Episode 78: The Power of Transcendent Thinking

With Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Available October 14, 2025

“What does it mean to be a self-actualizing, fully integrated, socially contextualized human being in this new world order? And how would we design opportunities…to help a young person develop not just what they know now, but to potentiate in ways that change who they could become?”

Neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang returns to New View EDU to share the work she and her team at USC CANDLE are doing to answer these, and other, deeply provocative questions about the science of teaching and learning. Her new research hones in on a specific type of cognitive process, which she terms “transcendent thinking.” And as Mary Helen explains during this conversation with Debra Wilson, transcendent thinking may be the key to unlocking long-term developmental outcomes for students.

Guest: Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So what we have here is this incredible suggestion that when kids dispositionally engage with complex, curious, deep thinking about big ideas. Not only are they deeply engaged by that, but they are physically and functionally growing their capacity to think in ways that over time produces a neural substrate that supports wellbeing. So we're actually growing a robust brain that enables us to be well, to manage in relationships, and to feel good in our own skin and to develop identities that transcend that are about big ideas and purpose and values.” (18:21)
• “What we show is that teaching well is not more work, it's different work. It's work in which you really engage with the thought patterns, what it feels like for these students to be thinking. What are their emotions about here? Are they having emotions about, you know, the amazing power of right triangles to help us, you know, sort of understand the geometry of the world and how powerful it feels to really engage in that kind of mathematical thinking? Or are they having emotions about, yay, I did it, I'm done. Or, boo, I didn't, and now I'm freaking out because I'm going to flunk, right? Because when the emotions are mainly about those outcomes, what we're finding is that the school is not promotive of development in the same way. It may be promoting quote unquote learning, maybe, but in the service of what? What are you going to use that learning for?” (33:33)

Related Episodes: 75; 72; 69; 59; 58; 47; 35

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

Episode 77: Dignity-Affirming Leadership in Schools

With Jason Craige Harris

Available October 7, 2025

At a time when conflict and polarization feel like an unrelenting fact of life, how can we build stronger, kinder school communities where everyone feels seen, known, and valued? That’s one of the pervasive questions facing school leaders right now, and one that Jason Craige Harris is ready to help us answer. He joins Morva McDonald for a conversation about refocusing our leadership practices to center human dignity, and why he feels that reframe is so vital to our continued wellbeing.

Guest: Jason Craige Harris

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “We have to engage in a bit of a listening tour to hear how people are experiencing their cultural reality. And one of the reasons why is because our brains are storytelling factories. And in the absence of information given to us, whenever we detect gaps, we create, right? We fill it with our own sort of assumptions. And those assumptions, I'm not saying they're automatically wrong, but they're not automatically right most of the time.” (6:58)
• “For a long time in my work, I framed things in terms of what I was against. Like I had a really clear idea of like, I don't want exclusion. I don't want assimilation. I don't want violence. I'm not even sure I really want tolerance. And so my whole imagination was defined by being anti- forces that were debilitating and dehumanizing. And at some point I realized, gosh, like, I'm not sure I've spent much time trying to thickly describe the world that I want, like what I'm fighting for versus what I'm fighting against...Let's just say that if exclusion somehow disappears, if racism disappears, if whatever -ism it is disappears, then will we no longer have purpose?” (19:15)
• “I worry that some of our school communities, because of the desire to avoid controversy and division, and the complexities that come with grappling with challenging human issues, like the desire to avoid crisis, then leads some toward a kind of superficial peace, a sort of superficial consensus.” (25:16)

Related Episodes: 67; 66; 64; 37; 30; 15; 13

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

Episode 76: The Promise, Possibility, and Power of Adolescence

With George Abalekpor and Eleanor Daugherty

Available September 30, 2025

As educators, we are always focused on ways to help our students thrive as they move through the K-12 experience and beyond. But often, we inadvertently frame adolescence as a period characterized by problems and challenges, rather than a developmental moment that can be inherently powerful and positive. How do we reframe how we think about adolescence, how we build the student experience for teens, and how we can focus on the work we are doing to ensure that our students transition from our schools to higher education with a full sense of their own agency? George Abalekpor and Eleanor Daugherty of Georgetown University join host Debra Wilson to share their wisdom.

