Things Fall Apart

Our conversation today is with educator, author, and Director of National Faculty at PBLWorks, Ryan Sprott, about one of the most contentious topics in education today, that is Teaching Contentious Topics in a Divided Nation: A Memoir and Primer for Pedagogical Transformation, which is also the title of his self-published book. In this conversation we be talk about his experience teaching an inquiry approach to teaching contentious topics. In part time project-based inquiry, his students in Texas, of all places, engaged with some of the most difficult open-ended, wicked questions around, as Ryan refers to them, “A question to open hearts and minds”–What is the purpose of a border and what has shaped your answer to this question? How can we improve energy policy and what has shaped your answer to this question? And what is the purpose of school and what has shaped your answer to this question? Students visited the Texas border with Mexico, worked with immigrant aid organizations and hosted dialogue with Border Patrol agents. They visited Texas oil fields to speak with oilmen on the ground, engaged in interviews, documented their experiences in field journals, created collaborative community art projects, and so much more. You'll hear student testimonials about how they came away transformed forever by the experience. Ryan Sprott @ PBLWorksTeaching Contentious Topics in a Divided Nation (Amazon) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm joined today by Dr Chloe Keegan. Chloe Keegan is Lecturer of Early Childhood Education in the Froebel Department of Primary and Early Childhood Education in Maynooth University, Ireland.Dr Keegan is an early childhood expert with over a decade of experience as an educator, researcher, and policy advocate. Her work focuses on children's rights and power, play and participation, and influencing practice and policy in early education. She completed her doctoral thesis at Maynooth University, developing an innovative method using GoPro cameras to involve children as co-researchers in studying power dynamics. Her research also explores the impact of play bans on children's well-being, moral development, the influence of stereotypical media on children's views of sex, gender, and race, and participatory art-based methods in children's research and video-based reflective practices.Connect w/ Dr Keegan on LinkedInFull thesis: It's Like a Baby Jail Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/conference “True light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.” ― N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms (as read by Zoe Bee)In stressful, uncertain times, when cynical powers attempt to divide and isolate us, community and solidarity are acts of resistance. But there are no superheroes here, and no simple answers to be found, only the Quest for Connection. In 2025, we're responding to the need for community and solidarity in uncertain times by turning Conference to Restore Humanity into a model for humanizing critical discourse and dialogue: bringing together students and teachers, researchers and doers, thinkers and visionaries to explore complex topics in education and illuminate a path forward together.Our virtual Conference to Restore Humanity 2025 runs July 21st through the 23rd. To make this year as accessible and sustainable as ever, we've cut the ticket price to just $50. You can learn more about Conference to Humanity and register on our website at humanrestorationproject.org/conferenceNebula Nostalgia by FSM Team feat. < e s c p > | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.htmlhttps://escp-music.bandcamp.comMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Nika Dubrovsky. Nika is an artist and writer whose work has been exhibited internationally, her children's books have been translated into several languages and, remarkably, as you'll hear in the episode, Nika is directly responsible for bringing Russian translations of Dr. Suess to post-Soviet Russia.Nika is the co-creator of Anthropology For Kids alongside her late husband: Anthropologist, best selling author, and activist, David Graeber, who passed away suddenly in 2020. A4Kids.org is an open-source platform which experiments with new educational formats. After David's passing, Nika also founded the David Graeber Institute as a platform to develop ideas and projects that continue his legacy.Most of Nika's projects are dedicated to the building and maintaining of social relationships, among which are the “Museum of Care”, a nomadic ‘anti' institute, and the Playground of the Future, a collaborative and interactive art project imagining playgrounds as a space of collectivity and care. “Playgrounds are vital public spaces,” she writes, “—they bring communities together, bridging generations and social divides. They're also about fun and play, which is exactly the kind of atmosphere we need when making collective decisions. A network of community-built playgrounds, designed around Visual Assemblies, could become spaces where people gather, play, and make decisions together.”https://museum.care/playgrounds-notes-from-the-curator/ Anthropology For Kidshttps://museum.care/ Radical Playgrounds: From Competition to CollaborationCities Made Differently (MIT Press)David Graeber Institute Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the latest in our “spotlight series”, the first of 2025, where we reach out to schools who are engaged in awesome work, and talk to teachers, school leaders, and students about it to shine a light, inspire, and influence others to do the same. As with all learning, process is the point, not perfection, and there's so much to learn from these schools as we reimagine education in our communities.Empower[Ed] is a personalized, competency-based education program designed to give high school juniors and seniors control over their learning. We integrate core academic subjects with real-world, community-embedded projects and Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses. Students primarily work independently, demonstrating mastery through projects that align with their passions and career interests. Empower[Ed] fosters learner agency, helping students build critical skills like problem-solving, time management, and collaboration, while crafting personalized learning paths that prepare them for success beyond high school. It's a flexible, self-directed learning experience aimed at making education more relevant and engaging. Empower[Ed] School PageEmpower[Ed] Community Impact ArcGIS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the help of Teacher-Powered Schools, Socol-Moran Partners, Stimpunks, and What School Could Be, we've completed the lineup for our 4th annual virtual Conference to Restore Humanity for July 21-23, focused this year on the Quest for Connection. Tickets are just $50 and you can find out more info at humanrestorationproject.org/conferenceWe're excited to have members of the team from Story Xperiential with us for today's episode, which was recorded way back in 2024. Developed by veterans from Pixar and Khan Academy, Story Xperiential brings the art of professional storytelling into the classroom, giving students the tools to craft and share their own stories using the same creative process as major studios.The program is structured to fit into school schedules, offering a two-part curriculum: Storytelling Essentials, where students develop a story outline into a story reel, and Mastering Storytelling, where they expand their work into a full narrative. Through self-paced lessons, hands-on projects, and a moderated peer feedback system, students not only learn the technical aspects of storytelling but also gain confidence in their creative abilities.One unique aspect of Story Xperiential is how it can be integrated into every subject area, aligning with interdisciplinary content standards -- bringing together social studies and ELA, for example, or STEM and fine arts -- while also fostering skills like collaboration, critical thinking, and visual communication. In this episode, we'll explore how Story Xperiential is being implemented in schools, hear about the impact it's having on students, and discuss how storytelling can be a powerful tool for learning and self-expression.You're gonna be hearing a few voices in this conversation. HRP director Chris McNutt is hosting this one, who you're probably used to hearing on this show, and he'll be talking to a few people on the StoryX team:Dennis Henderson VP of Education and StrategyChief Technical Officer, Tony DeRoseAnd Chief Learning Officer, Brit CruiseYou can learn more and sign your students up at https://www.storyxperiential.