Education Evolution

Social justice is a big topic of conversation across the globe. But how do we teach our children about social justice? It’s not something that we should teach once like so many schools do with programs like Character Counts. Social engagement is something that schools need to live and breathe every day, immersing students in activism that makes a difference. And it should also carry over into the home.

That’s why the conversation I had with Traci Baxley of Social Justice Parenting is so timely and so important. Traci has a diverse background, with more than 30 years of experience in pre-K through college and our conversation focused around why social justice is so important–and how to integrate it into our schools and homes.

So much of what we talked about focused on kindness and conversation, which I believe we can all aspire to do better at.

About Traci Baxley
Traci is driven by compassion, social justice, and radical love–for all children. She wears many hats in the social justice field, including as a university professor, life coach, speaker, and educator. Traci has worked with families, organizations, and corporations in developing inclusive practices that lead to meaningful relationships, a sense of belonging, and high productivity. She has co-authored two books on areas of belonging and cultural identity, authored numerous publications, and presented research at conferences nationwide. She is also mother to five biracial children and is dedicated to ensuring they know, love, and embrace their blackness.

Jump Through the Conversation

[1:38] What is Social Justice Parenting?
[3:55] Using the R-O-C-K-S Model in homes, schools…everywhere!
[9:15] What social engagement can look like in schools more holistically
[11:20] What activism looks like for teachers
[11:59] Traci’s thoughts on equality and changing policies
[13:56] Traci’s Magic Wand: We need to see one another and accept everyone’s lived experiences at truth for them.
[14:33] What radical love looks like

For complete show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/14

Education Evolution
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Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/14-raising-our-youth-as-activists-for-social-justice-with-traci-baxley

We know children learn better when they’re involved in both the learning process and in making decisions about what and how to learn. That’s one of the things that makes place-based learning so powerful: that students can immerse themselves in the local economy, the culture and the outdoors to learn anytime and anywhere.

Today’s conversation with Teton Science Schools’ Nate McClennen explores the importance of place-based learning and how to keep students involved and engaged as they discover they can truly make a difference in the world.

We also talk about equity, something that is on a lot of educators’ minds right now–and needs to remain there. Tune in to this important and valuable conversation about real learning and assessment, using learning standards in competency-based learning and how to keep our teenagers engaged in their own education.

About Nate McClennen
Nate McClennen is the Head of Innovation at Teton Science Schools (TSS) in Jackson, Wyoming. His work focuses on how to scale the impact of place-based education through technology, innovation, design learning, rural education, and school networks. He was part of the founding faculty at Journeys School from 2001-2006 and was Head of Journeys School from 2006 – 2015. Since 1993, he has taught science, technology, robotics, and math at the secondary and university level. He serves as an adjunct faculty of the Teacher Learning Center at Teton Science Schools, implementing teacher-workshops nationally and internationally. As the director of the Place Network initiative, Nate is supporting the launch of a national network of rural place-based K-12 schools.

Jump Through the Conversation

[1:16] What is place-based education
[2:16] More about Teton
[3:08] Learning is “anytime/anywhere” sinkhole example
[6:39] Agency, community, and equity drive Place-Based Learning
[9:56] Community: Every learner belongs and feels a part of the community
[10:33] Equity: Every student deserves to experience incredible learning in their K-12 experience
[12:45] Authentic assessment beyond the written and talked curriculum to what is truly learned
[16:35] How to measure competencies, outside of your typical stand-alone assessment
[ 22:50] Why don’t we give credit for mastering competencies–even if it is on the soccer field?
[24:07] Nate’s Magic Wand: Eliminate artificial constraints we’ve created in the traditional education model. Shifting engagement of students leaving high school from 20-30% to 70-100% so our students graduate feeling like their learning was relevant, they had a voice, and they can make a difference
[26:15] The positive impact COVID has had on our schools
[29:00] Maureen’s takeaways
[29:47] Sticky learning (teachable moments)

For complete show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/13

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/13-using-place-to-engage-in-competency-based-learning-with-nate-mcclennen

When schools moved from in-person to virtual at the drop of a hat in the spring of 2020, many schools and educators panicked. Too many lacked the tech-savvy or, frankly, the creativity to find ways to keep rambunctious students engaged through Zoom.

The problem? Teachers were trying to teach as they always did–and even those practices made it challenging to keep kids engaged.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that students want to have a say in what they’re learning and how. Classrooms across the globe are teacher-led, rather than being student-centered. And because of this, students shut down amid COVID-19 and distance learning.

Today on the Education Evolution podcast, I’m talking with Meg Ormiston about what a more student-driven classroom looks like and how any type of school or classroom can use micro-teams to keep engagement up and students learning. Even when nothing else in their lives looks the same right now.

