Ok we get it. It’s not actually Fall yet. But the kids are heading back to school, it’s already tacky to wear white, and football is about to start again. Business is heating up and we’re starting to crank out content here at Palmer Media. There’s just that feeling in the air that everything is about to get busier and everyone is thinking about education.
Trending in Ed Season 7 Kickoff
There’s just no better time to kick off our 7th season of Trending in Education, and we’ve got our lineup mostly set heading into our 500th episode. We kick things off in style with our brand new episode highlighting the amazing guests we have lined up heading into the Fall:
Mike Palmer is back to kick off the 7th season of Trending in Education with our 493rd episode! Coming off a great run that showcased many of our best episodes throughout the summer, we're back with fresh content as Mike looks ahead at the upcoming conversations we have in store as our new season begins.
We start previewing Mike's conversation with Sameer Maskey from Fusemachines talking about how he's democratizing AI. From there, we talk music education and the arts with Kathryn Patricia Cobbler in an episode that features a sampling of Kathryn's music. Then we talk Gen X and get zeitgeisty with Celine Coggins who talks about why she is founding The Legacy Years to activate collective action among the oft-forgotten generation. From Gen X to Gen Z, Mike then previews his conversation with Rebecca Mendoza about teaching Accounting and launching her career at 28. We conclude with reflections on conversations with Miriam Plotinsky about her book Teach More, Hover Less and with Anurupa Ganguly, the Founder and CEO of PrismsVR, about using VR to unlock a deeper conceptual understanding of math.
All of these conversations are on the horizon as we look forward to celebrating our 500th episode this Fall. We're very happy to have you along for the ride.
Best of Trending in Ed Summer Series Wrapup
And even as we look ahead at what’s on the horizon for Trending in Ed, we have plenty to share from our back catalog as we round out our Best of series that ran through the Summer. Here’s a quick rundown of the Best of episodes we rolled out to close out Season 6.
The Path to Free College with Dr. Michelle Miller-Adams
As the collective attention of the nation moved to student loan forgiveness, we showcased our conversation with Michelle Miller-Adams about her book The Path to Free College: In Pursuit of Access, Equity, and Prosperity.
Dr. Michelle Miller-Adams is a professor of political science at Grand Valley State University where she teaches courses on international relations, poverty and inequality. She’s also a Senior Researcher with the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Michelle joins Mike Palmer on this episode to talk about her new book, The Path to Free College: In Pursuit of Access, Equity, and Prosperity. We begin by getting Michelle’s origin story to understand how tuition-free higher education has had a profound effect on her and her family. From there, we briefly explore the history of free public high school and free higher education through the examples from the University of California system and the City College of New York before picking up on the recent movement for tuition-free higher education beginning in 2005 with the Kalamazoo Promise.
From there, Michelle outlines the emergence of numerous grassroots efforts as well as those founded by institutions and states as we try to get our arms around an important movement in America in the 21st century that has gained broader support and awareness in recent years. We conclude with suggestions from Michelle on how to learn more through programs before ending with some reasons for hope.
Here are some resources to check out if you’d like to learn more::
It’s an informative and inspirational conversation about a zeitgeisty topic that you won’t want to miss!
Making Amazing Live Online Learning Happen with Adi Hanash
Then we ran it back to March of 2020 when Mike interviewed Adi Hanash about how live online learning experiences can be as good or even better than in person. Just do us a favor and don’t call it a webinar…
Adi Hanash is a virtuoso online instructor with deep experience in teaching, training teachers, and managing online programs for large organizations like General Assembly and Kaplan. In light of the rapid shift to remote learning (and teaching) driven by the covid-19 pandemic, Adi is running a series of webinars to provide teachers and learning leaders with insights from over 12+ years of experience providing amazing online experiences. We dive into much of this in today’s show.
While lamenting how the traditional conception of “webinars” is limiting, we explore how teaching online unlocks new opportunities to drive accountability and engagement. We also talk about the transformative power of taking a platform-agnostic and decidedly non-technical approach to innovating around synchronous learning.
We close by exploring how the response to the coronavirus is a forcing function and potentially a watershed moment in the understanding of what can be done online. In the process, Adi shares some tips and tricks on how to make the most of the rapid global shift to teaching online.
Labor Day Special - The Teacher Insurgency with Leo Casey
And bringing it home as we gear up for back to school, we returned to one of our most downloaded episodes with Leo Casey talking to us about his book The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective. Leo has done a tremendous job chronicling how teachers have united in collective actions as labor to defend their rights and improve their working conditions. This is something that has become even more relevant as we look to rebound from the pandemic years.
Mike welcomes Leo Casey, the Executive Director of the Albert Shanker Institute who has written a book called The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective. They begin with Leo’s upbringing by two New York City teachers, how he abandoned his dissertation to teach in Crown Heights, and how he began working with the union when his school shut down.
Leo then began to head the Albert Shanker Institute, a strategic think tank within the American Federation of Teachers which examines labor history, especially for teachers. Leo explains the origins of the 2018 and 2019 teacher strikes: the Janus case, post-2008 austerity, deprofessionalization, and movements like the Women’s March on Washington. Teachers saw both their compensation as well as their position in the classroom undergoing rapid decline.
The first teacher’s strikes were held in West Virginia, which had a history of the labor movement–both within education and beyond. From here the strikes spread, and ultimately the movement was successful in protecting teachers during COVID-19 times (in this context, Mike briefly mentions Leo’s article on Black Lives Matter and the NBA.)
Leo notes his concern about both the early retirement of teachers and the paucity in the pipeline for new teachers. Leo also expresses optimism for the Biden-Harris administration, notably President Biden’s support of unions. Leo finishes up by discussing the discourses around how teachers see themselves, and the need for true civics teaching.
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