Age of Awareness Podcast

We are both honored and excited to be kicking off our third season with professor and author Julian Agyeman . We only had time to explore a small portion of Agyeman’s extensive body of work. His contributions (publications, books, and research) span decades and cover a wide range of topics: from urban planning to food justice. Even a brief overview of his career would have required hours to do it...

We are excited to present this conversation as both a  New Year's day present and a final episode of season two for the AoA podcast. We chat with author and speaker David Stroh on what systems thinking is, how to apply to global issues, how to use it to reframe our thinking, and then how this reframing could impact life in the classroom - for both students and teachers. Thank you for all of y...

José Antonio Bowen has been a strong advocate for student-centered education in a number of roles and in a number of ways. From TED talks to books, from creating departments to becoming the president of colleges. The number of hats he has worn in the world of education is countless. We discuss his recent and not so recent works: Teaching with AI and Teaching Naked and how they can be incorporated...

We dive into Dr. Desautels' busy life as an assistant professor at Butler University and her work there with educational neuroscience, as a published author, and reflect on her insights and experiences as an educator in the classroom. She shares valuable insights as she guides us through her  book, 'Connections Over Compliance' , as well as other works she has published, while also...

We dive into a really interesting conversation with educator, author, speaker, innovator Paul Gorski . We discuss his recent book, 'Fix Injustice, Not Kids' , his work at GMU, his approaches to equity in schools, and much more. We are also joined today by a new co-host, Alina Kaye . Alina is a former educator and now is involved in early childhood education and we couldn't be happie...

We end 2023 with a wonderful conversation with Dr. Carter Berry discussing her work at her organization, Brownicity and her work as an author. We discuss her recent work, "Teaching for Justice and Belonging: A Journey for Educators and Parents" and how it lays down the steps for the "how-to" of implementing such initiatives in ones classroom. It was amazing to hear how her effo...

Navigating the Ethical Horizons of AI with Prof. Casey Fiesler Join us in a thought-provoking conversation with Professor Casey Fiesler from the University of Colorado - Boulder, as we delve into the intricate intersection of artificial intelligence, ethics,  technology, and the world of education. We look into the role of AI in education and gain insights on staying informed in this rapidly evolv...

We have our 5th Coffee Chat and part 3 of our conversation with Professor Stephen Mulkey. We chat about warming in the North Atlantic and its impact on ocean currents, changes in hurricane systems, geoengineering projects and why fossil fuel companies support them, how global agriculture will have to change in the face of our current climate crisis. Thank you for tuning in! Where to find Mulkey on...

Check out our past episodes at: aoapodcast.com Here is part 2 of 3 of our Coffee Chat conversation with Professor Stephen Mulkey . We chat about the concept of degrowth and how it fits in addressing climate change, the current state of carbon capture technology, and end with the Amazon Rainforest. Be on the lookout for part 3 of 3! Some articles were mentioned in this chat. I will link here: Worki...

In this Coffee Chat we have a familiar guest back on, Professor Stephen Mulkey . We discuss current climate change issues, we work to clear up some confusion on 'wet bulb temperature' and dive deep into one of Professor Mulkey's new course: Communities and Climate Change. We discuss how climate justice and community-based initiatives play a vital role in how we move forward with add...

We have finally gotten around to sharing the second half of this wonderful conversation with professor and environmental scientist Stephen Mulkey. This is our second Coffee Chat (CC) and we are hoping to post more of these in addition to our episodes. We talk about divestment opportunities, teacher tips (really for all levels), and the future of science education - with fun stories mixed in. We ho...

Addressing food insecurity in schools was actually one of my main focuses as a first year teacher many years ago as an environmental educator. I was overly enthusiastic and naive about the promise of schoolyard vegetable gardens solving all food insecurity among the 10+ million children living in hunger in the US.  Years later it is still a focus of mine but I have learned so much along the way. T...

Tune into a fun conversation with author and professor Renee Hobbs. Renee first got on our radar with he recent book and winner of the 2021 PROSE Award, "MIND OVER MEDIA: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age." We discuss her book and how she first got into media literacy. This conversation helped reframe how I saw "screen time" and how my students could communicate their gras...

We are happy to share with you an engaging conversation for your Thanksgiving Break! In this episode we had the privilege to chat with keynote speaker Principal Kafele . We cover how schools can better support their administrators, specifically their assistant principals, so they can better support their schools, what it means to push for equity in a learning environment, and how administrators ca...

We are excited to kick off our second season of episodes with a conversation with author and lecturer Alfie Kohn .  This was a shorter conversation but we covered a lot of ground. Like many of our other conversations here, I think everyone from parents to students, teachers to administrators, and activists to policy makers can get something out of this conversation. We chatted about the topics suc...

Here we wrap up our second Coffee Chat and the second half of our conversation with professor and environmental scientist Stephen Mulkey. We touched upon advice for both students and teachers in the environmental world, the uncanny beginnings to the International Center for Tropical Ecology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the plastic industry, and the false promise of current geo-engineer...

This is a fun conversation that touches upon Stephen Mulkey’s original motivation to pursue this path, how he has navigated academia in the face of climate-change denial, and how the youth can help shape the future of environmentalism—both as students and activists. Mulkey has been active in the environmental science realm in almost every aspect. To helping start conservatories to leading the firs...

In this last episode of 2021 we end the year with internationally-acclaimed speaker Ken Shelton on the topic of technology in schools. We cover so many more topics and Ken provides us with several real-world examples that I think anyone in education can appreciate. Whether you are an administrator, educator, parent, or even student I think there is a piece of advice for everyone. Read more about K...

This was a fun episode as we got a chance to speak with someone who has been contributing to Age of Awareness for years.  I actually discovered the insights and works of Sarah Mock on medium.com about five years ago. Now, she is a best-selling author with her recent book "Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm." This was a nice conversation about some of the...

This 8th episode was really fun to do. As a Design and Tech teacher, I really enjoyed hearing about the design process, the creative freedoms, and then the impacts of the final products they are producing over at Microsoft Education. For the educators listening in to this episode; you will notice that it is clear that Microsoft makes it a priority to communicate and collaborate with in-class teach...

We had the amazing opportunity to sit down with Lorena Germán and to discuss so many great topics about her work and about her journey to where she is now.  Her new book, "Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Practices" is available for pre-order now and will be available in September.  You may know her from one of her many other projects in education and education re...

We had the privilege of chatting with one of the world's leading science communicators, Hashem Al-Ghaili . As a social media manager myself, I was just blown away by the numbers he was reporting: reaching 200,000,000 people each week just on Facebook alone?! Numbers that I couldn't even imagine seeing on the analytics boards. But we spoke about much more than just reaching so many people...

How were some teachers able to thrive during their time teaching from home during a global pandemic? How were some able to pivot so easily and transition from in-person teaching to remote teaching? Well, for thousands of teachers around the world The Modern Classrooms Project might be the answer. In our fifth episode, we jump into a conversation with their co-founder Kareem Farah. We explore the r...

Kids can be entrepreneurs, too. That is what Stephen and Sean discover in this episode of the show when they sit down with Rocket Club founder and CEO, Alex Hodara. Rocket Club is a program for kids that combines the disciplines of coding, robotics, and entrepreneurship to teach kids valuable lessons they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. Alex talks about the origins of his own jou...

In our third episode we had the opportunity to talk with science communicator and celebrity Steve Spangler . You may know him from The Ellen DeGeneres Show or from his presence on various other platforms ( TikTok | YouTube | Instagram ) We get into engagement strategies with students, learning to teach in a virtual/online setting, starting and managing several businesses, and being a lifelong lear...