Episode 75: The Future of Smart

Available May 13, 2025

Are we, as educators, trying to create the best human versions of AI…or the best humans? That’s a central question Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen asks when she thinks about the future of education. Drawing upon her bestselling book, The Future of Smart, she joins host Debra Wilson for a discussion about human-centered liberatory education, what schools need to do differently to set kids up for an ambiguous and uncertain future, and how she views topics like agency, curriculum, and technology in light of human development.

Guest: Ulcca Hansen

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We've organized kids' time in school and outside of school in ways that don't give them a chance to do what they need to be doing to develop during adolescence in healthy ways. And we see that. Our adolescents aren't doing well, they're anxious, they're depressed, they're turning that into self harm or risky behaviors. And so we add SEL into our schools when actually what we need to do is foundationally change, right, how we allow them to spend their time.” (8:34)
• “What I hear from kids is, oh my God, you keep telling me that I'm supposed to do this like boring stuff that I have no interest in so I can graduate and go to college and then I can live my life. And what they are saying is, I want to live my life now. There are things I care deeply about, some of them existential and some of them not. And that's what I want to sink my teeth into. And in fact, developmentally, that is exactly the moment when they need to be doing it, and not do what we have been doing to them, which has led to this new thing called the quarter life crisis, which is you have 25 year olds saying that they feel purposeless and that they feel unmoored and really kind of unhappy with their lives.” (26:41)
• “In some ways it's about how well does this person know themself, and have they actually done the work to be good enough friends with themselves and their own story and their own journey, that they can hold space for another person to come to them as their self and not immediately go into a tailspin, right? And really that's what this kind of education requires, is that, not that you're a perfect educator or guide, but rather that when you meet somebody who says something to you that might be hurtful or lashes out at you or questions you, that your immediate reaction is not to fight back and close in, but rather to be like, I'm okay. Like, let's go there, right? Because that is the kind of relationship that you're gonna have when you're doing this kind of work.” (34:38)

Related Episodes: 74, 72, 60, 58, 53, 51, 40, 35, 32, 29

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 74: Improving Access Through Innovation

Available May 6, 2025

How do we measure learning? It’s a question that plagues educators, as a rapidly changing landscape keeps us scrambling to catch up with evolving technologies, ever-expanding content, and the need to blend real-world experiences with tried and true curriculum. For over 100 years, part of our answer to the problem of measurement has been the Carnegie unit. And now, the Vice President for Educational Transformation at the Carnegie Foundation says that answer needs to change.

Guest: Diego Arambula

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So we believe that to make this move towards this new architecture, there's going to need to be a set of scalable tools to support this work. And often, there's a way for an independent school to solve a problem that directly meets the needs of their students today, but is not replicable unless you have student to teacher ratios of one to 10, or unless you've got this kind of funding or unless, or unless, or unless. And what might it look like to not live in a world of scarcity, but rather to live into this world of abundance, but to think about it through a lens of, huh, and what would it look like to share this?” (18:05)
• “Counselors are pushing that because they see what universities are asking for. And universities, in an ever-growing effort to get students who are truly prepared, ask for more. And right now, the only way to ask for more is to ask for more time. Because the Carnegie unit has conflated time and learning, the only way for a student to be more prepared for college is to spend more time earning more credits. And if we can't unlock those two, we're going to continue to put more pressure on young people.” (27:55)
• “It's an invitation to say, we'd love to partner with independent systems who are moving really fast towards some of these to say, can we be learning in these places about efforts to do this kind of work? And if any of that learning can then roll up so that the shared learning Carnegie is bringing is from public systems, from independent systems, in red states and blue states, in big cities and in rural areas, we just think that will continue to let us speak into what at the end of the day is a somewhat silent American consensus that we want the same thing for our kids, and that right now we're not getting it, and that it's possible.” (32:07)

Related Episodes:  69, 65, 56, 53, 51, 46, 43, 36,29

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Episode 73: Empowering Variable Learners

Available April 29, 2025

Educators understand that not all learners need the same things to thrive. But it’s not always easy to discover what each student truly needs to help them learn and grow to their greatest potential. That’s why Nancy Weinstein created Mindprint Learning, a company devoted to zeroing in on each student’s specific learning needs, so parents and educators can help empower kids to take charge of their educational journey. Nancy sits down with Debra Wilson, along with Sumner McCallie of the McCallie School in Tennessee, to share how Mindprint works with schools.

