Above is an image related to one of the news stories we followed this past week. Do you know what it shows? At the bottom of this quiz, you’ll find the answer.
Have you been paying attention to current events recently? See how many of these 10 questions you can get right.
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of memorable lines. This week’s installment highlights lines from notable 20th-century science fiction novels. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you want to experience the entire work in context.
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Iowa City eliminated bus fares two years ago. Now New York City’s mayor-elect wants to do the same for the largest city in the country.
Written by Alex Liau, learning & behaviour psychologist.
When children struggle emotionally, the place where they spend most of their time can either support their healing or make them feel more stressed. These places can be schools, community spaces, and surprisingly, their own home. Play therapy recognises that some children struggle even in familiar settings. By using play therapy in schools, treatment becomes more approachable and less overwhelming, creating a form of mental health care that feels safe, supportive, and seamlessly integrated into everyday life.
Hannah, a second-grade student, developed severe separation anxiety after her parents’ divorce. She and her mother had recently moved into a women’s shelter, a major change that deepened Hannah’s sense of insecurity. Each morning, she clung to her mother, refusing to enter the classroom. She often complained of stomachaches, and her teachers noticed she withdrew from group activities. When the school counsellor introduced play therapy, Hannah finally found a safe outlet to express what she couldn’t put into words.
Ethan is a nine-year-old student who often freezes during tests. Despite being a capable and diligent student, Ethan experiences significant anxiety during tests. His teachers noticed that he sometimes puts his head down on the desk, refusing to write. When Ethan began school-based play therapy, he chose to work with puppets. In one activity, he acted out a classroom test with puppets. One puppet whispered, “I’ll fail again,” while another said, “You’re ready, you studied hard.”
This exercise allowed Ethan to externalise the negative self-talk that paralysed him during exams. Guided by his therapist, Ethan created a Brave Backpack to overcome his anxiety. Using craft supplies, he decorated a paper bag with drawings that made him feel courageous. These included stars, shields, and even a superhero. Inside, he placed small cards with “helpful thoughts,” like “I’ve practised, and I can try my best.” The backpack became a tangible reminder of his inner resources, something he could “carry” into future challenges.
Play therapy in schools normalises emotional support by embedding it into a child’s routine. For Hannah, sessions took place in a small, quiet room right next to her classroom. Having the therapy close to her classroom keeps her from feeling overwhelmed.
In one session, Hannah used a puppet to act out her fear of being left alone. The puppet cried and begged its “parent” not to go. Watching this, her therapist gently guided the story, helping Hannah imagine what the puppet might do to feel safe while apart, perhaps carrying a picture of the parent or creating a goodbye ritual. Together, they wrote a short story about the puppet learning to manage the day with bravery.
This approach made coping strategies feel tangible and relevant. Because therapy was part of Hannah’s school life, she could immediately practice her new skills in the classroom.
Ethan’s therapist used Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help him identify unhelpful thought patterns. He would often say to himself, “If I make a mistake, I’ll fail everything.” Through guided play, Ethan practised replacing these unhelpful thoughts and scripts with more balanced ones.
One game involved drawing “worry thoughts” on slips of paper, then tossing them into a basket labelled Not True. Next, Ethan wrote “helper thoughts” on bright cards and placed them in his Brave Backpack. This activity turned abstract concepts into something visible and manageable. By practising these steps repeatedly, Ethan learned to challenge his anxious thinking in playful but effective ways. These playful yet structured activities provided Ethan with concrete ways to manage big emotions in real-time.
Therapists in school settings work closely with teachers and administrators to carry therapeutic lessons into everyday classroom life. Hannah’s therapist suggested creating a calm corner in the classroom. Stocked with soft cushions, sensory toys, and a few calming picture books, this space gave Hannah and her classmates a safe place to manage overwhelming feelings. Her teacher learned to encourage Hannah to use the corner when she seemed anxious, reinforcing the strategies from therapy sessions.
This collaboration helped bridge the gap between therapy and education. Hannah felt supported not just in her sessions but in the classroom itself, reducing the stigma often associated with mental health support. Other children also began to see the calm corner as a standard tool, fostering a more compassionate school culture. Children spend much of their time in school. It is a place where they learn, make friends, face challenges, and sometimes struggle silently with emotions which may be too big for them to handle.
