Marginal Design

This week, we've got a solo episode about predictability and ice cream machines. While there is little in life more predictable than the ice cream machine at Mc Donalds not working when your small children ask for an ice cream cone, some of the things we experience in our school settings come close.

This week, Deidre Roemer joins the podcast to discuss what it looks like to have a disposition of empathy verses sympathy. As a former special ed teacher, current assistant superintendent of the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District, and future superintendent of the South Milwaukee School District, she has used and continues to use this framework to guide her interactions with students and staff helping them become the best versions of themselves they can be. 

It's hard to argue that implementing restorative practices can hurt a school culture. The challenge, though, is knowing how and when to approach a conflict from a place of restoration. Even harder is understanding how to balance restorative practices with traditional behavior management strategies. Greg Goelz, principal at Dottke PBL High School, joins the podcast to discuss the philosophies that guide his utilization of restorative practices. 

An individuals ability to reflect can, in many ways, be as instrumental in their future successes as any other learned skill. This week, Mike Strong from Blue Dot Education (https://bluedoteducation.org/), talks about the power of reflection and gives some easy ways to build reflective capacity in young people. 

This week we're talking early childhood education on a cross over episode with the 53206 Cast. Ashley Harrell, an expert in early childhood education, joins the podcast to talk about how we can best prepare the little ones for a lifetime of learning and how we might use that information to make design decisions for high school students. 

It's really tempting when thinking about equity to focus on how things currently are. While it's useful to understand the way things are, it's a lot more helpful to grow in our understanding of how we got to where we are and solidify a vision for where we want to go. This week we talk about tempering our natural tendency to fixate on our current situation and instead set our sights on what could be. 

A zip code and the neighborhoods that make up a zip code tell a story and the story that is told about a neighborhood can vary drastically from place to place. As we move toward a more equitable society, one thing that we will see less and less of is our ability to predict educational outcomes based on demographics and where a child grows up. 

Spending a decade working at an alternative school gives you plenty of opportunities to talk to kids that weren't successful in a traditional school setting. What I found, is that almost all of the kids thought less of themselves because they attended an alternative school and most thought of themselves as failures. This episode talks about what happens when we label a young person as a failure and how we might begin to design something better. 

We might have an idea flower for a podcast buried deep in this episode.