The Harvard EdCast

When school finances were looking dire, Michael Hester, superintendent of Batesville Public Schools in Arkansas, saw an opportunity to get creative. In an effort to overcome financial challenges, he turned to a solar energy initiative. The district utilized legislation (Act 464) to conduct an energy audit and redirect savings from solar and efficiency measures to cover costs. Within four years, teachers had a 30% increase to their base salary. “We didn't really have resistance at first because it was more just doubt whether the numbers match, if that would be delivered. Just disbelief that maybe what we were saying we were going to do and pursue could actually happen. Could we check all the boxes? Could we not only find the money, would those numbers be right? And then would we give the teachers the money?” Hester says. “Because you know how that goes. A lot of times you get your budget and things happen, and then you've got emergencies or crisis and things happen and it never gets to where you intended it to go.”In this episode, he discusses the rapid implementation of the project and emphasizes the positive impact on education, the community, and student engagement with green initiatives.

A rise in mass shootings and growing tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas War are just a couple things that children are likely hearing about – regardless how parents may try to shield them. These events compounded with other factors like existential uncertainty, the pervasive influence of social media, and a breakdown of civility in society are likely impacting children today and contributing to increased anxiety, says Abigail Gewirtz, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University. Many of today’s challenges are unfamiliar with parents who are left trying to figure out the best way to respond. “Parents are dealing with things in this generation that parents didn't have to deal with, at least in the last couple of generations. And that's a tricky thing to do, to know what to say, how to say, when to say it, what to listen for,” she says. Although it may seem like there is nothing a parent can do, Gewirtz believes parents can take on these difficult conversations. In this episode of the EdCast, she shares effective communication strategies, including regulating parents' emotions and engaging in problem-solving conversations with children, and strking the balance between shielding children and providing age-appropriate information. “I just want to acknowledge there's no resolution to these terrible events. But when I talk about resolution I'm thinking about how we can empower our children to feel better,” Gewirtz says. “These things worry us and upset us. And often we can be left feeling like, ‘There's nothing I can do,’ and we can be left feeling hopeless. But I think one of the most important messages that parents can convey to children is there is always something you can do.”

Higher education is one of the few industries that has changed little in the past few decades. Harvard Visiting Professor Brian Rosenberg believes there is an urgent need to transform higher education but too many structures and practices are keeping colleges and universities stuck in the past. “Look at any mission statement for any college or university, and you will probably find a word like transformational or transformative. And look at the work of any faculty member in any discipline, and they will tell you that they're trying to push the boundaries of their discipline and change things,” Rosenberg says. “But when it comes to the way these institutions operate, there is, in fact, a powerful resistance to, reluctance to, opposition to change.”He says an unsustainable financial model in colleges and universities and the importance of making education more accessible and equitable should be enough of a driver for higher education to change. However, a stubborn resistance to change is so embedded in the culture and structures of higher education have made it nearly impossible to. Some of those structures are the foundation of higher education like faculty tenure and shared governance.In this episode of the EdCast, Rosenberg emphasizes the need for a shift in mindset and incentives to push for meaningful change in the field and to ensure its sustainability and relevance.

What does it mean to raise a grateful child? Developmental scientist and psychologist Andrea Hussong from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says it’s a lot more than teaching your child about basic manners. In fact, it’s a lot deeper than that and parents play a crucial role in modeling gratitude, how they create opportunities for children to experience gratefulness, and even talking to their children about it. After studying parents and children, she recognized components of gratitude: what we notice, how we think or feel about it, what we do and how we enact grateful behaviors. “One of the big things that gratitude does that I think is so important for kids is it helps us find people in our environment that care about us.” Hussong says. “It strengthens our relationship with them, and it makes that support network surround us with a little more care. And we know social support is so important, particularly now, when we're dealing with these pandemics of loneliness and isolation. We really need that.”In this episode of the EdCast, Hussong shares strategies that can help your child develop a deeper understanding of gratitude, how you can foster it in the hearts and minds of your children, and the way to pivot as your child becomes a teenager. She also addresses the potential impact of gratitude on mental health.