Guests: George Abalekpor and Eleanor Daugherty

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “I will forever remember this student who said, ‘You keep asking me how I am, and then you correct my tone of voice.’ And just this idea of, we need to get over ourselves. If we want to truly and authentically connect and create scholarship and practice that is meaningful for today's adolescent, we need to listen a bit more and abandon a little bit the watch your tone of voice, young lady. Those little corrective behaviors are actually stifling the presence, the authentic presence of adolescents.” (22:05)
• “So youth, I think more than anything, they want to feel as though their schooling matters. They want to feel that they are getting a sense of meaning and purpose in their education. And I think to tie it all together, I think co-creation is an answer to that solution. It's something that I think is tangible, can be honestly pretty easily developed in all educational spaces, and it allows for meaning because when you give youth an opportunity to be active participants in not just affecting policies, but affecting policies that specifically impact them and communities that they're involved in, there's automatically a sense of purpose that is attached to that.” (34:42)

Related Episodes: 75; 70; 67; 60; 59; 51; 40; 22

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

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.

Episode 72: Thriving Through Happiness

Available April 22, 2025

What does happiness have to do with achieving excellence and success? Do happy students learn more deeply and go on to more fulfilling careers and lives? Most educators understand the intrinsic connection between emotional well-being and deep learning, but “happiness” doesn’t tend to show up on our classroom rubrics. Dan Lerner, author, performance coach, and professor of the famous NYU class “The Science of Happiness” sits down with host Morva McDonald to share why we might want to rethink the value of positivity.

Guest: Dan Lerner

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So there is certainly an element, genetic element, component, of happiness, right? For folks listening out there, try to think of someone who you always think of as, that person's always a little gloomier than other folks, right? And that is the way that some people are sort of set. Think about it like a thermostat, right? They are set to a certain number…But a considerable amount of how we experience positive emotion is through rightly directed effort.” (9:23)
• “Positive emotions come in lots of different shapes and colors. When we look at the research on positive emotions, we research different positive emotions separately. Hope is researched differently than joy. It's researched differently than pride. It's researched differently than love. It's researched differently than calm or tranquility or peace. So being able to go in and allowing someone to express what they're excited about, what they're looking forward to, and then getting into, all right, so what are the challenges? Means we have potentially primed our colleagues or our direct reports or whoever we're meeting with to be operating in a different way.” (14:17)
• “Let's say your coach is standing next to you as you drag that bag of boulders or your teacher is standing next to you as you're taking the really hard math test. Are they saying you suck, you suck, you're never gonna do it? Or are they saying, you know, you are doing great. I believe in you. I know we can get this done. When you're done with that workout session, do you go home and stare at the ceiling? Is that effective? Or do you go talk to another teammate and you're like, man, that was tough, you know, it's worth it. And I'm so glad you're here to have the conversation with.” (26:13)

Related Episodes: 66, 60, 59, 51, 42, 40, 35, 22

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

Episode 71: Exploring Generative AI in K-12 Schools

Available April 15, 2025

AI continues to be one of the hottest topics in education right now. Should we be using it? Should we allow students to use it? When, where, and how does it fit into our schools and our vision for the future of education? Yet despite all the chatter, the fact remains that AI is so new and so fast-moving that we don’t have a lot of evidence or research upon which to base our decisions. That’s a problem Chris Agnew and the Generative AI Hub at Stanford’s SCALE Initiative are trying to address.

Guest: Chris Agnew

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “I would say AI in schools is a week by week, month by month, as far as how fast the technology is changing, how fast take up is changing. And so it is something that school leaders need to keep front of mind and be actively talking about, even though they can't be expected to know the answers. Because here's the great secret. Right now, nobody knows the answers. Even the heads of the largest LLMs are building tools that they don't know where that will lead. And we need to face it head on.” (12:21)
• “I hope we all know that technology is not a thing in its own right. Technology we should be adopting as a tool to do X or to do Y, but we're not just adopting technology for technology's sake. AI is the same. And so determining, okay, AI is this tool. What are we thinking about what we want to apply this to?” (15:23)
• “I feel like we're at the precipice of the opportunity to make this choice or go down a more, say, dystopian or technology for technology's sake path. Right now we have this technology, when you apply it to education in schools and specifically you take AI with this very new powerful technology. You can use it to optimize a currently flawed system, or use it to completely reimagine what's possible.” (27:22)

Related Episodes: 68; 49; 45; 32; 31; 28

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