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the help of Teacher-Powered Schools, Socol-Moran Partners, Stimpunks, and What School Could Be, we've officially announced our 4th annual virtual Conference to Restore Humanity for July 21-23, focused this year on the Quest for Connection. If you're interested in joining us, tickets start at just 50 bucks and you can find the full lineup at humanrestorationproject.org/conferenceToday I'm joined by Christian Moore-Anderson. And I wanted to have Christian on to talk about the ideas that drive his teaching practice and that he shares in his book, Difference Maker: Enacting systems theory in biology teaching. While that title may seem daunting, Christian's teaching would immediately look and feel to observers like “just good teaching.” But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Informing his theory and practice of teaching is a set of related ideas that I was largely unfamiliar with before encountering it in his book: cybernetics, systems theory, and enactivism. Cybernetics is simply a feedback loop. Just as someone steering a ship adjusts the rudder based on feedback from the ocean, so too does good pedagogy depend on what Christian calls “recursive teaching”, or a constant feedback loop of action, interpretation, and learning between teachers and students. You can connect with Christian on BlueSky @cmooreanderson.bsky.social.Difference Maker: Enacting Systems Theory in Biology Teaching - Christian Moore-AndersonChristian's Recommended Reading:From Being to Doing: The Origins of the Biology of Cognition - Humberto Maturana, Bernhard PörksenThe Pragmatic Turn: Toward Action-Oriented Views in Cognitive Science Edited by Andreas K. Engel, Karl J. Friston and Danica Kragic Understanding Systems: Conversations on Epistemology and Ethics - Heinz von Foerster The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future - Andrew Pickering Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness - Anthony Chaney Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you go back through the HRP podcast archives, and I encourage you to do just that, you'll see that we've covered just about every topic imaginable in the world of education, with some that keep returning again and again. One area you'll probably notice a regrettable gap is in early childhood education, PreK-early elementary. One reason is that it's just out of the experience of the two high school social studies teachers who started the podcast, and another is that foundationally, at least for the classrooms I've visited since, PreK-early elementary tends to get a lot more right about developmentally appropriate instruction and schooling than the middle and high school grades that follow. That's a large part of why I reached out to my guest today to help unpack the ideas that make early childhood education such a powerful and important part of a child's life.Heidi Echternacht is co-founder of Kinderchat, a weekly professional conversation, resource library, and online network for early childhood advocates and educators. Created and led by teachers, Kinderchat has hosted global discussions between and among professional educators and in-service teachers for over ten years. Author of The Kinderchat Guide to the Classroom, Heidi has been an educator of children for over 20 years and currently teaches second grade in Princeton, New Jersey.Kinderchat SubstackKinderchat.orgConnect with Heidi on BlueskyKinderchat GuidesIn Dialogue with Reggio EmiliaPeter Gray - Free to LearnVisible Learners - Mara Krechevsky Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we're joined by Mike Tinoco. Mike is a full time public school teacher from California, and author of Heart at the Center: An Educator's Guide to Sustaining Love, Hope, and Community Through Nonviolence Pedagogy. Gholdy Muhammad called the book "an urgent call for truth, love, and justice for every educator and community member who deeply dreams of and seeks peace.” Further, Mike is a certified Kingian Nonviolence and Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC) trainer who provides workshops around the country. And, he's an award winning beat-boxer.miketinoco.comHeart at the Center: An Educator's Guide to Sustaining Love, Hope, and Community Through Nonviolence Pedagogy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm thrilled to be joined today by Pernille Ripp — a passionate educator, author, and literacy advocate. She is the author of Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child, Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Students, and Reimagining Literacy Through Global Collaboration. She's also the founder of the Global Read Aloud, a program that has connected millions of students and teachers around the world through the shared joy of reading.And for all of our benefit, Pernille is also a prolific sharer. After teaching in Wisconsin for over a decade, In her BlueSky re-introduction she noted she was “back living in Denmark because she needed to breathe a bit easier.” And she frequently posts about her experience in the Danish education system, “Fun fact about teaching at my Danish school,” she writes, “when we are sick, we're not required to write sub plans because we're sick.” And by most measures, Danes are among the happiest in the world, despite having among the highest tax rates. Healthcare and PreK-College education is free. Hygge conjures cozy seasonal vibes. Denmark has some of the highest public education participation and teacher pay and some of the lowest student:teacher ratios and class sizes among their OECD peers, including the United States. On a more grim note of comparison, the Wikipedia page for “school shootings in Denmark” contains a single entry from 1994, the only school shooting in Danish history. However, as a PDF, the list of school shootings in the United States since 2000 is 169 pages long with footnotes.Regular listeners of this show will know just how immediately all of this grabbed my attention. In the past we've had guests talk about their experiences with everything from the education system in Trinidad & Tobago to the national Chinese college entrance exam, so I am thrilled at the opportunity to dig into both American and Danish society and education systems with someone who has knowledge and experience in both.Pernille Ripp Bluesky Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are any number of narratives that emerged from the 2024 election and that will be hotly debated over the next four years. However, one of those is not up for debate: that vouchers and school choice lost everywhere they were on the ballot in 2024. In Colorado, voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would've added “a right to school choice.” And in red-state Kentucky and Nebraska, voucher programs failed by nearly the same proportion that Donald Trump won. On this show we've focused a lot on culture war issues as they directly impact what and how classroom teachers can teach, and I suspect the culture war will come up in this conversation. But we've never actually dug into the specific issue of voucher programs, which also impact educators, parents, schools, and kids in over a dozen states, with even more to come in an explicit push for a national universal voucher program as a long-term federal policy goal. My guest today is Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. He's written extensively about education politics, school choice, and culture wars in the United States, and you should definitely give him a follow on BlueSky @joshcowenmsu as he is very persistent in addressing the topic of his latest book, titled The Privateers: How BIllionaires Created A Culture War and Sold School Vouchers. I wanted to have Josh Cowen on to better understand, as we head into a new year and the next administration, how, like unsinkable rubber ducks, vouchers continue to fail to deliver on their promises and continue to be rejected by voters, and yet, we find ourselves on the verge of a nationwide voucher and school choice program. The Privateers @ Harvard Education PressJosh Cowen @ BlueSkyThe Effect of Taxpayer-Funded Education Savings Accounts on Private School Tuition: Evidence from Iowa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are joined by Dr. Kapono Ciotti. Dr. Ciotti is the Executive Director of What School Could Be, an organization offering a whole host of things: free resources, a flourishing community, coaching services, graduate coursework, and more; plus WSCB is one of Human Restoration Project's partners. Prior to this work, Dr. Ciotti grew up in Honolulu, Hawai'i in a progressive, constructivist school and taught in the same area, then in Senegal, and then became a school leader in the United States and internationally. He's worked in over one hundred schools across four continents, including as national faculty for the National Association of Independent Schools in diversity, equity, and justice. Dr. Kapono Ciotti @ Solution TreeDr. Kapono Ciotti @ PrincipledLearningWhat School Could Be Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are joined by Dr. Pepper Stetler. Pepper's recently released book, A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother's Reckoning with the IQ Test documents her journey alongside her daughter, Louisa, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome. It dives into the history and ongoing problematic issues with measuring intelligence, specifically how school and society uphold and reinforce misused and misappropriated labels. Pepper's