Street Data Pod: Imagining the Next Generation of Education

Join us for this opening episode of Season 5 as we dive into the instructional core with THE Zaretta Hammond, who needs no introduction! Get to know Zaretta as she enters her self-described “Maker Phase” of life. In this season, Alcine and Shane are exploring the question, What needs to be true—at various levels of the system—to awaken and center student voice and agency? Zaretta cracks open this conversation by challenging all of us to couple “equity work” with “instructional equity”, beginning with a deep focus on literacy to interrupt what she has deemed cognitive redlining. Listen as Zaretta unpacks a pedagogy of possibility in which educators leverage neuroscience to make learning “sticky” and help students get smarter and sharper about the core skills they need to thrive. Zaretta offers so many insights on where we need to pay attention as educators, starting with a reminder that curriculum is not a magic wand that will generate learning and belonging is a precondition for cognitive capacity-building, not the end goal. She grounds us in the truth that learning is messy, predicated on making and thinking strategically about mistakes, and that students need both care and push. And she gives us a powerful vision of classrooms rooted in the kinds of “studio habits” that artists have, in which students are cognitively apprenticed into the vital skills and habits of learning required for the global societies in which they live.   For Further Learning: * Visit Zaretta’s organization Ready 4 Rigor HERE [https://ready4rigor.com/] * Get your copy of Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain HERE [https://www.corwin.com/books/cultural-responsv-teaching-brain-241754]  * Listen to Zaretta Hammond on the following podcasts: * Whole Student Podcast: Who Helped You Thrive as a Student? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NKnssuk2kw] (2022) * 180 Podcast Part 1 [https://www.podbean.com/ep/pb-uyn9h-108d4a5] and Part 2 [https://www.podbean.com/ep/pb-rmfte-10a55c6]  * The Future of Learning with Tim Logan [https://www.futurelearningdesign.com/podcast/episode/ec6fe73a/culturally-responsive-teaching-a-conversation-with-zaretta-hammond] (in the UK) - April 3, 2024 * Minding the Gap with Tom Sherrington [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/readying-students-for-rigo-u-r-culturally-responsive/id1516532537?i=1000642446815] (UK) - Jan. 2024

Today's episode is a re-release from Season 4! From West Philly to Stanford University to becoming a field-shifting scholar, Dr. GLB is here to drop the mic for Street Data Pod’s Season 4. We learn about Little Gloria and her largely positive educational experience growing up in Philadelphia before attending a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). We get the inside scoop on her groundbreaking research as a post-doc at Stanford, including what happened when she flipped the dominant, deficit-based research paradigms and asked, “What’s right with Black kids?” From there, GLB enlightens us around the core tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy, which starts with a set of beliefs about children and families (not practices!) and a willingness to interrogate knowledge. Finally, we talk about the transformative value of focusing on the “big ideas” of one’s discipline versus the millions of little facts that suck the life out of so much curriculum. To continue our exploration of pedagogies of student voice, GLB takes us to Matamoros, México where a science teacher with few resources in an “underperforming” region breathes life into his content by believing in the brilliance of his students and building an experiential learning simulation. Don’t miss this phenomenal episode!   For Further Learning: * Here is a recent article by Dr. Ladson-Billings: “I’m Here for the Hard Re-Set: Post Pandemic Pedagogy to Preserve Our Culture” [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OCMc1unonh-A2f3gnOZRAtQWvzUZYX2X/view?usp=sharing] * Here’s a trailer for Radical [https://youtu.be/BXcGgvAKC1Q?feature=shared], the movie Dr. Ladson-Billings referenced as an example of culturally responsive pedagogy in classrooms. * At the time of the recording, Dr. Luis Moll just transitioned into being an ancestor. We want to honor his brilliant contributions to our field by sharing an article on his seminal theory of funds of knowledge [https://education.ucsc.edu/ellisa/pdfs/Moll_Amanti_1992_Funds_of_Knowledge.pdf].

