From Common Core to Singapore Math, robotics to creative writing, student athletes, ADHD and many other topics, we've covered a lot of ground on this program over the past 14 months. Dr. Jefferson gives a brief synopsis.

Karin Chenoweth is author of How It's Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools , which examines in detail how eight high-poverty and high-minority schools have achieved academic success. It also examines how Massachusetts has become the highest achieving state in the nation. Chenoweth's earlier work includes It's Being Done: Academic Success in Unexpected Schools

Dr. Brennan is an experienced educator & advocate for quality education for all students. She is passionate about equity in education both for students of poverty and gifted students. She has two Master's degrees and has a doctorate of education degree in special education, teaching gifted and talented from the University of Northern Colorado.

Darius Prier is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership, School of Education, Duquesne University. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; and B.A. and M.P.A. degrees from Wright State University. Prier is currently working on a forthcoming text, The Media war on Black male youth in urban education, which will be published with Routledge. He speaks nationally on matters related to urban youth culture, leadership, and social justice education.

Janet Cheatham Bell is a writer, editor and independent scholar, who has pursued her dream of creating and publishing books since 1986. Her first title Famous Black Quotations and some not so famous was self-published that year, and later licensed to Warner Books. Since then she’s published nine additional quotation books. The quotations she identified and compiled have become part of the cultural lexicon and been used in classrooms, books, movies and television series. A former education consultant for the Indiana Department of Education, Janet has also taught African American literature at a number of colleges. In 1995 and 1996 New City, Chicago’s newspaper of literature and the arts, named her to “The Lit 50: Chicago’s Book World, Who Really Counts.” Janet’s coming-of-age memoir, The Time and Place That Gave Me Life, published by Indiana University Press in 2007, was called “one of the best forms of social history.”

Adeola Tella-Williams has been teaching for over 15 years. She began teaching in East New York (Brooklyn); left Brooklyn and taught in Japan for one semester. Upon returning to the states, she landed a teaching job on Long Island where she has taught for the past ten years. Her love of culture, politics, and fairness drives how she presents events in history to her students. A life long learner, Adeola is constantly in search of new information about teaching, learning, and how she can best link the past to the present.

Dr. Paula McAvoy is co-author of The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education. She is an Associate Program Officer at the Spencer Foundation. She earned her doctorate in philosophy of education from the department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her publications include work in democratic education, cultural and religious accommodation, and the ethics of teaching about politics. These interests were largely formed by her experiences teaching high school social studies in California for ten years.

Creativity is the type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. This is one of the philosophies that the Exploratorium was built on. Mike Petrich, Director of their Making Collaborative joins us to talk about their other principles, the Makers Movement, and the importance of tinkering.

Mr. Hoachlander is President of ConnectEd California, which provides students and teachers with an online forum where they can access integrated curriculum units, media tools, and industry professionals to support project-based learning in their schools. He is widely known for his expertise in career and technical education.

Mr. Registre is Director of Science for the Uniondale school district in New York. He discusses the importance of teaching science, and why STEM based education should be a priority in public schools.