Host Justin Reich and Jal Mehta from the Harvard Graduate School of Education continue our Subtraction in Action series with Leidy Klotz, Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia, and the author of Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. Together they discuss Leidy’s book, his research and inspirations, as well as how these ideas can better serve education.

Resources and Links

Learn more about the untapped potential of subtraction in Leidy Klotz’s book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less

Check out Jal Mehta’s Book In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School

Subscribe to Jal’s podcast Free Range Humans

Watch our film We Have to Do Something Different

Check out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/leidy-klotz/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley 

Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

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Follow our host Justin Reich on Twitter

Our host Justin Reich is joined by Jal Mehta from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to kick off Subtraction in Action, our new series about the positive impact that subtraction can have on school communities. Justin and Jal have been talking to teachers, school leaders, and design experts from around the country about what we can take away from schools to free people up to focus on the essential. Justin and Jal share their ideas about subtraction, along with highlights from some conversations they’ve had throughout the series. 

In this episode, Justin is joined by Jal Mehta, Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, co-author of In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School, and co-host of the Free Range Humans podcast.

We also hear highlights from conversations with:

• Leidy Klotz, Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia, and the author of Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less.
• Beth Rabbitt, CEO of the Learning Accelerator
• Tyler Thigpen, Co-Founder of The Forest School in Atlanta, Georgia & the Institute for Self Directed Learning
• Nicole Allard, Executive Director of Educational Excellence and Innovation in the Vista Unified School District in California
• Nat Vaughn, Principal of the Blake Middle School in Medfield, Massachusetts

Resources and Links

Check out Jal Mehta’s Book In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School

Subscribe to Jal’s podcast Free Range Humans

Learn more about the untapped potential of subtraction in Leidy Klotz’s book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less

Watch our film We Have to Do Something Different

Check out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/subtraction-in-action/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley 

Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

Follow TeachLab on Twitter and YouTube

Follow our host Justin Reich on Twitter

In this episode of TeachLab, we present a selection from our host Justin Reich’s recent appearance on What School Could Be’s Game Changer Series. In the interview, Justin is joined by the filmmaker Aimee Corrigan and educator Angela Daniel, to discuss the making of the Teaching Systems Lab’s new documentary film We Have to Do Something Different.

The conversation is hosted by WSCB’s Susannah Johnson and Tony Wagner. Some highlights a discussion about the ways that teachers can use asset framing to build strong relationships with their students, the power of using rigorous and engaging curriculum to support diverse groups of students, and the importance of centering student and community context. 

This fall, you can screen We Have to Do Something Different and get a peek into Angela’s classroom yourself. Attend a local screening or sign up to host your own. Learn more about screening opportunities and check out the screening guide at somethingdifferentfilm.com.

Resources and Links

Lean about our film We Have to Do Something Different

Check out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/game-changers/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Mixed by Garrett Beazley

Follow TeachLab on Twitter and YouTube

Follow our host Justin Reich on Twitter

TeachLab is excited to introduce Subtraction in Action, a new series about the positive impact that subtraction can have on school communities. How do we make school simpler? How do we give teachers and students some room to breathe? Can we clear out the marginal to focus on the most important things?

For this new series of episodes, we’ve been talking to teachers, school leaders, and design experts from around the country about what we can take away from schools - to free up people to focus on the essential.

In this episode of TeachLab, our host Justin Reich goes behind the scenes of the Teaching Systems Lab’s new documentary film We Have to Do Something Different: Teachers on the Journey to Create More Equitable Schools. The 35-minute film provokes important conversations about the big challenges facing schools by taking a detailed look at the small steps teachers around the country are taking every day to help their students succeed. These dedicated teachers provide hope that, while the systemic inequities in our schools won’t disappear overnight, educators can make a positive impact, starting now. 

In this episode, Justin explains the film’s origins in TSL’s online course Becoming a More Equitable Educator. He then shares key clips from the film that show the teaching practices that help teachers build relationships with their students and engage students in challenging but important conversations about representation and equity. The episode ends with Justin interviewing Neema Avashia, social studies teacher in Boston Public Schools and one of the stars of the film. They discuss the current challenges facing public schools and the need to bring joy back into the classroom.

This fall, you can screen We Have to Do Something Different and get a peek into Neema’s classroom yourself. Attend a local screening or sign up to host your own. Learn more about screening opportunities and check out the screening guide at somethingdifferentfilm.com.

Resources and Links

Lean about our film We Have to Do Something Different

Check out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/WHTDSD/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

Follow TeachLab on Twitter and YouTube

Follow our host Justin Reich on Twitter

This week on TeachLab, our host Justin Reich joins a panel of education leaders with Superintendent Dr. Baron Davis from Richland School District Two in Columbia, SC, Superintendent Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed of  Hopkins Public Schools in Minneapolis, MN, and Dr. Beth Rabbitt, CEO of The Learning Accelerator, hosted by the US Department of Education's Office of EdTech. 

In the conversation, panelists share recent experiences in districts, schools and classrooms throughout the pandemic. In the face of challenges, new strategies and innovations have emerged. Panelists reflect on how educators can take these insights and move towards more equitable learning experiences for all students. 

The conversation was moderated by Chris Rush, Sr. Advisor for Innovation & Director of Educational Technology, Office of the Secretary at U.S. Department of Education, and Kristina Ishmael, Deputy Director, U.S. Department of Education, as a part of the Office of Education Technology’s “Planning for Changing Scenarios: Navigating the Road Ahead”, a webinar and blog series to help districts and schools share challenges and strategies.

