Rebel Educator®

Join me for this incredible interview with Trevor Soponis PhD, Founder and Chief Learning Officer at The Sustainable Learning Projects. Dr. Soponis believes that projects should connect to the community and create good in the world while creating a platform for real world learning and skill building by students. 

We talk about seaweed and shellfish farms, sustainable forestry, how to engage your children in projects at home and what comes next for education. Trevor also shares with us why the current education system no longer serves our needs and a few of the exciting collaborations he is currently working on that help to provide the skills and connections that are needed by the students of today’s world.

In this episode, we cover:

• How students can become experts with real world outcomes
• What educators can do to be more successful in an evolving classroom
• Why the concept of falling behind is detrimental
• The reasons why our current educational system no longer serves us
• What should Project-Based Learning (PBL) assessments look like

SHOW NOTES: https://www.podpage.com/rebel-educator/5

In this episode, CEO of InventXR Education Foundation, Freedom Cheteni and I discuss how to acknowledge injustice, stop other-izing, start healing and the need for a compassion revolution.

Freedom is the editor-in-chief of Superintendents Journal, a globally renowned thought leader, and an inventor of future-ready transformational models and applications for individuals and organizations at a global scale. We discuss how education will change for World 2.0 as we move on from COVID-19, letting students solve the problems they are growing into, and even pterodactyl eggs!

This is a dynamic conversation and Freedom’s enthusiasm for education and the future are infectious.

I had a blast in this conversation, I hope you enjoy it.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why we need a compassion revolution
• Revisiting the principles of TRICK and examining TRICK-squared
• How we can work collectively to solve inequities
• Using virtual reality technology to bring more experiences to students
• Teachers no longer being the providers of knowledge and what the alternative can look like

SHOW NOTES: https://www.podpage.com/rebel-educator/4

Dave Potter is a force in the education system in California. His work focuses on supporting underserved communities through all forms of cross-collaboration that make progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Join us as we discuss how to enhance student agency and choice, including practical ideas for educators and parents, why overcoming a lack of trust and creating a safe and engaging learning environment is imperative to learning, what role social emotional health plays in education, and what schools and the education system might look like post-pandemic.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why we need to ask students about their needs and wants
• How we can plan for going back to school in a way that meets the newer needs of students
• Fitting action projects into school schedules and developing large scale measurements to access this kind of learning
• The importance of social emotional health during this time of crisis

SHOW NOTES: https://www.podpage.com/rebel-educator/3

Our guest this week, Esther Wojcicki, journalist, educator, and author of the book ‘How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons to Help Your Child Become Self-Driven, Respectful, and Resilient’, shares her thoughts on making education more effective for the 21st century, how we can use the current crisis to revolutionize education,  why it’s important to trust and respect them, and how to help kids build the life skills they need, so they won’t need an adult-ing course in college!

In this episode, we cover:

• Why we no longer need memorization to the degree that we used to in the classroom and in life
• How the principles of TRICK encourage authentic learning
• Strategies that we can use to give children more responsibility and independence
• Using technology to make learning collaborative, relevant, and flexible
• How we can support unmotivated learners

SHOW NOTES: https://www.podpage.com/rebel-educator/2

Welcome to the first episode of the Rebel Educator podcast!

Where is education going?

According to our guest, Dr. Barry Sheckley, that depends a great deal on where we want it to go. The current crisis has given us an impetus to change the education system and create one in which students become engaged learners, rather than passive students who are simply repeating information back to their teachers. What we really need are classroom environments where students feel autonomous, confident and respected so they can explore and learn all the things they wonder about.

Join us as we discuss how these changes can happen, the new wonderland of online instruction, the blended learning revolution and how to teach learners, not students.

In this episode, we cover:

• The benefits of thinking in patterns and systems
• How we can move from passive students to active learners who exhibit curiosity instead of just doing what they’re told
• Using problem posing instead of problem solving as a learning strategy
• Issues with standardized testing and changes going forward
• Why targeting individual growth is more beneficial than using letter grades to assess learning
• Supporting teachers to promote their growth and development

SHOW NOTES: https://www.podpage.com/rebel-educator/1