In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Katherine M. Heavers — a high school biology teacher, evolutionary biologist, and co-author of Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In — about what it actually takes to build authentic relationships in a classroom. Heavers draws on her doctoral theory of the "telling break" and 12 years of research conducted while teaching full-time to argue that the relational work great teachers do is learnable by anyone.

Together, Seth and Kate explore the biology of trust — why authenticity isn't soft or sentimental, but a survival mechanism the mammalian brain has been running for 200,000 years. They talk through Kate's theory of the telling break, the moment a teacher's personal disclosure cracks open a shared space of curiosity in the room, and why that moment is at the center of learning rather than on its margins. Kate makes the case that vulnerability, emotional safety, honest feedback, and the willingness to name your own failures in front of students are all trainable skills — not personality traits — and that any teacher can be brought to them given the right conditions and inner work. The conversation ends with a genuine surprise: after three and a half years of exploring AI tools, Kate recently deleted her ChatGPT account because her teenage niece's ethics teacher changed her mind.

Key topics:

• The telling break — what happens when a teacher steps out of instruction and becomes a person in the room
• Teaching as a learnable craft vs. an innate gift
• The biology of trust and why authenticity is an evolutionary strategy
• Emotional safety and productive struggle — how to hold both at once
• Self-reflection and inner work as professional practice, not personal disclosure
• Confronting bias as an ongoing relational obligation
• AI, cognitive offloading, and what we give up when we stop thinking for ourselves

Links & Resources:

• Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In — Katherine M. Heavers & Valerie Kearns, Routledge, 2024. https://www.routledge.com/Transforming-Teaching-Through-Relationship-Building-and-Self-Reflection-Finding-Our-Way-In/Heavers-Kearns/p/book/9781032798103
• Daring Greatly — Brené Brown (mentioned by Kate as essential reading for teachers)
• The Atlas of the Heart — Brené Brown (mentioned)
• Adam Grant and Brené Brown's collaborative content - The Curiosity Shop Podcast
• Grace and Frankie — Netflix series (Kate's media recommendation)
• "Toward a Theory of the Educational Interruption: A Conceptual Model of the Telling Break" — Katherine M. Heavers, doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 2012. https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/37293/

Guest Bio: Dr. Katherine M. Heavers

Dr. Katherine M. Heavers is a high school biology teacher at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in New Jersey and an adjunct professor in teacher education at Rutgers University and The College of New Jersey. Her work sits at the intersection of evolutionary biology, the philosophy of education, and classroom practice — she spent 12 years earning her EdD in Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Rutgers while teaching science full-time, developing her theory of the "telling break" along the way. She is co-author, with Valerie Kearns, of Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In (Routledge, 2024).

About the Host:

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Rushton Hurley — founder of Next Vista for Learning and Director of Innovation at Junipero Serra High School — about the annual showcase that brings student projects from Serra in California together with student projects from Parklands College in Cape Town. Rushton's claim, sharpened over years of running the Creative Solutions for the Global Good class: students aim for "good" when they know other people will see their work, and "good enough" when only the teacher will. The episode works through what changes — in design, in motivation, in resource requirements — when the audience expands.

Together, Seth and Rushton explore the design of the Creative Solutions for the Global Good class, the Serra–Parklands College partnership, the iterative storytelling model that replaces the year-end capstone, AI as a tough-questions generator (not a writing tool), and the minimum viable conditions for replicating this kind of work at less-resourced schools. The episode closes with a project from a Parklands student who redesigned the desiccant sachets used in pharmaceutical packaging — the original ones can leak when saturated, and her version changes color when it crosses the threshold.

Key topics

• Audience as motivator: "good" vs. "good enough"
• Iterative storytelling as pedagogy, not summative assessment
• The Serra–Parklands College partnership across continents
• AI as a tough-questions generator
• Minimum viable conditions for project-based learning at any school
• Concrete student projects: Scale Bridge, Fruit Share, the desiccant sachet

Links & Resources

• Next Vista for Learning — https://www.nextvista.org
• Rotary.cool — http://rotary.cool (Rushton's Rotary club, the connector to many of the showcase's global audience members)
• Junipero Serra High School — https://www.serrahs.com
• Parklands College, Cape Town — https://www.parklands.co.za/
• Kevin Brookhouser, The 20 Time Project — https://www.20time.org/
• More or Less (BBC) — Rushton's recommendation - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
• Rushton's previous appearance on Make It Mindful: "Education Futurist: Rushton Hurley" — https://makeitmindful.transistor.fm/episodes/40-education-furturist-rushton-hurley
• To request access to the recorded showcase: email rhurley@serrahs.com

Guest Bio: Rushton Hurley

Rushton Hurley is the founder of Next Vista for Learning, a nonprofit video library and student video contest platform he started in 2005, and the Director of Innovation at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California. His work centers on giving students agency over project-based work, building partnerships between schools across continents, and treating storytelling — the act of telling and retelling a project's story to different audiences — as the primary mechanism through which students improve. He previously taught as an assistant language teacher in Japan.

