Learning Unboxed

Rebecca Morningstar has been teaching animal science and zoo management courses at Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Michigan since 2013. Potter Park Zoo is going above and beyond the minimum requirements to provide the highest possible welfare for its animals, employees, and guests. Its mission is to inspire conservation of animals and the natural world. And people can’t make a difference in the world...

Tony Wagner is a globally-recognized expert who is currently a senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute founded by Linda Darling-Hammond in 2015. Prior to that, he held a variety of positions at Harvard University for more than twenty years, including a few years as the expert in residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab and the founder and co-director for more than a decade at the Ch...

You can’t talk about rethinking education for long without hearing Montessori come up. In fact, several past guests on the show have mentioned it, either as an inspiration or having been brought up in that educational philosophy themselves. While we’ve scratched the surface before, we’ve never had the opportunity to dig into it until now. Joining us to help us get a clear picture of this popular e...

Buddy Berry is the superintendent of Eminence Independent Schools, a rural district with approximately 850 students located 400 miles east of Louisville, Kentucky. Buddy is a fourth-generation alumnus of Eminence which offers him a unique perspective, coming from the place that he now leads. Five years ago, Eminence was facing a decline in enrollment and a dropoff in funding. Thanks to Buddy and m...

Our traditional school system has always grouped students by age, but we’re coming to see the benefits of mixed-age learning. When you take kids of different ages and have them learn together, they both grow exponentially faster. Jason Blair is in his 20th year as an elementary school art teacher, currently teaching at Dublin City Schools. He was a previous guest on Learning Unboxed when we spoke...

We know that the modern school wasn’t designed for education and that it’s woefully inadequate at meeting the needs of today’s students and the work environment of the future. So much so that small tweaks aren’t enough to fix it — it has to be redesigned completely. Nathan Gorsch, Founding Principal of Village High School in Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs. Like us at the PAST Found...

One of the best ways to empower students with the life skills they’ll need as adults is to entrust them with solving challenging, real-world problems. Now imagine being able to pay them for those problems. That’s the reality of the Smart Skills Program here at PAST—all about creative, innovative ways to think about workforce development. Smart Skills is a six-week program over the summer, a career...

We believe kids learn best through experience. But what happens when we start holding our young ones back in a misguided attempt at keeping them safe? Gever Tulley is the co-founder of Tinkering School which came about in 2005. It gives kids the opportunity to prove how capable they are by supplying them with the tools to solve real-world problems and watching them make mistakes, learn, and build...

Anyone will tell you: Teaching is hard. But when we have teachers who are good at their jobs but are feeling that struggle, how can they overcome that hurdle and go on to have long, joyous teaching careers? Bill Manchester is an old friend of Learning Unboxed. We met with him and his students back in episode 34, Engineering Creativity Through Music. If you happened to miss that one, we’ll catch yo...

When we can use entertaining games as amazing educational tools, everyone wins. It’s clear that the game of chess can lead to some stellar learning opportunities, but what's not always obvious is how to get kids interested in it at all. Elliott Neff is the founder and CEO of Chess4Life, a platform that teaches kids critical thinking skills, problem-solving, EQ, and other important life skills...

When we spoke to members of The Willowell Foundation, Jen Olson & Tasha Ball, about the Wren’s Nest, we realized there’s so much more to this story that needs to be explored. How we contextualize our relationship with nature is so important, and getting kids interested in it at the ground level may have far-reaching implications. Matt Schlein is the founder and director of The Walden Project a...

There’s a lot to learn by taking the time to understand things that kids are invested in, even if it doesn’t seem to relate to education. Take esports, for instance: Could this thing that so many adults pass off as a waste of time actually teach our kids valuable life skills? North American Scholastic Esports Foundation (NASEF) is the world’s first academic approach to esports, providing opportuni...

