Eagle Rock Staffers Recommend Their Favorites Podcast Episodes

If you’re a frequent reader of our blog, you’ve noticed that our staff isn’t the least bit shy about recommending books and movies to our peers in progressive education. It is in that vein that we’re pleased to recommend the below episodes from among some of our staffers favorite podcasts. If one or more of them grab your attention, just click on the title and listen in:

Is America’s Education Problem Really Just a Teacher Problem? An episode from the Freakonomics Radio Podcast

This episode of the Freakonomics Radio Podcast goes to great lengths to explore the notion that maybe some students aren’t succeeding today because of teacher quality. While it’s true we spend more money per student than practically any other nation in the world, the U.S. education system is failing on many fronts — especially in math. It begs the question: Are our students getting the short shrift because some of our educators aren’t all that educated? Listen in to find out.

Deeper Learning Conference 2016. An episode from the Getting Smart podcast

Several of Eagle Rock’s staffers attended the Deeper Learning Conference this past spring, and we’re big fans of High School for the Recording Arts where Lewis McCaleb, a senior at the Minneapolis school, was a keynote speaker at the conference. Lewis, a musician, performed a song and spoke about the role educators can play in shaping young people’s lives. In this podcast, Lewis frames the discussion of deeper learning around the impact educators can have on students’ lives. Trust. Equity. Justice. Relationships. Rigor. High Expectations. Love. Other podcast guests include educators from EL Education, University of San Diego’s Mobile Technology Learning Center and El Paso Independent School District.

How to fix a broken education system … without any more money. A TedTalk on Education

This episode of the TedTalk on Education podcast presents a compelling story about reforming education for 15,000 schools in India that are working with few resources. What’s interesting is to hear about the low-cost interventions educators are employing. Seema Bansal and her team set an ambitious objective: 80 percent of children in the North Indian state of Haryana should have grade-school knowledge by the year 2020. To meet this objective, the team is using creative, straightforward techniques such as communicating with teachers using SMS group chats, and they have already measurably improved learning and engagement in thousands of schools.

Is This Working? Episode 358 from the This American Life podcast

This episode of the This American Life podcast explores the concept of Restorative Practices, which Eagle Rock has been working on for several years. We love what’s going on at Lyon Community School in Brooklyn, which is described in Act III of this podcast. The podcast delves into the issue of schools struggling with how to handle students who are misbehaving. No general consensus or guaranteed fix is evident and, in truth, there is evidence that some of the most popular punishments actually may harm these kids.

Edvancers Podcast — Episode No. 1 (featuring Michael Soguero, Eagle Rock’s director of professional development)

‘Edvancers’ are people who move education forward, trying out new things and not being afraid of failure. And it’s at Edvancers.com where you get to hear from them. Each episode features independent educational consultant and podcast host Seth Dimbert speaking to one of these educators, discussing their work, passions, successes and failures. This inaugural episode features our very own Michael Soguero discussing people taking education in new directions.