Many of you are already working to get your classrooms ready and will be welcoming students for the first day in the next couple of weeks, if you haven’t already. It’s a magical and stressful time of year, so we wanted to release Dr Carla Shalaby’s 2024 Conference to Restore Humanity keynote as a “back to school” special podcast. Carla speaks so powerfully to her own practical experience of human-centered education and why we do what we do: moving away from control, surveillance, and punishment, towards a model based on collective care, inclusion, and restorative practice. We hope you find it a great way to center ways of thinking about classroom management that will help get the school year started off on the right foot and sustain community with students throughout the next several months. As Carla reminds us, "Being good at human being requires a ton of work and investment, and perhaps most of all, an intentional rejection of a culture of disposability, the idea that there's ever such a thing as a throwaway person." If you prefer video, that’s up on our YouTube channel as well, just search for Human Restoration Project.Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an amazing school year! Let us know if you need anything.Link to YouTube video Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Susan Blum, a Professor of Anthropology at Notre Dame and author of insightful educational books, explores the concept of 'schoolishness'—the alienation created by traditional schooling. She critiques standardized testing and advocates for authentic, joyful learning experiences that resonate with students' lives. By sharing examples from innovative educational practices, she highlights the transformative power of community engagement and self-directed education. Blum emphasizes the need to rethink educational structures for a more genuine connection to knowledge.

Nawal Qarooni, an educator and founder of NQC Literacy, dives into the transformative power of family engagement in education. She discusses her book, which explores how to elevate caregiver collaborations to enrich classroom experiences. Nawal emphasizes understanding diverse family dynamics, celebrating their contributions, and challenging common misconceptions about parental involvement. She advocates for empathy in interactions between educators and families, encouraging a cultural shift that recognizes the vital role of caregiving in nurturing children's success.

“Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practices the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster.”This is how Scottish historian & writer Thomas Carlyle characterized Great Britain’s mechanized, steam powered industrial era in 1829. These changes in the human relationship to production rippled through the world economy with profound social, political, & environmental implications. One loosely organized group, the Luddites, emerged early on to smash the new machines and resist mechanization of the mills.200 years after Carlyle’s “Age of Machinery”, we find ourselves sold a new Age, the Age of automation and AI, which promises another transformation in the way we live, work, AND learn, with similar social, political, and environmental consequences. At least, the AI-hype cycle is real. Sal Khan’s new book, for example, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing) promises to be “required reading for everyone who cares about education.”But what should be the relationship of education, automation & artificial intelligence? Should there be one at all? How much power – not to mention student data – should educators cede to the new machine in the Age of AI? Or…should the answer be a 21st century Luddite revival and mass resistance to the vision of the future offered by Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft?That, I suspect, will be the argument of my guest today, Charles Logan, a Learning Sciences PhD Candidate at Northwestern University, writing earlier this year for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Ultimately, the Luddites’ militancy and commitment to resistance might be a necessary entry point for how laborers—and teachers, students, and caregivers—can take an antagonistic stance toward AI and automation, and create a new ‘commons.’”Toward A Luddite PedagogyShould We Be More Like The Luddites?Inspiration from the Luddites: On Brian Merchant’s “Blood in the Machine”Learning About and Against Generative AI Through Mapping Generative AI’s Ecologies and Developing a Luddite PraxisRecord being placed on a record player.wav by HelterSkelter1114 -- https://freesound.org/s/409036/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0rope-making machinery running.wav by phonoflora -- https://freesound.org/s/201166/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story my guest will tell today is of her experience growing up and teaching in Memphis, Tennessee before finding a purpose-driven career change in - I am not joking - the heart of Transylvania. Emma Sisson is the School Director of The Mission School in Sighisoara, Romania. The work of The Mission, Romania is deeply rooted in the local community in Sighisoara and, as you’ll hear Emma describe it, homebase is an 80,000 sq ft abandoned Soviet textile mill where staff live, work, house a K-3 school, and provide family wrap-around services to Romani children and families. Romani, or Roma, are a historically enslaved and oppressed underclass in Europe, in Romania in particular, where they are often slandered as a lazy, thieving, “gypsy” underclass. In 2022 the European Union reported that 80% of Roma live in poverty, compared to the 17% EU average. 1 in 5 live in households with no running water. 1 in 3 have no indoor toilet. And fewer than half of Roma children attend early childhood education. The scathing report prompted the EU director of Fundamental Human Rights to ask, “Why do Roma across Europe still face shocking levels of deprivation, marginalization, and discrimination?”  Overcoming structural discrimination and prejudice against Roma people is a key part of The Mission’s mission. The Mission School also works to preserve Roma values and language in the context of education, expressed as a preference for family apprenticeships, experiential hands-on learning, and a rich oral tradition, that have historically put them at odds with the priorities of institutional school-based literacies.On the other side of the Atlantic, The Mission international is currently recovering from a devastating fire that destroyed their entire campus headquarters in Tijuana, Mexico that served over 500 at-risk youth, so if you’d like to learn more and donate to help support Emma’s work in Romania and rebuild the Tijuana campus, you can do that at themissioninc - that’s the mission eye-enn-see - dot org https://www.themissioninc.org/ You can reach Emma @ emma.barbara.sisson@gmail.comAmazon Book WishlistAmazon Supplies Wishlist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Anna Saavedra and Morgan Polikoff explore the polarizing landscape of modern education found in their February 2024 report, "Searching for Common Ground.” The report reveals widespread support for public schools alongside significant partisan divides, particularly on topics like LGBTQ identities and racial inequality. From bipartisan consensus on some issues to stark disparities on others, this discussion highlights the complexities of education policymaking and the need for informed dialogue to navigate contentious topics and shape a more equitable future for education.Links:How Americans really feel about the teaching of controversial topics in schools @ USC TodayRead the full report online. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Delve into Puerto Rico's educational system, resistance against Americanization, historical ties with the US, and the struggle for cultural autonomy. Explore the impact of colonial rule on education, economic history, and divergent perspectives on statehood versus independence. Learn about the role of educators in shaping anti-colonial perspectives and supporting Puerto Rico's quest for self-determination.

