Episode 64: Pluralism in Education

Available October 15, 2024

Navigating polarities and fostering respectful dialogue are responsibilities that weigh heavy on many school leaders right now. How, in the current social and political climate, can we build bridges of cooperation rather than creating further barriers that divide us? How can we create space for people to voice ideas and opinions while balancing our very real obligations to nurture student safety and wellbeing? Eboo Patel, author and Director of Interfaith America, sits down with NAIS President Debra Wilson to talk about his work on the role of pluralism in schools.

Guest: Eboo Patel

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “Diversity is a treasure. Identity is a source of pride, not a status of victimization. Cooperation is better than division. Faith is a bridge. Everybody's a contributor.” (4:49)
• “It is an exercise of citizenship in a diverse democracy to come to know something about your fellow citizens who are from different identities, including different political parties, including different regions of the world, and from different intellectual frameworks and maybe of different values. I mean, you know, did I think diversity was just the differences I liked?” (16:00)
• “If there's anything that a school should be, it should be a place that is immune to the kind of ideologies that shut down the conversation. I want to quote John Courtney Murray again. I think it's so powerful. He says, civilization is living and talking together. That is the definition of civilization. And the definition of the barbarian is the person who shuts down the conversation. And the introduction of ideologies that shut down conversations about, for example, how people from different identities should relate to one another.” (21:41)
• “If you're United Airlines, and you're hiring a graduate from Embry Riddle aeronautical university, you are pretty sure that person can fly a plane. If I hire a graduate from The Lab School or Latin School or Parker, these are elite independent schools in my city of Chicago, what should I be confident that graduate can do? And I think a head of school should say, my graduate can navigate pluralism.” (25:12)

Related Episodes: 37, 30, 29, 22, 17, 7, 4

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A Special Re-Broadcast: Episode 40, Student Voice and Agency in Education

In honor of the departure of our original New View EDU host Tim Fish after 60 episodes, we’re pausing to share one of his favorite episodes of the podcast. Tim delighted in speaking with students, and was especially enthusiastic about this interview with two students from One Stone School in Boise, Idaho. We hope you’ll enjoy revisiting this episode with us. Stay tuned for our return to new programming next week, when Debra Wilson sits down with Eboo Patel of Interfaith America.

Guests: Ella Cornett and Mackenzie Link

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “To go back to the question of what should school be, I feel like learners and students should come out of school with that sense of purpose. And that's, that really resonates with me because I feel like that's what I want out of school. I wanna leave school and kind of know what I wanna do and who I wanna be in the world.” (21:39)
• “I would describe my stress...less so stress. I would call it ambition. Like, I think the weight of ambition sits heavy on my shoulders because I strive for the, like, the next best thing I wanna keep doing. I wanna keep going, I wanna keep pushing. And One Stone really allows me to do that and empowers me to do that.” (26:24)
• “It's that pushing students, the healthy balance of pushing students. And this is where great coaching comes in. And great mentorship is, you do have to find the thing that students care about and relate it, everything that you're doing, to that. And then we're in the home stretch.” (29:57)
• “It's easy if you let it be easy, in the sense that if you don't want to grow, if you don't try to grow, you won't. Just like a student in public school that doesn't try, they won't get a good GPA. But that's not the motivation here. The motivation here for us is to grow. So if a student doesn't want to grow, how can they?” (39:44)

Related Episodes: 36, 34, 27, 23, 18

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

Episode 63: Building Academic Resilience

Available October 1, 2024

Resilience is a hot topic in education. We wonder whether 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 instead? That’s what Megan Kennedy is exploring with her team at the UW Resilience Lab.

Guest: Megan Kennedy

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “These skills and mindsets have a primary kind of effect on their own ability to cope with stress and cope, like have some resilience, both individual resilience and to build sort of team or organizational resilience in the work. Because oftentimes I'll teach these groups to organizations as a whole. For example, an entire school or college, or to a full team, so that they're learning these skills and mindsets in community. And then that gets reinforced in their like team meetings and in their relationships. And if you can imagine that to scale, all of a sudden, you have all these schools and colleges across campus that have learned these skills and mindsets in community, and then that grows.” (16:54)
• “We could still maybe explore this concept of how do we not just spiral up the social and emotional learning from kindergarten to 12th grade, but how do we actually extend that into the university? So what's happening in the K -12 system helps support students as they transition into college. And what we are teaching in college is really building off the skills and mindsets that the students have been learning kind of all the way up. So I've spent some time in my career really interested in a collective impact approach. How do we work together around common issues and be working in a really aligned and coordinated way? So this idea of having the K-12 system and the university system more seamless around social emotional learning is, I think, a really interesting and cool opportunity.” (24:29)

“I don't suggest that that's an easy thing. Collective impact never is. But I think that on the table would be a lot of conversations about the competitive nature of things. And it's interesting that we're in a time where the need to be collaborative and work across differences and come to the table and be able to manage our emotions when we have different perspectives and different ideas, because the issues are really challenging, is more important than ever.” (30:57)

Related Episodes: 60, 59, 51, 48, 29, 22, 19, 3

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