Guests: Nancy Weinstein and Sumner McCallie

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We all know when students aren't learning, they can't articulate why they're not learning. They behave in a certain way. Some of them pull back, some of them are disruptive, some of them sort of, you know, kind of shelter in place, if you will, and hide their emotions. And as parents and teachers, we can't always figure out what that is. But if we can know this is a kid who's struggling to focus, or struggling to remember what they learned, or struggling to learn in some contexts but not others, well then we know exactly what to do. We have great teachers, but if they're playing a guessing game for all the kids, it's just impossible to do. But with the data, it is so eminently possible and makes such a difference in so many kids' lives.” (6:47)
• “In fact, great teaching involves recognizing we have a lot of different type of learners in our class, right? I mean, that's how that works. But for a student himself or herself, themselves, to say I have agency here. I actually have an ability to take what's being given to me, in whatever format is being given to me, and begin to maneuver myself and maneuver the content into a way that I can best absorb it, or into a way I can best remember it and process it. That's pretty powerful.” (20:33)

Related Episodes: 69, 63, 60, 58, 57, 52, 40, 23

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 72: Thriving Through Happiness

Available April 22, 2025

What does happiness have to do with achieving excellence and success? Do happy students learn more deeply and go on to more fulfilling careers and lives? Most educators understand the intrinsic connection between emotional well-being and deep learning, but “happiness” doesn’t tend to show up on our classroom rubrics. Dan Lerner, author, performance coach, and professor of the famous NYU class “The Science of Happiness” sits down with host Morva McDonald to share why we might want to rethink the value of positivity.

Guest: Dan Lerner

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So there is certainly an element, genetic element, component, of happiness, right? For folks listening out there, try to think of someone who you always think of as, that person's always a little gloomier than other folks, right? And that is the way that some people are sort of set. Think about it like a thermostat, right? They are set to a certain number…But a considerable amount of how we experience positive emotion is through rightly directed effort.” (9:23)
• “Positive emotions come in lots of different shapes and colors. When we look at the research on positive emotions, we research different positive emotions separately. Hope is researched differently than joy. It's researched differently than pride. It's researched differently than love. It's researched differently than calm or tranquility or peace. So being able to go in and allowing someone to express what they're excited about, what they're looking forward to, and then getting into, all right, so what are the challenges? Means we have potentially primed our colleagues or our direct reports or whoever we're meeting with to be operating in a different way.” (14:17)
• “Let's say your coach is standing next to you as you drag that bag of boulders or your teacher is standing next to you as you're taking the really hard math test. Are they saying you suck, you suck, you're never gonna do it? Or are they saying, you know, you are doing great. I believe in you. I know we can get this done. When you're done with that workout session, do you go home and stare at the ceiling? Is that effective? Or do you go talk to another teammate and you're like, man, that was tough, you know, it's worth it. And I'm so glad you're here to have the conversation with.” (26:13)

Related Episodes: 66, 60, 59, 51, 42, 40, 35, 22

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 71: Exploring Generative AI in K-12 Schools

Available April 15, 2025

AI continues to be one of the hottest topics in education right now. Should we be using it? Should we allow students to use it? When, where, and how does it fit into our schools and our vision for the future of education? Yet despite all the chatter, the fact remains that AI is so new and so fast-moving that we don’t have a lot of evidence or research upon which to base our decisions. That’s a problem Chris Agnew and the Generative AI Hub at Stanford’s SCALE Initiative are trying to address.

Guest: Chris Agnew

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “I would say AI in schools is a week by week, month by month, as far as how fast the technology is changing, how fast take up is changing. And so it is something that school leaders need to keep front of mind and be actively talking about, even though they can't be expected to know the answers. Because here's the great secret. Right now, nobody knows the answers. Even the heads of the largest LLMs are building tools that they don't know where that will lead. And we need to face it head on.” (12:21)
• “I hope we all know that technology is not a thing in its own right. Technology we should be adopting as a tool to do X or to do Y, but we're not just adopting technology for technology's sake. AI is the same. And so determining, okay, AI is this tool. What are we thinking about what we want to apply this to?” (15:23)
• “I feel like we're at the precipice of the opportunity to make this choice or go down a more, say, dystopian or technology for technology's sake path. Right now we have this technology, when you apply it to education in schools and specifically you take AI with this very new powerful technology. You can use it to optimize a currently flawed system, or use it to completely reimagine what's possible.” (27:22)

