EdSurge Podcast

Freeman Hrabowski is a college president who has long fought for civil rights and racial justice. When he was 12 years old he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama—and got arrested. His program to help students major and persist in STEM fields hsa been shown to work, and several colleges are trying to replicate it.

Learning science is always advancing, yielding new insights about how people gain and retain knowledge and skills. How can classroom teachers keep up—and even conduct their very own research to improve their instruction, day-by-day and week-by-week?

Little kids are curious about race and difference. So how are teachers preparing to help children develop positive social identities, encourage their self-expression and help them feel comfortable and safe? We talk with Dr. Calvin Moore, Jr., CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition, which administers the Child Development Associate National Credentialing Program, the most widely-used credential in early childhood education.

Just after the pandemic began, we reached out to one of the masters of making educational videos, John Green, for his advice and thoughts on education during this unprecedented time. And he talks about his podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, now a bestselling book by the same name.

Teachers around the country have been giving an unusual assignment to their students that goes like this: Think of someone who is in a bit of a financial pinch, make a video about why the person deserves a boost, and then hand-deliver the person a check for $1,000. The money comes from a philanthropic effort called VING, and on this week’s podcast we talk to its founder and hear one of these surprise student gifts in action.

We’re living in a world of big data, but also one where misinformation spreads like never before. On this week's podcast we talk with Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective, about his advice for how to better understand the numbers in our world.

People don’t talk much today about early teaching machines, some of which were made out of wood and brass. And that’s no accident, according to Audrey Watters, a longtime critical observer of edtech who is out with a new book called Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning. On this episode, we’re dusting off these old teaching machines from all the way back to the 1920s, to see what these low-tech devices can teach us about education today.

Only two percent of teachers in the U.S. are black men. Markus Flynn, executive director of the nonprofit Black Men Teach, is leading creative efforts to diversify the teaching workforce, and change the culture of schools.

Today, one in five college students is a parent. Yet few higher ed institutions track parenting status or have programs designed to serve students who have children. For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we spoke with author Nicole Lynn Lewis about what teen parents need to thrive at college.

What a debate about the admissions process at one of the best public high schools in the country says about who should get what in education.