Get ready for another re-release! Get to know transformational teacher leaders Marlo Bagsik and Nina Finci in this beautiful conversation and new episode! Co-hosts Shane and Alcine explore with their guests what it means to “choose the margins” of our classrooms as they hear about Marlo and Nina’s development of a districtwide Humanizing instructional framework. Together, they unpack how to create the conditions for belonging as a core domain of Student Agency for students at the margins. And they conclude with a poignant moment of witnessing Marlo’s experience of collaborating with Shane, Sawsan, and Crystal to develop Pedagogies of Voice: Street Data and the Path to Student Agency, the sequel to Street Data which will be on the shelves the first week of August!

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In our first-ever LIVE podcast, recorded between Oakland and New Orleans, Shane and Alcine engage in a heartful conversation with Pedagogies of Voice co-author Marlo Bagsik. They excavate stories from how Marlo and Shane became collaborators and co-conspirators to how PoV came to be to what a focus on pedagogies of student voice mean to all three of the humans in dialogue here. Honoring the FullScale (formerly Aurora) Institute's focus on competency-based education, they explore what pedagogies are worthy of being paired with authentic competency-based education so that young people and educators alike feel empowered and excited about their futures. The energy in the room is abuzz as the hosts close with audience questions and from the gut, truthful reflections about why, how, and in what ways to navigate this work in these critical and often-hostile conditions.

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Get ready for a re-release to kick off season 6! In this delightful dialogue with the wizard behind Cult of Pedagogy, Jennifer Gonzalez, and middle school drama teacher Amanda Liebel, Shane and Alcine walk alongside two brilliant educators to think about service, street data, and pedagogy. You’ll learn the origin story of the magical blog and  podcast called Cult of Pedagogy. We’ll think about what it means to have a “heart of service”, as Amanda characterizes the deep work of teaching as always a reflective practice. We’ll also discuss how Shane, Jamila, and Jennifer came together to create a 9-hour free video series that tracks two teams of teachers as they move through the messiness and richness of the Street Data process! Finally, this episode offers vibrant one-inch windows into a pedagogy of student voice, including:

Enjoy this priceless conversation!

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Season 5 closes with a tender and inquiry-centered conversation between Alcine, Shane, and the luminous Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz who shares that “Critical love is a profound and ethical commitment to the communities you’re serving… to the human flourishing of those young people in your classroom.” Dr. Sealey-Ruiz discusses her powerful Archeology of Self framework, quoted in Shane’s forthcoming book Pedagogies of Voice (PoV), making deep and seamless connections to Street Data and PoV. She invites us into the “Warrior Work” of solidarity, explaining how these respective bodies of work speak to each other, specifically how the 10 toxins in Pedagogies of Voice intersect with her racial literacy development framework. And the conversation ends with an emotional conversation about the 2024 election and the need to “name the suffering” as a condition for healing while also “hospicing grief to make room for something new to be birthed.” Don’t miss this final episode, which ties together so many threads of our Season 5!

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Tune in for another re-release! Shane and Alcine are back with this on-FIRE conversation with Cincinnati math educators Crystal Watson and Dr. Dawn Williams who remind us that “The sun does not ask permission to shine, and neither do I.” These Black women leaders take us on a journey to understanding the type of math pedagogy that will transform and empower future generations of learners. We learn from Dr. Dawn why it’s important for leaders to create a place called home for teachers and, in turn, for students. Crystal and Dawn model a culture of listening to students, always asking, “How will that one child feel…?” and engaging in learning alongside students, all in efforts to affirm to students that the classroom is “your space.” They also teach us how to have a student-centered Data Meeting, how to support teachers to practice active listening- even when it’s uncomfortable! They explain how anxiety specifically with math triggers fight or flight, diminished executive function, and distracting behaviors in the classroom, and how building authentic and trusting relationships can help teachers guide students through that anxiety. Finally, we celebrate the truth that Black educators are “everything” while acknowledging the emotional labor of being a Black woman educational leader.