work on disability advocacy has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, and The Washington Post, and she's also an Art History professor at Miami University.Book: A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother's Reckoning with the IQ Test Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was not familiar at all with China's national college exam, the gaokao, until reading about it in Susan Blum's book, Schoolishness, and talking with her about it on a podcast episode we released in August – episode 152, you should check it out – and I'm incredibly grateful to Susan for making the connection with my guest today. Zachary Howlett is associate professor of Anthropology at the National University of Singapore, joining me from Singapore, and author of the book, Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Exam in China. I thought at first ah, sure, every country has its school gatekeepers and methods of rationing secondary & post-secondary education – the SAT & ACT in the US, or the GCSE's in the UK, for example – so how is this any different? But what I was not prepared for in Zachary's work was the sheer magnitude of the gaokao as a deeply Chinese cultural, economic, political, and even a magical and religious phenomenon that touches every aspect of life, and for which there really is no American equivalent. The blurb on the back of the book from Karrie Koesel captures it so well, “Zachary M Howlett opens the black box of the gaokao to reveal that it is not only a fateful rite of passage, but also a complex social phenomenon laid in with ritual, magic, dark horses, examination champions, latent, potential, luck, character building, social inequity, and the possibility of changing one's fate.”Meritocracy and its Discontents book link Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's not every day that you get an email from ACLU. If you aren't aware, since being co-founded in part by Hellen Keller in New York City in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union has been involved in dozens of major cases defending the fundamental civil rights of individuals and causes both popular and very much not so. In 1925, the ACLU represented high school science teacher, John Scopes, in what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. Nearly 30 years later they played a significant role in the Brown v Board decision overturning “separate but equal” education for Black and white students. So when they reached out wanting to do a podcast episode with us about the state of Title IX in 2024, I had to say yes. In the past we've done episodes about how classroom teachers can best support LGBTQ students in potentially hostile policy environments, but we are well overdue for a national look at the current rights under Title IX for LGBTQIA+ students, pregnant and parenting students, and for all students facing sex-based harassment and assault and the obligations schools have to protect them.Jennesa Calvo-Friedman is currently a staff attorney at the ACLU. Previously, she was the Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. Before joining the ACLU, Calvo-Friedman clerked for the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Ronnie Abrams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She was the Relman Civil Rights Fellow at the civil rights law firm Relman, Dane & Colfax. Calvo-Friedman received her B.A. from Swarthmore College, and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she graduated first in class, was a Public Interest Law Scholar and Executive Editor of the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy.US Dept of Education Title IX: https://www.ed.gov/titleixACLU Title IX Fact Sheet: https://www.aclu.org/documents/title-ix-fact-sheetGeneral Resources:https://nwlc.org/respect-students/https://www.equalrights.org/news/new-title-ix-rule-goes-into-effect-protecting-lgbtqi-other-students-but-not-in-all-states/Pregnant and Parenting Students:https://thepregnantscholar.org/titleix-updates-toolkit/https://www.abetterbalance.org/our-issues/students-rights-emerging-workforce/Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, and Gender Based Violence:https://www.publicjustice.net/what-we-do/gender-sexual-violence/https://www.advocatesforyouth.org/campaigns/know-your-ix/LGBTQIA+:https://www.glsen.org/title-ixhttps://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/lgbtq-rights#are-lgbtq-students-protected-from-discrimination-in-schoolshttps://legacy.lambdalegal.org/know-your-rights/article/youth-how-the-law-protects Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If education had a Hippocratic Oath - First, do no harm - grades and grading would be among the first practices on the chopping block. And in the conversation about grades and grading in school, there are any number of books and blogs educators can look to for figuring out how to de-grade, un-grade, Hack Assessment, and so on, to mitigate the harm grading causes. After all, as these books and blogs reveal, it's a system educators have a surprising amount of control over. But what about parents who see it weighing on their own kids and young people who feel the weight of the grading system themselves? How do we communicate the real consequences of grades and grading, especially on youth mental health, and the need for change to those on the outside looking in? And what can parents do to help kids who are navigating outmoded grading systems?“Supporting a child who is trying to navigate an educational system that privileges grades and achievement begins, simply, with compassion and love,” my guest today writes, “When children believe that their worth as human beings has nothing to do with the grades they receive, and when they know that the love of their family comes without conditions, they are better able to cope with the negative messages that grades can so often send.”Just one of many powerful lines from my guest, Joshua Eyler, who runs the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and is a clinical assistant professor of teacher education at the University of Mississippi. His latest book is absolutely full of insight for people trying to change the system, we're talking about Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do About It, currently available from Johns Hopkins University Press.Failing Our Future Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stop me if you've heard these before:American public schools are failing,American students are falling behind their global peers,The future of American innovation, economic equality, and global competitiveness depends on schools today preparing students for the job market of tomorrow,School reform is only tool we have to fix these urgent issuesEach of these sentiments have become conventional wisdom at this point, and they've appeared in the platforms of both major American political parties if not explicitly, then through familiar buzzwords: school choice, competition, data-driven accountability, college and career readiness, STEM education, and gaps of all kinds: the skills gap, the achievement gap, and the employment gap, to name a few. And when your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails… But it may also be the case, despite the flaws of public education throughout the nation's history, that American public schools became “failing schools” exactly when they needed to, to fit the needs of politicians and industry, and to fit schooling into the new economic order that came to dominate the last half century. At the global level, this narrative even fuels reactionary stories of civilizational struggle and the “decline of The West. As an Italian economist lamented for GIS Reports earlier this year, “There are only two ways Western educational systems can reverse the current trend and offer more appealing prospects: Allowing private schooling to flourish and Bringing about radical reforms in state schooling.”The most likely outcome, he predicts is a steady decline, writing, “the vicious spiral that links poor education to inequality, social tensions, more government intervention and, finally, low productivity and stuttering economic growth will likely dominate the future of many Western countries for years to come.”This last line captures what my guest today describes as The Fantasy Economy. Neil Kraus is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. His most recent book, The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement, describes in powerful detail how exactly our popular, bipartisan conventional wisdom about America's “failing schools” and the decline of of the American student came to be: as the result of a deliberate project to shift the responsibility for economic precarity and inequality away from industry and policy and place it squarely on the shoulders of educators and schools. “Ultimately,” he writes, “ we must see the fantasy economy for what it is—a misleading, political campaign in the interests of corporations and the wealthy.”The Fantasy Economy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A “solutionary” has multiple definitions, one