Tony DelaRosa doesn’t think teachers can wait for policy mandating the inclusion of all races – especially Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) – in the classroom. The majority of states do not require curriculum about AAPI. Delarosa's aim is to support educators on how to do this necessary work on a group that’s historically and systemically invisible in the United States. In DelaRosa’s new book, "Teaching the Invisible Race," he emphasizes the importance of being pro-Asian American in the classroom, which involves recognizing the intersectionality of Asian American identities and their connection to other racial and social justice movements. "With my work, I'm challenging educators to think about how do you get Asian American in dialogue now? You're already talking with your kids. That's great. Step two is how do you actually get the community talking and involved? And that's another level. That takes years of practice..." he says. "And also a second level is that we need this even more in places where there's not Asian Americans. Much more important because if you're not going to get exposed to them by people, what is your way to build your racial literacy about Asian America if it's not in front of you? It has to be that school. School is the places to do those things.”In this episode of the EdCast, he addresses the challenges teachers may face in implementing Asian American education and the need for racial literacy and the importance of failure and reflection in the learning process.

Harvard Associate Professor Nadine Gaab wants to see the whole system surrounding children and reading development change – starting in utero. Earlier intervention can be the ultimate game-changer when it comes to identifying children with dyslexia, but also other learning differences. “When it comes to learning differences such as dyslexia, we are largely focused on a reactive deficit-driven wait to fail model instead of the development of preventative approaches,” she says. Gaab is a neuroscientist who researches the development of typical and atypical language and literacy skills in the pediatric brain, and pre-markers of learning disabilities. "What we could show is that some of these brain alterations are already there in infancy, and toddlerhood, and preschool. So what we can conclude from this is that some children step into their first day of kindergarten with a less optimal brain for learning to read. So you want to find them right then, right? And that has tremendous implications for policy," she says. "You don't want to wait and let them fail if you already can determine who will struggle most likely and who will not."While there have been some efforts to mandate universal dyslexia screening, it is only one small part of what needs to be done to take steps toward addressing the needs of children. The latter is something that Gaab envisions an entire community -- beyond just the school walls -- being a part of from pediatricians to bus drivers and even librarians.In this episode of the EdCast, Gaab discusses the what we know and don’t know about dyslexia and literacy development, and why the need for intervention – as early as preschool -- could be the most impactful thing that happens.

Changing a school can be challenging, but possible when you have a group of folks committed to making change, says Justin Cohen. He is a writer and activist who authored, "Change Agents: Transforming Schools from the Ground Up." As part of his research, he spent time speaking to educators in various schools that had successfully implemented change to better understand how they were able to do so. There's no real secret to making change, he notes, but rather there were key steps that these schools did including being open to change and giving the teachers the keys to drive and implement it. "Teachers know more than anyone what needs to happen," he says. "It's when the outsiders and the people with clipboards and the policymakers who haven't set foot in a school, since they dropped their kids off at private school, have a take. That's what I think gets people's backs up. And so when educators come together and talk, they know the challenges. They are deeply aware of what needs to happen, in a lot of cases, and are pretty disempowered when it comes to enacting or adopting the changes." Sometimes that even means going rogue from the district, he admits. In this episode of the EdCast, Cohen shares the habits of schools that have managed to implement change and how you can too in your school.

The Supreme Court’s decision to end race conscious admissions and -- actions taking place in many states to curb diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts on college campuses – has raised the question: what is next for DEI in higher education? Rich Reddick, a leading thinker on DEI in higher education, knows that the field needs to regroup and rethink the future of diversity – something on the minds of most college administrators. “Many folks this summer, we all were sort of in a funk, you know. It's just disappointing to know that the work and the research that has gone for the last 40 years, sort of, being dismissed,” says Reddick, the associate dean for equity, community engagement, and outreach for the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.“I remind people in both Fisher cases, there are amicus briefs submitted by the Fortune 100 and the military saying [diversity] is something that's critical to our ability to be competitive. Having a diverse population and having students have an opportunity to learn from each other and expose to each other's identities is such an important part of what makes us competitive economically, socially, politically. So that can't go away,” he says, reminding that this is a time for applicants to lean into diversity in college admissions and for colleges to lean on partners in higher education to continue their commitment to diversity. In this episode of the EdCast, Reddick shares his reaction to the Court’s decision, how it has impacted and changed his work with college administrators, and ways for those doing the challenging work of diversity today to stay committed to the fight.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing how we work with implications for the future. A recent study, conducted by edX Founder Anant Agarwal and Workplace Intelligence, reveals how AI is already impacting the workforce. With the explosion of AI, 87 percent of executives are already struggling to find talent for jobs. In order to prepare students for the future -- this means educators must also learn to incorporate AI in their work and classrooms, he says. Agarwal compares the adaption of AI in education as similar to other technological innovations like the Internet. “While students should learn how to use AI to research stuff and how to find different kinds of content, we need to help them understand how to use it in their day-to-day lives and at work, much as we brought in search engines and the Internet into the education process without fighting it," he says.In this episode of the EdCast, Agarwal discusses why everyone needs to upskill in AI and how educators can begin learning more about AI in order to figure out the best approach in the classroom.