Related Episodes: 68; 49; 45; 32; 31; 28

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Episode 70: The Role of Schools in Building Healthy Relationships

Available April 8, 2025

Educators are well aware that relationships are central to the work we do in schools. We know that how connected we are to our students, and how connected they feel to their communities, makes a big difference in how well they’re able to learn and develop. We also know that as they leave our schools and go out into the world, their ability to relate to others, understand social nuances, and navigate everything from collegial relationships to friendships to dating will have an impact on their success and their well-being. But what is our role in helping them develop those interpersonal skills? How deeply involved should schools be in educating students around different types of relationships, and how should we be thinking about the messages students may be absorbing from the school environment? Health educator Shafia Zaloom sits down with Debra Wilson to untangle the tricky dynamics.

Guest: Shafia Zaloom

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We all need spaces free of judgment, ultimatums, and assumptions to share with open honesty, right? Like think that's really important and shame in particular, which is what a lot of judgment leads to. And so as adults, taking care of, with our own peers, what we need to work through so that we can be present in a nonjudgmental way. And to get really curious and ask strategic questions of kids that let them be the experts of their own experience.” (21:40)
• “This stuff was coming up outside of the classroom, and we know this, right? It's happening everywhere, typically during transition. So like the in-betweens, it's happening when your kids are walking in a line and waiting outside the gym to go to P.E. It's happening when they're waiting in line to wash their hands before they go to the lunchroom. It's happening during recess when there's, you know, a random game of tag going on and it's girls up against boys…It's happening in the in-betweens, and it's people who aren't trained to teach this in a classroom necessarily. It's not the school counselors who are in their office doing one-to-one support.” (36:05)

Related Episodes: 63, 59, 51, 35, 32, 28

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 69: Building Collaborative Learning Cultures

Available April 1, 2025

Professional development is an important part of educational leadership, but not all professional development opportunities are equally effective. When we’re seeking to improve teaching and learning outcomes in our schools, are we developing classrooms or cultures? Siloes or collaborative communities? Guests Elham Kazemi and Jessica Calabrese, co-authors of Learning Together: Organizing Schools for Teacher and Student Learning, join host Morva McDonald to share how they worked together on a novel practice that built community, improved student outcomes, and changed how both teachers and learners thought about their work.

Guests: Jessica Calabrese and Elham Kazemi

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We think about what it is that we want to try with students, but then all of us go into the classroom together. Instead of going separately into our own individual spaces, we collaboratively go into one space where we know the kids, where we're invested in their learning, and try to learn with them. So we'll pose the tasks. We'll think with the kids. We'll tell the kids that we're there to try something out and learn from the children themselves. And we pause when we need to make sense of what to do next or something that we see that we didn't anticipate, that now we can take advantage of because our real children are there with us.” (7:52)
• “We have to redefine our identity as teachers, that my job isn't to get kids to do things. I can get you to do things, but you are not left with something new in your understanding when I walk away. So if I'm truly teaching you to be a learner, like we talk a lot about teach the reader, not the book. Teach the mathematician, not the math. And it takes a lot of reassurance from leaders for teachers to believe it's okay to do that, that I am not being judged by what I can get kids to do, things in a moment or on a day of a test. And I find myself saying that a lot of like, we're growing children, not test scores.” (37:51)

Related Episodes: 67, 58, 49, 45, 32,19

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 68: Technology Innovation in Independent Schools

Available March 25, 2025

AI and other technological advances are moving at an almost incomprehensible speed right now, and schools have to adjust. Some are leaning out, with phone bans and efforts to make the school day as low-tech as possible. Others are cautiously leaning in, adopting new technologies, and trying to strike a comfortable balance. And then there are the school leaders who are leaping ahead, with a vision to embrace technological innovation as a vibrant cornerstone of their plans for the future. Jalaj Desai is one of those visionary heads of school, and he’s joining NAIS President Debra Wilson to share how he’s using AI to transform Saddle River Day School.

