Teach, Tech, Lead

Tracey Pacheco is the founder and director of Blend Learning and an experienced educator with 25 years in the New Zealand education sector. After 10 years in the classroom, she became a Ministry of Education-accredited PLD facilitator and established Blend Learning in 2015. Since then, Tracey has worked alongside dozens of schools to build sustainable capability in curriculum design, inquiry learning and integrated teaching and learning. We know you will enjoy this conversation with Tracey!

Recorded LIVE at the National Education Summit, this conversation with Dr.Haili Hughes is one which you will not want to miss! We touched on teacher retention, science of learning, explicit teaching, codification, lethal mutations, leadership, teacher wellbeing and teacher agency - amongst other topics! Also name dropped Adam Boxer, Carl Hendrick, Tom Sherrington, Peps Mccrea, Doug Lemov and even Ferris Bueller! Hope you enjoy it!

Bjorn Norstrom is an EdTech leader, STEM educator, and advocate for ethical AI adoption in K-12 education. A licensed technology educator with extensive industry certifications, Bjorn has spent more than two decades helping students and teachers connect classroom learning with real-world technology skills. His experience spans teaching, curriculum design, program management, and STEM coaching, with a particular focus on AI, career and technical education (CTE), and digital literacy. Through his work with Aspire Arizona and other educational initiatives, Bjorn is helping schools explore practical, educator-first approaches to AI that reduce workload, enhance learning, and better prepare students for the future. Gus and I enjoyed this conversation and we are sure you will to!

Dr Alice Elwell is an experienced educational leader, Head of English, and IB educator whose work sits at the intersection of teaching, research, and curriculum innovation. As a teacher of English, Theory of Knowledge, and Global Politics, she champions inquiry-driven learning, student voice, and democratic classroom practices, working closely with students to co-design meaningful learning experiences. Alongside her school leadership role, Alice teaches pre-service teachers at university and is a PhD researcher exploring critical literacy, affect, and meaning-making in secondary English classrooms. Her work is driven by a passion for helping students and teachers engage deeply with ideas, develop strong identities as learners, and shape classrooms that foster curiosity, critical thinking, and authentic participation. We know you will enjoy our conversation with her!

Associate Professor Anita Skandarajah is an internationally recognised breast and endocrine surgeon, researcher, and medical educator. She is Head of Breast and Endocrine Surgery and Deputy Director of General Surgery at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, a Breast and Endocrine Surgeon at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Melbourne. Alongside her clinical leadership roles, Anita is deeply involved in surgical education, mentoring the next generation of surgeons and supervising postgraduate research. Hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation!

Gus and I were thrilled to be able to chat to Professor Danny Liu - who is a molecular biologist by training, programmer by night, researcher and faculty developer by day, and educator at heart. A multiple international and national teaching award winner, he is Professor of Educational Technologies at the University of Sydney where he co-chairs the University's AI in Education working group and leads the Cogniti.ai initiative that puts educators in the driver's seat of AI. Most recently he has been coordinating the development of the Castlereagh Statement (castlereagh.ai), a world leading, trans-sector approach to reframing education in the age of AI. We're sure you will find this conversation both thought provoking and intellectually challenging - hope you enjoy it!! 

Brad Gaynor is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, and published author of two books - From Burnout to Breakthrough: The Leadership Reset and Not One More Teacher Lost: How We Can Save the Profession. Gus and I chatted to him about a variety of topics including, why teachers burn out, his RESET framework, how we can retain teachers, and how organisations can look after the wellbeing of their staff. Hope you enjoy it!

With shoutouts to House of the Dragon, Spiderman and our upcoming live pod at The National Education Summit with Dr Haili Hughes, this episode has it all! In our latest #one-pager, Gus outlines a technique he calls Calling Across the Room, designed to keep students on task in a very visible and authentic way. Hope you enjoy it!

Many teachers use Learning Goals and Learning Intentions (or similar). Many others will be surface parts of study designs and give students lists of Key Knowledge of Key Skills dot points. None of these things are wrong, but in our latest one-pager, Gus and I discuss the ways in which we can help better define and reinforce with students the learning 'nodes' that they should be taking away in each lesson. Hope you enjoy it! One-pager link: https://angushumphries.substack.com/p/pedagogy-one-pager-14-whats-the-takeaway?r=7lhl7i&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Gus and I were joined by Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath - a neuroscientist, educator, and researcher whose work explores how the brain learns and what that means for teaching in the real world. He's the author of The Digital Delusion, a thought-provoking book that challenges many of our assumptions about technology in education and asks whether more technology really leads to better learning. The conversation was wide ranging and thought provoking - we hope you enjoy it!