About Meg
Meg Ormiston, in her role as a consultant, partners with school systems that have committed to 21st-century learning experiences for everyone. Meg creates a unique partnership in each district, reflecting the mission, vision, and direction that local leaders identify. Her district-wide projects include guiding teams through the visioning process, designing and delivering professional development, facilitating classroom modeling, developing student leaders in technology, and educating parents.

Meg is the lead author in the NOW Classrooms series of five books all published in 2018. The books, written by 27 practicing educators, are organized into grade bands of k-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and leadership guide. The NOW Classrooms: Lessons for Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Technology books are practical and sequence technology skills k-12. The 3-5 NOW book was awarded a Teachers Choice Award by Learning Magazine. Also, Meg was named as one of “2018’s Most Influential People in EdTech” by Tech and Learning Magazine.

After twelve years of teaching and coaching in the classroom, Meg volunteers on her local school board, facilitates grant projects, and continues researching and writing about best practices.

To learn more about Meg’s work, follow @megormi on Twitter.

Jump Through the Conversation

[1:45] What is a NOW classroom?
[2:30] Elements of the NOW classroom
[3:52] How micro-teams work
[5:45] The power of having students lead micro-teams
[10:03] How students become leaders with micro-teams
[12:45] How a fifth-grade classroom became a service organization and supported a school of 900
[15:54] It IS possible to shift a school for the benefit of students
[20:23] Meg’s magic wand: I wish everyone had kept up and known all the great educational technology tools before [COVID] happened. You chose to not come to the different sessions and…a lot of teachers were not prepared. So students were not engaged.
[23:22] “The Arrow” continuum from teacher-driven to student-directed learning
[24:48] Top 10 Toolkit of educational technology for teacher
For complete show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/12

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/12-micro-teams-enhancing-student-agency-and-learning-with-meg-ormiston

In education, we spend a lot of time educating our youth but maybe not as much time as we should be getting them ready for the workforce. Today on the Education Evolution podcast, I’m talking with Dr. Leigh Anne Taylor Knight, the executive director of the DeBruce Foundation. Her organization helps teens and young adults take what they’re good at and what they love to do and discover ways to translate this knowledge into goals and plans for future employment.

It’s fascinating to think about how increased awareness can grow more informed career decision-makers and I love the idea of giving youth this knowledge early on. You’ll also hear us talk about how the DeBruce Foundation is responding to COVID and enabling interns to continue learning and growing–remotely.

About Leigh Anne Taylor Knight
Dr. Leigh Anne Taylor Knight is a resourceful, innovative leader who currently serves The DeBruce Foundation in Kansas City as Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. The Foundation’s mission is to expand pathways to economic growth and opportunity. It seeks to help people discover what they want to do, and what they’re good at doing, to open more career possibilities.

Having served as a K-12 educator, Leigh Anne established a career dedicated to improving how individuals understand themselves and view opportunities to advance in the world of work. She is driven to lead the leveraging of resources across sectors for innovative learning, rigorous research, and community collaboration in order to improve economic development and the quality of life. A teacher at heart, Leigh Anne has also served as a K-12 assistant superintendent, advised learning institutions across the nation, and led a bi-state consortium providing powerful tools for data-driven educational research to inform practice and policy.

After graduating from University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design and Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Secondary Education, Leigh Anne earned her Education Specialist’s degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and her doctorate from the University of Kansas in Education Policy and Leadership.

Jump Through the Conversation
[1:30] DeBruce Foundation’s mission: expanding pathways to economic growth and opportunity
[1:49] Agilities: Discovering them and finding how those are used in careers
[4:08] What agilities success looks like
[6:09] DeBruce foundation’s connection to the community
[6:36] DeBruce virtual internships–condition of covid to innovate
[9:25] Workforce readiness
[12:44] Be more informed career decision-makers with the agility advantage approach
[16:44] Leigh Anne’s Magic Wand:
Knowing their agilities and having the opportunities to grow
Organizations invite youth and embed them into the processes of the company

For show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/11

Education Evolution
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Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/11-aligning-kids-futures-with-agilities-testing-with-dr-leigh-anne-taylor-knight

It’s so much easier to motivate kids when you, the educator, have choices and the flexibility to teach to the students rather than the test. And when you can craft learning experiences around student passions. But in a traditional school setting, this is a much more difficult endeavor.

Though this week’s guest on the Education Evolution podcast was the founder and director of the micro-school Puget Sound Community School for 24 years. Andy Smallman is passionate about ensuring that all children have the opportunity to learn. There he was able to empower teachers and students alike and allow his students to grow to love learning.

