Member Voices: Noni Thomas Lopez from the Gordon School

05/23/23 • 30 min

New View EDU

Season 4 Bonus Episode:Noni Thomas López, Head of School, The Gordon School This episode is a re-broadcast of an archival episode from our friends at the NAIS Member Voices podcast. The original episode and show notes can be found on the Member Voices Season 5 page. In the second episode of our three-part miniseries on Cultivating Diverse and Inclusive Communities, our guest is Noni Thomas López, head of the Gordon School (RI). She talks about how becoming a more diverse and inclusive school is like peeling an onion, the importance of finding opportunity in discomfort, and why battling misinformation keeps her up at night.Relevant Resources:

Independent School magazine: Independent Spirit: Noni Thomas López
NAIS New View EDU Podcast: Episode 7: Schools for Diversity and Designing Inclusive Futures
NAIS Legal Tip: Consider Anti-Bias Handbook Policies
Video: Equity and Inclusion: Bringing About Systemic Change from the Inside Out
Independent Ideas Blog: The Pandemic of Misinformation
Learn more about this episode’s sponsor, Carney, Sandoe & Associates, by visiting its website.

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

Season 4 Bonus Episode:Noni Thomas López, Head of School, The Gordon School This episode is a re-broadcast of an archival episode from our friends at the NAIS Member Voices podcast. The original episode and show notes can be found on the Member Voices Season 5 page. In the second episode of our three-part miniseries on Cultivating Diverse and Inclusive Communities, our guest is Noni Thomas López, head of the Gordon School (RI). She talks about how becoming a more diverse and inclusive school is like peeling an onion, the importance of finding opportunity in discomfort, and why battling misinformation keeps her up at night.Relevant Resources:

Independent School magazine: Independent Spirit: Noni Thomas López
NAIS New View EDU Podcast: Episode 7: Schools for Diversity and Designing Inclusive Futures
NAIS Legal Tip: Consider Anti-Bias Handbook Policies
Video: Equity and Inclusion: Bringing About Systemic Change from the Inside Out
Independent Ideas Blog: The Pandemic of Misinformation
Learn more about this episode’s sponsor, Carney, Sandoe & Associates, by visiting its website.

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

Previous Episode

Student Voice and Agency in Education with One Stone Students

Episode 40: Student Voice and Agency in Education

In four seasons of New View EDU, we’ve talked a lot about what students need to thrive. In this episode, we’re going straight to the source. Host Tim Fish sits down with Ella Cornett and Mackenzie Link, high school students from One Stone School in Boise, Idaho, to get their real world perspectives on everything from classes and schedules to life lessons on failure, accountability, passion, purpose, and more.

Guests: Ella Cornett and Mackenzie Link

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

“To go back to the question of what should school be, I feel like learners and students should come out of school with that sense of purpose. And that's, that really resonates with me because I feel like that's what I want out of school. I wanna leave school and kind of know what I wanna do and who I wanna be in the world.” (21:39)
“I would describe my stress...less so stress. I would call it ambition. Like, I think the weight of ambition sits heavy on my shoulders because I strive for the, like, the next best thing I wanna keep doing. I wanna keep going, I wanna keep pushing. And One Stone really allows me to do that and empowers me to do that.” (26:24)
“It's that pushing students, the healthy balance of pushing students. And this is where great coaching comes in. And great mentorship is, you do have to find the thing that students care about and relate it, everything that you're doing, to that. And then we're in the home stretch.” (29:57)
“It's easy if you let it be easy, in the sense that if you don't want to grow, if you don't try to grow, you won't. Just like a student in public school that doesn't try, they won't get a good GPA. But that's not the motivation here. The motivation here for us is to grow. So if a student doesn't want to grow, how can they?” (39:44)

Related Episodes: 36, 34, 27, 23, 18

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Next Episode

Welcoming New Leadership to NAIS with Debra Wilson

Episode 41: Welcoming New Leadership to NAIS

During the summer of 2023, longtime NAIS President Donna Orem retired, and new President Debra Wilson stepped into the role. In this first school year of Debra’s tenure, she sits down with Tim Fish to introduce herself to the NAIS community and share her personal journey with independent schools.

Guest: Debra Wilson

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

“Context really matters. There is that...do people feel known and seen? And when I, when I say that, it's not just the kids, but it's the individual staff members, it's the parents. Like, what message are they receiving all of the time? And that really leads to greater connectivity. And it tends to lead to happier encounters.” (20:18)
“One of the things I talk about with education, we adults can mess around with us all we want. Every kid's only got one shot at it. So, you know, if they have a bad teacher placement three years in a row, they're 50% behind their peers. Like that's, I mean, that's, that's just research. Like that's, there's just numbers. And so we don't really have time to play around with this, so like, how do we hold those things really sacred?” (25:34)
“You want good, smart, thoughtful, solid people doing good, smart, solid, thoughtful work. Bright shiny objects, like, they can, they can jump you right off the tracks...that kind of traditional, basic, not so sexy, like, we just, we're gonna do really good work day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, is what you're going for most of the time.” (36:23)

Related Episodes: 39, 31, 25, 14, 13

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