The field of out-of-school learning time is vast and supports 10 million children a year. Despite this, the programs are often viewed as glorified babysitting and tremendously undervalued. Harvard Sociologist Bianca Baldridge began studying these programs many years ago, citing the impact they had on her own life and how little was known about them."I do think it is important for people to understand that as a society, we really depend on the sector in ways that we may not realize. So it's not only supporting the education system, the school system, because schools can't do everything. They never have. They never will," she says. "When parents are working, working late, young people have a place to go. That really supports the economy and thinking about parents having more time and space to work. And it provides young people with an opportunity to explore what they love, hone in on particular skills, engage with their peers, and also engage in relationships with youth work professionals."In this episode, she shares insight into the out-of-school learning sector, its unique impact on children's lives, the challenges it faces, and ways the sectors can work together.

When the pandemic hit, Stanford Economist Thomas Dee knew it was important to track enrollment as a means of understanding what children are experiencing. He discovered that 1.2 million students didn't enroll in public school. Dee's data indicates not only where these children went but also a significant number of children unaccounted for. A closer look at this data provides some insight into aspects of academic recovery that might also be missing."So much of our academic recovery discourse is focused on the kids still in public schools, and particularly those older kids who are in the kinds of testing windows that draw our attention," he says. "But the enrollment data are telling us really that some of the most substantial reductions in enrollment are among younger students, who to this day haven't yet aged into testing windows and won't until we hit the fiscal cliff, when the federal resources available to school districts run out."The implications for such significant enrollment changes range from challenges in instruction, how to distribute funding properly, to possible layoffs and school closures.

John Silvanus Wilson Jr. believes higher education institutions have something to learn from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) that can change the future of democracy. “What's in their DNA, what's in their history, and what remains on many of the campuses is a model for what needs to happen in this country and in this world now if we are going to save a democracy and save the planet in that order, by the way, which is unfortunate because a broken democracy cannot save a broken planet,” Wilson says.Wilson, currently the executive director of the Millennium Leadership Initiative for Aspiring Presidents, has a long history with HBCUs as a graduate and later president of Morehouse College, and also the leader of the White House Initiative on HBCUs under the Obama Administration. While HBCUs have long been viewed through a lens of deficiency and survival, Wilson notes that these institutions actually are preeminent in character – something that is missing from many institutions nationwide. He calls on higher education to focus more on producing citizens who aspire to common good rather than personal gain. “I think all of American higher education has to heed what John Dewey said and begin to deliberately shape people who will leave and not just be selfishly concerned about their own well-being but about the well-being of society, the shape and condition of democracy,” he says. “This is critical.”In this episode of the EdCast, Wilson reflects on HBCU history and how it can inform the future of higher education and democracy.

The pandemic challenged literacy development and outcomes for many students but that doesn’t mean America is currently in a literacy crisis. Harvard Professor Catherine Snow, a pioneer with decades of research in language and literacy development, says she’s puzzled by the public discourse about a literacy crisis.“I am...struck by the degree to which people are willing to invoke a literacy crisis, when the data do not support anything like a literacy crisis,” Snow says. “NAEP scores, aside from the pandemic then—but NAEP scores, over the last 10, 15 years have grown-- slowly, but they have gotten better in literacy.” There are many districts that weathered the storm of COVID. Snow cautions that it’s important to remember the negative impacts on children’s reading test scores is not evenly distributed, and in time we will have a better understanding of its impact on literacy development. In the meantime, Snow reminds educators to remain steadfast with balanced literacy instruction.“What worries me about the post-pandemic instruction is that people are particularly under the influence of these worries about phonics are retreating to a stance of, ‘Oh my gosh. They've missed the phonics instruction. We've got to do that more and more and better and better,’” she says. “And the fact of the matter is that yes, they need phonics instruction. But they don't need an hour and a half a day of phonics instruction. Fifteen minutes a day, in the context of opportunities to read and practice and play with language, is probably more effective than overloading literacy instruction with phonics in order to repair the ravages of the pandemic.”In this episode of the EdCast, Snow discusses the current state of American literacy, and how despite knowing what works, we continue to misinterpret modes of instruction and the science of reading.

