The Algebra Project: Math Literacy and Empowerment – Part 1
Kate Belin teaches math at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, a progressive public school in the Bronx, where she implements the Algebra Project, an initiative that connects math to students’ lived experiences. We talk about the synergy between the Algebra Project and Fannie Lou, both of which have their roots in the history of...
The Algebra Project: Math Literacy and Empowerment – Part 1
NYC schools: still separate and unequal
Student activists Coco Rhum and Hebh Jamal describe what real integration of NYC schools would look like and how to achieve it. Bringing sharp analysis and insight from their experiences as leaders in IntegrateNYC and Teens Take Charge, they were interviewed by Lev Moscow on our sister podcast, acorrectionpodcast.com. *Overview and transcript below. Image: Integrate NYC Facebook...
NYC schools: still separate and unequal
Advice for Secondary School Teachers
This is an encore. We interview Lev Moscow who, for the last 14 years, has taught history and economics at The Beacon School in New York City. Lev reflects that advisory, done well, can serve as a venue for students to explore questions of ethics, purpose and happiness. He talks about balancing the history curriculum...
Advice for Secondary School Teachers
Multicultural Education: Challenges and Aspirations
We speak with New York State Regent Luis O. Reyes on the evolution of multilingual education in New York, beginning with the ASPIRA Consent Decree that in 1974 established bilingual education as an entitlement for Puerto Rican and other Latinx students. NY is gradually transitioning to bicultural and bi-literate education. The Regents’ Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education...
Multicultural Education: Challenges and Aspirations
Gender Inclusivity: Where Science and Ethics Intersect
We speak with high school science teachers and trans men, Sam Long and Lewis Maday-Travis, who have developed resources and trainings to help biology teachers develop gender-inclusive curricula. Science tells us that sexual and gender diversity is both normal and positive. *Overview and transcript below. References To know more about Lewis and Sam’s projects, please...
Gender Inclusivity: Where Science and Ethics Intersect
Emotionally Responsive Education: “inviting and containing”
Margaret Blachly of Bank Street’s Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice describes how to fit materials, curriculum, and relationships together to create an emotionally safe classroom. Emphasizing the importance of a deep understanding of child development, she tells how important it is to know each child’s “story.” Margaret shares what she’s learned as a dual-language and...
Emotionally Responsive Education: “inviting and containing”
Post-traumatic Growth and Resilience: creating safe environments for Central American immigrant children
This is an encore. Our conversation with Stephanie Carnes about Central American immigrant youth was one of our most popular. Enjoy it with our wishes for a safe and happy holiday. Stephanie Carnes is a trauma-focused bilingual school social worker in a large public high school in New York’s Hudson Valley. Stephanie worked as the...
Post-traumatic Growth and Resilience: creating safe environments for Central American immigrant children
Special education: how students and their teachers are shortchanged
Jia Lee, NYC special education teacher and union activist, talks about the unfairness of the Fair Funding Formula, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the tendency of schools to re-traumatize vulnerable students. She also highlights the contrast between NYC Chancellor Carranza’s call for more culturally responsive classrooms and the City’s newly-mandated MAP tests, and the gap between...
Special education: how students and their teachers are shortchanged
Reframing masculinity: stopping violence against women and girls
Quentin Walcott (“Q”), a leading NYC and international anti-violence educator and activist, creates programs that help transform men and boys — even batterers — into activists against violence. He focuses on the intersections of violence — race, class, and gender — and its impact on marginalized communities. Q is Co-Executive Director of CONNECT, a nonprofit that...
Reframing masculinity: stopping violence against women and girls
Ed schools as allies to new teachers of color
Dr. Harriet (“Niki”) Fayne of Lehman College School of Education describes strategies to support new teachers and “second stage” teacher-leaders. She discusses ways to attract teacher candidates, reduce early-years attrition, and help teachers grow while staying in the classroom. Lehman builds ethics into leadership training and maintains long-term relationships with its graduates and the schools...
Ed schools as allies to new teachers of color
Paula Rogovin: Creating a social justice early childhood classroom
We speak with Paula Rogovin, who taught kindergarten and first grade in NYC public schools for 44 years. Paula empowered the youngest students to become researchers and activists. She encourages students to ask questions (“anything goes”) and research is interdisciplinary, comprising literature, social studies, art, music, and science. Cultural relevance evolves organically from the research. When...
