Episodes

Fasten your seatbelts, listeners. Jeff Hotle is an innovative, creative educator with 45 years of experience as a teacher, principal, technology director, school director and designer of pioneering learning models. Originally from the United States, Jeff has been living in Qatar, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia and New Zealand working in the field of education since 2006. He has been with Liger Leadership Academy as its Director of Learning since 2013 and is passionate about ed...

This is the fourth in a series of special episodes that come from the Game Changer and Big Think speaker series in the What School Could Be archives. Educators worldwide are striving to connect their students to classrooms and experts in ways that humanize the world while preparing them to thrive in the 21st century. In this re-mixed, re-mastered Game Changer conversation, Jennifer D. Klein, author of The Global Education Guidebook, takes us through the steps and strategies needed to set up equi...

This episode covers a wide range of issues in education, most notably design thinking and generative AI. John B. Nash is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies at the University of Kentucky. He teaches a range of courses on school technology leadership, design thinking and research methods. His current research agenda investigates how technology, innovation and policy interact and influence schools and educators in different contexts. John is also a director o...

Whole Child, Whole Life author, Stephanie Malia Krauss writes, “I am a mom [and now two-time author] with a background in education and social work. Through my experiences teaching and running a school, I know getting young people to succeed academically does not always mean they are healthy, happy, or ready for what comes next. This was true in my own life. As a high school dropout, I needed people and opportunities within and beyond school to help me live and learn. Today I work at the interse...

Humans have always been creative hustlers—problem solvers who seek to live beyond the limits suggested by society. Yet we live in a world where the place you were born, the amount of money you have, and the level of melanin in your skin indicate a precise path you are expected to follow. Too many of us silence our creativity and let our hustle calcify as we settle for the roles assigned to us. In this special episode, moderated by What School Could Be's Susannah Johnson and Kapono Ciotti, you wi...

Today my guest is Julia Fliss. Julia is an educator, activist, world changer, lifelong learner, creative, and yogi who lives and teaches middle level learners at a school in the mountains of Evergreen, Colorado. She has made it her life’s mission to advocate for student voice, agency, and the power of transformative pedagogy and global collaboration within our current education system. Julia and I share a common superhero named Zoe Weil, the founder of the Institute for Humane Education and the ...

The following conversation happened on December 1st, 2022 via Zoom. Kapono Ciotti and I hosted a panel of four brilliant futurists who discussed the need to educate not one, but multiple generations of teachers and students who will intentionally shape the future of society, resulting in a world that is more just, more equitable, and fully sustainable, and do it in a way that avoids negative, unintended consequences. This panel did a remarkable and wonderful job unpacking all that is what school...

The Milken Family Foundation writes, "Esther Kwon has worn many hats in her years at Daniel K. Inouye Elementary School. Currently an assistant principal, Kwon looks for innovative ways to enhance students’ educational experience in and out of the classroom. As assistant principal, she is an integral part of the school’s administrative leadership team, helping to drive the instructional program and meet overall academic goals. Last year she piloted the Pineapple Academy, a distance learning opti...

Listeners, meet Miguel Gonzales, Brian Hyosaka and Megan Parry, three visionary and articulate education leaders at Embark Education and Embark, the School in Colorado. "At Embark Education, we are rooted firmly in radical trust, fostering relationships, and shifting mindsets, while expanding to explore the profound potential of learner-centered education for youth and adults. Embark, the school, is a micro middle school in North Denver embedded in two small businesses – Pinwheel Coffee and Fram...

Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx educator and administrator who believes that students shouldn’t have to leave their community to live, learn, and earn in a better one. Moving generations of students into spheres of personal and academic successes they have never imagined, while reclaiming and rebuilding the Bronx, Stephen’s extended student and community family have grown more than 165,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic performance. Named a 2015 Top Ten F...

Today my guest is Paul Balazs, the Theory of Knowledge teacher, Student Activities Coordinator, Wipeout Crew founder and advisor, and Milken Award Teacher of Promise - among many other things - at Henry J. Kaiser high school in East Honolulu. Listeners, as always, I spent two weeks preparing for today’s conversation. In the end I must have had 30 questions I wanted to ask Paul, but in a painful process, and in the interests of time, I had to narrow them down to just 9 or 10. Ouch! So here is wh...

The very well traveled educator, Emma Reppun was raised between the hills of Marin County, California and the Koʻolau Mountains of O'ahu, in Hawai'i. In college she studied sociology at UC Santa Barbara where she received the first inkling that teaching would be her life’s work. In the following years she was trained in the ways of Forest School and Nature Connection by her mentors at Vilda and Earthwise Education, and became a Wilderness First Responder through the National Outdoor Leadership S...

