Episode 75: The Future of Smart

Available May 13, 2025

Are we, as educators, trying to create the best human versions of AI…or the best humans? That’s a central question Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen asks when she thinks about the future of education. Drawing upon her bestselling book, The Future of Smart, she joins host Debra Wilson for a discussion about human-centered liberatory education, what schools need to do differently to set kids up for an ambiguous and uncertain future, and how she views topics like agency, curriculum, and technology in light of human development.

Guest: Ulcca Hansen

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We've organized kids' time in school and outside of school in ways that don't give them a chance to do what they need to be doing to develop during adolescence in healthy ways. And we see that. Our adolescents aren't doing well, they're anxious, they're depressed, they're turning that into self harm or risky behaviors. And so we add SEL into our schools when actually what we need to do is foundationally change, right, how we allow them to spend their time.” (8:34)
• “What I hear from kids is, oh my God, you keep telling me that I'm supposed to do this like boring stuff that I have no interest in so I can graduate and go to college and then I can live my life. And what they are saying is, I want to live my life now. There are things I care deeply about, some of them existential and some of them not. And that's what I want to sink my teeth into. And in fact, developmentally, that is exactly the moment when they need to be doing it, and not do what we have been doing to them, which has led to this new thing called the quarter life crisis, which is you have 25 year olds saying that they feel purposeless and that they feel unmoored and really kind of unhappy with their lives.” (26:41)
• “In some ways it's about how well does this person know themself, and have they actually done the work to be good enough friends with themselves and their own story and their own journey, that they can hold space for another person to come to them as their self and not immediately go into a tailspin, right? And really that's what this kind of education requires, is that, not that you're a perfect educator or guide, but rather that when you meet somebody who says something to you that might be hurtful or lashes out at you or questions you, that your immediate reaction is not to fight back and close in, but rather to be like, I'm okay. Like, let's go there, right? Because that is the kind of relationship that you're gonna have when you're doing this kind of work.” (34:38)

Related Episodes: 74, 72, 60, 58, 53, 51, 40, 35, 32, 29

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 74: Improving Access Through Innovation

Available May 6, 2025

How do we measure learning? It’s a question that plagues educators, as a rapidly changing landscape keeps us scrambling to catch up with evolving technologies, ever-expanding content, and the need to blend real-world experiences with tried and true curriculum. For over 100 years, part of our answer to the problem of measurement has been the Carnegie unit. And now, the Vice President for Educational Transformation at the Carnegie Foundation says that answer needs to change.

Guest: Diego Arambula

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So we believe that to make this move towards this new architecture, there's going to need to be a set of scalable tools to support this work. And often, there's a way for an independent school to solve a problem that directly meets the needs of their students today, but is not replicable unless you have student to teacher ratios of one to 10, or unless you've got this kind of funding or unless, or unless, or unless. And what might it look like to not live in a world of scarcity, but rather to live into this world of abundance, but to think about it through a lens of, huh, and what would it look like to share this?” (18:05)
• “Counselors are pushing that because they see what universities are asking for. And universities, in an ever-growing effort to get students who are truly prepared, ask for more. And right now, the only way to ask for more is to ask for more time. Because the Carnegie unit has conflated time and learning, the only way for a student to be more prepared for college is to spend more time earning more credits. And if we can't unlock those two, we're going to continue to put more pressure on young people.” (27:55)
• “It's an invitation to say, we'd love to partner with independent systems who are moving really fast towards some of these to say, can we be learning in these places about efforts to do this kind of work? And if any of that learning can then roll up so that the shared learning Carnegie is bringing is from public systems, from independent systems, in red states and blue states, in big cities and in rural areas, we just think that will continue to let us speak into what at the end of the day is a somewhat silent American consensus that we want the same thing for our kids, and that right now we're not getting it, and that it's possible.” (32:07)

Related Episodes: 69, 65, 56, 53, 51, 46, 43, 36,29

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 73: Empowering Variable Learners

Available April 29, 2025

Educators understand that not all learners need the same things to thrive. But it’s not always easy to discover what each student truly needs to help them learn and grow to their greatest potential. That’s why Nancy Weinstein created Mindprint Learning, a company devoted to zeroing in on each student’s specific learning needs, so parents and educators can help empower kids to take charge of their educational journey. Nancy sits down with Debra Wilson, along with Sumner McCallie of the McCallie School in Tennessee, to share how Mindprint works with schools.

Guests: Nancy Weinstein and Sumner McCallie

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We all know when students aren't learning, they can't articulate why they're not learning. They behave in a certain way. Some of them pull back, some of them are disruptive, some of them sort of, you know, kind of shelter in place, if you will, and hide their emotions. And as parents and teachers, we can't always figure out what that is. But if we can know this is a kid who's struggling to focus, or struggling to remember what they learned, or struggling to learn in some contexts but not others, well then we know exactly what to do. We have great teachers, but if they're playing a guessing game for all the kids, it's just impossible to do. But with the data, it is so eminently possible and makes such a difference in so many kids' lives.” (6:47)
• “In fact, great teaching involves recognizing we have a lot of different type of learners in our class, right? I mean, that's how that works. But for a student himself or herself, themselves, to say I have agency here. I actually have an ability to take what's being given to me, in whatever format is being given to me, and begin to maneuver myself and maneuver the content into a way that I can best absorb it, or into a way I can best remember it and process it. That's pretty powerful.” (20:33)

Related Episodes: 69, 63, 60, 58, 57, 52, 40, 23

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.