New View EDU

Episode 49: The View From the Classroom

In an age of educator burnout and high turnover rates, what keeps veteran teachers motivated to stay in the classroom? This episode of New View EDU explores how rapidly changing technologies have provided a constant source of inspiration and innovation for two educators. Howard Levin and Stacey Roshan have both transformed their practice through exploration of the opportunities technology provides to both teachers and learners, and used that spark as fuel for careers defined by both longevity and creativity.

Guests: Howard Levin and Stacey Roshan

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “But to me, the preparation is really about ensuring that they have skills and confidence to navigate life with resilience and empathy, that they're critical thinkers, that they're effective communicators and active contributors to their communities. And as a math teacher, I always say that teaching math is the easy part. My most important role is helping students learn how to learn, embrace a growth mindset, take ownership of their learning, and just encouraging a love for the process of learning, I think is so critical.” (11:04)
• “I really believe that these are very new categories in today's world. In the world that I grew up in, the focus was, and in many places still today, the focus is on really good teaching, really good absorption, all kinds of techniques and tricks to get information to stick with students. And we're living in a completely different world right now. We're at our fingertips with a quick breath of our own speech, that information is just everywhere. And so I think it's a huge challenge for independent schools to really embrace and really look at how different the world is for our students and the future students.” (14:53)

Related Episodes: 45, 40, 35, 31, 28,18,13

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Episode 29: The Future of Higher Ed

Much of the work of K-12 schools is focused on getting students to the “next step,” which, for many of them, is college readiness. But increasingly, it feels like we’re not working on college readiness so much as we’re working on college admissions. Preparing kids to successfully apply to college, in the hyper-competitive admissions landscape, is almost a full-time job of its own. What should schools be doing to help students with college (and college application) readiness? When we focus on gaining admission to selective schools, what are we missing in the K-12 experience? And what do colleges actually want K-12 educators to know?

Guests: Jeff Selingo and Dr. Adam Weinberg

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “More selective institutions like Denison and others that are really trying to decide between applicants. They're looking for that difference. They're, they cherish what is rare. And increasingly, to be honest with you, what is rare are those students who are not over-curated, over-programmed. I feel like, especially because of social media now, we have to curate our lives to be perfect. And we see this manifest itself in applications.” (11:41)
• “I think there's so much about the college application process that... forces is too strong a word. That shapes the high school experience of too many students, where they're not able to do either one of those, right? They're not able to ask who they want to be because they're too busy asking, What do I need to be to get into the college of my choice? And the second is, we're so worried that if they experience any bit of failure, they won't get into good college, that we're not giving them the space to learn that actually failure's the only way to develop the kind of resiliency you're gonna need to be successful in life.” (17:41)
• “ I think this is where advising comes in and helping students understand-- and maybe this is where there's a role for K through 12, because I think every student should graduate from high school understanding what kind of learner they are. So that when they do go to college, they're making those better choices. You know, am I a better visual learner? You know, how do I read, you know, should I do online? Should I do hybrid, whatever it might be, so that when they get to college, they're making those choices in a better way.” (33:00)
• “I think one thing that we could be and should be doing with students during their junior, senior years, at least level setting expectations so they don't arrive at college assuming that everything's gonna be perfect and they're gonna be happy all the time...And don't make the mistake when you're, have that moment of unhappiness, that moment of not sure you can make it, of looking around and assuming that everybody else is doing great and you're not.” (35:28)
• “This may be our last chance, or one of our last chances, where we have a community of people, similar in age, together in one place. And we should be preparing them, K through 12 and higher ed, for that moment afterwards, where they are going to be in communities, at school board meetings, in in, in community associations, and volunteer organizations. And they're going to have to have these very tough debates and they're gonna have to do it in person using those facts.” (43:35)

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Episode 59: Schools and the Emotional Lives of Teenagers

Now more than ever, schools are focused on supporting student mental health. With rates of anxiety and depression on the rise among teens, we know we need to design environments that help foster adolescent wellbeing. But are wellbeing programs working as intended? What are we getting right – and getting wrong – about the emotional lives of teenagers? Dr. Lisa Damour has the answers.

