What Do You Want from Education with Lainie Liberti
February 28, 2023
What Do You Want from Education with Lainie Liberti

A question we don’t ask enough is what we want from education. Of course we all want well-rounded young adults when they’re done with school, people who can become productive members of our society and who also have a healthy worldview.

But our schools are not preparing our youth in this way. Students are graduating from high school with a narrow mindset because they haven’t experienced anything other than what’s in their community and the four walls of their classrooms.

When the recession happened in 2008, Lainie Liberti knew it was an opportunity to make a change for the benefit of her then 9-year-old son. So they hit the road to learn in the real world. They’ve since visited countless countries, started a business around world schooling, and both have come out changed in all the best ways.

This week on the podcast, Lainie is sharing her experience with parenting and teaching in the real world and how she and her son are supporting other families to do the same.

About Lainie Liberti:

Lainie is a best-selling author, international speaker, community leader, teen mentor, and alternative education advocate who helped to spearhead the thriving world schooling movement.

As a result of the 2008 California economy crash, Liberti closed her Los Angeles-based branding agency. Liberti and her then 9-year-old Miro decided to “be the change” instead of victims and chose a life of adventure. After, selling all of their possessions, Lainie and her son hit the road for what was to be a one-year adventure in 2009. After thirteen years and almost 50 countries, the pair calls Guanajuato, Mexico their home.

Lainie chose to educate her son Miro through the world, facilitating rich experiential learning, cultural immersion, volunteering and leadership as his school. We call this world schooling.

Liberti has spoken about world schooling on the TEDx Edu stage in Amsterdam, written about learning through travel for multiple magazines, academic journals, and websites including the International Journal of Education, Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning, People Magazine, Huffington Post, USA Today, The New York Times and The New York Post and has contributed to several books on the topic of world schooling.

Lainie published the Amazon best-selling book Seen, Heard & Understood, Parenting and Partnering with Teens for Greater Mental Health in May 2022. Lainie Liberti is the founder and creator of Transformative Mentoring for Teens that launched in early 2020 offering virtual 1:1 coaching for teens as well as a 12-week course designed to transform lives. Lainie is a certified life coach, specializing in transformational coaching.

Lainie co-foundered Project World School with her son in 2012. Liberti designs and co-facilitates the Project World School teen retreats as month-long immersive learning communities to support self-directed teens from around the world. Over the last 8 years, Lainie has facilitated 20+ international retreats for almost 100 teens, learning through cultural immersion, examining personal values and exploring world views.

In addition, Lainie founded Project World School Family Summits, where she’s produced 10 in-person international conferences for hundreds of families across Europe, Asia and Mexico since 2016.

Jump in the Conversation:

[1:26] – Where Lainie’s passion for transforming our relationship with learning began
[3:34] – What do you want for education
[4:44] – What is world schooling
[6:06] – Learning was a radical part of what they were doing in their travels
[6:42] – We’re wired to be natural learners
[7:29] – The world provided a lot of opportunities
[7:50] – Helping others in world schooling
[9:44] – The adventures of Lainie and her son
[10:25] – Project World School is born
[14:22] – Understanding the plight of others is impossible unless you’re there
[15:16] – Tying in mental health to world learning
[18:00] – Taking teens out of their comfort zones
[19:55] – Getting outside comfort zone is part of who we are
[22:23] – How to participate in world school without the travel
[25:35] – What would it be if we took a moment to recognize situations from different perspectives
[26:40] – Turbo Time
[32:19] – Lainie’s Magic Wand
[33:32] – Maureen’s Takeaways

Links & Resources

 

Transcript:

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 0:03
Hello fellow parents and educators. Thank you for joining me at Education Evolution, where we are disrupting the status quo in today’s learning models. We talk about present day education, what’s broken, who’s fixing it, and how. I’m Dr. Maureen O’Shaughnessy, your host and founder of education, evolution, micro school coalition, and co founder of active, I consult and train with schools and leaders who are fiercely committed to changing the narrative, reimagining the education landscape, and creating learning that serves all children and prepares them to thrive. If you are new, welcome to the podcast, please subscribe on our website to get it delivered to your inbox weekly. If you’ve been around a while, have you left a review?

