Episode 66: School in a Time of Hope and Cynicism

Available November 5, 2024

How good are people? How much can you trust your neighbors? How much do you agree with others on fundamental values and ideals that are important to you? Sometimes it can feel like the answers to these questions skew towards the negative. But author and researcher Jamil Zaki says we’d be surprised by the reality. He sits down with Morva McDonald to talk about his book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, and what his findings mean for everyone, especially school leaders, right now.

Guest: Jamil Zaki

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “One, during the hardest time in many people's lives, during one of the greatest disasters of the century, people didn't respond to this adversity by falling apart and focusing on themselves. They came together and found ways to help one another, which is so remarkably beautiful. But then second, most people ignored this global avalanche of human kindness, which is the sadder surprise, that our minds are tuned away from goodness even when it's all around us.” (3:17)
• “Having an assumption about people, even if it's a gloomy assumption, is very comfortable. You get to maybe not have faith in people, but have faith in your assumptions. Letting go of that faith and saying, I don't know what the world is like necessarily. I don't know what the future holds. I don't know what this person is like, is uncomfortable. But it's that courage to be humble about what we know and what we don't know that is the beginning of learning.” (13:54)
• “One, we as a country are far less divided than we think we are. I am in no way here minimizing real extremism, real political violence and real risk to human rights in this country. I think we're in a very scary time. But if you look at what people actually want, even their views on different issues, we're much closer together than I think the media and even politicians want us to realize that we are. We are being told the story of extreme division when reality is that we are divided, but not that much, and that there are many things that we have in common in terms of our values and what we want.” (31:19)

Related Episodes: 64, 62, 54, 44, 37, 32, 17, 15

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

Episode 35: The Relationship Between Emotions and Learning

Social-emotional learning and student wellbeing are increasingly showing up as priorities for schools. But what if research could prove that looking out for the emotional components of teaching and learning aren’t just important for mental health, but actually essential for academic growth? That’s the central premise of Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s research, and she’s ready to make the case that emotions are vitally linked to our ability to learn.

Guest: Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “The whole rest of the brain, the deeper thinking, the emotion regulation, the engaging with other people, the social meaning making, the sense of self. All of these kinds of very basic systems that are fundamental to being a good human are not predicted by, or even associated with, IQ. They are predicted by this, this what we're calling transcendent thinking… So how do we get kids to think that way?” (9:50)
• “It's literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about information for which you have no emotional reason or context to engage.” (12:09)
• “We're not installing information into a person like a squirrel, like, stashing away its nuts, right? What we're doing is inviting a person to engage actively with an orchestrated set of materials and content in a way that will help facilitate them naturally coming to realize what matters there, and the power of those tools for understanding something important about ideas and the world.” (21:12)

Related Episodes: 32, 18, 16, 5, 3

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

Episode 65: Leadership and Design for the Future of Schools

Available October 22, 2024

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 be reactive rather than proactive? Carla Silver, Executive Director of Leadership + Design, has been partnering with schools for over 15 years to help create cultures of learning and foster human-centered design thinking. She sits down with host Morva McDonald to discuss her views on leadership and where schools are headed.

Guest: Carla Silver

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “Really since the internet, things are changing so rapidly. And teaching and learning is having to change to keep up with those technological changes. So change is just rapid. And so that means that school leaders have to be way more flexible. They have to be way more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. You throw in things like a global pandemic, and the second thing I think that's happening is that heads of schools, and school leaders in general, are being asked to respond to so many external events in ways that they hadn't in the past.” (9:21)
• “We don't necessarily define ‘leader’ as someone who necessarily has positional authority. I mean, obviously that's the most common definition. You think about someone who has a position or a title, but some of the most effective leaders that we work with… they're actually classroom teachers and they don't necessarily want to leave the classroom. They actually want to influence change from that position. And so I think it's really important to think about the fact that when we talk about leaders, we think about anyone who's really trying to mobilize other people to make change, to manage adaptive work, adaptive challenges.” (15:22)
• “One of the things we really try to help leaders of all different backgrounds and genders and race and ethnicities think about is, how do they lead with their own signature presence? Which is, what are the things that they, where they naturally feel really gifted and in the flow and how do they amplify those qualities and be attentive to them instead of trying to necessarily come from a deficit model of leadership, where I'm not good at this or I'm not good at that, but rather where are you naturally really gifted as a leader, and how do you build more of that in your life?” (22:25)

Related Episodes: 64, 56, 42, 38, 25, 20, 9, 5

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