Find out more about how Andy was able to facilitate learner-centered learning, where his efforts to promote kindness came from, and how teachers can truly engage students with one simple action every day.

About Andy Smallman
Andy Smallman is the visionary and founding director of the Puget Sound Community School, an independent school in Seattle for students in grades 6-12 that helps them build on their strengths and nurtures their intrinsic motivation. Along with the mentoring work he’s done over the years with adolescents, Andy is known for his efforts to promote kindness, has been the officiant at numerous weddings, has facilitated evening & weekend workshops for adults, and is regularly sought out for counsel. In everything he does, Andy helps people see the awe both inside and around them.

Jump Through the Conversation
[2:18] Example of engaged, interdisciplinary learning (radio/art/writing)
[4:52] How to motivate kids when you’re in a more traditional school setting
[7:07] Steps a traditional classroom teacher can take to create this agency
[8:04] How to share your experience as a teacher
[9:27] Learning to “sense and respond”
[10:43] Learning as a life process vs a checklist
[11:50] Teaching kindness
[15:22] How parents can help motivate kids
[16:48] Andy’s Magic Wand: Within themselves, students are okay. Educators need to create and maintain learning environments that don’t damage a child’s psyche! How do we help people know they are whole now?

What motivates kids? How can we help them have voices to tell us and choices to make their learning personally relevant and motivating? (That’s agency.)

Sense and respond–listening to what resonates and responding from that place instead of a pre-planned lesson

Can we honestly say our schools help kids know they are whole and don’t damage their psyches?

For show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/10

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/10-motivating-older-kids-in-a-traditional-school-setting-with-andy-smallman

I got my first taste of interdisciplinary learning when I was in the seventh grade. The fact that I can remember the lessons, the outcomes, and the experience itself more than 40 years later is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary and experiential learning.

When I was in my student teaching immersion in college, I worked with an amazing mentor teacher who allowed me to see the joy of this learning model from the other side. The questions students asked and the amount of engagement we saw solidified what I already knew: Educators must get children involved in the learning process.

This week on the Education Evolution podcast, I’m sharing some of the research out there around interdisciplinary education and what it looks like in real-time. Every child in schools today will grow up to be part of the larger world. Don’t we owe it to them to allow them to use the skills they’re learning right away, rather than relying on rote memorization?

Highlights from the Episode

[1:12] How Maureen experienced experiential learning in 7th grade
[3:11] What, why and how of experiential learning
[3:38] Why teachers should go through the work of creating interdisciplinary lessons
[7:53] How LEADPrep prepared to “go interdisciplinary”
[10:20] What our version of interdisciplinary will look like for the fall
[13:25] Tapping into educators with more experience
[14:32] Maureen’s Magic Wand: The isolated silos of each subject becomes real-world blended and relevant for our learners

For show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/9

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/9-making-learning-stick-with-interdisciplinary-learning

In many schools, students are pulled out of classrooms to receive additional support in speech and occupational therapy, special education, remediation in math or language arts, and other services. Sadly, this doesn’t serve students or their classroom teachers.

In this episode of the Education Evolution podcast, we’re talking to Julie Burgess-Dennis, a speech and language pathologist (SLP) who works as part of the team of consulting specialists at LEADPrep Academy in the Seattle area. She shares why a push-in model helps to build relationships between these “dream team” consultants and classroom teachers and why it helps children master their goals that much faster.

The whole-student perspective we get from this transdisciplinary model is vital in our students’ success and it’s something we rarely see in a traditional school model. Listen in to our conversation and think about how this smaller school setting, a micro-school, with embedded tiers of support can benefit the children in your community.

About Julie Burgess-Dennis

Julie provides speech, language, communication, and social cognition services in the context of social interaction, play, and structured learning activities. Her professional training has focused on sensory-motor processing, motor speech disorders, language processing, and social cognition. She is PROMPT© Level II trained, completed intensive training at the DIR© Institute, and has attended many workshops focusing on Social Thinking© presented by Michelle Garcia Winner. Julie has also focused a great deal of professional development on sensory-motor processing relating to sensory regulation, communication, and language development.

Julie’s approach is family- and team-based, providing service in the home, school, and Under the Umbrella: A Therapy and Learning Collective. She values the collaborative process and enjoys working with all individuals participating in her clients’ social and academic learning. She offers evaluation, treatment, and consultation services; all individualized to meet the unique needs of every client, family, and school.

For show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/8

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/8-creating-teams-of-learning-support-with-julie-burgess-dennis

When you think about how we’re educating our children today, think about how many choices they have in what they’re learning and why. Children in a traditional public education setting don’t have much choice and there’s no room for future-focus. They have to earn a prescribed number of credit hours in English, math, civics, and science–never mind what their actual goals and dreams are.