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 1:08
Hi Lainie, it is so good to have you on Education Evolution today.

Lainie Liberti 1:12
Thank you, Maureen. I’m happy to be here.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 1:15
And listeners today I’m chatting with Lainie Liberti of project World School. And Lady let’s dive in and understand how you became an education evolutionary? Where did this story of school transformation begin for you?

Lainie Liberti 1:30
Well, for me, it’s less about school transformation and more about transforming our interpersonal relationship with learning. And that really is the foundation of everything that I do. And I guess I’ll give you just a really brief background so you can understand the context. In 2008, the economy crashed, and in California, which is where I’m from, and I was faced with closing my business, because I knew that I wouldn’t be bringing my staff back at the beginning of the year. And I remember one night looking at my son, who was at that time nine and going to public school. And I said to him, we wrote, What do you think we just get rid of all this stuff and go have an adventure? And of course, he said, yes. But the the follow up question for him was, Do I have to go to school? No, no, no, he was, at that point, attending public school in the Los Angeles County School District. And as a single parent, you know, I never questioned, well, you know, what education was the purpose of education, any of those really sort of deep philosophical questions I just accepted, it was somebody else’s job to educate my child. And I never really questioned that. But when we decided to pack it in, or pack it up, and go on this, what was to be a one year adventure, I knew intuitively, that he would learn way more than he would ever learn in fifth grade. And that became one of the foundational set of knowings. Yes, guided our questioning. And when it came down to that, you know, I’m being very, very brief here. Just to let you know, we that one year, Journey turned into 14 years, we never went back. And one of the questions that guided us was, what do we want from education? And that really became in, you know, we transform that question into what kind of learners do we want to become? And how is learning something that can impact our own lives? So that’s the foundation and it’s gone many places from there. As you said, we went to cofound, my son and I together, project World School. And you know, many things came from that mental wellness, a focus on mental wellness and adolescence, and working with families to help them step into partnership, parenting, and learning from the world. So it’s like all mesh together. But the the brief story that I told you is at the base of everything,

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 4:28
it’s always fun to hear the Genesis and it’s interesting for so many of us that it has to do with our own children. And that’s been a part of my story, too. And I think, as passionate parents that definitely a very important part of our lives.

Lainie Liberti 4:42
Absolutely.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 4:44
Absolutely. What is World schooling?

Lainie Liberti 4:47
Wow. that’s a wonderful question. When we started to travel, we started to recognize that everything around us was a way to learn, and there were many components that went into our first, you know, sort of venture into the world. And that was we were present, we were learning in partnership, our natural curiosity was guiding us. And my son and I, as I mentioned, we left with the intention to have this journey start and remain in partnership. I wasn’t the boss, I wasn’t telling him where to go, we were going to decide where what we were going to focus our time and energy on together, where we, you know, where we were going. And the way that we would spend our time partnership was that the foundation and one of the questions that were sent asked me eight months into our journey, as we were sort of looking at the tail end of the year was, can we keep doing this forever? Because that was part of our agreement. And it was really working for both of us. And the idea that learning was a radical part of what we were already doing. And as we started to look into, well, okay, I’m the responsible parent and the adult. And I’ve got to decide how we’re addressing education in this moment, because a year off from school is perfectly acceptable in my mind. But, you know, for doing this forever, how do we address this? And I discovered that there was this thing called unschooling and the unschooling thing was incorporating everything that we were already doing, and never heard that word before. And when I recognized that we were wired to be natural learners and learning was the thing that we sought out the most versus the, you know, encapsulated definition of education. We continued to do that. And instead of saying what we weren’t doing, which is unschooling, we decided to use the term world schooling because we were already learning, unschooling and following this sort of paradigm, I wouldn’t call it a pedagogy because it’s kind of anti pedagogy. But we were utilizing that with the One added benefit of travel. So the world provided a lot of opportunities to ask questions and step into our, our curiosity. To answer your question, again, Genesis and and you know, our origin stories kind of important to understand.

