98: Militarism, Baudrillard, Video Game Design, and the College Board

In this podcast we've decided to experiment a bit with our programming. To be honest, right now there's a ton of burnout in the education world, from the pandemic to ongoing struggles of teacher power and support, and the culture war once again resurfacing in the classroom. As educators by day and nonprofit workers by night, we totally get that struggle.

Therefore, we're putting a slight pause on our typical interview format to try out something new. This frees us up from the workload of scheduling, researching, and working with guests. And, it opens up the door for us to produce more casual content. If you like the guest stuff, don't worry - we'll come back to that in early December! But...if you like the new stuff, please let us know.

In this podcast we're going to go through four parts:

1. An update of what we're working on at HRP.
2. Article shareouts that Nick and I have been interested in recently.
3. Talking about what we're currently doing in our classrooms.
4. A pop-quiz to see who exits this podcast alive (or something.)

And we discuss:

• Militarism and increased nationalism in the classroom.
• Simulation theory, Baudrillard, and fatal strategies.
• How video game design relates to classroom pedagogy.
• Celebrating Columbus Day (and the surrounding debate) and its context to nationalism.
• The corruption of large-scale nonprofits, including testing companies and public charter networks.