UnMastered Leadership - All Things We Think But Do Not Say

This week we speak with Dr. Gary Gruber, L+D co-founder, lifelong learner and provocateur.  Join Carla Silver as we talk about quitting, firing, getting fired and moving on.

In this podcast episode, Leadership+Design's Tara Curry-Jahn interviews friend and colleague Gretchen Morgan about her over 20 year journey through education, the lessons and insights collected in her varied roles and some projections on how we can inspire greater equity and impact in the delivery of educational services. They also discuss possible steps to counter the compliance culture of education to make room for more learning for all students and communities. 

Gretchen leads the Center for Innovation in Education.

Gretchen Morgan has spent the past 20 years as an innovative educator; as an elementary teacher, middle and high school principal, K-12 program developer for Expeditionary Learning, and now Executive Director of Choice and Innovation for the Colorado Department of Education.  Her best job, however, is being a mom to two wonderful kids who fill her up with imaginary friends, lacrosse, stories, bikes, ideas for businesses, and THE best hugs. 

 She has also authored, Innovative Educator, an Action Plan for Teachers.

The Center for Innovation in Education works to advance systems that seek greater equity in how children develop the identity, community, agency, and competency that pave the way for greater equity in our larger society.

At C!E we believe a new approach to public education governance is emerging - an approach in which leadership of the system is neither top down, nor bottom up, but something more collaborative and complex that engages the public’s trust.  We act on this aspiration by forming learning communities of leaders who are committed to striving for the kind of extraordinary leadership that builds, sustains and repairs relationships across traditional lines of difference to reshape systems so that they are, by design, always seeking greater equity.

Learn more: https://www.leadingwithlearning.org/who-we-are

In this episode, join us for a conversation with Dr. Ashley Smith.   Dr. Smith is the founder of  Edusigner, and she works with teams and individuals that are interested in being changemakers.   She is inspiring, thought-provoking, and she offers insights as to how we can begin to think about the intersection of hiring, race, gender, and more.  Please enjoy this conversation, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.  

Join L+D's Carla Silver and guest Steve Solnick, Head of the Calhoun School in NYC, as we talk about the college admissions process and the college experience  in 2020.  Students this month are getting ready to hear from colleges and universities in the first round of college admissions. We  talk about our national obsession (or is there one?) in a small, elite list of colleges and universities.  Are we are really going to let a defunct magazine (US News and World Report) tell us which colleges are valuable?  Maybe we don't.  Steve brings a whole new perspective to the college madness.

Steve Solnick is a season educational leader. He currently serves as Head of School at The Calhoun School, one of New York City’s oldest progressive schools. Calhoun is dedicated to fostering a love of learning and strong sense of community in students from nursery through high school through a curriculum that is experiential, project-based, and values-driven. 

From 2012 to 2017, Steve served as president of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., the only national liberal arts college that fully integrates work and service into its educational program. Before that, Steve spent a decade as the Ford Foundation Representative in Moscow and then New Delhi where he provided leadership to the Foundation’s work in the areas of human rights, higher education, arts and culture, sustainable agriculture and sexual and reproductive health. Before joining the Ford Foundation, he was associate professor of political science at Columbia University and served as coordinator for Russian Studies at the Harriman Institute. He is the author of Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions and numerous journal articles and book chapters. He has been a full member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2001, has served as President of the Board of Governors of the American Embassy School of New Delhi, and has been a Trustee of Barnard College since 2014.  

Steve graduated from MIT as a Physics major, and then received a B.A. in Politics and Economics from Worcester College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

In the meantime, we are so excited to share with you an episode of the UnMastered Podcast where Carla and Ryan talk with our friend David Clifford, Creative Director and Equity Designer at Equity Meets Design.  In David’s own words:  “As a heterosexual, upper-middle-class, able-bodied White man, David is the beneficiary of the generations of oppression of people in U.S. He uses his legacy privilege to challenge the very systems and structures of oppression that placed him in his unearned place of power.”

Our conversation with David illustrates the great lengths that he has gone to be fully conscious of his own whiteness which has given him both privilege and power, which he has wrestled with as a teacher, school leader, parent and resident of the diverse city of Oakland.  He shares,  through many humble and vulnerable stories, the deep work he has done on himself and in his professional universe to combat inequities and to create more just schools and organizations. His story begins as a young child growing up in Pasadena and his journey takes him to schools in San Francisco and Oakland to the Stanford d.School and to the National Equity Project.   David is an artist, a builder, and a fine human.  

A bit more on David that we don’t share in the podcast: David founded DSX, an educational non-profit that invites the creative courage in all of us to design for equity. David is also co-creator of Liberatory Design, a complexity-centered approach to design for equity in your heart and working context co-created during a collaboration in 2016/17 with the National Equity Project and d.school's K12 Lab. David is a founding member of the Equity Design Collaborative. David co-founded the East Bay School for Boys as a feminist act to empower middle school boys to be thoughtful, courageous and engaged men of tomorrow. Before that, during his 13 years at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco leading the Technical Arts department, David co-designed and built many programs: Center for Civic Engagement and Leadership, Philanthropy Initiative, Senegal Service Learning Project and Private Skills for Public Purpose. David, a resident of Oakland for 30 years, is married with two lovely daughters who have attended both public and private schools in Oakland.

Enjoy this conversation with David. We certainly enjoyed having it!

In this short 5 minute episode, Ryan Burke, Senior Partner at Leadership + Design discusses some of the key reasons why - Designing for Election Week - a new offering was such a priority.    Having served as a high school principal in 2016, Ryan watched the last election cycle from inside a school, and if you are interested in how schools might prepare for, plan for and handle election week, election day and the follow up after the election in November, check out this short episode.   

Join us for our latest episode where we talk with Denise Pope, the founder of Challenge Success. We discuss student engagement and wellbeing in the midst of COVID-19 and how we might use this new landscape to make changes to schools that create greater engagement and healthier students.  From assessment, to academic integrity, to adequate sleep, the meaningless race to the name brand college - we cover many of the tired and outdated aspects of school that aren't working, and how we might break up with some of our old practices to make space for those things that really matter.  Check out the CS White Papers,  Resources for Remote Learning for schools and families, Virtual Spring and Summer Offerings for educators, and the  Challenge Success 2020-21 School Program.

Natalie Nixon, creative strategist and President of Figure 8 Thinking, talks to Carla Silver about her forthcoming book The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work and how we might leverage our creativity in this time of COVID-19. She also encourages us to #staybuoyant!  Go to Figure8Thinking.com to download a sample Chapter of The Creativity Leap.

In this episode, we interviewed Morgan Vien about her family's efforts for implementing and adjusting to an extended remote learning experience. She shares her thoughts about supporting student agency, parenting and finding the space we all need during this moment in time. This conversation is positive and generative and will inspire new thinking about the role of parents, students and schooling in a world where learning and engagement become the enduring need. 

In this episode, Leadership+Design's Tara Curry-Jahn interviews Lauren Hancock, the Community Programs Administrator with the San José Public Library. They discuss the role of the library to lean into the emerging needs of students and families amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in schools and youth development organizations to suspend services. Lauren shares insights on teaching and learning and the need for students' basic needs to be met prior to expecting learning to flourish. She also shares her experience with school districts partnering with community, city and youth development organizations, like the library, to provide a human-centered learning experience.

Lauren Hancock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenthomashancock/