What are children learning about climate change in American schools? That question set award winning journalist Katie Worth to uncover how climate change education is being taught. As part of her research, she visited several states, talked to teachers, scoured text books, and spoke to students and their families. It turns out climate change education is just as contentious in the classroom as it is in politics. In this episode, she shares points of friction happening between teachers within the same schools and how students are often unable to connect environmental disasters in their own communities with climate change. Additionally, Worth discusses how the fossil fuel industry sometimes plays a firsthand role in children's education. She shares the potential repercussions of raising a generation of children unable to understand the effects of climate change on their world. 

Mistakes are supposed to be part of learning. However, Maleka Donaldson knows how we convey mistakes and respond to them as educators can significantly impact a child's learning experience. Donaldson is an assistant professor at Smith College where she studies teacher-student interactions and responding to mistakes in early learning. In her book, "From Oops to Aha: Portraits of Learning from Mistakes in Kindergarten," she examines instruction in the classrooms of four public school kindergarten teachers showing the varied ways these interactions happen, and how factors beyond the teachers’ control shape their approaches to teaching and contribute to structural inequities.

Higher education needs major change and reinvention to provide more opportunity and social mobility for everyone. This is what Paul LeBlanc hopes to see in the future. As the president of Southern New Hampshire University for 18 years, LeBlanc has led tremendous change including becoming the largest nonprofit provider of online higher education and to offer a full competency-based degree program. In this episode of the EdCast, LeBlanc shares insight into why and how the institution made these groundbreaking changes. He also discusses the future of higher education and a need to get back to some of the initial focus that drove higher education in America – its students and opportunity. 

The school nurse's job encompasses much more than you'd think. Even before COVID, the school nurse was the "health hub" of the school. Yet 25.2% of schools don't even have a nurse. Linda Mendonca, the president of the National Association of School Nurses, discusses the need for school nurses and how they are doing much more than most of us realize. She offers guidance for the school community, especially administrators, on how to make sure your school nurse is a part of important conversations. 

It's a contentious time to be a school board member in America. Michael Casserly, a strategic adviser for the Council of the Great City Schools, reflects on the current state of school board meetings happening around the country. He also provides insight regarding the purpose of school boards, what a board needs to do to function well, and how to manage controversy. 

There's a lot of conversation in education about how to use this summer to make up for lost academic time in COVID. But depending on the student and the situation -- summer school may or may not be the right solution. Catherine Augustine, a senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation, has spent many years examining what makes summer school effective. She advises that while summer school isn't magic, it can also be beneficial for some children. Additionally, she breaks down some of the differences between summer school and extended learning, and offers guidance to families trying to figure out what to do with their children this summer. 

Jessica Lahey wondered how to keep kids from developing addictions to drugs and alcohol. She thought about it in her job as an educator at an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents. She also pondered this as a parent and an alcoholic. Lahey knows that preventing substance abuse isn't cut and dry. In her new book, The Addiction Inoculation, she explores substance abuse risks and what parents need to know to keep their children safe.

DC Public School Chancellor Lewis Ferebee was making strides on student academic gains, growing enrollments and creating the positive environment that he wanted for the nearly 50,000 students in the district. Then COVID happened. Like many education leaders, he faced unprecedented challenges to deliver distance learning, properly ventilate school buildings, extend supports and reopen schools. Ferebee shares what it has been like to lead the district though this time and some of the unique steps he has taken, as well as what has worked and what hasn't.

The pandemic has exposed gender inequities that don't often get talked about in education. It doesn't matter whether women work in early childhood, or higher education, or somewhere in between, these inequities play out similarly across the field. Jennie Weiner, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, studies how to make education -- especially leadership -- more inclusive and equitable. While education has long been a "highly feminized profession," Weiner explains the unique way this has worked against women in the field.  She shares the importance of gender as we work toward an antiracist society and strive for a more just world. She also suggests steps toward change.

How has the end of adolescence changed or has it at all? Harvard Professor Nancy Hill and Lecturer Alexis Redding set out to better understand changes in adolescent development across generations. When they discovered an untapped archive from the 1970s, they expected to uncover huge changes, especially considering how the world shifted in the past 50 years. Instead they found common ties among the generations. They share how these generational similarities offer insight into how we can better support adolescents at home and in college. They also debunk this idea that today's adolescents are "coddled" and "overparented."