Ted Dintersmith, at his website, writes, "I have an unusual vantage point on the future of our children and our nation. I spent my career in the world of innovation [and venture capital], and my track record there suggests I might know a bit about it. And over the past decade, I’ve immersed myself in the world of education. I don’t claim to have the expertise our classroom teachers have, and I respect their insights — celebrate them, actually. But I have insights into the world our children will...

Dr. Cara Chaudron is a math enthusiast born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i. She teaches 6th grade math at the School For Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability, known as SEEQS, a public charter school near and dear to my heart. I have done two previous episodes with SEEQS faculty, including Zoe Ingerson and school founder, Buffy Cushman-Patz. Dr. Chaudron is a shining example of what it means to teach for deeper learning. This episode was edited by the talented Evan Kurohara. Our theme...

My guest today is Annie Evans, the Director of Education and Outreach for New American History at the University of Richmond in the great state of Virginia. Annie is a National Geographic Society Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, a National Geographic Certified Educator and Trainer, a Co-Coordinator of the Virginia Geographic Alliance and a great writer/blogger. She has over 30 years of classroom and educational leadership experience and she designs curriculum and facilitates professional learning for K...

Today my guest is Ali Pressel, a truly remarkable and impressive educator who teaches, guides, mentors and coaches young people in the St. John's County School District in Florida. She has masters in science from University of Maryland and a bachelors in Environmental Sciences and Human Ecology from Rutgers University. She is a leader in career academy education and develops innovative ways to engage students in their local community and help them make connections between the natural world and t...

Today my guest is Rob Strain, coming to us from Oakland, California. This is his first time as a guest on a podcast! Working chronologically, Rob has done internships in Botswana, at NASA and at a refugee camp in Philadelphia. He taught in the 1st grade at a Bay Area public school, served in multiple roles at Teach For America, GripTape, the Catalyst Fellowship and at Transcend. Rob co-founded the Inspiration Project and is about to launch a rebranded consultancy called Lemon Battery. And that i...

Today my guest is Brendan McCarthy. Brendan’s resume is complicated, so bear with me. He is currently working on a masters in education at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa. Prior to that, he has degrees from Parsons School of Art and Design and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He also taught at Parsons, which is what we are going to focus on today. His undergraduate degree in mathematics is from Columbia University and he graduated as the valedictorian at Gonzaga College High School. Rec...

Today my guest is Erik Swenson, the Student Service Coordinator and Project Teacher at West Hawaii Explorations Academy PCS, fondly known in Hawaiʻi as WHEA. WHEA began when a Hawaiʻi island high school teacher built a famous solar car team that raced across Australia, the continental US and Europe. From that experience came first a school within a school, and then, in the year 2000, the chartering of WHEA as a public startup, Hawaiʻi Island high school. Erik describes himself as an analytical, ...

So what will you hear in my conversation with Hawaii's Governor, David Ige? Over the next 75 minutes you will hear him talk about his passion for education and his involvement in a start up high school in his home community of Pearl City; how his degrees in engineering and business shaped his approach to appointing members of Hawaii’s Board of Education; his thoughts on No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and the Every Student Succeeds Act; the creation of his Blueprint for Public Education; h...

Jackie Freitas teaches the natural sciences and agriculture at Leilehua High School on the Island of Oahu in the state of Hawaiʻi. But really, she is doing much, much more than that. She is cultivating, nourishing, and shaping the minds and hearts of the next generation of young farmers, engineers, coders and makers who will move Hawaiʻi from unsustainable mono ag to a more diverse and organic AgTech approach to feeding the local population. Jackie is changing lives, developing a love of place a...

Dr. Kristin Alford has a Bachelor's Degree in Minerals Processing Engineering and a PhD in Ferrosilicon Corrosion in Dense Medium Plants from the University of Queensland. Dr. Alford, a futurist, also has a Master's in Strategic Foresight from Swinburne University. Yes, there is an interesting difference between being a futurist and having a degree in strategic foresight, whose connotation has a bias towards action. Most importantly, Dr. Alford is the Director of the Museum of Discovery at the U...

My guest today is Parul Punjabi Jagdish, who came onto my radar screen because of a talk he gave in Las Vegas attended by one of my previous guests, Robert Landau. Currently, Parul is the CEO of AIME Mentoring, Inc. (USA), a global movement founded in Australia. Parul’s resume is long, and deep. So what is AIME Mentoring? In 2004, AIME founder Jack Bancroft sketched an idea of a social network for good, one that connected university students as mentors with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ...

In his 21 years at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School, Kevin Matsunaga has taught over a thousand students how to use cameras and editing software, and how to conduct interviews and tell stories. He emphasizes that the digital media program also teaches students important life skills, like how to work in teams, meet deadlines, communicate effectively and solve problems. “Our goal has never been to produce that next Spielberg,” he says. “It’s always been to just give them opportunities that they ...