Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to our end of year status update podcast.
Speaker: My name is Nick Covington and I'm part of the progressive education nonprofit Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Stacy Cadence Hilgenberg, Shawn Michael Morris and Josefina Maria Isabel Rodriguez-Sotres.
Speaker: among many awesome donors in our recent funding drive.
Speaker: Thank you for your ongoing support.
Speaker: You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Post, Twitter, TikTok, and more.
Speaker: So I'm joined by Chris McNutt, our executive director here today to talk about a year in review for 2022, kind of what we have going ahead in 2023, how our donor drive that we're in the midst of here through the end of the year is going to help us get there.
Speaker: And then talk about in the later half of this episode, some social media and some branding updates.
Speaker: So Chris, how are you doing today?
Speaker: I'm doing well.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm excited to talk about all this stuff and talk about what we've been doing and where we're going in the future.
Speaker: Do you want to get us started then on that impact report?
Speaker: What are we, what were we up to in 2022?
Speaker: Well, run the numbers for us.
Speaker: Yeah, so there's a lot of very intriguing and awesome stats that we've had as an organization.
Speaker: As many folks know, th is is our first year that we've been full-time since about June of this year, so really only a half year.
Speaker: And I feel like we've done a lot of joyful work, things that have actually made an impact in schools across the country and perhaps even across the world.
Speaker: And we've seen a lot of growth just anecdotally in concepts like in grading, restorative justice, purpose-finding, that I feel like really
Speaker: weren't at play within the education sphere even just a few years ago.
Speaker: So stats wise, since January of this year, up until October, which is when we ran the report, we had roughly 1.4 million social media impressions.
Speaker: In terms of like year to date, we've had 54% more website users, 84% more page views, 40% more podcast listens.
Speaker: Our stuff gets about 4,000 reads per month.
Speaker: In terms of our articles, we have 500 resource downloads a month, 2000 average episode listens per podcast.
Speaker: So some awesome stats there versus where we have been in the past.
Speaker: Folks have been reaching out to us and saying a lot of just really heartwarming things about the work that we've been doing.
Speaker: And yeah, I'm pretty darn proud of it.
Speaker: We've had so many new writings.
Speaker: We've had 22 new stories from 16 contributors.
Speaker: We've had 23 new podcasts.
Speaker: Our research database is up to, I believe it's more than this now, but 534 entries, most of which are open access.
Speaker: Had six major releases.
Speaker: We had our ungrading handbook was updated and doubled in size.
Speaker: We had our kind of like new YouTube content coming out that's pretty high quality.
Speaker: In terms of that documentary, we just released a new YouTube video actually coming out as a recording today, as well as we had our zine, we had our interdisciplinary school subject, which is done, but releasing next year.
Speaker: Just a whole host of things.
Speaker: Finally, I'll talk about our conference and PD.
Speaker: So both through online workshops and working in schools directly, we've had
Speaker: 398 educators attend our PD and workshops.
Speaker: 98% said the PD was great or excellent, which I don't think is normal.
Speaker: So we must be doing something right there.
Speaker: And then our conference that we just kicked off this year had 125 attendees and 72% rated the virtual conference better than an equivalent in-person event.
Speaker: So we feel like our virtual model did quite well, and we plan on continuing that here this year.
Speaker: That's just really a small fraction of what we've been up to this year.
Speaker: I wrote this in the introduction to our impact report, but I think our Midwestern roots make us not want to be very frank with how positive our success has been.
Speaker: But we've been doing a lot of really cool stuff, and I'm very proud of the work that we've done as an organization.
Speaker: One of the last things that we did, Chris, was pilot the first in this edgy futurism learning series.
Speaker: So we put together a short one hour workshop with a pretty dedicated, you know, small group of people on our discord where we went through one of the aspects of our video game and learning design conference presentation that we had built both for the Progressive Education Network Conference, the Teacher Powered Schools Conference and delivered in person, you know, over 90 minutes in both of those contexts.
Speaker: And still,
Speaker: weren't able to dive in as deep as we wanted to.
Speaker: So we just took a slice of that, which was designing for emotion and in the space of an hour walked through a few activities with the people in the room.
Speaker: And the feedback was overwhelmingly positive on there, right?
Speaker: Despite our small but powerful group, like the message seemed to resonate and land and people seemed to make that transfer into their own classroom practice.
Speaker: So as we start to talk about the donor drive that we had just launched,
Speaker: prior to the past holiday.
Speaker: Let's go ahead and bring that in here because one of the things that we want to do in the future heading into 2023 is actually sustain this edgy futurism learning series with a whole host of other guests designing workshops, planning activities amongst our own content materials here too.
Speaker: Do you want to talk about the vision for that edgy futurism learning series?