of which reads, “A person who identifies inhumane, unjust, and/or unsustainable societal systems and then develops solutions to transform them so that they do the most good and least harm for people, animals, and the environment.”Today we are joined by Zoe Weil who has dedicated her work to creating, spreading the word, and teaching what it means to be a solutionary. She has written eight books including her most recent book we're talking about today, The Solutionary Way. She's delivered multiple TEDx talks and keynotes around the world on educating to solve the world's most pressing problems. And she's the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education, which has been making serious strides in implementing the Solutionary Framework in schools around the country as well as in their own graduate program.Links:Solutionary Public Policy Webinar with Caitie Whelan and Zoe WeilThe Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community, and the World for the Better by Zoe WeilThe Institute for Humane Education Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are joined by Angela Stockman. Angela is a veteran secondary English/Language Arts teacher, author, and professional learning facilitator. She has presented at state, national, and international levels and has led curriculum, assessment, and instructional design projects in over 100 school districts.She has written books and resources on writing instruction, including The Writing Workshop Teacher's Guide to Multimodal Composition, Creating Inclusive Writing Environments in the K-12 Classroom, and the recently released The Writing Teacher's Guide to Pedagogical Documentation: Rethinking How We Assess Learners and Learning, which we're talking about today.Links:The Writing Workshop Teacher's Guide to Multimodal CompositionAngela Stockman's website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many of you are already working to get your classrooms ready and will be welcoming students for the first day in the next couple of weeks, if you haven't already. It's a magical and stressful time of year, so we wanted to release Dr Carla Shalaby's 2024 Conference to Restore Humanity keynote as a “back to school” special podcast. Carla speaks so powerfully to her own practical experience of human-centered education and why we do what we do: moving away from control, surveillance, and punishment, towards a model based on collective care, inclusion, and restorative practice. We hope you find it a great way to center ways of thinking about classroom management that will help get the school year started off on the right foot and sustain community with students throughout the next several months. As Carla reminds us, "Being good at human being requires a ton of work and investment, and perhaps most of all, an intentional rejection of a culture of disposability, the idea that there's ever such a thing as a throwaway person." If you prefer video, that's up on our YouTube channel as well, just search for Human Restoration Project.Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an amazing school year! Let us know if you need anything.Link to YouTube video Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Dr. Susan Blum. Susan Blum is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of I Love Learning; I Hate School and My Word!, as well as the editor of Ungrading. Her new book, Schoolishness: Alienated Education, and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning is now out on Cornell University Press. It catalogs in great detail the characteristics of a “schoolish” education, that is, school as a self-contained institution with its own logic, grammar, and rules. One that, ultimately, sets students up for difficult re-entry into the rest of their lives in an unschoolish world. Susan draws upon examples of unschoolish learning from around the world and makes a powerful case for a necessary anthropological perspective that makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar.“If we don't try, nothing will change,” she writes, “It's hard. Hell, it's probably impossible. Schoolishness is probably here to stay, but maybe not all of its elements are inevitable. Entrenched, yes. But inevitable? I don't think so.”Editor's Note: Susan would like to add a quick correction that her current DuoLingo streak is over 1,100 not 11,000. :)Susan Blum's WebsiteWorks mentioned this episode:Susan Hrach - Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect LearningDavid Lancy - The Anthropology of ChildhoodEdwin Hutchins - Cognition in the Wild Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are joined by Nawal Qarooni. Nawal is an educator, writer, and adjunct professor based in Jersey City, who founded and operates NQC Literacy, a consultancy firm serving PreK-8 school leaders and teachers in holistic literacy instruction, equity-driven practice, and family engagement. She also serves on several committees, including the National Council for Teachers of English Committee Against Racism and Bias, evaluates manuscripts for Reese Witherspoon's LitUp program, and advises the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Advisory Board. Her recent book, Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care is a deep dive into how educators can celebrate and elevate students' families, while encouraging shared reflections and connections to what's happening in schools.We talk about building a collective culture of care that invites in families to build a better education system that supports all learners. We're combining the lens of progressive education lens of the classroom to the greater support structures that raise children toward a better future.NQC LiteracyNourishing Caregiver Collaborations Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care by Nawal Qarooni (Routledge) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practices the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster.”This is how Scottish historian & writer Thomas Carlyle characterized Great Britain's mechanized, steam powered industrial era in 1829. These changes in the human relationship to production rippled through the world economy with profound social, political, & environmental implications. One loosely organized group, the Luddites, emerged early on to smash the new machines and resist mechanization of the mills.200 years after Carlyle's “Age of Machinery”, we find ourselves sold a new Age, the Age of automation and AI, which promises another transformation in the way we live, work, AND learn, with similar social, political, and environmental consequences. At least, the AI-hype cycle is real. Sal Khan's new book, for example, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing) promises to be “required reading for everyone who cares about education.”But what should be the relationship of education, automation & artificial intelligence? Should there be one at all? How much power – not to mention student data – should educators cede to the new machine in the Age of AI? Or…should the answer be a 21st century Luddite revival and mass resistance to the vision of the future offered by Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft?That, I suspect, will be the argument of my guest today, Charles Logan, a Learning Sciences PhD Candidate at Northwestern University, writing earlier this year for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Ultimately, the Luddites' militancy and commitment to resistance might be a necessary entry point for how laborers—and teachers, students, and caregivers—can take an antagonistic stance toward AI and automation, and create a new ‘commons.'”Toward A Luddite PedagogyShould We Be More Like The Luddites?Inspiration from the Luddites: On Brian Merchant's “Blood in the Machine”Learning About and Against Generative AI Through Mapping Generative AI's Ecologies and Developing a Luddite PraxisRecord being placed on a record player.wav by HelterSkelter1114 -- https://freesound.org/s/409036/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0rope-making machinery running.wav by phonoflora -- https://freesound.org/s/201166/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story my guest will tell today is of her experience growing up and teaching in Memphis, Tennessee before finding a purpose-driven career change in - I am not joking - the heart of Transylvania. Emma Sisson is the School Director of The Mission School in Sighisoara, Romania. The work of The Mission, Romania is deeply rooted in the local community in Sighisoara and, as you'll hear Emma describe it, homebase is an 80,000 sq ft abandoned Soviet textile mill where staff live, work, house a K-3 school, and provide family wrap-around services to Romani children and families. Romani, or Roma, are a historically enslaved and oppressed underclass in Europe, in Romania in particular, where they are often slandered as a lazy, thieving, “gypsy” underclass. In 2022 the European Union reported that 80% of Roma live in poverty, compared to the 17% EU average. 1 in 5 live in households with no running water. 