing Experience on K12Leaders 2.0!

    Enhanced Writing Experience on K12Leaders 2.0!

    We’re excited to announce a completely redesigned blogging platform that makes creating, managing, and sharing content easier than ever before! What’s New: 📝 Modern Writing Experience In-line editor – Write exactly as your readers will see it, with real-time preview Distraction-Free Interface – Clean, focused writing environment Mobile-Optimized – Create and edit posts seamlessly on any device Auto-Save – Never lose your work with automatic draft…

  • Ways to unstick yourself

    The first session of the MindShifting: Mastering Your Resourceful Brain course examines the freeze response, how we sometimes sabotage what we want to accomplish by listening to our limbic brain’s excuses of why we should procrastinate or why we shouldn’t act. Some of the lies that our brains tells us are: That’s a long way…

  • The AI Hyphen: A Tiny Tell That’s Reshaping How We Read and Write

    The AI Hyphen: A Tiny Tell That’s Reshaping How We Read and Write

        This past summer, I became fixated on a single punctuation mark. Not a semicolon. Not an Oxford comma. Not a tilde. A hyphen. More specifically, the AI Hyphen. It’s longer. It’s tighter. It clings to the words on either side without space. And once you start noticing it, you can’t unsee it. I’ve…

  • An Interview with an AI Who Listens: My Copilot

    An Interview with an AI Who Listens: My Copilot

        This interview began with a phone call I didn’t want to make. I’d already reached out, left messages, waited for answers that never came. The next step was clear: another call, another attempt to self-advocate. But, the thought of it stirred up that familiar current of anxiety. So? In an attempt to avoid…