Speaker: And we'll get into how the drive is going to support that.
Speaker: The goal of the EduFuturism Learning Series is to build online professional development workshops for teachers that are interactive and that actually take advantage of virtual-first learning models as well as progressive education.
Speaker: We found, and we're not perfect at this either, we've done this in the past, that a lot of online workshops tend to be hour-long listening sessions with some chance for Q&A.
Speaker: The goal of the EduFuturism learning series is to tackle interesting concepts in interactive ways.
Speaker: In our most recent learning series pilot, you'll find that we use Figma and we had folks interacting and kind of manipulating charts and diagrams.
Speaker: And these are things that you could use in your own classroom or within a PD coaching context.
Speaker: The goal is to actually do actionable progressive education instead of just talking about theory.
Speaker: Theory is important, but it's not everything.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: The three different proposed learning series as part of this pilot are learning through video games, which is, as Nick just said, something that we've already done or just elaborating and building on that.
Speaker: For example, getting in like indie game developers to talk about their process and doing interactive activities with them, which would be super cool.
Speaker: The second is transforming and reflecting on societal change using science fiction.
Speaker: As we'll get into here in the branding part, Nick and I have been very much focused on the ideas of solar punk and cyberpunk and Afrofuturism and all these different interesting movements in the science fiction space and how those could be in accordance with social justice.
Speaker: So bringing in science fiction to the classroom, what does that mean?
Speaker: How does that change how we look at different ideas?
Speaker: And then finally, using and problematizing social media in classroom spaces.
Speaker: So still kind of really in that futuristic mode of thinking, how do concepts of
Speaker: Everything from tech talk to AI intelligence to the growth of even like far right movements on social media spaces.
Speaker: How do all those different things interact within our classroom spaces?
Speaker: This is not a series on like, here's how you control phones in class, or here's how you can do PBL with cell phones.
Speaker: I feel like those things have been done to death.
Speaker: This is more about like,
Speaker: How do I talk about Andrew Tate in my class?
Speaker: Because that's something that many middle school and high school, especially boys, are connecting with sadly right now.
Speaker: Or who even is that if you don't know?
Speaker: Because you probably should.
Speaker: Or how can I utilize AI writing?
Speaker: And how do we discuss that as a tool versus plagiarism versus cheating?
Speaker: What does that conversation look like?
Speaker: How can it be useful?
Speaker: So to summarize, the goal of this entire thing is to look at concepts that are kind of cutting edge or innovative and interesting while drawing upon theory, practice, and the history of progressive education.
Speaker: If you want to be able to support us through this drive, you can go to humanrestorationproject.org support.
Speaker: And there you'll actually find our little progress bar on what we think is a very fair amount of $2,500 to kind of kickstart the process for this.
Speaker: We're a little bit over halfway there now with 37 donors that we've got.
Speaker: Currently, you can find a quick trailer that we put together for that EduFuturism Learning series and kind of see
Speaker: more of the stuff that Chris was talking about.
Speaker: But we've also planned a few really cool, we think are really cool, donor rewards and gifts that you can get depending on your donation level.
Speaker: So a $50 donation actually gets you a limited edition The Future Needs You shirt.
Speaker: $100 donation will get you a limited edition 11 by 17 HRP poster that you could put in your classroom, you could put up in your office, you can put it up in your home.
Speaker: And then $150 donation will actually get you the early, early bird conference tickets for the Conference to Restore Humanity slated for July 2023.
Speaker: in addition to all the other things.
Speaker: So the $150 donation actually will get you the conference ticket and the poster and the shirt.
Speaker: The $100 donation will get you the poster and the shirt.
Speaker: And of course, any amount, you know, if you feel like you can't give up to that $50 amount, any amount counts towards the fundraiser, contributes towards keeping the mission of this organization alive.
Speaker: So check out our website, humanrestorationproject.org slash support.
Speaker: to learn more about our fall end of year fundraiser and more ways to get involved with the Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: And keep in mind too that your donation not only supports new initiatives, but initiatives we've done in the past.
Speaker: All of our work is primarily creative comments, unless we're drawing upon someone else's stuff that isn't.
Speaker: So that means that you can take all of our stuff.
Speaker: It will always be available for free.
Speaker: You can remix it.
Speaker: You can use it.
Speaker: The podcast, the resources, et cetera, are all freely available to use and they'll remain as such.
Speaker: So we'll all the upcoming events.
Speaker: Finally, I should note this tax season, we are an official 501c3.
Speaker: So everything is tax deductible.
Speaker: You'll get a receipt and you can utilize that if that matters to you.
Speaker: In addition to the Edgy Futurism series, which we're going to be launching in 2023, let's talk about the grant updates.
Speaker: Let's talk about professional development.
