Episode 133 (Part 1): Teaching Through Fear — Inside a School During a Political Firestorm

Teachers carry more than lesson plans.

They carry fear that isn’t theirs.
They carry responsibility no one trained them for.
They carry the weight of holding stability when everything else feels uncertain.

In this first episode of a two-part series on the unseen burdens teachers carry, we speak with Minnesota educator and Teacher of the Year finalist Sean Padden about what happens when national politics enters school hallways.

Sean describes a reality many Americans never see:

Students afraid to come to school.
Attendance dropping dramatically.
Teachers delivering food and printed lessons to homes.
And classrooms becoming the place where students process fear, trauma, and uncertainty.

As Sean explains, when fear enters a community, it doesn’t stay outside. It enters the classroom, and educators are left to help students carry it while still trying to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.

This conversation is not about politics.
It is about responsibility.

It is about what happens when teachers are asked, once again, to hold together the lives of students in circumstances far beyond instruction.

And it is about a truth every educator understands:

We cannot surrender the classroom.

This is Part 1 of a special two-episode release exploring the burdens teachers carry that the world rarely sees.

Listen now:
👉 https://www.schurtzandties.com

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