1 in 3 have no indoor toilet. And fewer than half of Roma children attend early childhood education. The scathing report prompted the EU director of Fundamental Human Rights to ask, “Why do Roma across Europe still face shocking levels of deprivation, marginalization, and discrimination?” Overcoming structural discrimination and prejudice against Roma people is a key part of The Mission's mission. The Mission School also works to preserve Roma values and language in the context of education, expressed as a preference for family apprenticeships, experiential hands-on learning, and a rich oral tradition, that have historically put them at odds with the priorities of institutional school-based literacies.On the other side of the Atlantic, The Mission international is currently recovering from a devastating fire that destroyed their entire campus headquarters in Tijuana, Mexico that served over 500 at-risk youth, so if you'd like to learn more and donate to help support Emma's work in Romania and rebuild the Tijuana campus, you can do that at themissioninc - that's the mission eye-enn-see - dot org https://www.themissioninc.org/ You can reach Emma @ emma.barbara.sisson@gmail.comAmazon Book WishlistAmazon Supplies Wishlist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Anna Saavedra and Morgan Polikoff explore the polarizing landscape of modern education found in their February 2024 report, "Searching for Common Ground.” The report reveals widespread support for public schools alongside significant partisan divides, particularly on topics like LGBTQ identities and racial inequality. From bipartisan consensus on some issues to stark disparities on others, this discussion highlights the complexities of education policymaking and the need for informed dialogue to navigate contentious topics and shape a more equitable future for education.Links:How Americans really feel about the teaching of controversial topics in schools @ USC TodayRead the full report online. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us as we delve into the historical and current relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, focusing on the island's education system and its role in shaping Puerto Rico's future. Professor Jenaro Abraham shares his expertise on social movements, politics, and education in the Caribbean, offering key insights into Puerto Rico's quest for self-determination. From the legacy of colonialism to the prospects of statehood versus independence, this conversation explores the complexities of Puerto Rico's identity and its educational landscape. Additional Resources: Jenaro Abraham @ GonazagaPuerto Rico in the American Century, By César J. Ayala, Rafael BernabeCentroPRPedagogy of the Hawaiian Islands podcast series Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Let's start with the bad news.” is how the conclusion to my guests' book about changing grading practice begins. “No one is coming to save us. No consultant is going to sweep through and fix things for a fee. No new technology, digital, online, or otherwise, is going to change the game.” The game, of course, is school, and the currency of that game is grades.Jack Schneider is Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at the UMass - Amherst. He is the Executive Director of the Beyond Test Scores Project. Director of the Center for Education Policy. Co-Editor of the History of Education Quarterly, and Co-Host of the Have You Heard Podcast.Ethan Hutt is the Gary Stuck Faculty Scholar in Education and associate professor at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Education.Their 2023 book, Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don't Have To), is a thorough, and at times frustratingly pragmatic, exploration of flawed necessity of the load bearing pillars of “real school” – grades, transcripts, and standardized tests – their origins in our nation's history, the distorting effects they tend to have on the outcomes and goals of education, why nothing has arisen so far to replace them at scale, and why there are no magic potions: “No one is going to wake up one morning and realize that the answer was staring us in the face all along,” they remind us.Balancing the real with the ideal, they also chart a path toward the possibility for something different, and like the grand experiment of public schooling itself, it's something we'll have to figure out and build together.Off The MarkJack SchneiderEthan Hutt Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we talk with Rethinking Schools first-ever Executive Director, Cierra Kaler-Jones, about the past, present, and future of Rethinking Schools, especially as we enter another potentially contentious year of educational culture wars for 2024, and her vision for how educators can demand power for those who need it the most within our school system. Links:Rethinking Schools Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are joined by Dr. Emma McMain. Emma works in the College of Education at Washington State University as a postdoctoral teacher and researcher, focusing on assessment for pre-service elementary teachers, cultural considerations in education, and social and emotional learning (SEL). Her work aims to promote social and ecological justice, seeing education as an important site of social transformation. Dr McMain's recent works include: Drawing the line: Teachers affectively and discursively question what counts as “appropriate behavior” in schools — which dissects the power dynamics of classrooms in determining what is “appropriate” behavior; and The “Problem Tree” of SEL: A Sociopolitical Literature Review — which contextualizes what social-emotional learning actually means in a classroom setting from a variety of perspectives and in history. Particularly, we wanted to reach out and talk more about the idea of SEL as systemic change versus SEL as an add-on, and why this matters as we think about racism, sexism, neoliberalism, and more, especially in the context of SEL in the ongoing culture war and attacks on schools.More about Dr Emma McMainDrawing the line: Teachers affectively and discursively question what counts as “appropriate behavior” in schools Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reimagining education is no small feat, but there is hope on the horizon. MINDFOOD, easily digestible content for education. In this series, we'll do the random fun stuff: top 10 lists, current events, things we're thinking about. This is a casual format with limited editing and not as many intense conversations that occur in our mainline HRP interviews. Let us know what you think.Learn more about our free resources, podcast, writings, and more at https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/Human Restoration Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit centered on enabling human-centered schools through progressive pedagogy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this incredible final installment of his exploration of the pedagogy of the Hawaiian Islands, Noah Ranz-Lind talks to educators and students at Hanahau‘oli School, a progressive K-6 school in Honolulu. Hanahau‘oli School promises its students an "intimate and nurturing learning community supports connections between home and school and the world, respecting and celebrating the uniqueness of the Hanahau‘oli child while appreciating the interconnectedness that defines our learning ‘ohana. Grounded in tradition yet embracing of innovation, we perpetuate joyous work, committed to being a resource and symbol of learning's potential." And you will hear ample evidence of the joyous work at hand in this episode! Links:Hanahau‘oli School Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris sits down with Congressman Jamaal Bowman! serving New York's 16th district since 2021. Bowman was a crisis management teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx, who eventually founded his own public school, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a middle school in Eastchester. For years he maintained a blog on changing school policy and standardized testing, with a focus on being deeply involved in the opt-out movement to encourage families to not take the tests, as well as centering pedagogy on social emotional health and restorative justice.Congressman Bowman's team reached out to Human Restoration Project to talk about the More Teaching, Less Testing Act (linked below). The policy lessens the number of tests given each year in schools, limiting the number of tests all students take and finding other ways to gather data, such as through a smaller but representative sample size. Please note that Human Restoration Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and that this interview is not an endorsement of Bowman or his electoral campaign.More Teaching, Less Testing Act: https://bowman.house.gov/_cache/files/8/9/89180377-ee4a-4906-b170-f4ee28d3602e/0D579FD78ABAA89748EA157D3F31CAB1.more-teaching-less-testing-act-bill-summary.pdfA video of this conversation in available on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/y9Aw4EsH_yc Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's