Melinda Mangin stresses the importance of creating welcoming gender inclusive environments -- regardless of whether anyone in your school identifies as transgender. “If you imagine a quarter of your students somehow see themselves as gender nonconforming-- they like something that's not stereotypically appropriate for their assigned gender-- then we're talking about a lot of kids,” says Mangin, a professor at Rutgers University who is an expert in inclusive schools for transgender people. “I think it's really incumbent upon us to move away from seeing gender as a problem, and waiting to fix a problem, and trying to reframe it as this is an opportunity to be more expansive in how we understand a concept, and to create space for that expansiveness to present itself, and really just shifting our mindset about the work that we're doing. We're not fixing a problem. We're creating opportunities for genuine authenticity for kids.” Many educators struggle to understand how best to do this work, and it comes with many fears, she says. Given the current climate of hate and laws against transgender people, she hopes educators will still do their best to affirm student’s identify and work on developing gender neutral school cultures. In this episode, she discusses steps educators can make to develop more trans inclusive schools and efforts all schools should take toward building more gender inclusive school climates.

When it comes to navigating a child’s digital life, there are many challenges facing today’s parent, says Katie Davis. While an overemphasis is often placed on screen time limits, Davis says this is often a simplistic approach to managing children’s digital media use and families need to go deeper. Davis, an associate professor at the University of Washington, has long researched the impact of digital technologies on young people. In her latest work, she explores a wide range of technology and its impact on children at multiple stages of development – from toddler to twenty-something. She reflects on her own experience as a parent, and encourages families not to stress about the challenges of raising children in the age of digital media. “We do our best as parents to steer our children towards positive technology experiences, and we do our best to monitor what they're doing, ultimately, the challenges are bigger than what we can solve within our family, and it really takes more than individual families to address these challenges,” Davis says. “It takes government regulation, and it takes technology companies changing their practices.”In this episode of the EdCast, Davis talks about how children engage with technology at each stage of development and how they can best be supported.

Social psychologist Geoff Cohen says a crisis of belonging is destroying us. One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness. Young people are struggling with high levels of anxiety and mental health issues at times when they desperately need a sense of connection and belonging. Although most of us know what it feels like to be excluded or question our belonging, Cohen says we don't do the greatest job of recognizing that feeling when it happens to others. In fact, we often threaten other people's sense of belonging, he says. It's having a serious effect on our wellbeing. The good news is there are small ways we can change and even nurture belonging as educators, parents, and citizens. In this episode, he shares what we need to do to truly create places of belonging.

Educators need to do more to address the basic social emotional needs of immigrant children if they are to advance in learning, says Harvard Professor Carola Suárez-Orozco. She is the director of the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, where she's focused on the practices that can change immigrant children’s lives in the classroom. Immigrant children make up 27 percent of US student population. Immigrant children face many challenges and also have many strengths and resiliences. However, those qualities often go unnoticed in the quest to learn English. Suárez-Orozco doesn't dismiss learning English as important, rather she wants educators to gain a better understanding of who immigrant children really are in order to succeed.

Parental rights movements have gained much momentum in recent years with huge potential to impact the future of public education. University of Massachusetts (Lowell) Associate Professor Jack Schneider and journalist Jennifer Berkshire, also hosts of the education policy podcast "Have You Heard," say there's more happening with these movements than meets the eye. For the past few years, parents and schools have been embroiled in controversy on everything from banned books to curriculum choices to mental health clinics on campuses. This isn't the first time in education history where we've seen such movements, but Berkshire and Schneider say we need to pay closer attention to the political agendas behind them, and what this means for public education. In this episode, they reflect on the history of parental rights movements, the political agendas at play, and how these movements impact educators and students.