Lainie Liberti 7:43
But to answer your question, what is World schooling, a couple of years later, we helped to organize and CO found this movement of families that are interested in doing the very thing that we were doing. And we started a large community, or we started a community on Facebook, which turned into 40,000 people and started to host conferences. And what we wanted to do in the definition of world schooling is to make it really inclusive. So whereas I’ve been in unschooling groups and self directed groups, and there’s always a right way and a wrong way to do it, we didn’t want that we wanted the diversity of calm as a learner and being open, you know, be a homeschooler be somebody who’s taking courses online, be somebody who goes to brick and mortar traditional schools, but incorporate the world around you as this rich environment to learn and use your natural curiosity and the ability to learn, multigenerational, and in partnership, and that became our working definition of what world schooling is. So by other people’s definitions, we were unschoolers who were traveling, who were world schoolers, but I know many world schoolers who use curriculum who do all of the different, you know, modalities of learning to, to, you know, create this rich experience of world schooling.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 9:27
I love it. I got to raise my daughters and six other countries. And I am just a big fan of what we can learn in the world and natural curiosity. Give me a couple a story or two of of where maybe or you and your son traveled or a life lesson that you learned.

Lainie Liberti 9:46
Oh my gosh, well, we only have a short time. So many. We ended up ended up leaving when my son was nine and he is now 23. We are I’m based here in Mexico now. But we’ve been all over the world we have been primarily our our love became Latin America. So we’ve been all over Central and South America. Now, of course, I’m in North America, we’ve been through Europe and Africa and all throughout Asia. And when my son turned 13, we actually created a company, as you mentioned, together called Project World School. And that gave us the opportunity to bring this kind of immersive, experiential learning to other teams. But I’m going to share with you one experience that happened before we started Project World School and Miro is my son’s name, he must have been about 12, we had heard of this beautiful town that we wanted to visit when we were in Colombia. And it was called San Cipriano. And the only way that we could get there was to take this motorcycle that was, like fitted to right on a railroad track, because this, this town is deep in the jungle. And it’s a very local town. And so there were no roads and kind of like ketose. In Peru, there’s no way to drive in either have to fly in or, or go in with a boat. Well, this you can go in with a boat, or through transportation, with this motorcycle that has been fitted to have two wheels, you know, on each side of the track with a plywood kind of cart to bring people in, wow, primers, it was crazy. And the driver said, Listen, we pretty much know when the trains spread, but you won’t hear the whistle of a train jump off to this town. And when we got to this town, the town was somewhat impoverished, it was filled with people that were immigrants from the Caribbean and Afro countries. And so it was primarily African descent people that were living in this town. And they had been there for generations and generations. And they were sort of contained into a state of poverty, but felt very connected to the land. And they were caretakers of the surrounding jungles. And for 10 to 20 years, there had been a battle between the Colombian government who had empowered the mining companies to come in, and, you know, destroy the natural resources. And so the young man and and all of the people in the town were in battle with the mining company.

Lainie Liberti 12:57
And to me, that seemed pretty straightforward, I understand what’s happening. But until we got into the town, we understood by staying with local families in these, you know, a plywood, you know, structures that were on stilts, because it was very wet and it rained and everything sort of disintegrated and had to be rebuilt constantly. It was this constant process. And a lot of the young man and men in the town, either were the caretakers of the jungle and stood up to the miners, and often to the fate of their own demise. Or Joy joined the miners. And the the cultural desire to to thrive and survive as a human is strong. And you could see the humanity in this struggle. And it wasn’t a matter of right or wrong, it was a matter of Let’s survive, and either will stand in alignment with the values or I’m going to feed my family. And you could not cite side with either side because both had merits. And Miro played with the young children in the town. I’ve got pictures of him like taking these bamboo sticks in their sword fighting and they’re doing everything that every kid ever does in any, you know, town across the world. And they were the same, yet understanding the plight of the people in this town is impossible, unless you’re there and so that immersive understanding, and I still don’t know right or wrong. I have just sort of a deeper kind of understanding of of the human condition and how we all address what’s happening.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 14:57
This is such a powerful story in I feel like in the United States right now we get really black and white, right and wrong. And so often, like you say it’s complex. And it also impacts us at an emotional, visceral level. And that leads me into wondering, you have tied in mental health, to what you’ve been working on to. And that’s a huge issue right now. So how has that played in I know you have a book, seen, heard and understood parenting and partnering with teens for greater mental health. Talk to me about that, too?