Paula Rogovin: Creating a social justice early childhood classroom
Prioritizing Mindsets: What New York State’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework Gets Right
Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash Schools adhere to ideas of what is the “correct” way to be, act, learn, and communicate. They institutionalize these ideas through school policies, teaching choices, and curricula. But these norms are not neutral or arbitrary; they mirror the norms that allow society’s justification for why certain groups such as white, middle-class, and...
Prioritizing Mindsets: What New York State’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework Gets Right
José Jiménez on gender diversity and sexual identity in elementary schools
We speak with José Luis Jiménez, principal of A.C.E. Academy for Scholars, PS 290, in Queens. A queer educator of color, he came out to his students during Pride Month in 2017. If a community is truly welcoming to all, he thought, “you don’t “check a part of yourself at the door.” José encourages his...
José Jiménez on gender diversity and sexual identity in elementary schools
Kiersten Greene on technology in schools: “Are we doing our homework?”
We speak with Dr. Kiersten Greene, Associate Professor of Literacy Education at SUNY New Paltz, about classroom internet use. Electronic tech’s transformational possibilities can go unfulfilled as schools buy and use tools and materials without evaluating whether they are effective or meet teachers’ needs. Huge funding sources like New York’s Smart Schools bond issue fund...
Kiersten Greene on technology in schools: “Are we doing our homework?”
Ujju Aggarwal on school choice, whiteness as property, and the “right to exclude”
We speak with Dr. Ujju Aggarwal, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Experiential Learning at the New School’s Schools of Public Engagement. Dr. Aggarwal explains how neoliberalism, with its emphasis on individual choice, includes a “right to exclude” and perpetuates discriminatory school admissions, not only to some charter schools but also to district schools and programs, describing in particular the experiences of parents in Manhattan’s District...
Ujju Aggarwal on school choice, whiteness as property, and the “right to exclude”
Jesse Hagopian on bringing Black Lives Matter into schools
We speak with Jesse Hagopian, an editor for ReThinking Schools and a long-time teacher in the Seattle Public Schools. He is a co-editor of the book Teaching for Black Lives. Jesse discusses the groundbreaking annual National Week of Action in February that makes four demands of schools: replace zero tolerance discipline with restorative justice, implement...
Jesse Hagopian on bringing Black Lives Matter into schools
Adjoa Jones de Almeida of the Brooklyn Museum on art as experience
We speak with Adjoa Jones de Almeida, Director of Education at the Brooklyn Museum. We discuss the significance of “art as experience.” Ms. Jones de Almeida describes art’s transformational power to educate and empower students of all ages, both personally and politically. The Museum partners with teachers across the academic spectrum and works to include...
Adjoa Jones de Almeida of the Brooklyn Museum on art as experience
Melissa Rivers on Community-Based Education in Rural Alaska
We speak with Melissa Rivers, Principal of the Scammon Bay School in Alaska’s Lower Yukon, a mile from the Bering Sea. The isolated, tight-knit Yupik Eskimo community is subsistence-based, harvesting moose and salmon. Students are artistic and learn by making things, but also must prepare for standardized tests designed for very different environments. For the past several years, Scammon...
Melissa Rivers on Community-Based Education in Rural Alaska
Mark Santow on Suing Rhode Island for Educational Equal Protection
We speak with Dr. Mark Santow, Chair of the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Dr. Santow and his middle school son, along with 12 other plaintiffs, are suing the state of Rhode Island in federal court under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for failing to provide civics curricula and other components of an adequate...
Mark Santow on Suing Rhode Island for Educational Equal Protection
Ethical College and Career Decisions
John Dewey, arguably America’s greatest 20th century philosopher and educator, stressed the importance of teaching habits of rigorous ethical inquiry in the classroom and in the larger society. He argued that students should learn to consider the impacts of their individual and collective social, economic, and political choices. Fortunately, many schools and youth programs encourage...
Ethical College and Career Decisions
Lev Moscow offers advice for secondary school teachers
We interview Lev Moscow who, for the last 14 years, has taught history and economics at The Beacon School in New York City. Lev reflects that advisory, done well, can serve as a venue for students to explore questions of ethics, purpose and happiness. He talks about balancing the history curriculum to include non-European perspectives....
