“The problems we face are not the fault of any single individual or organisation. They are often the by-product of good intentions. And yet, alongside children and young people and their parents and carers, it’s educators who are most exposed to these pressures – who confront them every day, and try to make it all work regardless,” writes today’s guest in a piece from May titled Confronting the educational polycrisis. Joining us from Brighton, UK Dr James Mannion is a keynote speaker, teacher tr...
Jul 19, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 173
“We are a community affair. We’re Autistic, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, Tourettes, schizophrenic, bipolar, apraxic, dyslexic, dyspraxic, dyscalculic, non-speaking, and more. We’ve collectively experienced rare diseases, organ transplants, various cancers, many surgeries and therapies, and lots of ableism and SpEd. We’ve experienced #MedicalAbleism, #MedicalMisogyny, #MedicalRacism, #MedicalTrauma, and #MedicalGaslighting. We understand chronic pain, chronic illness, and the #NEISvoid “No End In Sight Void”...
Jul 05, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 172
At the time of recording, New York Magazine had released an article titled “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College: How ChatGPT has Unraveled the Entire Academic Project” which launched a thousand takes. The piece outlines an arms race, characterized as “a siege on education” between college professors, sneaking white-text Trojan horse prompts like “mention Dua Lipa” to confound the chatbots, and students, one of which is quoted as saying, “the ceiling has been blown off” cheating. One e...
Jun 21, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 171
For as much as schools are a necessary collaboration of communities and families, we haven’t spent much time, if any at all, on this podcast focused on parenting itself. Well that changes today, as I’m joined by Steve Shapiro and Nancy Shapiro-Rapport, siblings, and co-founders of Our Family Culture. Our Family Culture is a platform dedicated to helping families build strong, intentional cultures rooted in shared values, traditions, and meaningful connections. Through stories, guides, and commun...
Jun 07, 2025•44 min•Ep. 170
Our conversation today is with educator, author, and Director of National Faculty at PBLWorks, Ryan Sprott, about one of the most contentious topics in education today, that is Teaching Contentious Topics in a Divided Nation: A Memoir and Primer for Pedagogical Transformation , which is also the title of his self-published book. In this conversation we be talk about his experience teaching an inquiry approach to teaching contentious topics. In part time project-based inquiry, his students in Tex...
May 24, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 169
I’m joined today by Dr Chloe Keegan. Chloe Keegan is Lecturer of Early Childhood Education in the Froebel Department of Primary and Early Childhood Education in Maynooth University, Ireland. Dr Keegan is an early childhood expert with over a decade of experience as an educator, researcher, and policy advocate. Her work focuses on children's rights and power, play and participation, and influencing practice and policy in early education. She completed her doctoral thesis at Maynooth University, d...
May 10, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 168
https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/conference “True light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.” ― N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms (as read by Zoe Bee) In stressful, uncertain times, when cynical powers attempt to divide and isolate us, community and solidarity are acts of resistance. But there are no superheroes he...
May 03, 2025•4 min
My guest today is Nika Dubrovsky. Nika is an artist and writer whose work has been exhibited internationally, her children’s books have been translated into several languages and, remarkably, as you’ll hear in the episode, Nika is directly responsible for bringing Russian translations of Dr. Suess to post-Soviet Russia. Nika is the co-creator of Anthropology For Kids alongside her late husband: Anthropologist, best selling author, and activist, David Graeber, who passed away suddenly in 2020. A4...
Apr 19, 2025•38 min•Ep. 167
This is the latest in our “spotlight series”, the first of 2025, where we reach out to schools who are engaged in awesome work, and talk to teachers, school leaders, and students about it to shine a light, inspire, and influence others to do the same. As with all learning, process is the point, not perfection, and there’s so much to learn from these schools as we reimagine education in our communities. Empower[Ed] is a personalized, competency-based education program designed to give high school...
Apr 05, 2025•48 min•Ep. 166
With the help of Teacher-Powered Schools, Socol-Moran Partners, Stimpunks, and What School Could Be, we’ve completed the lineup for our 4th annual virtual Conference to Restore Humanity for July 21-23, focused this year on the Quest for Connection. Tickets are just $50 and you can find out more info at humanrestorationproject.org/conference We’re excited to have members of the team from Story Xperiential with us for today’s episode, which was recorded way back in 2024. Developed by veterans from...
Mar 22, 2025•44 min•Ep. 165
With the help of Teacher-Powered Schools, Socol-Moran Partners, Stimpunks, and What School Could Be, we’ve officially announced our 4th annual virtual Conference to Restore Humanity for July 21-23, focused this year on the Quest for Connection. If you’re interested in joining us, tickets start at just 50 bucks and you can find the full lineup at humanrestorationproject.org/conference Today I’m joined by Christian Moore-Anderson. And I wanted to have Christian on to talk about the ideas that driv...
Mar 08, 2025•53 min•Ep. 164
If you go back through the HRP podcast archives, and I encourage you to do just that, you’ll see that we’ve covered just about every topic imaginable in the world of education, with some that keep returning again and again. One area you’ll probably notice a regrettable gap is in early childhood education, PreK-early elementary. One reason is that it’s just out of the experience of the two high school social studies teachers who started the podcast, and another is that foundationally, at least fo...
Feb 22, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 163
Today we're joined by Mike Tinoco. Mike is a full time public school teacher from California, and author of Heart at the Center: An Educator's Guide to Sustaining Love, Hope, and Community Through Nonviolence Pedagogy. Gholdy Muhammad called the book "an urgent call for truth, love, and justice for every educator and community member who deeply dreams of and seeks peace.” Further, Mike is a certified Kingian Nonviolence and Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC) trainer who provides workshop...