About the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores. See https://banyangloballearning.com/

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Mitch Weathers and Sarah Oberle, Ed.D. — a middle/high school teacher-turned-author and a primary educator who completed her doctorate studying working memory — about why executive functioning looks fundamentally different in grades K–3 than it does anywhere else in school. Their new co-authored book grew directly out of feedback that K–3 teachers had been handed materials written for older students and told to make them work. The episode makes the case that what happens in the primary years isn't just preparation for real learning — it is real learning, and most schools treat it as invisible.

Together, Seth, Mitch, and Sarah explore what the three core executive functions — working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility — actually look like when a child is five versus eight versus twelve, and why the developmental arc across those years matters for how teachers structure everything from transitions to independent work time. Sarah draws on her years teaching emerging readers to describe how cognitive load quietly derails decoding, how visual clutter competes with attention, and why playing music with lyrics during work time is, as she puts it, "really cruel." The conversation gets genuinely interesting when Seth pushes back on inhibition — asking whether what looks like off-task behavior might just be a child doing exactly what they need — and the discussion that follows is one of the more honest treatments of classroom compliance versus developmental reality you'll hear on an education podcast.

Key Topics

• The three core executive functions: working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility
• Why K–3 materials can't simply be adapted from K–12 resources
• Cognitive load and how instructional design either protects or depletes it
• The developmental arc from preschool through third grade and what changes around grades 3–4
• Classroom environment design: visuals, acoustics, physical layout, and attention
• Routines as an executive functioning tool, not just a management strategy
• When off-task behavior reflects unmet developmental needs vs. instructional design failures

Links & Resources'
Executive Functions for Every K-3 Classroom by Mitch Weathers and Sarah Oberle, Ed.D. (K–3 focus) — https://organizedbinder.com/product/ef-k3-book/

• Executive Functions for Every K-3 Classroom by Mitch Weathers and Sarah Oberle, Ed.D. (K–3 focus) — https://organizedbinder.com/product/ef-k3-book/
• Executive Functions for Every Classroom (Mitch Weathers' first book, grades 3–12) — https://organizedbinder.com/product/executive-functions-for-every-classroom/
• Mitch Weathers' website: OrganizeBinder — https://organizedbinder.com/

Guest Bios

Mitch Weathers works with educators on applying executive functioning research to classroom practice. His first book focused on grades 3–12 and was widely used in school professional development. His new book, co-authored with Sarah Oberle, extends that work into the primary grades (K–3), an audience he intentionally left out of the first book because, as he says, he's not a primary teacher. He writes and consults under the OrganizeBinder brand.

Sarah Oberle, Ed.D. is an early childhood educator who spent years teaching emerging readers before pursuing doctoral research on working memory. Her classroom experience — figuring out through trial and error why some things worked and others didn't — eventually met the research, and the alignment gave her a framework for anticipating where instruction breaks down before it does. She brings that practitioner-to-researcher perspective to the book.

About the Host:
Seth Fleischauer is a former classroom teacher and the founder of Banyan Global Learning. Make It Mindful explores how people, cultures, technologies, cognitive processes, and school systems shape what happens in classrooms around the world.

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Jessica Werner, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Northshore Learning, about why teacher burnout is better understood as a systems problem than a personal one — and what happens when schools try to fix it without addressing the foundations that are already shaky. Jessica draws on her doctoral research in Uganda, where a policy expanding secondary school access flooded classrooms without providing additional support, and connects that experience directly to what she's seeing now in U.S. schools facing school choice expansion, teacher shortages, and the pressure to adopt every new initiative at once.

Together, Seth and Jessica explore why measuring teacher wellbeing is so difficult and why qualitative judgment still matters, how cultural context shapes what counts as a behavior problem and what motivates students, what schedules and workloads quietly signal to teachers about how much their effectiveness actually matters, and why adding initiatives on top of weak foundations accelerates burnout rather than solving it. Jessica also shares a specific example from a school in Colombia where an American teacher adapted her math instruction to work with — rather than against — the social, collective culture of her students, offering a concrete picture of what culturally responsive intervention looks like in practice.