Educators play a crucial role in implementing and sustaining therapeutic play therapy in schools. Ethan’s therapist collaborated with his teacher to ensure he had access to his coping tools during test days. A small box under his desk held his glitter jar and Brave Backpack cards. The teacher also learned to use simple prompts, such as, “Would you like to take two deep breaths before we start?” These small but meaningful accommodations made Ethan feel supported, reducing his anxiety and helping him engage more fully in class.
The benefits of play therapy are not limited to schools. In community-based settings, such as family service centres, shelters, and transitional housing, play becomes a lifeline for children navigating instability.
At the community centre attached to the women’s shelter, Hannah joined group play therapy after school while her mother worked. During the sessions, she often spent time at the sand tray, repeatedly building houses from sand. These creations revealed her longing for stability and her fear of more change.
The therapist encouraged Hannah to talk about her “sand houses and the family members living in them.” She explained that one house was “safe,” while another was “broken.” With gentle guidance, Hannah began to process her sense of loss and uncertainty. Over time, she also took part in cooperative activities like painting murals and playing group games that reminded her she wasn’t alone.
Community-based play therapy also adapts to meet the cultural needs of the children. In Hannah’s case, her therapist included familiar Chinese folktales and songs about love and strength. They are the same ones Hannah enjoyed when her mother sang them at bedtime. These moments affirmed her identity and reassured her that every part of herself was welcome in the playroom. Respecting cultural traditions sends a message to the child that “your identity is valued, and healing can include the familiar activities from your community”.
The true strength of play therapy in schools and community settings lies in its accessibility. Children like Hannah don’t need to travel far or face the stigma sometimes attached to “going to therapy.” Instead, support reaches them in spaces where they already feel safe and understood.
For Hannah, this meant practising self-calming techniques in her classroom’s calm corner, engaging in sand tray play at the shelter, and sharing her experiences during group sessions. Over time, these activities became part of her daily routine, tools she could draw on at home, at school, and during therapy.
Hannah’s journey highlights how integrating play therapy into familiar environments transforms children’s mental health support. In schools, it reduces stigma and embeds coping strategies into everyday learning. In communities, it offers safe outlets for trauma, fosters social connection, and honours cultural identity. Above all, it reminds children like Hannah that they are not alone, and that healing can begin wherever they feel most at home.
Holistic care extends beyond the classroom. Ethan’s therapist invited his parents to join occasional sessions. Together, they played a structured storytelling game where each family member shared a “morning victory” and one challenge from the week. This activity highlighted strengths and normalised struggles.
Ethan’s mother proudly shared that her morning victory was “getting everyone to school on time,” while Ethan admitted, “I remembered to pack my Brave Backpack.” The therapist used these moments to model supportive responses and showed parents how to validate emotions and encourage effective coping strategies.
Play therapy is most effective when everyone in a child’s world participates in the healing process. Teachers, counsellors, and parents each play a vital role in reinforcing what happens in the therapy room. When adults understand and apply the strategies children learn, such as using calm corners, storytelling, or art-based reflection, the benefits of therapy extend far beyond the session itself.
Each technique, whether a game, a sand tray activity, or a simple breathing exercise, helps address a specific emotional need. And because every child’s story is unique, the methods must be tailored to their experiences and development. When schools, families, and communities work together, play therapy becomes more than an intervention – it becomes a shared language of care, safety, and connection.
If you’re passionate about helping children build resilience and emotional well-being, explore Alison’s free Diploma in Play Therapy. This comprehensive course introduces the theory and practice of play therapy, offering educators, mental health professionals, and emerging therapists the skills to support children through play, one of the most natural and effective paths to healing.
This word has appeared in 73 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
It seems like such a simple selection, after all, in the business/corporate, association, education, and other segments that AI is taking it by storm.
Companies are training their employees to use AI, with Augmentation as the essential; on the tech side, automation is the other form, being used to.
I think of augmentation as a co-worker – and it aligns with what others see it as.
Automation is self-explanatory.
What, though, is it from a learning/training standpoint with your employees?
Think about that for a bit of time – more than 10 seconds.
A co-worker – eliminates repetitive tasks (as just one example) is understandable, and can be effective.
However, how do you use the AI options for your learners?
If it is AI literacy, which requires updates on new terms they might come across or will – and those overseeing something knowing those terms, but more than others, requires a duality approach.
I wouldn’t do either without a learning system.