Despite growing concerns about generative artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, in education, Harvard's Chris Dede isn't overly worried. As a researcher on emerging technologies, he's seen many decades where new technologies promised to upend education. Instead, Dede knows artificial intelligence requires educators to tweak how they teach in order to truly take advantage of what AI has to offer. As the associate director of research for the National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education, Dede says AI raises the bar and it has the power to significantly impact learning in powerful ways. In this episode of the EdCast, Dede talks about how education needs to get smarter to work with artificial intelligence.

Longtime educator Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade thinks schools have been focused on equality for too long and need to fundamentally rethink it. He says equality is not producing the results that schools really need of providing all students with a quality education. While visiting schools many years ago, he noticed educators used the terms "equality" and "equity" interchangeably. Then, he started tracking what that actually means and the data demonstrates it doesn't work. What would schools look like if they were truly equitable places? In this episode of the EdCast, Duncan-Andrade reimagines what education could look like in America if we dared to break free of the system that constrains it.

Mostly everyone has had some connection to hip-hop, especially students today, according to Harvard Lecturer Aysha Upchurch. It's more than just rap music, hip-hop is a cultural movement consisting of MCing, DJing, breaking, graffiti, and knowledge. It's been a part of our lives for almost 50 years. When we think about education, Upchurch says, it's important to consider hip-hop as part of it. As the director of HipHopEx, an experimental lab at Harvard that explores hip-hop pedagogy, Upchurch has experienced firsthand what can happen when education welcomes hip-hop with open arms. In this episode of the EdCast, Upchurch breaks down what hip-hop is and isn't, and ways that educators can incorporate hip-hop into their relationships with students and schools.Share this episode with your networks! Use #HarvardEdCast and tag HGSE on any social media channel.Twitter: @HGSE Instagram: @harvardeducationFacebook: @HarvardEducationLinkedIn: Harvard Graduate School of EducationTikTok: @harvardeducation

Many elementary schools around the nation have little time or support to focus on social studies. It may explain why we see topics like Thanksgiving reduced to simple acts of gratitude or longstanding myths opposed to its more complex history. University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor Noreen Naseem Rodríguez says the lack of social studies in elementary curriculum is "heartbreaking" and really necessary for democracy. But it's not about just teaching any social studies, it's about making an effort to teach an anti-oppressive social studies -- or one that tells the full story about the nation and all its people. “When we think about anti-oppressive social studies, we're really thinking about ways to bring those who have been marginalized for so long to the center, and to find ways to teach social studies so that every child in a classroom can see themselves reflected in who is a part of a community, who is a part of this nation's history. And it isn't just about the great things that have happened in this nation, but really engaging with some of that complexity in ways that are appropriate for young children,” she says. “We don't want to terrify them, we don't want to traumatize them, but making sure that students feel seen and that they have a sense of belonging no matter who they are, what their identities are. And that requires us to really throw out a lot of the stuff that's traditionally been used in classrooms.”In this episode of the EdCast, Rodríguez shines the light on the current state of social studies in elementary schools and why it needs to change. She shares ideas about how educators can lean into teaching uncomfortable narratives and some of the challenges to doing this work. Share this episode with your networks! Use #HarvardEdCast and tag HGSE on any social media channel.Twitter: @HGSE Instagram: @harvardeducationFacebook: @HarvardEducationLinkedIn: Harvard Graduate School of EducationTikTok: @harvardeducation

Harvard Lecturer Laura Schifter wants more schools taking climate action. Schools are major contributors to climate issues in ways that educators and administrators may not even realize. Schifter says it goes beyond just the high use of energy, but also school buses and high food waste. The good news is schools can do a lot to shift its carbon footprint and make it part of student’s education at the same time. Schifter, who leads the K12 Climate Action Initiative at the Aspen Institute, aims for 100,000 schools to run entirely on clean, renewable energy in 10 years. But what is it going to take to get there? In this episode of the EdCast, Schifter outlines the reasons why schools must act now and shares the many resources available to make change a reality.