Key topics:

• Teacher efficacy as a component of job satisfaction and retention
• The limits of quantitative measurement for wellbeing
• Cultural differences in student motivation: intrinsic vs. extrinsic
• Schedule design and its unintended impact on teachers
• Addition without subtraction: the workload problem
• School choice policy and the costs of rapid enrollment growth
• Neuroscience basics that translate directly into classroom management
• School-student "match" as a framework for the future of school choice

Links & Resources:

• Northshore Learning — coaching, school partnerships, and on-demand courses for educators: northshorelearning.org
• Jessica Werner on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jessica-werner-ph-d-818032163
• Northshore Learning YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCznAU47jszmmJyFBWd_1Lvw
• Hidden Brain podcast with Shankar Vedantam (recommended by Jessica): hiddenbrain.org
• Justin Reich, MIT Teaching Systems Lab — referenced by Seth on "addition by subtraction" in schools: https://makeitmindful.transistor.fm/episodes/76-experiment-with-humility-teaching-in-the-ai-evidence-gap-with-justin-reich

Guest Bio: Jessica Werner, Ph.D.

Jessica Werner is the founder and CEO of Northshore Learning, where she works with schools in the U.S. and internationally to support teacher effectiveness and student behavior through personalized coaching, group training, and on-demand professional development. Her work is grounded in neuroscience and centers on what actually allows teachers to feel effective — and what systematically undermines that feeling over time. Jessica holds a Ph.D. in education, with doctoral research focused on the implementation challenges of Uganda's universal secondary education policy, and has over 20 years of experience as a classroom teacher, professor of education, and consultant.

About the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See banyangloballearning.com.

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth Fleischauer talks with international school consultant Chris O'Shaughnessy about narrative therapy — what it is, why it matters, and how its techniques can quietly transform the way educators approach empathy, resilience, and cross-cultural understanding. What begins as a conversation about storytelling opens into something much bigger: a practical framework for helping students separate fact from interpretation, build emotional muscle in measurable steps, and find common ground even when values genuinely clash.

Along the way, Chris draws on everything from gym metaphors to the Enneagram to a sociology study involving voluntary self-electrocution to make the case that the oldest human art form — telling stories — might also be one of the most powerful tools in a teacher's toolkit.

Together, Seth and Chris explore the neuroscience of narrative, the taxonomy of resilience, and what it looks like to introduce intentional discomfort into a classroom — including the surprisingly radical act of letting kids be bored.

Key Topics Discussed:

• What narrative therapy actually is — and why it's less about therapy and more about learning to hold your own story at arm's length
• The description → evaluation → interpretation framework, and how a photograph of a woman in a wedding dress teaches you more about assumptions than any lecture could
• Why our brains prefer a complete story to an accurate one — and what that costs us
• The "gym as intentional inefficiency" model: how to introduce beneficial discomfort in measurable, safe steps
• Dr. Wong's taxonomy of resilience — cognitive, behavioral, emotional, relational, and motivational — and why giving students language for these differences is itself an act of empowerment
• What to do when cross-cultural conflict isn't a misunderstanding — it's a genuine clash of values
• The Enneagram as a tool for digging beneath belief systems to find the shared motivations underneath
• Why boredom might be the most underrated creative catalyst in schools — and the sociology study that proves people would rather electrocute themselves than sit with it
• Awe as an emerging opportunity in education (Seth's answer to Chris's lightning round question)

Guest Bio:

Chris O'Shaughnessy is an international school consultant whose work takes him into schools across cultures and contexts around the world. Drawing on a background in sociology, he helps educators build the skills — empathy, resilience, cross-cultural communication — that don't show up on a standardized test but determine everything about how students navigate the world. He is based at chris-o.com.

Host Bio:

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of the Make It Mindful podcast. His work focuses on global learning, cultural competency, and the evolving role of technology in education. Through Banyan Global Learning, he develops live virtual learning experiences that connect students to new people, places, and ways of thinking.

Episode Links:

• Chris O'Shaughnessy's website: chris-o.com
• Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World — Michele Borba
• Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy — Emily Bazelon
• Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
• The Homework Machine podcast — Justin Reich, MIT Teaching Systems Lab

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth Fleischauer talks with child development expert and author Deborah Farmer Kris about awe — what it is, why it matters, and why it might be the missing piece at the center of meaningful education. What begins as a conversation about a single emotion opens up into something much bigger: a research-backed framework for understanding how wonder drives curiosity, curiosity drives intrinsic motivation, and motivation unlocks the kind of deep learning that tests can't easily measure. Along the way, Seth reflects on how awe has been quietly powering his own work at Banyan Global Learning all along — he just didn't have a word for it until now.

Together, Seth and Deborah explore the neuroscience of wonder, the contagious nature of teacher enthusiasm, and what it means to make your classroom an oasis of awe — even inside a system that doesn't always make space for it.