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Come and join Alcine and Shane as they visit with British Columbia educators John Harris and Denise Augustine. We begin in the realm of story as Denise describes being situated “between generations” in her renowned Coast Salish family of carvers, artists, and leaders and John shares his experiences of growing up on the land and watching his father negotiate treaties as the official liaison for their community. Drawing on her legacy as the Superintendent of Indigenous Education for British Columbia, Denise provides powerful historical context for the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada, which created space for residential school survivors to tell their stories and led to 94 distinct “calls to action” in 2015. She pulls this thread into the fabric of educational change, illuminating how BC is leading the way in reconciliation through a Tripartide Education Agreement and the more recent Declaration of the Right of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which requires that school districts create Indigenous Education Councils that view First Nations as “governing bodies”, not just “special interest groups.” From this exploration of reconciliation in education, John takes us into his own family’s legacy of the “Sixties Scoop”, in which his father was taken from his grandparent’s home nearly a dozen times, all the way to his family’s recent visit to the Field Museum of Chicago, which holds over 4,000,000 cultural artifacts, many of which were purchased from Indigenous Nations in the Pacific Northwest. John describes the unsettling experience “as if someone went into your house and took everything.” They end their visit discussing the nuances of place-based versus land-based education and the ways that John has woven his upbringing and community cultural wealth into his pedagogy, which is depicted in the integrative case study which concludes Shane’s forthcoming book, Pedagogies of Voice: Street Data and the Path to Student Agency (Corwin, 2025). Speaking to student agency, John reminds us that “When we give youth opportunities to give back to their communities, they really shine.” Join us for this incredible and luminous conversation reinforcing relationality and reciprocity as core values from Indigenous knowledge systems that hold the potential to transform education everywhere.

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In this re-released episode,  with Blackfoot scholar Dr. Sidney Stone Brown, Alcine and Shane are gifted many stories and teachings. We learn about the Native Self-Actualization model that Dr. Stone created and how she was told by her elders, “We’ve been looking for you” before she wrote her book. We dig into her original research into Abraham Maslow’s archives and discover the truth that Maslow’s concept was not originally a hierarchy, but that the corporations utilizing his work asked him to convert it into a pyramid to “motivate their employees”. We also explore the deep layers of what it means to heal, to come back to our wholeness, to understand time as circular rather than linear, and to situate listening as the ultimate act of transformation. Your heart will sing as you listen to Dr. Sidney Stone Brown.

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In this touching episode, we center the voice of middle school student leader Karime Reyes who helped to spearhead a radical redesign of her school’s first week last August. In conversation with Peer Resource class teacher Tamar Sberlo, Karime brings insight and depth to what students really want in a classroom, what it means to belong, and how it felt to be part of a school transformation process. We also get a window into Tamar’s “low control” teaching style and the ways she strives to give learners choice and voice. Walk with us as we enter the world of MLK Jr Middle School in San Francisco and see the Street Data model come to life!

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Get ready for a re-release! Shane and Alcine dream with colleagues Matt Alexander and Jessica Huang, surfacing shared learning from a combined 80 plus years in education. Matt and Shane reminisce about the early years of teaching in San Francisco pre-No Child Left Behind and how they aspired toward a pedagogy of student voice. Jessica shares her experience working in international education in Asia where the West is “exporting stereotypes into neocolonial schools” and ways she is disrupting the Model Minority myth. These four leaders explore how the American Dream is a facade, lessons in democracy from the world of community organizing, and why leaders need a power analysis of their school communities. Finally, they consider what authentic accountability looks like and what it means to walk toward becoming elders in the movement for educational justice, and preview a project they are working on to “radically dream” together with educators across US + Canada.

For Further Learning:

Get to know transformational teacher leaders Marlo Bagsik and Nina Finci in this beautiful conversation and new episode! Co-hosts Shane and Alcine explore with their guests what it means to “choose the margins” of our classrooms as they hear about Marlo and Nina’s development of a districtwide Humanizing instructional framework. Together, they unpack how to create the conditions for belonging as a core domain of Student Agency for students at the margins. And they conclude with a poignant moment of witnessing Marlo’s experience of collaborating with Shane, Sawsan, and Crystal to develop Pedagogies of Voice: Street Data and the Path to Student Agency, the sequel to Street Data which will be on the shelves the first week of August!

For Further Learning: