Season 1, Episode 8: In this episode What’s Going On? host, Jae, is joined by Jose Rivera, a student studying marketing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the content creator for the Social Studies Network’s Tik Tok page. Together they discuss how Tik Tok can support teaching and learning in social studies and K-12 education overall.  

Season 1, Episode 7: In this episode What’s Going On? host, Jae, is joined by Dr Y’Shanda Rivera, Director of strategy, research and Partnerships at R-City Community Development Center and former K-12 teacher and administrator. Together they discuss the importance of community partnerships, creating classrooms that support learning and healing instead of harm, the joys of teaching, being authentic, letting students share all of their brilliance and power in classrooms, and finding places where are hearts beat well.

Season 1, Episode 6: In this episode of What’s Going On? host, Jae, is joined by Noelle Johnson, a student studying to be a teacher at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. They talk about living through history, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, their futures as Black women navigating a predominately white institution, relevant curriculum that reflects students’ lives and languages, dismantling the school-prison nexus, and social studies as a humanizing act.

In this episode of What’s Going On? host, Jae, interviews Dr. Rachel McMillian, Assistant Professor of Social Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Together they go back to Dr. McMillian’s high school classroom in Cincinnati, Ohio where she, and her students partnered with the Ohio Innocence Project and Keith Lamar, an incarcerated human being on death row, to study freedom in relationship to the Constitution and their lived experiences in the world. This project led Dr. McMillian’s students to organize each other and their community around issues of wrongful convictions and freedom. Throughout the episode they make connections to teaching and learning in social studies classrooms today and in the future.

To learn more, and support Keith Lamar’s fight for freedom visit https://www.keithlamar.org/

In this episode of What’s Going On? host, Jae is in conversation with Tina Franklin-Bertrand, an elementary school teacher in Chicago with over 20 years of experience. They talk about the role that perspective plays in social studies, the importance of teachers being emersed into the community, story-telling in social studies, and how to make social studies relevant to the local lived experiences of students.

Season 1, Episode 3  

In this episode of What’s Going On? host, Jae is in conversation with Alexis, a college senior who’s studying to become a high school history teacher. They talk about identity being a major factor in the work of creating history, the importance of grace and connection between students and teachers in classrooms, and the understanding that history is continuously changing

In the second episode of What’s Going On? host, Jae, a college student studying to become a high school teacher is in conversation with Liv, a college senior who’s studying to become a high school social studies teacher. They talk about the influence of personal experiences in their social studies journeys and their hopes for social studies teachers to create open and safe classrooms.

In this inaugural episode of What's Going On? host, Jae, a college student studying to become a high school teacher is in conversation with Dr. Asif Wilson, Assistant Professor of Social Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. They talk about the origins of social studies, and how it might be a space of liberation and freedom.