NAIS New View EDU Podcast Archives: Season 3

Find New View EDU on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and many other podcast apps.
 

Season 3 Episodes: Fall 2022

Episode 30: How Equity and Well-Being Work Together in Our Schools

Schools exist to help prepare students for the future. But in a society that prides itself on equality, how can we create equitable schools that prepare students to enter a world where inclusion is crucial? And how does focusing on the well-being of our school communities go hand-in-hand with building inclusive environments? In the Season 3 finale, two school heads with deep expertise in leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work join host Tim Fish and special guest co-host Caroline Blackwell for a conversation about equity, well-being, and the future of inclusion efforts in independent schools.

Jessie Barrie of the Bosque School (NM) and Kalyan Balaven of the Dunn School (CA) talk with Tim and Caroline about the inspiring innovations they’ve helped launch, such as the Inclusion Dashboard and the Independent Schools Experiential Education Network; how they are leading in their school communities to improve DEI work; and what they see as the strengths and pitfalls of equity and inclusion efforts in education.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 29: The Future of Higher Ed

Much of the work of K-12 schools is focused on getting students to the “next step,” which, for many of them, is college readiness. But increasingly, it feels like we’re not working on college readiness so much as we’re working on college admissions. Preparing kids to successfully apply to college, in the hypercompetitive admissions landscape, is almost a full-time job of its own. What should schools be doing to help students with college (and college application) readiness? When we focus on gaining admission to selective schools, what are we missing in the K-12 experience? And what do colleges actually want K-12 educators to know?

In this episode, higher education experts Jeff Selingo and Adam Weinberg join host Tim Fish for a candid conversation about the admissions race, life on campus, and what “college readiness” actually means. Jeff is a bestselling author whose most recent book, Who Gets In and Why, was named among the most notable books of 2020 by The New York Times. Adam is the 20th president of Denison University, and his tenure has focused on issues like affordability, curricular innovation, and closing the college-to-career gap.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 28: Supporting Healthy Habits for Students in a Digital World

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Episode 27: Developing Mastery in Approaches to Education

As the world continues to rapidly evolve, so do the skills students need to be successful in the future. Educational models that revolve around seat time, content memorization, and age-based pacing are starting to fade into the past. But what should replace them? One idea that’s gaining traction is the concept of mastery. On this episode, Julia Griffin joins host Tim Fish to share how she and a team of innovative educators have launched the Mastery School at Hawken—an alternative learning experience within a well-established independent high school.

Describing the concept of a mastery-based education, Julia reflects on the purpose of education as achieving the “highest goal” of maximizing the individual growth of every student. Traditional high school models, she argues, are organized more for efficiency, conformity, and deference to the needs of the adults in the building. Designing a fully mastery-based system of education instead requires creating space to center the needs of each student. 

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 26: Bringing Virtual Reality into K-12 Education

After COVID forced schools all over the world to dive headlong into experiments with online learning, most educators are delighted to have the chance to return to in-person classrooms. But what if the answer to a number of challenges in education—equity, access, student agency, efficiency—actually lies in going more deeply into the virtual realm? The founder of the world’s first virtual reality charter school believes that may be the way forward for schools.

Host Tim Fish talks with Adam Mangana, the chief product officer and a founder of Optima Ed, an educational experience company focused on creating American classical and virtual reality curriculum. Adam also launched the world’s first virtual reality charter school, Optima Classical Academy, in 2022. He shares his ideas about the inherent opportunities for greater personal ownership, democratized content sharing, improved access, new financial models, and a more equitable experience regardless of geography.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 25: Developing Independent School Leaders for the Future

As schools and communities have undergone swift and often unpredictable transformations in recent years, leadership has also changed. Ideas about the characteristics of leadership, who owns the title of “leader,” and how leadership gets distributed are evolving rapidly to keep up with a culture of constant change. On this episode of New View EDU, explore what it means to be the kind of leader who can adapt and build strong schools now and into the future. 

Host Tim Fish talks with Dr. Nicole Furlonge, director of the Klingenstein Center at the Teachers College of Columbia University, and NAIS President Donna Orem about their views on independent school leadership for this moment. How has the need to respond to ongoing crises of well-being and safety, among other issues, changed the leadership model? What’s different for school leaders now, and what skills do they need to continue to lead successfully?

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 24: International Perspectives on the Independent School Landscape

Host Tim Fish is joined by Maddy Hewitt (right), executive director of the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA), and Kelly Borg (left), associate chief executive for teaching and learning at the Association of Independent Schools of New South Wales in Australia. Together, they discuss how world events such as the pandemic, global political instability, climate change, and a youth mental health crisis have fundamentally impacted education in different parts of the world—as well as what school leaders can do, and are doing right now, to create strong futures for their students and communities.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 23: Designing Schools for Self-Directed Learning

What if schools put learning into the hands of the student instead of the teacher? What if instructional models included less “instruction” and more time guiding kids to finding their own answers and inspirations? These are just some of the starting points for this discussion, and for the work that Tyler Thigpen does on a daily basis.

Tyler is the co-founder of The Forest School and the Institute for Self-Directed Learning. In this episode, he joins host Tim Fish to talk about self-directed learning and his approach to help students develop four core competencies: learning to be, learning to do, learning to learn, and learning to live together. Describing these competencies as “key marketplace skills,” Tyler delves into the benefits of an educational model that is purely student-directed. He shares what educators, parents, and students can expect from an educational experience that’s radically different from the norm.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 22: The Purpose and Nature of Higher Education

Since the beginning of the New View EDU podcast, we’ve been asking guests to help us answer the question: “What is the purpose of education?” Now we’re expanding our search for answers into the realm of higher education. What’s the purpose of college? Is it just to get a foot in the door of a competitive job market, or is there something greater to be gained from higher ed? And what do the answers to these questions mean for K-12 schools?

For more than 25 years, Wendy Fischman has directed research at Project Zero, a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. With Howard Gardner, she has just completed a national study of higher education and written a book about their findings, The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be. In this episode, Wendy joins host Tim Fish to dig into the research and the surprising conclusions that might be drawn from the work conducting over 2,000 in-depth interviews on college campuses.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 21: How to Create a Generation of Super Collaborators

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