NAIS New View EDU Podcast
The NAIS New View EDU podcast has always been about seeking big ideas to shape the future of education in an unpredictable world. Now, as rapid change becomes one of the most certain factors in an uncertain landscape, we're more committed than ever to highlighting the power of innovative, compassionate, future-focused thinking.NAIS President Debra P. Wilson and Vice President of Leadership and Governance Morva McDonald return to host dynamic, thought-provoking conversations with leaders from inside and outside independent schools. In Season 8, New View EDU will explore the connection between positive psychology and success with author and educator Dan Lerner; delve into the successful and innovative partnership between Elham Kazemi and Jessica Calabrese that helped transform mathematics instruction at an underperforming school; trace Jalaj Desai's journey at Saddle River Day School (NJ) as he changes the landscape of teaching, learning, and communication through AI innovation; and look more closely at the role of schools in building relationships, resilience, and purpose to help ready students for their next steps.
What is the purpose of school? What lies ahead for the future of education? What can we do to prepare learners for life beyond the classroom? These questions are more essential than ever, and in Season 8, we're seeking answers.
Find New View EDU on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and many other podcast apps.
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Season 8 Episodes: Spring 2025
Episode 68: Technology Innovation in Independent Schools
Available March 25, 2025
AI and other technological advances are moving at an almost incomprehensible speed, and schools have to adjust. Some are choosing to enact phone bans and efforts to make the school day as low-tech as possible. Others are adopting new technologies and trying to strike a comfortable balance. And some school leaders are embracing a vision of technological innovation as a cornerstone of their plans for the future. Jalaj Desai is one of those visionary heads of school, and in this episode of New View EDU, he joins NAIS President Debra P. Wilson to share how he’s using AI to transform Saddle River Day School (NJ).
Coming from a background in computer science, engineering, and education, Jalaj started his tenure at Saddle River during a time of transition and instability for the community. Immediately, he says, he convened the staff for a retreat to envision the path forward to a more robust and exciting future. Within just five years of his headship, they’ve been able to bring many of those plans to life: a Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, expanded honors and AP course offerings, business programs, honors gateway diplomas, advanced computer science coursework, and enhanced visual and performing arts programs.
But those changes are only the beginning of what he envisions for the future at Saddle River. Eighteen months ago, the school began working on a revolutionary AI integration across all facets of programming—teaching, learning, family communications, and even external partnerships.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.
Season 7 Episodes: Fall 2024
Episode 67: Leadership Through Listening
We most often focus on how we are educating our students. But how are we also educating our leaders, across every level of our schools? In the Season 7 finale of New View EDU, NAIS President Debra P. Wilson sits down with three education leadership experts from top programs at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt University. They discuss the importance of listening in developing the leaders of the future, and how to help them grow the skills and capacities to meet the evolving challenges of our times.
Nicole Furlonge (left), Carrie Grimes (center), and Steve Piltch (right) are seasoned educators who head programs for education leaders and whose careers developed through deep experience in independent schools. They have created a strong collaborative relationship and a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing educators right now. They begin the conversation by delving into the topic of listening and how it shapes their work.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.
Episode 66: School in a Time of Hope and Cynicism
How good are people? How well can you trust your neighbors? How much do you agree with others on fundamental values and ideals? Sometimes it can feel like the answers to these questions skew negative. But author and researcher Jamil Zaki says we’d be surprised by the reality. He sits down with host Morva McDonald to talk about his book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, and what his findings mean for school leaders.
Jamil says one of the most surprising things about human goodness is “how surprised people are by human goodness.” He offers examples that demonstrate trends toward kindness, generosity, and agreement on key issues. Yet research also shows that people believe the opposite—that kindness and generosity are declining, that others cannot be trusted, and that we are more divided than united on important matters. However, the bright spot is that when people are specifically asked those same questions about their own communities and those closest to them, the answers change. We are inherently more trusting and optimistic about the people we interact with regularly, even if it’s just the grocery store clerk who checks us out every week or the bus monitor who helps our kids get to school.
What does that mean for school leaders? Jamil says education institutions are uniquely positioned to uplift perceptions of human goodness by how they impact their communities. Building trust within the classroom and the school, and helping students look outward to those around them who are trustworthy, is one potentially effective antidote to cynicism.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.
Episode 65: Leadership and Design for the Future of Schools
Being a school leader is a complex job, and it has only grown in its scope and challenges in recent years. How can we develop our capacities as reflective changemakers, dynamic leaders, and future-focused thinkers in a culture that often demands we react rather than being proactive? Carla Silver, executive director of Leadership + Design, has partnered with schools for over 15 years to create cultures of learning and foster human-centered design thinking. She joins host Morva McDonald to discuss leadership and where schools are headed.