Lainie Liberti 15:36
Sure. Well, as I mentioned, Mirella, and I took all of these earlier experiences, and started to facilitate workshops and retreats for teens in different places in the world. Part of it came from the desire that my son had to actually have community and as somebody starts entering their adolescent years, you know, they’re starting to individuate. And it’s really important to have community or social learning or social connection. And I recognize this part of my personal journey, coming from a childhood with a lot of verbal and emotional abuse, and making the decision early on in my 20s, and into my 30s. And actually, still, now I’m in my 50s, to really focus in on my mental wellness. My editor said, call it mental health, people know what that is mental wellness, they don’t know so much, which is why the title of the book is titled that. But for me, I really took my internal worlds as a serious focus. And I wanted to really understand who I was and heal some of the trauma that I had from my childhood before I came a parent in my 30s. And that was my job. That was my job. And as somebody who, you know, was raised with some trauma in my background, my trauma response, and I recognize this clearly in everything I’ve ever done over the last 50 years, is to be highly independent.

Lainie Liberti 17:12
So self directed learning is a really natural thing for me. And so, you know, I went down the avenues of learning everything, everything I could about, you know, healing, you know, self help, psychology, neurobiology, and really, my healing became my own passion and my own drive. And when I became a parent, I studied everything about attachment parenting, and I read the books on conscious parenting and peaceful parenting, and every modality you can think of, I read it out of my own internal drive, and when we started to facilitate teens, we recognize that taking teens out of their home country into some, you know, you know, foreign country, not we never took a teen on a on the railroad tracks, we did take them outside of their comfort zone. And recognizing that sometimes teens were going into a state of fear or needed to unpack some things, and needed to have safe spaces, I tapped into the tools that I learned in my own healing, and started to integrate that into our retreats. And the project World School team retreats, I would always say, our journey in the outer world so we can know our inner worlds. And because of my background, and the tools that I had in my own tool belt, that became an integral part of the project, World School team retreats. And so fast forward, we’ve we’ve we’ve hosted team retreats for hundreds of teams and in I don’t know Miro and I were talking actually yesterday, and I said we need to count and see how many retreats we’ve actually done, because I don’t know, we’re probably between 20 and 30. But most of them our month long trips and foreign countries and you know, you could hide who you are for about five days. But if you’ve, if you’re resonating in fear, or you’ve got you know, distrust or something’s bothering you internally, it will come up and be a part of the community. So it was really an important aspect of facilitating these month long team retreats to have these tools. And when 2020 happened, everything shut down. I don’t have to tell anybody the history of three years ago, but our community of teens were looking for what do we do now? Like, you know, stepping outside of our comfort zone has become a part of it. You know who we are. And now we’re stuck in our homes. And it wasn’t just teens that were world schoolers. It were it was teens across the board that were struggling.