Because ILT for AI usage shouldn’t exceed 12 people per session (the most effective way for tech training in ILT).
But the above use case doesn’t always get to the learning system level – even with the content to effectively and efficiently train your learners, tapping into an AI assistant.
Here is what I am seeing with AI in the learning system space (regardless of types)
“Fast. Fast. Fast” (vendor at DevLearn on what people want)
From the administration standpoint, the whole notion and understanding of learning and training (and by most considered differently, not one and the same) – isn’t learning – it is, in theory, optimization and speed.
Even if the person overseeing L&D, Training, or say HR, and the system itself – say department, folks nowadays believe or ideally want a system to do their job for them.
Ponder that.
If your L&D department is gutted, and the system switches over to HRIS, will they have the time to do their job and tasks, along with knowledge, along with an extra load of something unfamiliar?
What about a system going to marketing – for external. How many have a background in learning or training?
Fast. Fast. Fast.
There is zero learning here – ZERO.
And I’m not referring to the departments the system is in; I’m referring to the administrator.
The whole goal of an administrator is clearly to run the system; however, it is also to learn.
Way too many systems have ignored that – and that isn’t about them having access to the learner side, and taking content.
I’m referring to the knowledge and learning that they can acquire as a result of the system.
There is a wealth of skills available on the administrative side that can be leveraged at another job, whether at your place of business or elsewhere.
Systems, though, ignore that aspect.
Fast. Fast. Fast.
Need to create content? Zoom.
Need to create an assessment or quiz? Type and Zip.
Need to assign learning paths and skills to learners? Maybe a quick prompt, or a setup of automation, and off to the races.
Repetitive tasks: Simplify, Speed, and hope for efficiency.
I’m okay with the latter, heck, a constant gripe if you will, is how long it takes, and speed to deliver what is needed – the speed being crucial here.
On the content side, type in the AI Assistant what you want, using prompts, and off you go.
Perhaps, if you are lucky, you will get a system that offers AI image generation, Voice-over Audio, Native Translation (becoming more common), text mood (not common across the space), and additional features.
Pick and go.
Maybe you get a way to add images and videos, whether via YouTube or, if it is rare, to integrate video bytes with the content within the content creator itself within the system.
Oh, the WYSIWYG – that text window where you can edit, add your own images, and make changes.
The edit is common.
Then you may see, before you start, the option to build the course yourself, OR allow AI to do it for you.
Suppose you are one of the elite few who have a system that allows you to select whether AI will do each section, chapter, page, or asset (slide to AI and it goes). This is really rare.
Fast. Fast. Fast.
The AI Assistant
Whether the vendor calls it by another name – let’s say Answer Engine or some other vernacular – it is to increase efficiency (again, in theory, applicable; there are other variables involved at that moment in time), productivity, and maybe help for the administrator.
Type in text on how to do something, and the Assistant presents it – most of the time in text; perhaps with sources (folks rarely click on them), and then a rarity of “Show Me, Tell Me, Let Me do it,” – which is the most effective way for adults to learn.
Folks want to go where the action is, not read about it.
That right there is learning on the system, and different capabilities – data shows that Admins as a whole use less than 20 percent of the entire system’s functionalities – again, admin side.
Think of the skills they are going to learn.
There is a lot to present here – all right there in that system – dependent on the system – all giving folks on the admin side skill sets they can use, regardless of the impact of AI in years to come.
Automation
It’s already here in the learning system space, content development/third-party authoring tools, video creators, voice options, templates, practice labs, and heck, you name it for learning/training, and likely there is a tool that can output it.
Fast. Fast. Fast.
Are you actually learning something beyond what you are adding to achieve the outcome?
Could you train someone who knows nothing about the product? Can you transfer that information you gained into another product/platform that isn’t that exact one?
All I saw at DevLearn and what I have been seeing – with minor exceptions (including my Learning Tech Product of the Year), across the industry – is all around automation.
Yes, there are parts of augmentation there – at least the option – I mean, you are having to add prompting text, and you need to pick options, edit, and then output.
All augmentation.
Learning though?
What exactly are you learning? How can you explain it so you want to return and do so because of learning?
Learner Side
Heavily around Automation with Augmentation – co-worker capabilities if your co-worker is a person who is handed stuff to do, over and over again.
Augmentation if the co-worker is onboarding you, or providing OJT.