“It's really important for us to take some time and reflect on what we have learned in the past 20 months, recognizing the uniqueness of everyone's journeys… then also look ahead and strip away the things that we don't necessarily need, and continue with things that have worked for our learners.”  

- Kristina Ishmael, Deputy Director, Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education

In this episode we hear about:

• The future of learning in the context of a post-pandemic world
• The importance of listening to the needs of teachers, students, and families
• Staying mission focused to make hard decisions
• Strategies for creating more meaningful learning experiences for students, and letting go of the things that aren’t contributing to that mission
• The importance of centering health and wellness
• Culturally responsive organizational values, culturally affirming curriculum, and culturally respectful instructional practices
• Stories of new learning models that unlocked brand new opportunities, including new technologies, learning spaces, community connections and partnerships.
• How the practice of including students, teachers, and families in a co-design process will be critical to creating the most meaningful, relevant, and beneficial experiences for students.
• Centering equity across discussions, decision-making, and codesign processes.

Resources and Links

Visit The Office of Ed Tech’s Webinar Replay — Planning for Changing Scenarios: Emerging Stronger Post-Pandemic to reflect more on this episode’s conversation

Don’t miss our online course Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices

Learn more about MIT Teaching Systems Lab’s Imagining September and The Teachers Have Something to Say Reports

Check out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/emerging-stronger/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

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This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by research scientist Joshua Littenberg-Tobias PhD. and Elizabeth Borneman M.Sc. to discuss a recently published Teaching Systems Lab efficacy study around the online course Becoming a More Equitable Educator and how well participants engaged with simulations about equity. They discuss the findings within the paper and the implications for simulation-based research.

“There's very little research into what do people actually do in these simulations. To what extent are they actually applying their learning in simulation behavior?... people might say, ‘Oh, I believe this thing, or I'm really supportive of equity,’ but when actually presented with a scenario, how do they respond to that in real time?" -  Joshua Littenberg-Tobias 

In this episode we’ll talk about:

• The Educator Mindsets
• The research and Topic Modeling
• Measuring changes in behavior over time
• Simulations for professional development
• Differences in teacher responses

Resources and Links

Check out Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices

Watch the full webinar Digital Clinical Simulations in Online Learning Environments to Promote Equity Mindsets: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Check out the TSL research paper Measuring Equity-Promoting Behaviors in Digital Teaching Simulations: A Topic Modeling Approach

Check out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/equity-simulations/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

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This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by Dr. David Joyner, Executive Director of Online Education at the Georgia Tech College of Computing. Together they discuss the challenges and advantages of online learning, the hard shift to remote learning under COVID, and David’s new book The Distributed Classroom.

“The distributed classroom is really about asking the question, ‘Can we take one classroom experience and distribute it across students who can commit to different levels of attendance, different levels of in-person attendance, different levels of synchronous attendance, things like that, such that you get to have as much of the experience as possible within your individual constraints?’" - David Joyner

In this episode we’ll talk about:

• The role of Executive Director of Online Education at the Georgia Tech College of Computing
• Distributed Classrooms
• The inherent advantage of learning CS online
• Minimum Necessary Compromise
• Assessing distributed classrooms
• The importance of teaching assistants
• COVID online learning and the Hosted Model

Resources and Links

Check out David Joyner’s book The Distributed Classroom

Check out David Joyner’s paper Components of Assessments and Grading At Scale

Learn more about Dr. David Joyner

Check out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education
 

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/david-joyner/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

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This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by a panel of teachers from across the country to bring their personal experiences of teaching during the pandemic and to discuss a recent report that was led by Natasha Esteves, a former teacher, and now a student at the Harvard graduate school of education called The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year.

“I had one interviewee say, ‘Everybody wants to tell teachers what to do, but nobody knows what teaching is like, and nobody knows what teaching is like during a pandemic.’ It's a very odd place to be in when you have other people telling you what to do while they are working from home and asking you to return to the classroom, or while they are working from home and asking you to teach remotely without sufficient professional development and how to do so.”     -Natasha Esteves

In this episode we’ll talk about:

• The experience of interviewing teachers for the report
• Advocacy for teachers concerns
• The toll of widening inequities in pandemic learning
• Ever-changing school COVID policies
• Public support for schools and teachers
• Human interactions with students

Resources and Links

Check out the full live event Teachers Have Something to Say

Check out the report The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year

Check out all of Teaching Systems Lab COVID-19 resources

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/teachers-say/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

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This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by Neema Avashia to discuss the recently released Teaching Systems Lab report Healing, Community, and Humanity: How Students and Teachers Want to Reinvent School Post-COVID. Together they reflect on what educators have seen in their classrooms since the pandemic, and how we can learn and grow from these experiences.

“I'm a pretty firm believer that the old normal didn't work already for too many young people. And that a lot of our young people, even if they're going through the paces of education or complying, that didn't mean that education was meeting their needs, or providing them with the educational experience that they deserve.”  - Neema Avashia

In this episode we’ll talk about:

• How Neema adapted her class in the face of the pandemic
• The research and methodology from Healing, Community, and Humanity: How Students and Teachers Want to Reinvent School Post-COVID 
• The pressures of “learning loss”
• What the students missed most about being in school
• How the pandemic served as a window into longstanding school inequities and how we are adapting school based on what we’ve learnedWWays that Neema is incorporating these new insights  into her classroom teaching
• How Neema incorporates these new ideas into her classroom

Resources and Links

Check out the full webinar Healing, Community, and Humanity

Check out the report Healing, Community, and Humanity: How Students and Teachers Want to Reinvent School Post-COVID

Check out all of Teaching Systems Lab COVID-19 resources

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/healing-community-humanity/transcript

Produced by Aimee Corrigan. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

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