The latest National Assessment of Educational Progressed showed big declines in students' math performance -- in some cases as low as 20 years ago. The results showcased the effects of the pandemic and in particular how hard it was to teach math, say Harvard experts Heather Hill and Jon Star. In this episode of the EdCast, they share why the scores dropped significantly, how challenging it can be to teach math, and ideas on how to move forward from this moment.Share this episode with your networks! Use #HarvardEdCast and tag HGSE on any social media channel.Twitter: @HGSE Instagram: @harvardeducationFacebook: @HarvardEducationLinkedIn: Harvard Graduate School of EducationTikTok: @harvardeducation

Children's imaginations are complicated and impressive, says Harvard Professor Paul Harris. Yet, often times, when we watch children pretending, we write it off as fantasy or child's play. What are educators and parents missing in those moments? How can adults be better informed about the nature of children's thinking? From how children mimic reality while pretending to why children develop fears to how they differentiate between make believe and what we tell them, Harris' decades of research demystifies children's thinking. In this episode, Harris takes us on a journey through children's imaginations and contemplates how educators and parents can better use children's imaginations for learning.Share this episode with your networks! Use #HarvardEdCast and tag HGSE on any social media channel.Twitter: @HGSE Instagram: @harvardeducationFacebook: @HarvardEducationLinkedIn: Harvard Graduate School of EducationTikTok: @harvardeducation

The upcoming election has the potential to greatly shift the landscape many superintendents are working in around the nation. The work of superintendents has never been more challenging, say Senior Lecturer Jennifer Cheatham and Claremont Graduate University Professor Carl Cohn, given the ongoing polarization today. That divide is impacting superintendents day-to-day work, making it incredibly hard to focus on key things like teaching and learning, equity, or even relationship building. “There've always been challenges working with the typical political characters, board members, unions, the stress of the job, supporting communities through crises,” Cheatham says. “These are not necessarily new for them. They're just amplified putting even more pressure and stress on superintendents and resulting probably in even more personal sacrifice.” Superintendent turnover is at an all-time high, with one in every four superintendents considering leaving the job, they say.In this episode of the EdCast, Cohn and Cheatham examine the current state of the superintendency and share ideas on how to manage in fraught times.

What can happen when parents challenge a curriculum? How can movements against curriculums take hold? There's a lot more to it than you might think, according to University of Hawaii at Manoa Assistant Professor Ethan Chang. Chang's research explores how a group of white parent activists challenged ethnic studies in California, catching the attention of news media nationwide. Although the movement didn't eliminate ethnic studies as part of the curriculum, it had good and bad repercussions. In this episode of the EdCast, Chang details the strategies activists used to challenge the curriculum in California schools, and why it behooves us to better understand the tactics made by counter-curricular movements.

What does it mean to be a school leader when the unimaginable happens? Frank DeAngelis, retired principal of Columbine High School, knows the answer firsthand. DeAngelis has dedicated much of his time in the past 23 years since the mass shooting at Columbine High School, helping other school leaders. Today he is part of the growing number of principals, who've endured school shootings, and work together as part of the Principals Recovery Network. In this episode, he reflects on the Columbine shooting, what he has learned, and about a new guide to help other school leaders work through responding to traumatic events like shootings.

Harvard Researchers Carrie James and Emily Weinstein give the low-down on teens' behavior online. As part of a multiyear study, they surveyed more than 3,500 teens uncovering information about everything from why they sext to how they navigate friendship dilemmas online. What teens do and why is far more complex than many adults give them credit for. As a result, Weinstein and James say that adults are missing key opportunities to truly guide their teens, instead falling back on tired and useless messaging. In this episode of the EdCast, they provide a glimpse into teens' online world and offer strategies for adults eager to connect and help with the young adults in their life.

Many school districts are beginning to see pandemic learning losses greater than they imagined. It’s time to figure out what to next, says Harvard Professor Tom Kane, an economist studying catch-up efforts. He wants districts to be empowered to make the best decision going forward. In his latest research, he’s helping districts determine how to plan for these losses and shares what interventions might provide the most bang for the buck. In this episode, Kane shares troubling information about how these learning losses have the potential to shape the future of education and how what we do now can get learning back on track.

Stewart Kwoh believes education is the best tool to fight back against ongoing anti-Asian American violence and damaging stereotypes. As co-executive director of the Asian American Education Project, Kwoh has been dedicated to developing curriculums and trainings for educators. Despite many of the lesson plans and tools being available for free, Kwoh admits it has taken time for education to embrace this rich history. In this episode, he shares the importance of learning about Asian American history and what are the roadblocks to embracing such a curriculum in our schools.