A combo of the knowledge output – utilized in different ways.
Agentic Agents – They are being hyped as the best form of AI. Right?
It depends – on your goals.
Agentic lacks human reasoning (essential for learning/training).
It lacks empathy, emotion, intrinsic motivation, to name just a few.
With the emotion side, what you get from Agentic is akin to lacking empathy or false empathy.
Hence the relevance of need for deep thinking in every scenario.
I can provide you or inquire thought proviking questions to get you to analyze and formulate a response to the question or series of questions and to probe further.
Suffer from imposter syndrome in the workplace?
Why?
And then based on the response continue to dive.
Lastly or at some point – I (name of the assistant or agent) have created a real world scenario where you can practice what we discussed today. Would you like me to add it to your learning path – where you can access it at any time?
Would you prefer we try it out now (remember I will be here to guide you and blah blah, if you need)?
Then explain the scenario – that the learner is going in. There action(s) will cause another action within the scenario – it takes adaptive learning into the way it should be with Agentic AI playing the role it can, and forcing – yes, forcing the learner to think.
One area to recognize on a side bar is that if your goal of the agentic AI agent(s) to do a specific task or tasks for whoever – it is still heavy on automation with a slight augumentation.
Bottom Line
What’s the end game?
Super Assistant or Learning Passenger?
Or both, a passenger who gives outstanding directions, loves to talk, and asks “are we there yet? are we there yet?”
Can automation and augumentation work hand in hand to empower people to learn – on the learner side in a meaningful, real-life manner that adapts to them, on an on-going basis – using and building upon the ongoing continuous learning cycle?
The answer is yes.
E-Learning 24/7
In a way, I have a few of those ring boxes stored in a shoe box for motor neurons. While I am no neuroanatomy expert, I do have an organizational scheme for some of this information. So when I see motor neuron, I’ve already chunked a bunch of extra information and understanding with that one concept.
Let’s take a different example, that probably makes more sense to people. What if we were talking about baseball? Here, I’m the novice…
“On the sharply hit 6–4 bouncer, observe how the shortstop initiates the double-play sequence by executing a momentum-efficient, closed-hip gather before transferring through a high-spin, wrist-pronated pivot to the second baseman, who—already positioned in a shallow, anti-handoff depth aligned with probabilistic spray charts—finishes the turn with a sub-0.4-second pop-release optimized for arm-slot continuity and downstream kinetic-chain stability to complete the 6–4–3 twin killing.” – chatGPT
To be clear, this is nonsense to me. I read that first line and have to stop at “double-play” and ask:
Two runs?
Two hits?
Two bases?
Two outs?
That’s a ring box that I’m going to have to memorize.
As educators, we are helping students to organize their knowledge not just so that they can regurgitate it on a test but because organized knowledge changes the way that we perceive the world. We are able to hold onto more so that we can reason and problem-solve with more information at our fingertips.
Well-organized knowledge also fundamentally changes the way that we process the world. A chess master sees the next move instead of scattered pieces, my husband sees safety violations when he walks into a warehouse, I see possible test anxiety, sleep patterns, and study habits when a student chats with me about how they’re doing.
But it is critical that we recognize where students are so that we are not forcing them to memorize those isolated bits of information. With careful scaffolding students can build. This is related to the concept of expertise reversal: the idea that novices need someone to help them make sense of things. They learn best when they are given that foundational knowledge, when they are explicitly taught. Experts, with the foundation laid, expand their knowledge best when they are given the opportunity to reason and problem solve. They learn best with more inquiry-related methods of teaching.
I’ve been throwing around the words expert and novice, which turn out to be relatively jargon-heavy words. What do they actually mean? In this context, it’s all relative. I am a relative novice when it comes to Roblox. My son is a relative expert. I need him to explain to me what we’re doing and how to play a game (don’t worry, we play together and parental settings are very much on). He gets frustrated by that because he wants to get in there and explore. As educators, our job is to take our students from that state of relative novice to relative expert, building on areas where they already have organized knowledge.
This is hard work. This is the hard work of education. But if we do this well, we have the opportunity to create more equitable classrooms where we don’t leave some of our students behind because we were tossing them ring boxes while the rest of the class was sitting happily with their shoe boxes.
Too far?
New York City didn’t have a portal to help people find affordable housing. So these teenagers made one.
Tell us a story, real or made up, that is inspired by this image.