Lev Moscow offers advice for secondary school teachers
Leo Ackley on teaching in Finland’s consistently superior schools
Amy interviews Leo Ackley, who emigrated to Finland in the 1972. He taught art, history of architecture, design, and engineering in Finnish schools for 37 years. We discuss the Finnish system. Teachers have autonomy to develop their own curricula. Finnish administrators are answerable to teachers rather than the other way around. Homework is rare and...
Leo Ackley on teaching in Finland’s consistently superior schools
Kym Vanderbilt on ethical early childhood teacher preparation
We interview Kym Vanderbilt, Lecturer and Professional Development Liaison in the Early Childhood/Childhood Department at CUNY/Lehman College. Kym describes her students’ concerns about meeting the needs of teacher assistants and parents as well as children. She talks about the test-heavy teacher certification process, which is both intimidating and expensive for aspiring teachers of limited means,...
Kym Vanderbilt on ethical early childhood teacher preparation
Anna Allanbrook on Brooklyn New School: centering children, marginalizing tests
We speak with Anna Allanbrook, longtime principal of Brooklyn New School (BNS). Learning at BNS is inquiry-based and cross-disciplinary. As well, BNS is known as the “opt-out school” because 95% of families opt out of standardized testing. The school offers no test preparation. Find more about the Brooklyn New School on bns146.org
Anna Allanbrook on Brooklyn New School: centering children, marginalizing tests
David Kirkland on New York’s State’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework
We speak with Dr. David E. Kirkland, Executive Director of NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. A leading voice in culturally responsive and sustaining education, the Metro Center helped write New York State Education Department’s new Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework. The Framework is founded on a view of education...
David Kirkland on New York’s State’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework
Norman Fruchter on the pioneering alternative high school he and colleagues built in Newark in the 1970s
We speak with Norm Fruchter, long-time educational activist and thought leader, about Independence School, an experimental high school where the ideal was that someone walking into a classroom couldn’t tell the teacher from the students. We discuss lessons learned – and perhaps forgotten – about supporting students whose original schools failed them. Among the school’s...
Norman Fruchter on the pioneering alternative high school he and colleagues built in Newark in the 1970s
Soledad Hiciano on nurturing and educating immigrant children in an age of deportation and deprivation
We speak with Soledad Hiciano, executive director of Community Association of Progressive Dominicans (ACDP), a multi-service community organization in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. She describes the challenges of supporting children who may have experienced multiple traumas, including homelessness and the deportation of close relatives. Photo by Bruce Warrington
Soledad Hiciano on nurturing and educating immigrant children in an age of deportation and deprivation
David C. Bloomfield on why we need a revolution in attitude to see education as a social good rather than an individual property right
We speak with Dr. David C. Bloomfield, Professor of Education Leadership. Law & Policy at Brooklyn College. David Bloomfield condemns the social Darwinism and “hoarding” mentality of our education systems. He explains how school resource allocation exacerbates segregation and inequality, a process deliberately abetted by the proliferation of school districts around the country. Education policy and financing reinforce an us against them view of schools....
David C. Bloomfield on why we need a revolution in attitude to see education as a social good rather than an individual property right
Silvia Canales on Relationship-Based College Counseling
We speak with Silvia Canales, who coordinates the college advisory program at Brotherhood/Sister Sol, an organization that provides comprehensive and holistic support services to underserved youth. Silvia talks about fully integrating college counseling into a program environment in which adults know young people well and students engage in systematic self-reflection. Find more about Silvia and...
Silvia Canales on Relationship-Based College Counseling
Scarlett Lewis on the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement: A Sandy Hook parent’s SEL program
“Nurturing, Healing Love” was the message that Scarlett Lewis found on her kitchen chalkboard shortly before her son, Jesse, was murdered in his first-grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School. In order to become part of the solution to the violence, Scarlett founded The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement with a mission to ensure that...
Scarlett Lewis on the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement: A Sandy Hook parent’s SEL program
Adán Vásquez on The Washington Heights Community Conservatory of Fine Arts: “I could be the one playing the cello!”
We talk with Adán Vásquez, executive and artistic director of the Association of Dominican Classical Artists and the Washington Heights Community Conservatory of Fine Arts, a unique free classical and folk music education program for the youth of Upper Manhattan. Adán Vásquez, a harpist, is an educator, an acclaimed classical musician, and a community activist....