Speaker: Let's talk about the other big objectives that we have for 2023 as well.
Speaker: Do you want to get that started, Chris?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So to be brief, our goals in 2023 are to release at least two to three brand new resources, as well as expand our PD outreach and then host our kind of second annual conference.
Speaker: In terms of PD outreach, we're looking to work with a variety of new schools, many of which are kind of in negotiation phase and or are in contract.
Speaker: So you'll see HRP working with various different schools.
Speaker: You'll see soon more information about our conference.
Speaker: We're still nailing down who exactly those keynotes will be and what the tracks will be.
Speaker: But I think they'll be very interesting and neat.
Speaker: I'm very excited for the potential there of some things we've been talking about and planning and learning from our conference last year.
Speaker: Finally, we are working on our Sharing with Power with Students handbook.
Speaker: That is our upcoming resource that will release early 2023.
Speaker: However, we've been delaying in releasing that because we are in active grant funding negotiations surrounding it.
Speaker: In the event that it is grant funded, it will be much bigger than what is already being prepared and it might come out a little bit later.
Speaker: The reason why that resource has to come out this year is because of those grant funding conversations.
Speaker: But I think we'll be all of us will be very excited about when it comes out and you'll see previews of that really soon.
Speaker: Join us after a quick break for a conversation on our response to the changing landscape of social media and how we're leaning into solar punk in 2023.
Speaker: Hey, it's Human Restoration Project's end of year funding drive.
Speaker: We're building an ongoing space for informing, guiding, and growing the progressive education movement.
Speaker: A home for educators, young people, students, families, activists, and scholars to fight back against the test-centric, rigid, and dehumanizing classrooms that are ill-equipped to tackle the challenges we face today.
Speaker: We are connecting together to build a broad social movement toward reimagining education because we all deserve a better future.
Speaker: This funding drive aims to maintain what we already do, as well as launch a whole new initiative called the EduFuturism Learning Series, a pay-what-you-want bi-weekly live web series featuring interactive lessons on emerging content in progressive education.
Speaker: Starting in January, we'll roll out three of these series.
Speaker: Video game design as learning design, understanding how designers build spaces that foster engagement and immersion,
Speaker: Reflecting on science fiction toward educational transformation, reflecting how we can utilize speculative fiction to reimagine a better future and fight for just causes, and utilizing and problematizing social media, navigating a community's use of apps, and finding how we can live with these tools toward a pro-social community in and out of the classroom.
Speaker: Your support means the world does.
Speaker: Every donation makes a huge difference in what we can offer as an organization and gives us the fuel to work with additional partners.
Speaker: $50 donors will receive this awesome limited edition color shirt.
Speaker: $100 donors will receive an exclusive limited edition HRP poster for their classroom or office.
Speaker: And $150 donors will receive an early, early bird ticket to Conference to Restore Humanity 2023.
Speaker: HRP is a 501c3 organization, and your support is tax deductible.
Speaker: We greatly appreciate your support, and if possible, please help us out and share this video far and wide.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Let's see if we can get through this without mentioning the new owner of Twitter in particular.
Speaker: But if you haven't noticed, there have been a lot of changes on that platform that have influenced a lot of the ways in which Chris and I are using our own personal social media on the platform, but then have also contributed to
Speaker: reflections and conversations about our organizational use of that platform to promote new works, drive engagement, et cetera, heading into this new post to Twitter world.
Speaker: And I say post ironically because that kind of has become one of our options that we'll talk about here as well.
Speaker: Did you want to add to that too at all, Chris, about what in that landscape kind of has changed and how have we been responsive to those changes?
Speaker: As folks know, Twitter is our primary social media platform as of right now.
Speaker: That's where we have the vast majority of our followers and where we engage with a variety of our content.
Speaker: We're also still on Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and all those different spaces.
Speaker: And as an organization, we've been exploring, you know, where else do we want to be?
Speaker: If you don't follow us on TikTok, we've been pretty active on TikTok and pretty happy with it.
Speaker: As someone that doesn't understand TikTok at all, we've been doing, I think, quite well there.
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: We're also exploring other social media platforms.
Speaker: We're on Mastodon.
Speaker: I know a lot of folks are exploring that.
Speaker: And we're also looking at places like Hive and Tribal and all the other different spaces that are popping up, as well as Reddit, as ways that we can reach as broad of an audience as possible.
Speaker: The reason why we're having this conversation about Twitter is because algorithmically we're concerned with one, how our own reach is doing there in the new landscape of that area, but also just the kind of animosity towards movements of social justice towards folks that are doing this type of work.
Speaker: And we don't necessarily know if we want that to be our primary space of engagement.
Speaker: Do know though,
Speaker: We're not leaving Twitter.