In previous parts of Hacking School, we’ve taken a look at our education system, the role it’s played, and what could happen if we allow ourselves to imagine other possibilities. Change is difficult—especially getting started—and once you’ve decided to make a change, picking a direction to go in can be even harder. We’re joined by August Majtenyi, a member of PAST’s research team, to have a conver...

If the role of school is to prepare students for their adult lives, then academics are only a part of what they need to learn. We’re going to look at an innovative program that is working hard to bring SEL (social emotional learning) to the forefront of our thinking as we look at transforming our school structure. Bridget Durkan Laird is the chief executive officer at Wings for Kids, an organizati...

We’re speaking to a number of people from one of Ohio’s leading STEM schools, the National Inventors Hall of Fame School, including Sam Crews, a founding teacher at the school with over 20 years of experience in schools. Joining him are two former students, Mar Lin and Camryn Woodley. They share their learning experiences at the National Inventors Hall of Fame School and how what they learned ther...

Many schools are excited by the idea of collaborative maker spaces, putting large amounts of funding into getting them built. But once those spaces have been built they start to struggle. What do we do with these spaces to make them a success? Nikil Ragav is the founder and CEO of inventXYZ, a program devoted to bringing high-tech, hands-on education to students everywhere by setting up maker work...

With a wicked problem in mind, choosing relevant issues tied to a school, a community partnership, technical apprenticeship, or continuing education reveals many paths that lead down numerous avenues of inquiry—all relating back to the issues at hand. Sustainability, world health, and local environments are larger issues with multiple facets, with the potential to generate years’ worth of projects...

Education starts from the moment we take our first breath, but we often only give it our full attention as kids get closer to their careers. Today we’re going to be talking about our littlest learners and how to prepare them for further education and their futures. Willowell Foundation’s “Wren’s Nest” program, a holistic, interdisciplinary, and sensory-based approach to learning, and a companion p...

Original summarization of the episode. Greet the reader and/or introduce the guest. Preview the person’s area of expertise, qualifications, accomplishments, or hook for being on the show. One sentence to connect relevant subject matter to the audience. Consider finishing with a list rounding out other included topics. Quick sign-off CTA. Educational, open-minded tone. Part of our core philosophy a...

There’s a severe disconnect between the preparation of students coming out of K-12 education and career success. Though the founders of the PAST Foundation each came from diverse areas of science, they each found they were seeing the same problem in students and young employees who worked in their labs: As intelligent as they were, when it came down to rolling up their sleeves and working there we...

Shawn Young is the co-founder and CEO of Classcraft, an innovative platform that helps educators make learning meaningful and motivate students through gamification. SInce its launch, Classcraft has had an incredible impact, with over 10 million students making use of the platform. He has a background in teaching himself, and in fact built Classcraft to meet the needs of his own classroom before i...

One of the main goals of education is to prepare our kids for the future, and that often means preparing them for a career. A great way to do that is through internships, capstones, and mentoring programs. Erika Reeves is the Bodies Early College Experience Coordinator at Metro Early College High School, who we’ve spoken with on the podcast before. She’s joined by a student, Shirish Parasa, who ha...

In this special issue of Learning Unboxed, we are kicking off a multi-part series we call “Hacking School.” The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, while awful in its own right, brought to light several long-standing issues in the education system—specifically when it comes to equity, technology, and pedagogy. We’ve come to understand that the current system does not prepare students adequ...

Art is such a powerful way to expand our creativity and explore unique ways of thinking, but the traditional art world can be uninspiring to outsiders and limiting to the artists themselves. Thankfully, people like Allyson Lupovich mean to change that. Allyson is the Director of Brand Content for Meow Wolf, an immersive art experience company in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their goal is to inspire creat...

High school internship programs can be a fabulous experience for students and, when done well, are incredibly productive for all parties involved. Internships can run from work-based experiences to being fully embedded in a workplace. Tammy Cooper has been the internship coordinator at the Marysville Early College STEM School for the past five years. She talks about some of the benefits of interns...