podcast we're joined by two founders of Ludic Language Pedagogy or LLP. LLP is an open access academic journal and community focused on publishing actionable ideas on “ludic”, or playful, ideas, and language learning, such as through tabletop RPGs, live action role playing, card games, and video games. For example, recently published papers include “Teaching Spanish with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” and “Places, people, practices, and play: Animal Crossing New Horizons here and there.”James and Jonathan are currently writing a book on ludic pedagogy, and they led a session at our recent Conference to Restore Humanity! on ludic teaching that is definitely worth checking out. This conversation centers the distinction of gamification from game-based learning: what's the difference? Why does it matter? How does it apply to teaching and learning?GuestsDr. James York is the editor in chief of LLP and a senior assistant professor at Meiji University, where he teaches and conducts research on the application of games, play and literacy. Dr. Jonathan deHaan is an associate editor and associate professor in the Faculty of International Relations at the University of Shizuoka, who focuses on teaching literacy with games.ResourcesLudic Language PedagogyLLP @ Conference to Restore HumanityPac Manhattan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aloha and welcome to episode 2 in a three part series on Pedagogy in the Hawaiian Islands. My name is Noah Ranz-Lind, and I am a student from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst interning here at the Human Restoration Project.In this episode, we delve into the research of Dr. Stacy Potes and her place-based pedagogical framework for Hawaiian youth. Stacy Potes, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Education in Secondary Mathematics. Dr. Potes currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher preparation, including Secondary Mathematics Methods and Multicultural Education. Previously, she worked as a Mathematics Lecturer at the University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu for five years and as a secondary mathematics teacher for thirteen years in the Department of Education. She focuses on contextualizing mathematics education by incorporating mathematics, culture, and sustainability. Her research is rooted in Hawaiʻi and influenced the development of a framework that includes place-conscious pedagogy, culturally responsive pedagogy, and critical ethnomathematics pedagogy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What you just heard were public comments from three community members of Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, at the center of a controversial state takeover by the Texas Education Agency. The bell you hear in the audio is a hard cut-off for speakers, whose mics were immediately turned off. After working its way through the legal system for several years, last winter, the Texas Supreme Court greenlit the replacement of district superintendent and the locally elected board of trustees by the head of the TEA, appointed directly by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, himself. And last month, school was back in session under the newly appointed superintendent, Mike Miles - former US State Department ambassador, charter school CEO, and Dallas ISD superintendent - amid dozens of pedagogical and policy changes that left teachers, parents, and students confused, frustrated, and afraid, as heard in the public comment at the beginning of this episode.The takeover of Houston ISD sits at the intersection of so many issues impacting American education today - democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism, the so-called parents' rights movement, testing & accountability measures, poverty, race, and charter schools. On Friday, September 15th, the morning after another heated board meeting in Houston, I spoke with Karina Quesada-Leon, an Houston ISD parent, activist, and former teacher who has been intensely involved in HISD for a decade, and she was generous to speak with me for an hour about the recent history of the majority Hispanic/Latino district, the impact of the takeover on teachers, families, & students, and how they are experiencing the New Educational System of Superintendent Mike Miles, and what's next for the movement opposed to these reactionary changes.We are generally not a current-events podcast, but because this is a fast-moving story, we wanted to release it to listeners as soon and as lightly edited as possible. You can also find an overview of the story on our YouTube channel by searching Human Restoration Project. We hope to follow up with Karina and other affected teachers, parents, and students at Houston ISD. If you'd like to reach out to me directly, you can do so by emailing nick@humanrestorationproject.org. And of course you can always find more of our work and support us @ humanrestorationproject.orgVideo: The Houston ISD Takeover Punishes Poverty & Subverts DemocracyTwitter: Houston Education AssociationTwitter: Karina Quesada-Leon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the first of a three-part series on Pedagogy in the Hawai'ian Islands, where we explore history, philosophy, and progressive developments in Hawai'ian Pedagogy. My name is Noah Ranz-Lind, and I am a student at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, interning at the Human Restoration Project.In this episode, we delve into the history of education in the Hawai'ian Kingdom, the impact of occupation and colonialism, and the link between Hawai'ian sovereignty and pedagogical practice here in Hawai'i. Today I'm joined by Dr. Keanu Sai. Dr. Sai is a political scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Hawai‘i Windward Community College, Political Science and Hawai'ian Studies Departments, and affiliate graduate faculty member at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa College of Education. He also served as Agent for the Hawai'ian Kingdom at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands, in Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom. His research focuses on the continued existence of the Hawai'ian Kingdom as a State under international law that has been under military occupation by the United States of America since January 17, 1893. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This keynote address was part of Conference to Restore Humanity! 2023: Breaking the Doom-Loop, sponsored by Holistic Think Tank, Cortico & Local Voices Network, Antioch University, Education Evolving & Teacher-Powered Schools, and Unrulr. You can also find a video of the keynote and community Q&A on our YouTube page by searching for Human Restoration Project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we're joined by Drs. Tanu Biswas and Toby Rollo. Tanu is an interdisciplinary philosopher of education, focused on challenging children's historical marginalization. She serves as an advisory board member of The Childism Institute at Rutgers, and is an associate professor of pedagogy at the University of Stavanger and an associate researcher at the Doctoral College for Intersectionality Studies at the University of Bayreuth.Toby is an associate professor of political science at Lakehead University, whose focus is on the democratic promises and failures of modern institutions with a specific focus on the marginalization of young people. His chapter in the recent work, Trust Kids!: Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy, edited by carla bergman, focuses on centering the child in our ongoing intergenerational fight for peace, justice, and sustainability in our world.In our discussion, we'll be talking about the connections between colonization, historical marginalization, youth rights, and adultism.GuestsDrs. Tanu Biswas & Toby RolloResourcesLet's Abolish Adult Supremacy! PosterNO! Against Adult SupremacyDecolonial Childism - Nurturing Diversity for Intergenerational SustainabilityChildism and Decoloniality - a need for scholarly conversationsChildism and Decoloniality (Video) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This keynote address was part of Conference to Restore Humanity! 2023: Breaking the Doom-Loop, sponsored by Holistic Think Tank, Cortico & Local Voices Network, Antioch University, Education Evolving & Teacher-Powered Schools, and Unrulr. You can also find a video of the keynote and community Q&A on our YouTube page by searching for Human Restoration Project.Dr. Darder is an internationally recognized activist-scholar and Professor Emerita at Loyola Marymount University, where for more than a decade she held the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair of Ethics and Moral Leadership.She is an American Educational Research Association Fellow, the recipient of the American Educational Research Association Scholars of Color Lifetime Contribution Award, and an award-winning author and editor of more than 20 books in the field.GuestsDr Antonia Darder is an internationally recognized activist-scholar and professor. For nearly 40 years, Antonia has worked tirelessly to counter social and material inequalities in schools and society.ResourcesConference to Restore HumanityAntonia Darder's Website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we wanted to provide a brief update on major upcoming projects at Human Restoration Project. Within we'll talk about:Ongoing work of the Human-Centered Schools Network (apologies for the audio quality...we are at a "beach house" in Michigan...)Our upcoming conference in 2 weeks! (July 24-27)Upcoming announcements and podcastsThank you for tuning in! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we're joined by Aaron Schorn, Head of Growth and Community at Unrulr. Aaron is an experienced educator who runs an afterschool social entrepreneurship program for young people. And recently, he introduced Unrulr to us at HRP — in short, it's one of the only edtech tools we've ever recommended, and it's one of the few edtech tools we'd be comfortable sharing on our podcast.In short, Unrulr is a storytelling tool to showcase learning. It allows young people and educators to take photos or videos of what they're doing, tag it according to a value, standard, or objective, then share it online privately or publicly. And what really stood out to me was that students can document their journey overtime, creating posts where they group together these moments and showcase a timeline of learning. We see this as a fantastic tool to document learning, share to families and community members, and act as a way to move away from one-and-done grades and toward narrative assessment.GuestsAaron Schorn, Head of Growth and Community at Unrulr and Director of the Nalukai Startup Camp, a social entrepreneurship program for young people based in HawaiiResourcesUnrulr's WebsiteEmpathy "Journey"And provided by teacher Gary Heidt (who shout-out...introduced us to Unrulr!)Student "Journey"Student "Moment" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we're joined by Meredith Broussard. Meredith is a data journalist whose research and reporting centers on ethical AI and data analysis for the social good. She's an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. And she's an author, including writing Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World and the recently released More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech.We invited Meredith on to specifically talk about the intersection of the recent rapid growth of consumer-focused generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, DALL-E, etc. as well as their integrations into commonly used education tools like Microsoft Office and soon, Google Documents. And I know that many educators are already worried about the implications of AI in classrooms…but it's going to be quite jarring when Google Docs has a built-in AI text prompt. In our view, we'll need to find ways to talk about AI and technology more broadly with students, guiding them in the use of these platforms and problematizing them — as opposed to just banning them outright.GuestsDr. Meredith Broussard, associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World and the recently released More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in TechResourcesMeredith Broussard's websiteMore than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech by Dr. Meredith Broussard (MIT Press, 2023)AI Stereotypes and Critical Reflections: Who's Being Generated? - YouTube Guide/Lesson by Human Restoration Project Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's podcast, we're joined by Dave Runge, co-founder and director of Future Schools. Future Schools is an Australian-based innovative schools organization, centered on exploring what's possible in schools by connecting together like-minds across over 100 school partners. Both in and outside of Australia, Future Schools helps educator teams explore what's possible, evolve their practices, and transform their spaces.Dave focuses his work on change leadership, recognizing that we need to focus on systemic change to achieve lasting results. And in today's conversation, we'll talk about that change-making process -- why so many spaces feel "stuck" and what we can do to help them branch out.GuestsDave Runge, co-founder and director of Future Schools who works with over a hundred schools across Australia and internationally to build new systems and reimagine education.ResourcesFuture Schools' WebsitePressure from Above, Pressure from Below research studyConference to Restore Humanity! 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the late 2000s, the concept of “solarpunk” emerged. In 2022, YouTube channel Our Changing Climate with, my guest today, Andrewism published a video titled “How We Can Build a Solarpunk Future Right Now”, in which they make that the case that "Ultimately Solarpunk envisions a world that might be slower, but more intentional. One that ties humanity closely to the natural world.” Or as Andrewism put in a reply to the video: "A future with a human face and dirt behind its ears."But if solarpunk is the future with humanity put back in, achieving it means taking control of that future from economic, social, & political forces that seem to be on autopilot to self-destruction, utterly divorced from human desires & human intervention. One path we've imagined already, and its grimy survivalist individualism was the defining feature of Reagan-era science fiction classics. However, in its radical reimagination of economic & social structures, solarpunk resists the nihilism & doomerism of the grim dehumanized technological dystopias that dominate the worlds of, say, Blade Runner, Robocop, & William Gibson's Neuromancer. Do we have the willingness to challenge the predominant social, economic, & political structures & systems that need to be challenged? To change the very nature of humanity's relationship to the planet? What role does education play in all of this? GuestsAndrew goes by Andrewism on his YouTube channel. His 66 videos, covering topics from education, liberation, and history, to family, parenting, and of course, solarpunk - have nearly 3 million combined views. Young people from around the world are watching & learning from him and participating in the community he has cultivated around his channel.ResourcesAndrewism's YouTube channelFighting Back Against the Future: Imagining a Solarpunk EducationConference to Restore Humanity! 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gamification is a long-standing practice across lesson planning and educational technology, but it doesn't always work out the way we expect. At the end of the day, if the nature of the task is not interesting, then what we're creating is more about compliance than engagement. In this session, we will host a conversation on what it means to gamify content, learning, and pedagogy: recognizing potential success while advising for potential pitfalls.This episode is a panel discussion we had with game designer & author, Adrian Hon, on the pros and pitfalls of “gamification” as part of our EduFuturism Learning Series. You can find all of the previous events including Innovative AI Tools for the Classroom…and their Dilemmas and Learning From Video Game Tutorials, as well as register for upcoming events in the series @ humanrestorationproject.org/learning. You can also find this video and others on our YouTube channel by searching for Human Restoration Project. GuestsAdrian Hon is an award-winning video game designer and is the CEO and founder of Six to Start, co-creator of the world's most successful smartphone fitness game, Zombies, Run! He previously was the director of play, creating alternative reality games, at Mind Candy.ResourcesWatch on YouTubeYou've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us AllAdrian Hon on TwitterConference to Restore Humanity! 