Adán Vásquez on The Washington Heights Community Conservatory of Fine Arts: “I could be the one playing the cello!”
The school that Bushwick built: the story of EBC High School for Public Service
Introduction I’m Shirley Edwards, and I was Principal of the EBC High School for Public Service, Bushwick for ten of its formative years. Bushwick is an “inner city” community in Brooklyn, NY, and when I became principal – in 1993, the second year of the school – it was beset with all of the problems...
The school that Bushwick built: the story of EBC High School for Public Service
Kids learn through relationships: a conversation with Pedro Noguera about building a culture conducive to teaching and learning
We talk with Dr. Pedro Noguera about public school models that work for students, parents and teachers, and how to build a social movement for a progressive education agenda. He talks about the social dimensions to learning and the mismatch between students’ needs and teachers’ skills. He argues that an obstacle to making change in...
Kids learn through relationships: a conversation with Pedro Noguera about building a culture conducive to teaching and learning
Jason Warwin on The Brotherhood/Sister Sol: building strong Black and Latinx youth leaders for social change
Jason Warwin is the Co-Founder and Associate Executive Director of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, an organization that provides comprehensive, holistic and long-term support services to youth who range in age from eight to twenty-two. Located in Harlem (NYC), Bro/Sis also has programs dedicated to developing Black and Latinx youth in Africa, Latin America and The Caribbean....
Jason Warwin on The Brotherhood/Sister Sol: building strong Black and Latinx youth leaders for social change
Stephanie Carnes on Post-traumatic Growth and Resilience: cultural competence and creating safe environments for Central American immigrant children in today’s U.S.
We talk with Stephanie Carnes, a trauma-focused bilingual school social worker in a large public high school in New York’s Hudson Valley. Stephanie worked as the lead clinician in a federally-funded shelter program for unaccompanied children from Central America and as a consultant she challenges the districts and agencies with whom she works to re-envision...
Stephanie Carnes on Post-traumatic Growth and Resilience: cultural competence and creating safe environments for Central American immigrant children in today’s U.S.
Mark Gordon on the Friends and Relationships Course: teaching and learning from people with intellectual disabilities about sexuality, interdependence, and inclusion
We talk with Mark Gordon, founder of the Friends and Relationships Course, a program in New Mexico that provides classes for adults with intellectual disabilities who want to learn how to form intimate and other relationships. He talks about what he’s learned over 15 years of teaching sexuality classes, learning along with his son about...
Mark Gordon on the Friends and Relationships Course: teaching and learning from people with intellectual disabilities about sexuality, interdependence, and inclusion
Zoe Weil on humane education: the world becomes what we teach
We talk with Zoe Weil, the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education. She talks about providing young people with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to address our pressing challenges in order to transform unsustainable and unjust systems into ones that are humane, healthy, and peaceful. Find more about Zoe and the Institute...
Zoe Weil on humane education: the world becomes what we teach
Deborah Meier on Public Education and Democracy: What makes an ethical school
We talk with MacArthur "genius" award winner Deborah Meier, a founder of the small schools movement, about what makes a good school. She talks about how to build and maintain trust and mutual respect among students, teachers, and families.
Deborah Meier on Public Education and Democracy: What makes an ethical school
Eva Lopez on Act4Change: applying Theatre of the Oppressed to building social justice in The Bronx
We talk with Eva Lopez about Act4Change, a Theatre of the Oppressed project in the Bronx. Eva Lopez uses theater techniques to invite children and youth to envision liberation and to empower them to resist oppression. Audiences become spect-actors to examine root causes of bullying, domestic violence and other personal/societal crises.
Parent-school relationships in early childhood programs: family engagement is driven by families
Yasmin Morales-Alexander of Lehman College dispels the myth that Latinx parents don’t engage in their children’s education. Genuine parent-school engagement is based on schools’ recognition of families’ cultural values and traditions. “Family engagement is a cultural practice.” *Overview and transcript below. Photo by OC Gonzalez Overview 00:00-00:49 Intro 00:52-06:51 Mexican immigrant parents’ engagement with their...
Parent-school relationships in early childhood programs: family engagement is driven by families