Harvard Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson knows that we can do a lot better for the nearly 30 million refugees in the world. As an expert on refugee education, she says education needs to create better supports for displaced children whose education is disrupted, dominated by exclusion and uncertainty about the future. In her latest research, she shares how governments and international agencies have been hindered in this work and how refugee teachers and students are leading the way to better educational supports. In this episode, she reflects on the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and offers insight into what we've learned from other humanitarian crises.

A silver lining of the pandemic, says Harvard Professor Fernando Reimers, was the push for education to innovate. Through the pandemic, Reimers set out to study how education systems around the world sought out innovations, even in places that had few resources. While it was reassuring how many education systems worldwide tried to make changes, Reimers discusses how he saw a dip in that creative ingenuity over time during the pandemic and why. In this episode, he also shares the unique ways that universities collaborated with education systems and how the pandemic impacted global citizens.

Juliana Urtubey, the 2021 National Teacher of the Year recipient, knows firsthand the importance of valuing all parts of a student’s identity. As a first generation, bilingual immigrant, Urtubey brings all parts of herself into the classroom. Today, as a special education teacher working at the Kermit R. Booker, Sr. Innovative Elementary School in Las Vegas, she leans into her diverse classroom and community, fully celebrating it. In this episode, she shares experiences and ideas for embracing student identity, and also how teachers can be better supported in their work.

Harvard Professor Dick Light has visited 260 college campuses talking to administrators, faculty, and students to figure out what sets a great university apart from an okay one. It turns out there are simple and affordable steps higher education administrators can do to make impactful changes on their campuses. Light has long studied the work of higher education and has plenty of stories to share about what happens when a university gets it right versus what happens when it goes wrong. In this EdCast, he's sharing the secrets of university success and even offers some advice to prospective students trying to decide whether their top choice is a "great" university.

Since the start of the pandemic, education has grappled with a looming threat of teacher shortages and a mass exodus of teachers. Elizabeth Steiner, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, has released two studies in the past year exploring job-related stress among teachers and recently school leaders. She says the changing modes of instruction, changing guidance on quarantining, mask and vaccine debates, and what's happening at home affects educators. They are one of the most stressed and depressed professions. In this episode, she reflects on the study's findings and shares what might help keep teachers in the job.

For the past decade, college enrollments have steadily been on the decline. The pandemic appears to have accelerated such drops with reports of more than a million fewer students attending college today. Chris Gabrieli, the chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, agrees that this decline is a crisis with the potential to affect many different parts of society beyond just a person's future. He talks about how higher education is moving much too slowly to abate these shifts young people are making away from college. In this episode, Gabrieli outlines why we are seeing such declines in enrollment, shares how simple ideas like early college can lure young people back to college, and why we need to act now.

When Gloria Ladson-Billings set out in the 1990s to adapt critical race theory from law to education, she couldn’t have predicted that it would become the focus of heated school debates today.In recent years, the scrutiny of critical race theory – a theory she pioneered to help explain racial inequities in education – has become heavily-politicized in school communities and by legislators. She says it has been grossly misunderstood and used as a lump term about many things that are not actually critical race theory. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor discusses the current politicization and tension around teaching about race in the classroom and offers a path forward for educators eager to engage in work that deals with the truth about America’s history.

Before the pandemic hit, Harvard Professor Stephanie Jones and Lecturer Emily Hanno were already tracking young children's development as part of the Early Learning Study at Harvard. As the pandemic began unfolding, they started to see shifts among the thousands of families and children participating in the study. Families reported a rise in temper tantrums, anxiety, and a poor ability to manage emotions, especially among the young elementary-aged children participating in remote learning. These findings may not come as a surprise to the many families who dealt with remote learning during the pandemic. However, Jones and Hanno say children's well-being and these experience matter now even as we inch toward a possible endemic. In this episode of the EdCast, they talk about how educators and families need to invest in social emotional learning before learning loss or lost classroom time. They share ways to support educators facilitating classroom experiences for children that allow them to process the experiences they've had. They also offer easy strategies for families to check in with their young children's well-being.

Many parents want to raise kind and compassionate children, but in today's world it can be difficult to figure out how. Traci Baxley, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, is a mother of five children and believes parenting can be a form of activism. She is the author of "Social Justice Parenting: How to Raise Compassionate, Anti-Racist, Justice-Minded Kids in an Unjust World." In this episode of the EdCast, she shares ideas for how to create an environment where kids can see themselves as part of a bigger family and offer support to take action in the world.