Feb 08, 2025•46 min•Ep. 162
I’m thrilled to be joined today by Pernille Ripp — a passionate educator, author, and literacy advocate. She is the author of Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child , Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Students, and Reimagining Literacy Through Global Collaboration . She’s also the founder of the Global Read Aloud, a program that has connected millions of students and teachers around the world through the shared joy of reading. And for all of our benefi...
Jan 25, 2025•53 min•Ep. 161
There are any number of narratives that emerged from the 2024 election and that will be hotly debated over the next four years. However, one of those is not up for debate: that vouchers and school choice lost everywhere they were on the ballot in 2024. In Colorado, voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would’ve added “a right to school choice.” And in red-state Kentucky and Nebraska, voucher programs failed by nearly the same proportion that Donald Trump won. On this show we've focused...
Jan 11, 2025•41 min•Ep. 160
Today we are joined by Dr. Kapono Ciotti. Dr. Ciotti is the Executive Director of What School Could Be, an organization offering a whole host of things: free resources, a flourishing community, coaching services, graduate coursework, and more; plus WSCB is one of Human Restoration Project’s partners. Prior to this work, Dr. Ciotti grew up in Honolulu, Hawai’i in a progressive, constructivist school and taught in the same area, then in Senegal, and then became a school leader in the United States...
Dec 07, 2024•44 min•Ep. 159
Today we are joined by Dr. Pepper Stetler. Pepper’s recently released book, A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test documents her journey alongside her daughter, Louisa, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome. It dives into the history and ongoing problematic issues with measuring intelligence, specifically how school and society uphold and reinforce misused and misappropriated labels. Pepper’s work on disability advocacy has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic,...
Nov 16, 2024•38 min•Ep. 158
I was not familiar at all with China’s national college exam, the gaokao, until reading about it in Susan Blum’s book, Schoolishness, and talking with her about it on a podcast episode we released in August – episode 152, you should check it out – and I’m incredibly grateful to Susan for making the connection with my guest today. Zachary Howlett is associate professor of Anthropology at the National University of Singapore, joining me from Singapore, and author of the book, Meritocracy and Its D...
Nov 02, 2024•53 min•Ep. 157
It’s not every day that you get an email from ACLU. If you aren’t aware, since being co-founded in part by Hellen Keller in New York City in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union has been involved in dozens of major cases defending the fundamental civil rights of individuals and causes both popular and very much not so. In 1925, the ACLU represented high school science teacher, John Scopes, in what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. Nearly 30 years later they played a significant role i...
Oct 19, 2024•28 min
If education had a Hippocratic Oath - First, do no harm - grades and grading would be among the first practices on the chopping block. And in the conversation about grades and grading in school, there are any number of books and blogs educators can look to for figuring out how to de-grade, un-grade, Hack Assessment, and so on, to mitigate the harm grading causes. After all, as these books and blogs reveal, it’s a system educators have a surprising amount of control over. But what about parents w...
Oct 12, 2024•44 min•Ep. 156
Stop me if you’ve heard these before: American public schools are failing, American students are falling behind their global peers, The future of American innovation, economic equality, and global competitiveness depends on schools today preparing students for the job market of tomorrow, School reform is only tool we have to fix these urgent issues Each of these sentiments have become conventional wisdom at this point, and they’ve appeared in the platforms of both major American political partie...
Sep 28, 2024•38 min•Ep. 155
A “solutionary” has multiple definitions, one of which reads, “A person who identifies inhumane, unjust, and/or unsustainable societal systems and then develops solutions to transform them so that they do the most good and least harm for people, animals, and the environment.” Today we are joined by Zoe Weil who has dedicated her work to creating, spreading the word, and teaching what it means to be a solutionary. She has written eight books including her most recent book we’re talking about toda...
Sep 14, 2024•43 min•Ep. 154
Today we are joined by Angela Stockman. Angela is a veteran secondary English/Language Arts teacher, author, and professional learning facilitator. She has presented at state, national, and international levels and has led curriculum, assessment, and instructional design projects in over 100 school districts. She has written books and resources on writing instruction, including The Writing Workshop Teacher's Guide to Multimodal Composition, Creating Inclusive Writing Environments in the K-12 Cla...
Aug 24, 2024•48 min•Ep. 153
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,...
Aug 17, 2024•41 min
My guest today is Dr. Susan Blum. Susan Blum is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of I Love Learning; I Hate School and My Word!, as well as the editor of Ungrading . Her new book, Schoolishness: Alienated Education, and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning is now out on Cornell University Press. It catalogs in great detail the characteristics of a “schoolish” education, that is, school as a self-contained institution with its own ...
Aug 10, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 152
Today we are joined by Nawal Qarooni. Nawal is an educator, writer, and adjunct professor based in Jersey City, who founded and operates NQC Literacy, a consultancy firm serving PreK-8 school leaders and teachers in holistic literacy instruction, equity-driven practice, and family engagement. She also serves on several committees, including the National Council for Teachers of English Committee Against Racism and Bias, evaluates manuscripts for Reese Witherspoon's LitUp program, and advises the ...
Jul 13, 2024•38 min•Ep. 151
“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 sim...
Jun 15, 2024•37 min•Ep. 150
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 sc...
May 11, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 149
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 inf...
Apr 20, 2024•37 min•Ep. 148
Join us as we delve into the historical and current relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, focusing on the island's education system and its role in shaping Puerto Rico's future. Professor Jenaro Abraham shares his expertise on social movements, politics, and education in the Caribbean, offering key insights into Puerto Rico's quest for self-determination. From the legacy of colonialism to the prospects of statehood versus independence, this conversation explores the complexitie...
Mar 16, 2024•42 min•Ep. 147