Carla outlines the three pillars of Leadership + Design’s work as: developing reflective changemakers; instilling the habits of human-centered design thinking; and creating the capacity for leaders to become optimistic futurists. She reflects that 30 years ago, school leaders might not see much change in their scope of responsibilities over a five-year span; but now, the pace of leadership is evolving rapidly alongside societal changes. Not only do leaders have to be more comfortable with ambiguity as technology, innovation, and expectations evolve, but Carla notes that they’re often asked to wade into the territory of responding to global events in a way that school leaders of the past would not have been called upon to do. She also stresses that leadership now is grounded in the need to be more curious than certain and can come from anywhere within a community—not just those who are tasked with the role and title of “leader,” but those who practice the dispositions of leadership from any position.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.
Episode 64: Pluralism in Education
Navigating polarities and fostering respectful dialogue are responsibilities that weigh heavily on many school leaders right now. How, in the current social and political climate, can we build bridges of cooperation rather than perpetuating barriers that divide us? How can we create space for ideas and opinions while balancing our obligations to nurture student safety and well-being? Eboo Patel, author and director of Interfaith America, sits down with NAIS President Debra P. Wilson to talk about his work on the role of pluralism in schools.
Outlining his personal journey from what he calls an “angry identity activist” to the head of the largest diversity organization in America, Eboo says he had to move from viewing the world through the lens of oppressor vs. oppressed to a place of understanding identity as a source of pride and cooperation as a source of strength. Diversity is a fact, he says, but pluralism is an achievement. Pluralism, as Eboo defines it, results from people of diverse identities working positively together. Pluralism is hard but important work, and learning to navigate it is a lifelong skill we can instill in our students.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.
Episode 63: Building Academic Resilience
Resilience is a hot topic in education. We wonder if our students display enough of it, how we can help them build it, and whether resilience alone is enough to help kids thrive in an increasingly demanding and uncertain world. But what if we need to expand our thinking beyond building resilience in individuals and start considering a systems-based approach? That’s what Megan Kennedy is exploring with her team at the University of Washington Resilience Lab.
Megan joins host Morva McDonald to share what the Resilience Lab does, how their efforts are shaping campus culture, and what their research shows about the efficacy of a systems-based approach to fostering resilience. She says that as the demand for mental-health care among college students remains high, the Resilience Lab seeks to offset the need for those services by better equipping students with personal skills and support. However, she’s clear that it’s not about downplaying the importance of mental-health services, nor is it about focusing on personal responsibility. Rather, she says, they’re trying to remove the onus of responsibility for mental health from students’ shoulders by taking a campus-wide, deeply embedded approach to helping everyone, from faculty and staff to the community at large, learn and practice resilience-building skills.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.
Episode 62: Wisdom Road
If you had an RV full of gas and the chance to spend months traveling anywhere, what journeys would you take? For Grant Lichtman, this wasn't just a hypothetical. It became a passion project called Wisdom Road. He traveled across North America seeking perspectives, traditions, and knowledge that our society risks losing. Now, he's sharing his experience with New View EDU host Debra P. Wilson.
Grant says his journey was about discovering the threads that still bind America together, even in a time of deep division. However, he didn’t ask about politics. Instead, he encouraged people to talk about themselves, their lives, and their values. From these conversations, he found a profound sense of shared humanity.
Grant’s experiences on the Wisdom Road were transformative. He emerged with an urgent sense of what’s missing in education today: foundational skills in civil discourse. He shares how his own communication evolved as he let go of the need to debate or defend and simply listened. Now, he challenges educators to help students engage with people and viewpoints outside their own. Learning to recognize and respect differences, and hold productive dialogues, is a vital skill in our increasingly global society.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.
Episode 61: Reflecting on 60 Episodes of New View EDU
For the past six seasons, Tim Fish has been the voice of New View EDU. Now that he has departed from his role at NAIS to start his own firm, NAIS President Debra P. Wilson and Vice President of Leadership and Governance Morva McDonald will be taking the reins. But first, Debra sits down with Tim to reflect on his 60 episodes of the podcast, what he’s learned from his long career in education, and what he thinks may be next for independent schools.
Tim and Debra begin by reflecting on Tim’s favorite episodes. He says if there were one theme that stands out, it’s the importance of student agency, and how a connection to the work and a sense of mattering transforms students’ experiences in school. He shares with Debra a new idea he’s working on, which is a redefinition of “excellence” in education, contrasting “old excellence” with “new excellence.” To allow for student agency and “new excellence,” Tim says his dream school would be designed with a smaller student body, more flexibility in age groupings and class sizes, a creative and more minimalistic approach to physical plant, and a well-defined, central role for teachers that also allows for the influence of innovation and technology.
- Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.