Hot Topics 12/28/25

Mikaela and Kat discuss trending topics!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Is that a little Millie Vanilli?

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Chris?

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Is that what that is?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Girl?

Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm gonna miss you or whatever it is. That's what
it sounds like.

Speaker 4 (00:11):
But is that what is happened? What was that?

Speaker 3 (00:14):
I have no idea that was? Uh? That was Zach, Zach.

Speaker 4 (00:17):
I think that I'm here for it. I mean definitely
here for it.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
The eighties and nineties kids are like, yes, we are
here for it. Uh six one four two, one nine
eight eight six six one four eight two one WTV
And Okay, I'm gonna play a piece of content and
we're going to react to it a little here with
you at home. And Zach just texted it was Millie Vanilli.
You can't you can't help but know it. Kat when

(00:44):
you when.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
You hear it. I grew up with it. Yeah, that's
my generation.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
So with this, we were talking a little bit about
literacy and some of the challenges especially I think post
COVID that some of these high school students now are
having and is there a class divide? So let me
play this for you guys first, and then we would
love to hear from you on this again. Six one
four eight two one nine eighty eight.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Six Glad nest mind of the future is going to
be who can read and critically think and who cannot.
Let me explain, what every educator on this app is
talking about, and what every educator in the field is noticing,
is a dramatic decline in basic critical reasoning skills and
basic literacy skills among students. This is particularly pronounced among

(01:28):
high school age students, where they're engaging with more complex
material and can't grasp basic concepts or manage basic memory
about those concepts. And what this is creating is a
generation entering the workforce without basic comprehension skills that is
going to make it very hard for them to keep
and maintain any form of employment. On the inverse of this,
we're seeing kids in more affluent families being not only

(01:51):
pulled out of the public school system and sent to
things like Montessori schools, but being pulled away from technology,
not given access to anything more than say a TV
or a video station until they're a teenager. No tablets,
no phones, things like that, and what.

Speaker 5 (02:04):
They're doing to fill their time instead is the normal
childhood stuff of playing outside, reading a book, coloring coloring sheets,
all of these things that seem like play, but are
actually building soft skills that make someone much better able
to navigate the world around them as they get older.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
The gap is not going to be who can use
AI and who cannot. The gap is not going to
be who is an all star on the act with
a full ride and who is not. The gap is
going to be who can reason in a basic way
and who cannot, and those that cannot will probably be
left behind.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Oof. That's powerful.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
So teacher talk hashtag teacher talk is a thing on TikTok,
and so I came across that this guy has a
couple hundred thousand followers and really his name is let
me share it with you guys, Jonathan Buckwalter, Buch Jonathan Buckwalter.
So I listen to that and I was like, Wow,

(03:01):
that is something and deep and substantive, and that's what
I thought we should talk about as a hot topic today.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
That is a hot topic.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
So kind of general reaction first, I want to kind
of walk through this with you, and especially with the
lens that you have as this mindset coach and somebody
who is talking about people going more that sixty forty
route kids are struggling. I see it. I have a
fifteen year old, I have a thirteen year old. I
am hoping they're going to pick up some critical reasoning skills,

(03:32):
but I don't know what's lost right now. And I
feel like I tried to role model it, but I
really think we are at a moment kat and so
it gets really challenging as a parent. And here I
think I'm doing the right stuff, but I don't.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
I have.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I've exposed them to some of these things, you know,
later than some parents, but maybe too early.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
I don't know what are what are you exposed them too?

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Well? You know, I gave my oldest a phone late
sixth grade, and my youngest, who is in seventh grade now,
just got a phone. I feel pretty good about that,
given where his brain is. But I feel like they
did grow up in the midst of COVID on tablets

(04:21):
learning at school during that time. And I don't know
if my oldest has picked up the amount of critical
reasoning I wish he would have by this point, or
if he's just being a normal fifteen year old kid.
Because I was a girl and I was maybe a
little more evolved, because girls' brains are a little more
evolved when you're fifteen versus a fifteen year old boy. Scientifically, Yeah,

(04:42):
So that's why I'm struggling, like, did I not do enough?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
And I wonder too, if those several years that kids
were home during COVID, if that's really affecting the children
today even more so than before. Yes, I will say
my daughter had she had a big problem with critical reasoning.
She was it wasn't even a public school. She went
to a small Christian school and I pulled her out

(05:06):
and moved her to a Catholic school that was near
where my son was going. And when she got there,
we found out very quickly she was very behind. She
did not she didn't think her way through anything, and
it took about a year to year and a half
probably that school year and part of the next one
to get her to a place where she could slow down.