Guest: Jalaj Desai

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “And that's the beauty of our school. We don't really worry about what did not work. We try different things. And if it doesn't work, it's OK and move on. We teach our kids the same exact thing. Don't get stuck up with what didn't work. We kind of evaluate the situation, see why it didn't work, and then simply move on.” (6:49)
• “We are still a typical independent school. Our teachers are still human beings and they love what they do. They love to teach. So when there is a doubt, it's because they want to make sure that what we're doing is right by the kids and by them, right?...But we are determined to, as a school, to do this, right? AI is here to stay. So sooner we get on board, as a whole community, as a whole faculty, it's much better for all our kids.” (18:59)
• “Some dreams you let go, right? In terms of because it doesn't work out, there are clear signals to do that. Some dreams you keep going because it's going to take time. It's going to, you gotta be patient. You need to go through a lot of stuff, especially when a school  is going through so many different cool things and changes. You just have to make sure your resources are divided correctly.” (26:04)

Related Episodes: 49, 46, 45, 31, 26, 19

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 67: Leadership Through Listening

Available November 12, 2024

We most often focus on how we are educating our students. But how are we also educating our leaders, across every level of our schools? Debra Wilson sits down with three educational leadership experts from top programs at Columbia, UPenn, and Vanderbilt to talk about the importance of listening in developing the leaders of the future, and how we can help them grow the skills and capacities to meet the evolving challenges of our times.

Guests: Nicole Furlonge, Carrie Grimes, and Steve Piltch

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So for me, listening, building people's capacity and understanding around listening as

a giving audience, as something that you do not because you agree with someone, but because you are giving them the dignity of space to articulate what is on their mind and heart. For me, that is both urgent work, it is important work, but it's also quite joyful work.” (10:51)

• “Since the pandemic, we've seen every year that there's one quote, ‘crisis’ after another. You know, you can talk about Gaza, you can talk about the potential of issues with the election, you can talk about almost everything. It used to be that those things were the exception rather than the rule. And I, for one…don't believe that's ever going to happen again. I mean, we're going to find different ways to deal with the issues, but I don't believe you're going to go through a year without something happening outside the realm of your school that's going to have direct impact in one way or another. That even if you're able to take what I'm going to call an unbiased perspective on what happens, you're going to have to deal with the wellbeing of your community around the given issues.” (17:16)
• “The research behind this is really powerful, that leaders who carve out intentional time– as little as five minutes a day– will experience more integration and balance in their leadership, better self-regulation in terms of their responsiveness, enhanced self-awareness, improved relationships at work, inner calm and peace. And so I think it's the idea here of just start small. And setting aside a small amount of time every day for mindfulness can have, in the aggregate, a significant impact not only on your own well-being, whether you're leading in a classroom full of first graders that are bouncing off the walls, or you're in the head's office.” (35:50)

Related Episodes: 65, 62, 50, 42, 25, 20, 15, 5, 3

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 66: School in a Time of Hope and Cynicism

Available November 5, 2024

How good are people? How much can you trust your neighbors? How much do you agree with others on fundamental values and ideals that are important to you? Sometimes it can feel like the answers to these questions skew towards the negative. But author and researcher Jamil Zaki says we’d be surprised by the reality. He sits down with Morva McDonald to talk about his book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, and what his findings mean for everyone, especially school leaders, right now.

Guest: Jamil Zaki

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “One, during the hardest time in many people's lives, during one of the greatest disasters of the century, people didn't respond to this adversity by falling apart and focusing on themselves. They came together and found ways to help one another, which is so remarkably beautiful. But then second, most people ignored this global avalanche of human kindness, which is the sadder surprise, that our minds are tuned away from goodness even when it's all around us.” (3:17)
• “Having an assumption about people, even if it's a gloomy assumption, is very comfortable. You get to maybe not have faith in people, but have faith in your assumptions. Letting go of that faith and saying, I don't know what the world is like necessarily. I don't know what the future holds. I don't know what this person is like, is uncomfortable. But it's that courage to be humble about what we know and what we don't know that is the beginning of learning.” (13:54)
• “One, we as a country are far less divided than we think we are. I am in no way here minimizing real extremism, real political violence and real risk to human rights in this country. I think we're in a very scary time. But if you look at what people actually want, even their views on different issues, we're much closer together than I think the media and even politicians want us to realize that we are. We are being told the story of extreme division when reality is that we are divided, but not that much, and that there are many things that we have in common in terms of our values and what we want.” (31:19)

Related Episodes: 64, 62, 54, 44, 37, 32, 17, 15

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.