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This conversation is nearly a year in the making, from the first messages with my guest back in 2022 - which also happened to be the last of my 9 years teaching AP European History. That year there were over 4.7 million AP Exams taken by 2.6 million students from 23,000 secondary schools. At about $100 per exam…well, you don't need to get a 5 on the AP Calc exam to finish that equation. And…here we are again, another high-stakes time of the academic year for yet millions more high schoolers seeking college credit from the College Board. From AP to SAT, the College Board is a billion dollar educational gatekeeper that plays an outsized role in American education in policy and practice, K12 and beyond. In fact, as my guest today outlines in her book, many states have passed laws requiring the College Board play exactly that role: mandating that schools offer a minimum number of AP courses (that require AP trained teachers), offering cash incentives for student test scores, & dictating to universities what scores they will be required to accept for which credits.Even more recent partisan challenges to curriculum, like the rejection of AP African-American History by the Florida Dept of Education, should also cause us to reflect on the homogenizing and controlling influence of what has become a de facto national curriculum, AND the metrics we use to evaluate success, AND the ways we assess & award credit, AND the philosophies & pedagogies we use in classrooms with students. Somewhere in the recent past, figure & ground inverted, and we not only lost track of what was important - the best intentions of what courses like these could represent - but along the way we ceded a lot of power to a single company and a single brand - Advanced Placement - to determine our educational goals, values, & practices from the top down.GuestsAnnie Abrams holds a doctorate in American literature from NYU and is currently on childcare leave from her job as a public high school English teacher. She writes in the introduction to her brand new book Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students..ResourcesShortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students from Johns Hopkins University PressAnnie Abrams Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I learned so much about viewing the world, especially mass media, through a critical eye this year. I learned about what traps we fall into while viewing media and how we can prevent that. I also learned about good vs. questionable journalism tactics and how this can affect how accurate a news source is.”My guest today, Sam Shain, is a musician, artist, writer, former journalist and current English teacher in Maine. That opening quote was just one student review of Sam's journalism class from his book Education Revolution: Media Literacy for Political Awareness, available from Zer0 Books. Teaching in the United States has never been more fraught, as teachers across the country are implicitly or explicitly forced to avoid certain topics, texts, and questions that have been labeled divisive, controversial, or - worse yet - political. Of course, these topics also tend to be the most immediate & important, and are accompanied by intense mis- & disinformation - the reality of climate change, systemic racism, COVID-19, and the outcomes of our electoral system, to take some examples from just the last couple of years - all of this seems particularly heightened with the new ability of AI to generate audio, video, and images to spread politically motivated narratives easier than ever before via social media, and a receptive population willing not only to accept them but to participate in spreading mis- & disinformation. As the student testimonial I read earlier testifies to, the gap has never been wider between our vital need to teach critical media literacy and our ability. To do. Just that. GuestsSam Shain is a former journalist and English teacher. He believes education is the way out of our country's current predicament and teachers and students can lead the revolution in turning this country around. Sam wrote for the Capital Weekly for several years and occasionally contributes to the Kennebec Journal.In addition to teaching and writing, Sam sings and plays guitar in the band the Scolded Dogs, who play frequently throughout Maine and have released several original albums. Sam lives in Hallowell, Maine.Resources"Not Rehired for Teaching Politics": One Teacher's StoryEducation Revolution from Zer0 Books Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It only takes a few seconds on Hanaa Elmi's Twitter timeline for even the most oblivious observer like myself to know that what she is doing is magical. One post from February details several images of student contributions from reflections on Stone Soup and other related readings - child's handwriting draws your eye to the center of each poster - We take care of each other by…We take care of water by…We take care of the Earth by… - student drawings and reflections surrounding those prompts create the shared understanding - Hanaa also captures “Our Ideas” in the margins - have a spirit of ubuntu (I am because we are), she writes, Be like the Water Walkers, Love water!Another series of images shows her young students exploring questions like “What's the heart of the story? What do you think the author wants us to know in our minds & hearts as a reader?”, one student reply reads “Ms. I think the heart of the story is that anger is okay and normal. We just have to breathe.” Hanaa prompts students to explore the differences & similarities between justice & charity. She quotes from one of the dozens of books her students use, “What are words really? Are they just random letters arranged in different ways? Or do they have magical powers that can inspire and amaze?” A student uses a number string to double 40. Students with clipboards find and sort animals on a number line by their height. They write, draw, & reflect in dream journals. I could go on and on and on… In every post, it's so obvious that students are deeply engaged & invested in the world & with each other. Community, love, joy, and learning are self-evident in the work she does with kids.GuestsHanaa Elmi is an elementary teacher in Windsor-Essex County. She is a graduate of the University of Windsor who roots her work in community: creating thriving spaces that humanize students. She is passionate about creating spaces where students deeply connect with the world around them in just, restorative, and conscientious ways.ResourcesMiss Elmi's Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a brief HRP update with me, Nick Covington, Creative Director here at Human Restoration Project!As you may have hear, Chris & I are coming off a whirlwind of a week in Columbus, Ohio, where we hosted a team from our Poland-based partners at Holistic Think Tank, Polish teacher representatives from the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, and a rockstar group of American teachers that included a team from our friends in Muskegon, Michigan (be on the lookout for more involvement from them in the future), as well as Trevor Aleo, and Jen Lucas; on the campus of The Ohio State University. The keynote of the conference was from none other than former Finnish minister of education & the author of Finnish lessons, Pasi Sahlberg, speaking not only to the need for systemic change, but the right kind of systemic change: rooted in cooperation, customized curriculum, holistic teaching and learning, trust-based professionalism, and where every school is a good school. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reimagining education is no small feat, but there is hope on the horizon. MINDFOOD, easily digestible content for education. In this series, we'll do the random fun stuff: top 10 lists, current events, things we're thinking about. This is a casual format with limited editing and not as many intense conversations that occur in our mainline HRP interviews. Let us know what you think.Learn more about our free resources, podcast, writings, and more at https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/Human Restoration Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit centered on enabling human-centered schools through progressive pedagogy.Learn more about Holistic Think Tank at https://www.holisticthinktank.com & sign up for the HTT Summit in Columbus, OH on March 4th at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/htt-summit-2023-interdisciplinary-school-subject-ids-tickets-533961311657See you there! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Because it is so well researched and presented, Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education, is a frustrating read. To tell the story of privatization, segregation, & the end of public education requires a massive cast. In her book Dr. Noliwe Rooks, my guest today, runs a precise thread from Reconstruction, Nelson Rockefeller, & Brown v Board through to Milton Friedman, every president in my lifetime, Teach for America, KIPP charter schools, Mark Zuckerberg, & more. Segrenomics has the kind of power that will be viewed with suspicion in states most impacted by it which are cracking down on theoretical frameworks that attempt to provide structural, systemic explanations. An interdisciplinary scholar, Noliwe Rooks' is the chair of and a professor in Africana Studies at Brown University and the founding director of the Segrenomics Lab at the school. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. She works on the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion and adornment; race, capitalism and education, and the urban politics of food and cannabis production.GuestsDr. Noliwe Rooks is a professor and chair of Africana Studies at Brown University and the founding director of the Segrenomics Lab. Her research focuses on the interplay between race, gender, popular culture, social history and political life in the US. She is the author of four books and numerous articles, essays and op-eds. Her most recent book is Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.ResourcesCutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education by Dr. Noliwe RooksDr. Noliwe Rooks @ Brown UniversityDr. Noliwe Rooks' website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.