(05:26):
She wasn't trying to just get the work done, but
she actually would think through things. And so, I mean
that was years ago, so I think it's common. However
you look at.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
It, how did you get that to happen? I mean,
you would have been in the midst of this journey
that you've been on and have been teaching people through
but like I think about that, was it more the
Catholic school doing that? Was it you doing it?

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Like?

Speaker 1 (05:50):
How did that work once you discovered it to get
her to a place of more critical reasoning.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
So I think we live in it. And even then
social media was getting pretty popular, even at that time
when she was in middle school, and I think that
we are at this critical juncture where we're just being
talked to all the time, and so we don't really
have to think anymore.

Speaker 4 (06:13):
We can just be told what to think.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
AI.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
I mean, I don't know about you. I think we
talked about that.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
I do love it. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
It's not going to tell you based on the prompt
that you give it. But that's all other stories. So
I think what I really tried to do with Sophia
and what we did with our son is, you know,
it's a really important to have conversations and let children
have opinions. And we live in a society right now
where it's hard to have an opinion one way or
the other, you know. But I was raised in an

(06:42):
environment where we debated and you had to pick a
side whether you believed in it or not, and you
had to defend it. My dad loved this stuff, and
so we would debate major issues, whether we defend whether
we believed in them or not. And that really that
taught us to think through both sides. And I think

(07:02):
that that's one thing that you can do with kids, like, Okay,
you don't believe in this, well, now defend it and
having that kind of debate club situation.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
Did you do that with Sophia? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I did it with my daughter. My son is extremely opinionated,
so like that's that's a different story. That's great for him.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
But yeah, we've we've done that a lot in our
families and I grew up doing that. I think that
it's a great way to get children to open up
and feel comfortable thinking thinking about how they feel about something,
but also seeing both sides. That really pushes the critical thinking.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Did you do it at the dinner table? Did you
do it in the car? Like when you were changing
her kind of perspective on critical thinking as she was
moving to this new high school it was high school. Yes,
she made move he middle school.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
That was middle school.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
So she makes this move she's in middle school.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
Where do you do it?

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Because I also feel like parents, sometimes it's a struggle
to get your teenager to come talk to you.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, there isn't a lot of time. So I had
the benefit of driving my children to school and up
until they got a little older, I did pick them up,
so there was a lot of time during in the car.
I think I once figured it out. It's like eleven
hundred plus hours within a few years time span, so

(08:20):
that was really good for us. I think that it's
important to remember too, and.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
It's easier for me.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
I know my kids are grown, but I think it's
important to remember that the sixty forty goes with all
the things that we do, right, So like you don't
have to have a conversation every day, like if you did,
if you had this conversation for twenty minutes in a week,
you've already started to change how they think.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
With the substantive conversation about how to maybe debate or
defend your opinion.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Well, I think that I think there is something to this,
and I think as parents as grandparents is you know,
aunts and uncles who are listening here today, something to
consider again. Jonathan Buckwalter on TikTok. That's where you can
find him. But good conversation. Thank you for that and
some of your insight from having kids who've gone through this,

(09:12):
which I didn't even know and didn't know that you
had a friend who also was going through this or
so he had a conversation about this recently.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
Absolutely, I was.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
I was astounded when she told me this. We literally
just talked about this last week. And she had to
go through a lot to get this child tested. They
thought he was dyslexic, but it was actually more than that,
and I mean she had to stay.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
The course on them.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
You have to advocate.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
She really did. I was surprised, and she really had
to advocate. But she did get to a point where
they got him diagnosed with whatever learning disability he has,
and it's it's really changed changed his whole life.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Which is just incredible and what some of these kids need.
All Right, coming up next, we're gonna we're gonna take
a turn. We have giveaways galore, so we're Doctor Frederick
Burtley is going to join us talking about what's new
with Kosai and also giveaways four packs, and then we
also have a New Year's Eve giveaway coming up as well.
So so much to come you're listening to what matters

Speaker 3 (10:16):
To the