Key Topics Discussed:

• What awe actually is — and how researchers know when someone is feeling it (hint: it's not just the Grand Canyon)
• The difference between awe and curiosity, and why they're more intertwined than most educators realize
• The research-backed chain from awe → curiosity → intrinsic motivation → deeper learning
• How awe primes the brain for memory — and why starting with wonder, not ending with it, changes everything
• Collective effervescence and neurosynchronicity: why learning together in a state of shared wonder produces measurably better outcomes
• Why teacher awe is contagious — and what that means for how we think about subject mastery and classroom culture
• The "small self" effect: how awe quiets cognitive chatter, restores perspective, and makes us more likely to help a stranger
• Why human kindness and bravery — not nature — turn out to be the most common source of awe across cultures
• The tension between awe and the structures of schooling: mystery vs. certainty, slow attention vs. coverage, wonder vs. testing
• Why Montessori education may be quietly ahead of the curve as AI reshapes what schools need to do
• A real conversation about teenagers, art museums, and whether you can — or should — engineer awe for your kids

Guest Bio:

Deborah Farmer Kris is a child development expert, educator, and author whose work explores the intersection of social-emotional learning, positive psychology, and how children grow. She writes regularly for PBS Kids and NPR's MindShift, and her Substack, Raising Awe-Seekers, brings the latest research on wonder and well-being directly to parents and educators. Her book on the science of awe and childhood is available now.

Host Bio:

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of the Make It Mindful podcast. His work focuses on global learning, cultural competency, and the evolving role of technology in education. Through Banyan Global Learning, he develops live virtual learning experiences that connect students to people, places, and ideas around the world.

Episode Links:

• Deborah Farmer Kris's website and resources: parenthood365.com
• Raising Awe-Seekers Substack: raisingaweseekers.substack.com
• Dacher Keltner's awe research at UC Berkeley: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu
• Ethan Cross, Author of Chatter and Shift: https://www.ethankross.com/
• Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"
• The Good Whale podcast (New York Times)
• The Overstory by Richard Powers

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth Fleischauer welcomes Christian Pinedo of AIEDU to explore what artificial intelligence actually means for the future of education. Rather than focusing on tools or hype, the conversation digs into how AI is exposing deeper challenges in the education system—from outdated assessment models to the need for systemic change. Drawing on his experience at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI and now working directly with educators across the U.S., Pinedo argues that AI should not be treated as a technology problem but as an opportunity to rethink how schools prepare students for a rapidly changing world.

Together, Seth and Christian explore how AI became “real” for educators with the arrival of large language models, why concerns about cheating are really conversations about assessment design, and how meaningful change requires both grassroots engagement with teachers and broader policy shifts at the state level. The episode highlights the importance of human-centered thinking, deeper professional learning for teachers, and the role of AI as a catalyst for broader educational transformation.

Key Topics Discussed:

• How Christian Pinedo moved from classroom teaching to working at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI and eventually to AIEDU.
• Why large language models made AI suddenly real for educators after years of research and speculation.
• The concept of human-centered AI and why conversations about AI must include educators, policymakers, historians, and communities—not just technologists.
• Why teacher concerns about AI “cheating” are really conversations about assessment design in a digital world.
• The limits of focusing on AI tools instead of addressing deeper systemic challenges in education.
• AIEDU’s AI Readiness Framework, which outlines competencies for students, teachers, school leaders, and districts.
• Why sustainable education reform requires both grassroots engagement with teachers and grass-tops policy change at the state level.
• How AIEDU’s Teacher Trailblazers Fellowship creates deeper professional learning through multi-week, collaborative teacher cohorts.
• Real classroom projects emerging from the fellowship, including:
  • Indigenous students exploring data sovereignty and AI
  • Students using AI to build a platform encouraging voter registration in rural communities
• The difference between information and knowledge in the age of AI—and why friction in learning still matters.
• How international contexts change the conversation around AI in education, especially for English language learners and communities with different assumptions about privacy and data.

Guest Bio:

Christian Pinedo works with AIEDU to help schools and policymakers navigate the impact of artificial intelligence on education. A former classroom teacher, he previously worked at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), where he explored how AI intersects with society, policy, and education. His work now focuses on helping educators and school systems develop the skills, frameworks, and policies needed to prepare students for a future shaped by AI.

Host Bio:

Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of the Make It Mindful podcast. His work focuses on global learning, cultural competency, and the evolving role of technology in education. Through Banyan Global Learning, he develops live virtual learning experiences that connect students to people, places, and ideas around the world.

Episode Links:

• AIEDU: https://aiedu.org
• AIEDU Podcast – Raising Kids in the Age of AI
• Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) - https://hai.stanford.edu/
• World Savvy