Lainie Liberti 20:11
And so I put together courses online teaching these tools that I would use in the project girls school teen retreats. So I launched a new business called transformative mentoring for teens. And it became wildly successful. You know, it’s still totally in demand, I teach courses for teens and separate courses, my son and I co teach for tweens online. And during 2020, I decided to use that time to write a book. So I wrote a book about partnership parenting, and I included all of the tools that I use in my practice, and that we’ve used with Project World School as well. So they’re some of them are tools that I’ve created. Some of them are fantastic tools like Byron, Katie’s the work, and all of it is about really the the internal worlds and again, mental wellness, you don’t have to be facing anything, in order to address your own internal worlds. But if you are, you know, somebody who suffers from anxiety, or fear or depression, you’ve got tools now, in a book written for you, and there again, there are many books written on this topic. But my book is actually written for parents to facilitate these tools with their teens. And it also addresses the collective trauma of COVID, which means we’re living in a changed world. So I hope that answers your question.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 21:56
Yes, I love it, and how holistic you’re looking at these outer experiences and natural curiosity, and then also connecting it back to how does that impact our self knowledge and our healing journey and, and just get to a place where we know ourselves and we can advocate for ourselves? So it all fits together? So beautifully? So my question if, if parents or educators can’t really make a month long trip somewhere, unschooling, what are some steps that could be taken either by parents or educators to get learning out of the four walls into the world, and then integrated back into the life of each youth? What are some baby steps, there has to be some things people can be doing so that they don’t just say, Oh, I could never do that.

Lainie Liberti 22:51
Absolutely. I think the first thing that I would say to parents and to educators is if you can, in your interactions with youth, with adolescents recognize the value of the inner worlds and place that on the same level as the, you know, curriculum, or the the, you know, the, you know, academic learning, those two things are in par with one another. I know that travel is a wonderful way to cultivate what they call soft skills, I really think they’re the most important skills, skills of grit, and collaboration and problem solving. And whatever you can do. In partnership, again, the internal worlds are such a delicate space, that if you try as the educator or the parent to go in and force your way into the internal worlds of a youth, yeah, again, again, you know, shut out. Doing this in partnership is the only way. And the ways that we can create greater partnership partnerships with our youth is through vulnerability. And vulnerability is really at the root of connection. So you can’t force your way in. The way that we can connect with the youth is through partnership. And that is going to require you as the facilitator or the parent, to have your own awareness of your own inner world. So this to me, it blows my mind that we’ve got some education system that does not include education about the inner worlds, that we don’t value those as, as a culture And I think we need to start normalizing inner world discussions. And also going back to your original question of how to incorporate travel or cultural experiences, I think the first conversation you have to have is about worldviews. What is your worldview? How is my worldview, informing how we’re moving through the planet or the world or our own individual lives? And what would it be if we took a moment to recognize the same situation, from a different point of view, a different worldview, that’s what travel gives us. And that’s what the San Cipriano story gave us. And I’m just hoping that the black and white thinking will soften and allow for spaces of beautiful shades of grey, because that’s where we find the beauty in life. I think, if we can cultivate our inner world, education, culturally, I think we can create a much more beautiful planet.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 26:19
Absolutely. Lainie This is so powerful, and schools are not going to touch on the inner worlds, the way they are set up now. And so it’s really about recreating what education looks like not just tinkering. Lots to do. I always love to have a little bit of time at the end, to learn more about you the person behind the idea. So may I ask you some turbo time questions?

Lainie Liberti 26:47
Absolutely.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 26:48
Yay. What’s the last book you read?

Lainie Liberti 26:51
Well, besides writing my book, I picked up a book. And of course, I had it here that cleaned up my desk, a book on the I think it’s called the highly immature parent. And then how to overcome that. And I’m, I’m sure that’s not the correct title. It’s in a box right over there. And I’m not going to grab it. But let me tell you something, something that I’ve recognized this is I was raised with an immature parent. And every time I’ve picked up the book to read it, I can manage to get through five or six pages. And it doesn’t matter what time of day, or how many cups of coffee I’ve had, it will put me to sleep. And this is my nervous system response. My subconscious response protecting me from going into these really deep places some pain inside of me. So I’ve just started to listen to the book, or try to spring my skirt. Yeah, good. Are you and and as a follow up, I can send you the name of the book. It’s powerful, but it also it’s

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 27:59
Yeah, absolutely. I can add it to the show notes. That would be great. Awesome. How about two inspirational folks you’d love to meet?