What is driving an increase in college completion rates? It's not student characteristics or higher student enrollments, says Jeff Denning, an associate professor at Brigham Young University. Denning, an economist noticed the increasing trend started in the 1990s, and upon looking deeper discovered grade inflation is driving numbers up. In this episode, Denning explains this change and what it might mean for higher education.

COVID has challenged many education systems worldwide. This is especially true for developing countries that faced significant learning issues prior to COVID. How far did COVID set these education systems back? How can countries like Brazil move forward? Claudia Costin, the founder and director of the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Education Policies at Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil, discusses how COVID has impacted education in Brazil and offers a path forward.

Math class doesn't seem the likely place to practice gratitude, but Michael Fauteux discovered that it had the power to change it. While teaching a 9th grade math class, Fauteux begin implementing moments of gratitude and soon started to see impacts on student learning. Through Fauteux's non-profit GiveThx that uses digital thank you notes and research based lessons to nurture mental health and improve academic success, he's sharing the practice in classrooms around the country. Since its launch in 2018, there have been over 300,000 gratitude notes sent by over 20,000 students. In this episode, he discusses what motivated him to launch the nonprofit and how gratitude can help student social emotional learning and more.

Christopher Emdin wants schools to embraces a whole student's identity. For far too long, public education has been stuck where it was not designed for all students, especially students of color, he says. Emdin, an associate professor at Teachers College, has long focused on issues of race, class, and diversity in education. Now, he's proposing a new educational model to help teachers and students celebrate ratchet identity in the classroom. He reimagines schools where educators use authenticity as a driving factor in their work. In this episode, Emdin shares his philosophy on being ratchetdemic, how educators can become ratchetdemic, and why it matters.

What are children learning about climate change in American schools? That question set award winning journalist Katie Worth to uncover how climate change education is being taught. As part of her research, she visited several states, talked to teachers, scoured text books, and spoke to students and their families. It turns out climate change education is just as contentious in the classroom as it is in politics. In this episode, she shares points of friction happening between teachers within the same schools and how students are often unable to connect environmental disasters in their own communities with climate change. Additionally, Worth discusses how the fossil fuel industry sometimes plays a firsthand role in children's education. She shares the potential repercussions of raising a generation of children unable to understand the effects of climate change on their world.

Mistakes are supposed to be part of learning. However, Maleka Donaldson knows how we convey mistakes and respond to them as educators can significantly impact a child's learning experience. Donaldson is an assistant professor at Smith College where she studies teacher-student interactions and responding to mistakes in early learning. In her book, "From Oops to Aha: Portraits of Learning from Mistakes in Kindergarten," she examines instruction in the classrooms of four public school kindergarten teachers showing the varied ways these interactions happen, and how factors beyond the teachers’ control shape their approaches to teaching and contribute to structural inequities.

Higher education needs major change and reinvention to provide more opportunity and social mobility for everyone. This is what Paul LeBlanc hopes to see in the future. As the president of Southern New Hampshire University for 18 years, LeBlanc has led tremendous change including becoming the largest nonprofit provider of online higher education and to offer a full competency-based degree program. In this episode of the EdCast, LeBlanc shares insight into why and how the institution made these groundbreaking changes. He also discusses the future of higher education and a need to get back to some of the initial focus that drove higher education in America – its students and opportunity.

The school nurse's job encompasses much more than you'd think. Even before COVID, the school nurse was the "health hub" of the school. Yet 25.2% of schools don't even have a nurse. Linda Mendonca, the president of the National Association of School Nurses, discusses the need for school nurses and how they are doing much more than most of us realize. She offers guidance for the school community, especially administrators, on how to make sure your school nurse is a part of important conversations.

It's a contentious time to be a school board member in America. Michael Casserly, a strategic adviser for the Council of the Great City Schools, reflects on the current state of school board meetings happening around the country. He also provides insight regarding the purpose of school boards, what a board needs to do to function well, and how to manage controversy.

There's a lot of conversation in education about how to use this summer to make up for lost academic time in COVID. But depending on the student and the situation -- summer school may or may not be the right solution. Catherine Augustine, a senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation, has spent many years examining what makes summer school effective. She advises that while summer school isn't magic, it can also be beneficial for some children. Additionally, she breaks down some of the differences between summer school and extended learning, and offers guidance to families trying to figure out what to do with their children this summer.