Guest: Dr. Lisa Damour

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “Schools are working against this broad cultural discourse that holds at the center the idea that discomfort is bad. And so as long as we're not challenging that idea, we're gonna be dealing with a lot of one-on-one conversations trying to convince people that this is really all okay. So I would both have schools get out on their front foot about reframing this appropriately. Mental health is not about feeling good and school is supposed to be stressful, and we are built to help your kid handle that.” (13:39)
• “There are a lot of people who age without actually working themselves through the maturity that is required for a healthy adulthood, right? Who aren't thinking about risk in very smart ways. They're thinking about whether they're going to get caught, not whether they're going to get hurt or hurt somebody else. They are not taking responsibility for their actions. They don't actually have a particularly good work ethic, right? So you can age into adulthood, but not really be as mature as you should be.” (31:09)
• “When I have seen adults really harm their relationship with a kid, and usually this is parent-child, but it can happen in a school, it's when the teenager says, you know what, you assigned this to us last week, or you said you were gonna pick me up and you forgot, and the adult denies or defends, right? When the adult flexes, we have all the authority, we will flex our authority if we want to. If the teenager is right and the adult is wrong and the adult doesn't own it, that relationship has hit a really rough patch.” (37:02)

Related Episodes: 54, 51, 48, 35, 32,15, 8, 3

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Episode 72: Thriving Through Happiness

Available April 22, 2025

What does happiness have to do with achieving excellence and success? Do happy students learn more deeply and go on to more fulfilling careers and lives? Most educators understand the intrinsic connection between emotional well-being and deep learning, but “happiness” doesn’t tend to show up on our classroom rubrics. Dan Lerner, author, performance coach, and professor of the famous NYU class “The Science of Happiness” sits down with host Morva McDonald to share why we might want to rethink the value of positivity.

Guest: Dan Lerner

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So there is certainly an element, genetic element, component, of happiness, right? For folks listening out there, try to think of someone who you always think of as, that person's always a little gloomier than other folks, right? And that is the way that some people are sort of set. Think about it like a thermostat, right? They are set to a certain number...But a considerable amount of how we experience positive emotion is through rightly directed effort.” (9:23)
• “Positive emotions come in lots of different shapes and colors. When we look at the research on positive emotions, we research different positive emotions separately. Hope is researched differently than joy. It's researched differently than pride. It's researched differently than love. It's researched differently than calm or tranquility or peace. So being able to go in and allowing someone to express what they're excited about, what they're looking forward to, and then getting into, all right, so what are the challenges? Means we have potentially primed our colleagues or our direct reports or whoever we're meeting with to be operating in a different way.” (14:17)
• “Let's say your coach is standing next to you as you drag that bag of boulders or your teacher is standing next to you as you're taking the really hard math test. Are they saying you suck, you suck, you're never gonna do it? Or are they saying, you know, you are doing great. I believe in you. I know we can get this done. When you're done with that workout session, do you go home and stare at the ceiling? Is that effective? Or do you go talk to another teammate and you're like, man, that was tough, you know, it's worth it. And I'm so glad you're here to have the conversation with.” (26:13)

Related Episodes: 66, 60, 59, 51, 42, 40, 35, 22

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Episode 12: Applied Imagination and the Possibilities of School

We know what it means to teach history. But what does it mean to teach the future? Ruth Wylie applies imagination and critical thinking to big questions about science, technology, artificial intelligence, and what it means to shape the futures we want to see.

Guest: Ruth Wylie

Resources and Expanded Show Notes

Full Transcript

In This Episode:

• “I think that even, you know, at maybe the most basic, but also perhaps some of the most profound, is to start to think about how to get futures thinking and foresight anticipation into our K-12 curriculum. So starting to encourage our young people to think about what are possible futures for themselves, but also getting away from the individual level and looking about what are possible futures for our communities, for our countries, for our world.” (5:44)
• “So when we're talking about futures, it's also about reflecting on our histories, our past, the indigenous knowledge. It's reflecting on what's happening today. And then it's about thinking about futures. So again, it's not about just creating a brand new course and hiring brand new teachers, but it's about creating a culture of futures thinking and embedding that into our everyday classroom practice.” (8:29)
• “And so we need to also be thinking about how we're building technologies to address equity, to address people across different lifespans, different spectrums. And I think it's really important again, that if we're going to be making decisions that have larger community, global, national impacts, we need to make sure that people from all of those different spheres are at the table when designing those technologies and thinking about the implications.” (18:50)
• “Agency is a construct that we talk a lot about at the center, and about how do we develop agency and shift that mindset away from ‘the future is going to be unveiled at the next press conference or it's being done by folks in white lab coats,’ and we really take and empower people to realize that they have agency over their future.” (27:48)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.