“Let's start with the bad news.” is how the conclusion to my guests’ book about changing grading practice begins. “No one is coming to save us. No consultant is going to sweep through and fix things for a fee. No new technology, digital, online, or otherwise, is going to change the game.” The game, of course, is school, and the currency of that game is grades.Jack Schneider is Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at the UMass - Amherst. He is the Executive Director of the Beyond Test Scores Project. Director of the Center for Education Policy. Co-Editor of the History of Education Quarterly, and Co-Host of the Have You Heard Podcast.Ethan Hutt is the Gary Stuck Faculty Scholar in Education and associate professor at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Education.Their 2023 book, Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don’t Have To), is a thorough, and at times frustratingly pragmatic, exploration of flawed necessity of the load bearing pillars of “real school” – grades, transcripts, and standardized tests – their origins in our nation’s history, the distorting effects they tend to have on the outcomes and goals of education, why nothing has arisen so far to replace them at scale, and why there are no magic potions: “No one is going to wake up one morning and realize that the answer was staring us in the face all along,” they remind us.Balancing the real with the ideal, they also chart a path toward the possibility for something different, and like the grand experiment of public schooling itself, it’s something we’ll have to figure out and build together.Off The MarkJack SchneiderEthan Hutt Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we talk with Rethinking Schools first-ever Executive Director, Cierra Kaler-Jones, about the past, present, and future of Rethinking Schools, especially as we enter another potentially contentious year of educational culture wars for 2024, and her vision for how educators can demand power for those who need it the most within our school system. Links:Rethinking Schools Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are joined by Dr. Emma McMain. Emma works in the College of Education at Washington State University as a postdoctoral teacher and researcher, focusing on assessment for pre-service elementary teachers, cultural considerations in education, and social and emotional learning (SEL). Her work aims to promote social and ecological justice, seeing education as an important site of social transformation. Dr McMain's recent works include: Drawing the line: Teachers affectively and discursively question what counts as “appropriate behavior” in schools — which dissects the power dynamics of classrooms in determining what is “appropriate” behavior; and The “Problem Tree” of SEL: A Sociopolitical Literature Review — which contextualizes what social-emotional learning actually means in a classroom setting from a variety of perspectives and in history. Particularly, we wanted to reach out and talk more about the idea of SEL as systemic change versus SEL as an add-on, and why this matters as we think about racism, sexism, neoliberalism, and more, especially in the context of SEL in the ongoing culture war and attacks on schools.More about Dr Emma McMainDrawing the line: Teachers affectively and discursively question what counts as “appropriate behavior” in schools Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.