Lainie Liberti 28:07
Okay, well, my son is named after an artist who I’ve got an education story that I’m going to tell you really quick. When I was a young girl, I was maybe in third or fourth grade in public school. And we were in an art class and we were drawing all the stuff and one of the teachers said, Okay, here’s the assignment, you’re gonna draw a picture of your family. And I love to draw these big fields of color and scribbles and patterns and designs and I was like, oh, art, I love art. I’m going to do that. And I remember the teacher coming over to me and looking at every all the students artwork, and she said to me, Laney, what are you doing? And I said, I’m making art. She said, That’s not art. That’s not Wait, what the assignment is. And I remember I had drawings all over my room, my parents had encouraged me to put the stuff on my wall, and I ripped it down. And I remember seeing artists stupid. I am not doing this anymore until I was about 15. And I was forced to go to a museum. And there I am looking at the Diego’s and this is on. All of them were just stupid. And then I saw Amuro and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so expressive. And this is not a thing that looks like a thing and I could see in it many things. And I remember writing we wrote down on my hand and going back to the school library and I was like I’m gonna check this person out. I thought it was a girl because it says Joan Miro that became discovering that became my permission to be creative again. was my inner permission. And it was so powerful. In fact, I’m sitting in front of one of one of my paintings now. But it was so powerful that I need my child mural. I don’t do our like bureau. But so that’s one person. And I think another person who would love to sit down and have a conversation with Daniel Siegel, who is a psychologist who wrote one of the most powerful books in my own self education, which is called brainstorm the power and purpose of the teenage brain.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 30:34
Yes, he is powerful, and I love him. Yes. How about a pet peeve of yours?

Lainie Liberti 30:43
A pet peeve absolutely is not making repair. It is. We are humans, we’re going to have conflict, the purpose of life, in my opinion, is to be in relation with one another, and to connect in order for us to know more about ourselves. But when conflict arises, the time to repair is not when you’re in conflict, but making effort afterwards in our relationship with our children, with other adults with anybody in our lives, and not making the effort to go and repair.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 31:22
Yes, I agree. I agree that it’s a natural part, to have conflict, but we’ve got to resolve it. We’ve got to value people and be courageous enough to sort it out together. Absolutely. Yeah. And what is something most people don’t know about you?

Lainie Liberti 31:38
Oh, my goodness. Um, well, let’s see. I I used to answer it very differently before I wrote the book, because a lot of my personal stories are in the book about my childhood. I used to be a punk rocker spiky hair, and I went to punk rock concerts. And granted, if you’re just listening to this, you know, I’m in my 50s. And I look pretty normal now. But yeah, I used to be a punk rocker.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 32:12
I love it. I close the podcast with a magic wand moment. So Lainie if I handed you a magic wand, and you could wish something for our youth that ties into that outer world, inner world, what would you wish,

Lainie Liberti 32:30
I would wish that every single adolescent on this planet had the opportunity to have access to powerful tools, and that they had adults in their lives, whether it’s parents or mentors, or teachers, or facilitators that had the skill base to actually see here and understand them. It’s the one thing I didn’t have when I was crying. Well, many things I didn’t have. But that was the most powerful thing that I craved. When I was growing up, that I would just be seen, I felt invisible. So that’s my magic wand moment. Where

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 33:13
Absolutely, that’s beautiful. Lainie thank you for being a guest today on Education Evolution.

