Shamoyia Gardiner is the executive director of Strong Schools Maryland. Shamoyia is a first-generation American, first-generation college graduate from Miami. Due in part to her identities and experiences as a former educator, she’s determined that life is best spent working at the intersection of education, advocacy, and youth development. 

Since its inception in 2017, Strong Schools Maryland has built a sprawling network of tens of thousands of individual grassroots supporters focused on securing the 2020 passage and 2021 veto override of the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, a law dedicating financial resources and critical policies to create a world-class system of public education in the state of Maryland.

Without further introduction, I give you Shamoyia Gardiner.

For more information about the work Shamoyia and others are doing at Strong Schools Maryland, please visit strongschoolsmaryland.org.

Today, I’m honored to have the chance to speak with Jeff Carreira. Jeff is a highly respected spiritual teacher and author who has dedicated his life to exploring the nature of consciousness and the vast array of spiritual experiences associated with it. Through his work, including over forty books, Jeff has helped countless individuals on their own spiritual journeys; and his teachings draw from a wide range of traditions and practices, several of which we touch on in this conversation. Additionally, we discuss Jeff's insights and perspectives on spiritual awakening, meditation, and personal transformation, and we begin to explore what is, I get the sense, only a small trace of his own fascinating story.

Amy Junge is a former California public elementary and middle school teacher and assistant principal. She started working with teacher-powered schools in 2009 and was a contributing author for Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots. Today, Amy is the Director of Teacher-Powered Schools, an organization started in 2014 with the goals of highlighting the successes of teacher-powered schools, and inspiring other teacher teams to either take charge in their schools or design and run new schools. Amy supports educator teams across the country with teacher-powered governance, collaborative leadership, and autonomous school models. 

Julie Cook teaches middle school at the Souderton Charter School Collaborative, a K-8 school in Souderton, Pennsylvania. Julie joined SCSC in 2002 and has been instrumental in designing and sustaining a teacher-powered school with her colleagues. SCSC’s mission to change the environment of education through individualized, experiential, and community-based learning is supported by the school’s innovative organizational processes and systems that empower teachers.

To learn more about Teacher-Powered Schools, please visit their website at teacherpowered.org.

Massimo Pigliucci is currently the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of science, the nature of pseudoscience, and practical philosophies like Stoicism and New Skepticism.

His most recent book The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders (Basic Books, 2022) is about the philosophy of character. It delves deep into the question of whether or not character can be taught, and how, and it applies these questions to our search for upright citizens and leaders.

Please be sure to visit his website in the link in the description.

Without further introduction, I give you Massimo Pigliucci.

Dr. David Bentley Hart is an author. To call him anything else, I found, gets a little tricky. He expressed to me in our conversation, for example, not really enjoying the title of theologian, though many might call him that. Similarly, others might try to categorize him as Orthodox, although again, he tells me he has little interest nowadays in orthodoxy, regardless of whether or not you capitalize the O.

The problem of trying to introduce someone like David Bentley Hart reminds me of the Whitman line: “I contain multitudes.” Having now just spoken with him, I can’t think of a better introduction.

And so I give you, Dr. David Bentley Hart.

Michael Horn speaks and writes about the future of education and works with a number of organizations to improve the lives of as many students as possible.

Michael Horn is the author and coauthor of multiple books, papers, and articles on education, including the award-winning book “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns” and the Amazon-bestseller “Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools.”

To learn more about Michael, please visit his website linked here.

Dr. Robert Fraser is a renowned author and biographer. His teaching career has taken him to the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, the University of Leeds, The University of London, and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Currently, he is a professor emeritus at the Open University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. This is his second time on the show.

Without further introduction, I give you Dr. Robert Fraser.

Sharif El-Mekki is the Director of the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED) which he founded in 2019. Prior to that, Sharif was an educator in Philadelphia for nearly 30 years.

Sharif served as the principal of Mastery Shoemaker beginning in 2008 and under his leadership the school received a number of notable awards including the 2016 bronze medal on the U.S. News & World Report high school rankings, 2015 Schools That Can School award, and two Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) awards (Silver, 2011; Gold, 2009). In addition, Mastery Shoemaker ranked as the 7th-best high school for Black student achievement in PennCAN’s Top 10 Schools Report Card.

Sharif has served as a 2013 U.S. Department of Education Principal Ambassador Fellow and America Achieves Fellow. Sharif blogs at Philly’s 7th Ward and serves on the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on African American Males as well as Excellent Schools PA.

And, in addition to all this, and I’m lucky to say it, El-Mekki was my principal and boss at Mastery Shoemaker shortly before he left to begin the Center for Black Educator Development.

Without further introduction, I give you Sharif El-Mekki.

Feel free to visit The Center for Black Educator Development here.

Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he chaired the Department of Religion for eight years and helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world.

He presently helps direct the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he served as Chair of Board from 2015 to 2020. Jeff is the author or co-author of twelve books. He specializes in the study of extreme religious states and the re-visioning of what he calls “a New Comparativism”.

He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of religions and the sciences for The University of Chicago Press, collectively entitled The Super Story.

Without further introduction, I give you Dr. Jeff Kripal.

Please visit his website, linked here. 

Jim possesses the rare ability to remain alarmingly focused and objective and, unlike me, he’s concise. He prides himself, and deservedly so, on his unique ability to solve problems and to bring people together, to help them reach consensus on complex issues— and it is for all these reasons, and so many more, that I always look forward to our conversations.