But when we teach children in a future-focused mindset, we’re able to raise thriving adults who have strong values and a leg up on their futures. This is just part of the conversation on today’s episode of Education Evolution with Kira Dorrian.

Kira is a parenting expert in the Pacific Northwest and co-host of the podcast Raising Adults: Future Focused Parenting. We approach our conversation from the perspective of the parent and the perspective of the education leader and look at how future-focused learning is about the long game of raising children.

Tune in now to find out how to help families move from surviving to thriving, how to parent and teach with the end in mind, and why it’s so important to lean into children’s voices.

About Kira Dorrian

Kira Dorrian is the co-creator of Future Focused Parenting and co-host of the popular podcast Raising Adults. She has been working with expectant and new parents as a childbirth educator and parent coach for over a decade and specializes in preparing couples for their transition into parenthood, navigating the transition itself, and helping them raise emotionally intelligent children. Kira has been a mental health professional with a private practice for the past ten years and is passionate about the mental health and wellness of the whole family as a key to a positive parenting experience.

Visit https://futurefocusedparenting.com for more info.

For show notes and more, go to https://educationevolution.org/7

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/7-future-focus-your-kids-and-let-them-use-their-voice-with-kira-dorrian

Too many youth today get lost in the traditional public school system. It’s not the teachers’ fault; they have more students to keep track of than ever. And it’s not the fault of the students who are just being their normal teenage selves. It’s because we don’t have enough micro-schools leading the way in education today.

I firmly believe that we need to teach children how to develop and nurture relationships with their teachers, a skill that will serve them well in college and beyond. Because this doesn’t typically happen in public education, we must turn to different models to get it done.

Today’s guests on the Education Evolution podcast are students at LEADPrep Academy, a flagship micro-school in the Seattle area. In fact, this is the school I founded and lead. Too often we forget to let today’s students have a voice in society, and today we give Frankie and Max, a sophomore and junior respectively, that voice.

Tune in as we hear about the best part of attending a micro-school, how teacher relationships make a difference (even in distance learning), and why traditional online school doesn’t always work. The boys also share some insight into how their own friendship circles are doing with the changes caused by COVID-19.

About Frank Rosner
Frank is a 10th grader at Leadership Preparatory Academy and also works with toddlers with special needs at the Kindering Center. He has a unique perspective on these youngsters as a special needs student himself. He is diagnosed with a variety of learning challenges, including autism. Frank is a homebody who loves to cook, clean, garden, and knit! He also has three pet tarantulas.

About Max Pierce
Max is a junior at LEADPrep and also takes classes at the local college. He particularly loves his college communication class. Max has always had a hard time focusing in school and started taking medication for his ADHD in fourth grade. When middle school got rocky, his parents suspected he wasn’t getting the attention he needed and started to search for alternatives that eventually led him to LEADPrep. There, he immediately felt like he was among friends and people he could trust. Max works at his local coffee shop and loves traveling, snowboarding, being with his friends, and…sleeping!

Show Notes, Links and Resources: https://educationevolution.org/6

Education Evolution
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Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/6-micro-schools-lead-the-way-for-community-support

Sometimes our call into education is as simple as a voice that says, “Be a teacher.” That was the case with Susan Thompson, academic dean at University High School in Tolleson, Arizona. Though she’s retiring at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, she’s still in the trenches and working with kids daily. The way she works so hard to buck the status quo of the traditional education model is inspiring!

In this episode, Susan offers an overview of how University High went from a school to get students who were falling behind ready for college to a highly sought after, rigorous option for diverse and motivated students. In fact, the school regularly ranks on the US News and World Report’s list of top high schools nationally while primarily enrolling students from the immediate community (rather than cherry-picking only high achievers).

After the interview, I provide a synthesis of Susan’s magic wand wish, and how it can help refill the cups of our teachers and students alike. I also offer a little challenge at the end that I’d love to discuss with each and every one of you…How can we each start with fascination?

About Susan Thompson
Susan Thompson has had a 30-year career in education, teaching theater, AP History, gifted programs, and serving as a librarian and now a principal/academic dean.

She has worked for the AZ Commission of the Arts instructing arts-based learning workshops all over the state of AZ.

She has also taught at a variety of universities. She coached cross country and was the AZ State Thespian Director for 10 years.

She resides in a small historic home in downtown Phoenix, where she serves her community as president of the Midtown Neighborhood Association and lives with her 1-year-old chiweenie, Frida.

Show Notes, Links and Resources: https://educationevolution.org/5

Education Evolution
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/education-evolution/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/5-a-school-within-a-school-harnessing-the-power-of-dreams-with-susan-thompson