Speaker: We'll continue to post on Twitter.
Speaker: It's just where we're shaping our primary engagement as an org.
Speaker: So the gist should just be social media is kind of in a state of upheaval with people exploring a post-Twitter world.
Speaker: We are not leaving Twitter, but we're going to shift our primary home base of social media operations, perhaps away from Twitter into the future and towards some of these alternatives.
Speaker: The primary one right now being on post.
Speaker: So if you search for that as a platform, you go to at Humor as pro, you'd be able to connect to us.
Speaker: I'm still at Covington edu and Chris is at the way you TBD because he's still on the wait list, but that's fine.
Speaker: So we've kind of leaned into and read a lot of work in the last six months around solar punk and sort of its offshoots and its rebranding as part of an offshoot of speculative fiction.
Speaker: So Chris, do you want to talk about what that rebranding has looked like for us and what people can expect in the future?
Speaker: Folks that are familiar with HRP's aesthetic and vibe probably know that we lean into a science fiction aesthetic.
Speaker: And a lot of our work has drawn upon pulp science fiction, like things like Isaac Asimov, that kind of stuff, in terms of space age thinking.
Speaker: So we would draw a lot upon, I guess, symbolism that would be akin to everything from dystopian sci-fi, like 1984, to 1950s, like iRobot, 1960s, whatever that was.
Speaker: So the idea of solar punk is taking the narratives of that old school, the world is ending, we need to fix things, robots rose up, we need to fix our dystopia,
Speaker: If that's the old way of thinking, solar punk is about imagining a future where utopias do exist.
Speaker: Typically, they're under threat of someone trying to tear that utopia down.
Speaker: But in a solar punk reality, people have learned to...
Speaker: work within nature.
Speaker: They have come together and built a better future.
Speaker: They're usually diversely populated.
Speaker: They fix the environment, which is a big part, obviously, of solar punk.
Speaker: And people in general live in harmony.
Speaker: It views people as a natural good who will solve their problems down the road, as opposed to something like altered carbon, which would view people as a natural evil, where capitalism has destroyed the entire world, and now people are trying to survive.
Speaker: So we're leaning into this aesthetic of solar pump because we want to build that future of hope.
Speaker: We want to build what would be called a pragmatic utopia, right?
Speaker: It's not wondrous thinking where we think that the world is just going to be solved by thinking about a better future, but it's taking steps to actually make that utopia a reality.
Speaker: It's about being interesting and inspiring.
Speaker: It's about making change at a grassroots level.
Speaker: And it's also about recognizing that
Speaker: Those future possibilities of what school could be already exist.
Speaker: We speak to schools all the time.
Speaker: You can listen on our most recent showcase series was with One Stone.
Speaker: It's a nonprofit where at least a majority stake of the board has to be students.
Speaker: And young people are actively involved in shaping that school.
Speaker: They operate the school.
Speaker: And kids in general, they're a happy community.
Speaker: So
Speaker: They've built a space that works for them, that's imagined a different reality, and they've done it.
Speaker: So these ideas that public education is doomed or that we need to have a revolution or that the world sucks and look at how terrible everything is, we don't necessarily think that's a prolonged needed conversation because we've seen that a different possibility exists.
Speaker: So we're trying to rebrand and focus a little bit more on this almost edupunk style of building something new together that is full of hope and reimagination.
Speaker: In terms of what that looks like, be on the lookout for even more articles on actually implementing these ideas.
Speaker: We're not removing any of the theory and we'll still acknowledge all the bad things that exist, but we're going to lean a lot into how can we actually change things and make that tangible as well as the actual like artwork and look of HRP.
Speaker: If you haven't been to our website recently, definitely check out our new website design, which is a little bit cleaner and leans a little more into that aesthetic.
Speaker: as well as new artwork that's on the way, which is inspired by like children's books and that imagination you would have had when you were seven, eight or nine years old about a bright tomorrow and a better future.
Speaker: So yeah, definitely check that out.
Speaker: So in summary, the idea of the solar punk or Afrofuturism or just more positive future that we're building together, it's to recognize that future possibilities are already here.
Speaker: We just need to unlock those ideas at scale.
Speaker: So if you want to support the Edgy Futurism series, if you want to support the leaning into this solar punk future together, you can go ahead and go to humanrestorationproject.org support.
Speaker: You can contribute to our funding drive.
Speaker: If it's possible for you to give, we appreciate it.
Speaker: But if not, we appreciate you sharing the video or our content as always.
Speaker: Thank you, Chris, for joining us today.
Speaker: And let's restore humanity together.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening.
Speaker: You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project, find ways to get involved, share our work, and donate to keep the project going on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: And of course, you can find us everywhere on social media by searching for Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: And let's restore humanity together.