Lainie Liberti 33:20
My pleasure, thank you for some powerful questions.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 33:33
We are all concerned about the mental health of our youth, Lainie’s work of transforming interpersonal relationships, and blending them with learning is amazing. She also asks tough questions, ones that are important not only for adults, to be asked, but also for us to ask students themselves. What do we want from education? What kind of learners do we want our youth to become? Or do youth want to become? I don’t think our present educational model aligns with the answers that we have for those questions. Hence, the need for an education evolution.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 34:17
We’re wired to be natural learners. unschooling takes away the four walls and then Laney extends this idea to blend in an international component. Most of us have not framed learning to include inner world conversations. Byron Katie is internationally renowned for her method of inquiry. She calls it the work Lainie referred to her as one of the sources she uses in her project World school model. This practice of Byron Katie’s allows people to access the wisdom that has always existed within I will put a link to the work came in our show notes. I also added in our show notes, a link to the book Laney is reading adult children of emotionally immature parents. It’s an important part of our inner world discovery to understand where we got the messages that become our life scripts. I am so glad that Lainie did not keep the message that her creativity was not art. As children, we all hear messages, usually from well meaning people that become a part of our identity. examining those messages as adults, or as youth with supportive adults can help us determine which labels don’t fit and which ones bring out our uniqueness and celebrate who we are. And then we get to choose which ones we keep Lenny’s juxtaposition of learning in the whole outer world, and each person’s inner world makes project World School, a special place for youth. As always, thank you for being a part of the education evolution.

Maureen O’Shaughnessy 36:21
I know how challenging it is to make changes inside your own school or community. I’ve spent years working with schools around the world and creating learner centered programs. And it always struck me how much schools were able to get done with the right tools and guidance. If you’re ready to make changes like this in your own school, let’s talk and put together an action plan. Visit educationevolution.org/consult for a free 15 minute call. And let’s see if we’re a good fit for more work together. Thanks again for listening. To support the education evolution. Subscribe so it lands in your podcast app and gets out to more decision makers. Then rate and review it. For more information in shownotes go to educationevolution.org education evolution listeners. You are the ones to ensure we create classrooms where each student is seen heard, valued and thriving. We are in this together and we need you. Let’s go out and reach every student today. Thank you for listening, signing off. I am Maureen O’Shaughnessy, your partner in boldly reimagining education.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Latest Episodes

Unlocking the World of Literacy with Marnie Ginsburg

Reading is simple, right? Not for everyone, and it’s especially challenging for those who don’t have access to all the tools and resources they need to be successful. This week we hear from Marnie Ginsburg, founder of Reading Simplified, who has dedicated her career...

Leading Like a Teacher with Miriam Plotinsky

The further away administrators get from their roots as teachers, the more they forget what it’s like to be in the trenches. The result is often either a real or perceived lack of empathy for teachers. Both teachers and administrators have vital roles in the school,...

Following the Evidence for Effective Policy with Darleen Opfer

We all want what’s best for our learners, but oftentimes biases get in the way of having productive conversations about what learning should look like in the classroom. Instead, we need to have evidence- and research-based conversations that support what truly works...

Latest Blog Posts

Why Isn’t Educational Change Happening?

School change is so much harder than I thought! When I did my doctoral research on school innovation and created a hands-on learning school-within-a-school in the 90s, I had no idea that I’d spend the next few decades making tiny changes. Changes that often...

Instilling a Practice of Gratitude in Uncertain Times

Thanksgiving looks different this year. Traditions are being shattered in 2020 and new realities are emerging. Thanksgiving is no exception. After Canada’s Thanksgiving in October, COVID statistics jumped, reminding us that, sadly, the pandemic isn’t taking a break...

Building Interdisciplinary Learning into Traditional Classrooms

A traditional classroom setting is just that...traditional. Teachers must teach specific subjects for a required amount of time, often using prescribed curriculum materials that may be a decade old. There’s little consideration for the individual learner--their...

Categories
Coming Soon!
Subscribe
Listen to Education Evolution on Apple Podcasts
Listen to Education Evolution on Spotify
Listen to Education Evolution on Stitcher
Listen on Google Play Music

Related Posts

Leading Like a Teacher with Miriam Plotinsky

Leading Like a Teacher with Miriam Plotinsky

This week on the podcast, we’re welcoming back author and educator Miriam Plotinsky. She’s sharing about her latest book, Lead Like a Teacher, and talking about what school leaders can do to build more trust and a more collaborative school environment.

Sign Up for Podcast & Blog Announcements and Get our Free Guide: Five Interdependent Hacks to Lead the Creation of a Learner-Centered Culture!

By providing your email address you are agreeing to receive email communications from Education Evolution. You can unsubscribe at any time.