In this final episode of Season 4, Alcine and Shane return to a conversation with Dr. Sawsan Jaber, contributing writer to Shane’s forthcoming book Pedagogies of Voice: Street Data and the Path to Student Agency. They explore the impact of the genocide in Gaza, and the backlash against Palestinian advocacy, on Sawsan as a leading Palestinian educator voice. And Sawsan shares what it’s meant to her to be a part of this next Corwin Press project. In the second half of the episode, Shane and Alcine walk down the Season 4 Memory Lane, surfacing moments that moved them and stayed with them. They close with a sneak preview of Season 5, which launches in January 2025, a few months before the debut of Pedagogies of Voice. Join us to close out this dynamic season!   For Further Learning:  * Envision Learning Partners’ criteria for high quality performance assessments [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hIGhO1-X4jwX6RH_TkfjfuJNdIKvrEcn/view?usp=sharing] * Read Shane’s article [https://ascd.org/el/articles/cultivating-a-pedagogy-of-student-voice] in ASCD’s Educational Leadership magazine, “Cultivating A Pedagogy of Student Voice”

In this penultimate episode of Season 4, Shane and Alcine explore the contours of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies with the illustrious Dr. Django Paris. Their conversation explores the ideas of shared communities and solidarities across difference, intersectionality, and chosen kinship. We learn how Django’s experiences of reading, writing, and art as a little person inform his scholarship and remind him “what it means to keep that voice and dedication to expression” as a scholar. We unpack the central tenets of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, including CPS as a pedagogical expression of both community care and the abolitionist ethos, “We keep us safe.” Finally, this intimate fireside chat uplifts the student-led movements for a Free Palestine that have emerged across the U.S. and beyond as spaces of abundance that resist a scarcity mindset. Don’t miss this groundbreaking, heartstring-tugging conversation with one of today’s educational dreamers and thought leaders.   For Further Learning:  * To learn more about Dr. Paris and his scholarship, click here [https://education.uw.edu/about/directory/django-paris]. * You can find his book Education in Movement Spaces: Standing Rock to Chicago Freedom Square [https://www.routledge.com/Education-in-Movement-Spaces-From-Standing-Rock-to-Freedom-Square-1st/Eagle-Shield-Paris-Paris-San-Pedro/p/book/9780367344597] at Routledge Press and the book series Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Book Series [https://www.tcpress.com/csps] at Teachers’ College Press. * Dr. Paris’s new conversations series can be found at An Educational Otherwise [https://linktr.ee/educationalotherwise] * To learn more about the Popular University for Gaza at UW, click here [https://www.dailyuw.com/news/inside-look-at-the-popular-university-for-gaza-s-community-resources/article_342d03c0-0a8f-11ef-bffb-2767dc145c4a.html].

We are back for another re-release from season 2 with Young Whan Choi! In this episode, we explore ways of being and leading in education that truly center students. Young Whan implores us to “marginalize” standardized testing, or at least push it to the periphery, as he offers a vision of authentic, community-based, performance assessments that demonstrate what students know and are able to do. He exposes the irony that, while many new leaders evoke the principle of being “student-centered”, students themselves are often painfully absent from professional learning agendas, except perhaps as an aggregated data point. And finally, Young Whan helps us rethink where knowledge lives and where power exists within the system.   For Further Learning: * Get a copy of Street Data on Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/Street-Data-Next-Generation-Pedagogy-Transformation/dp/1071812718], Corwin Press [https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/street-data/book271852], or from a BIPOC-owned local bookstore [https://secondstorypress.ca/wavemaker/2020/6/12/black-and-indigenous-owned-bookstores-in-canada-and-the-usa]. * Get a copy of Young Whan’s book, Sparks Into Fire: Revitalizing Teacher Practice Through Collective Learning at Teachers’ College Press [https://www.tcpress.com/sparks-into-fire-9780807767160]. * Read Shane’s recent Ed Week article [https://www.edweek.org/technology/opinion-standardized-tests-arent-the-only-meaningful-data-on-student-achievement/2022/09] on standardized testing. * Watch Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, Wayne Au, Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian discuss the racist history of standardized testing and its impacts today in The Racist History of Standardized Testing [https://youtu.be/Nmd7OeXqRw0]