Transcript
Speaker: Hey there, welcome to Human Restoration Projects 2023.
Speaker: With a date, my name is Chris McNutt and I'm joined by Nick Covington.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And we're 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 Leah Kelly, Jason Singleton, and Corinne Greenblatt.
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 Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Speaker: So today we wanted to provide you all an update on some major upcoming projects at HRP.
Speaker: First off, we're coming at you live from our ongoing work at a public school up here in Michigan, a middle school, working to establish a school within a school project with a bunch of sixth graders, a PBL, hands-on interdisciplinary program.
Speaker: It's part of our human-centered schools network.
Speaker: Nick, do you want to summarize a little bit about what we're doing?
Speaker: So ahead of their launch of the School Within a School model, we've been working with teachers this week to be able to nail down assessment systems, frameworks, theories and practices that are all going to support student autonomy, project-based learning,
Speaker: SEL programs that they've identified have been a key leverage for their students in there.
Speaker: And really just each day this week, kind of chunking out a different system, focusing on day one, kind of with values and connecting practices to that.
Speaker: Day two, working on assessment systems and ways of thinking about assessment, the tools that they're going to use to assess and maybe workshop some of the early models and examples of that.
Speaker: Today, we worked on them more on the project phase to kind of talk about project-based learning opportunities, how they can connect to the community.
Speaker: Tomorrow, we'll work with them on space and how we can structure space, how we can build routines and practices to help support student decision-making within those spaces.
Speaker: And Friday, just be there to support the teachers as they get done what they need to get done between now and August to launch their program successfully.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it's not necessarily...
Speaker: that we're going to turn this podcast into like a marketing thing.
Speaker: But it is worth noting a lot of people ask, what exactly is different about your PD?
Speaker: Why are we talking about this?
Speaker: What's like the selling point?
Speaker: And I think there's two things that come up and it really has been powerful.
Speaker: The first has been, th is is a district that we've been working with for a couple of years and we've been doing a lot of student focus groups.
Speaker: So the impetus behind this experimental new school within a school that's quite radical by traditional education standards, it's
Speaker: interdisciplinary, it's all PBL based, it's ostensibly gradeless, it's portfolio based.
Speaker: It's doing a lot of interesting work surrounding community asset building, getting out in the community, restorative practices, kind of you name it, you name the progressive practice, it's kind of doing it.
Speaker: The reason why
Speaker: we've been able to build that up is because we've been talking with kids and with teachers now for two years.
Speaker: Really what our human-centered schools model offers is a way to tell stories to make change, make the learning self-evident, make the story self-evident, and build something that reimagines education.
Speaker: That's the first part.
Speaker: The second part is that like it's pretty informal.
Speaker: We don't really offer prescriptive stuff.
Speaker: So what Nick is getting at is really a lot of new work we've been tackling surrounding actually some of our conference, which we'll get to here in a second, but like anti-racist UDL, diving into the CASEL framework, diving into the powerful task rubric, all these different frameworks that allow us to make change at both small and really large public schools and seeing what we can do.
Speaker: So that's that.
Speaker: So yeah, again, it's been great up here at the beach house that we've been living at here.
Speaker: So cheers to that.
Speaker: Second, we do have our Conference of Restore Humanity coming up.
Speaker: A little bit on that.
Speaker: First off, if you haven't registered yet, the date is July 24th through the 27th, 2023, in case you're listening to this in the future.
Speaker: For some reason, I don't know why you would.
Speaker: The conference is coming up.
Speaker: Right now, the early bird rate has passed, but there are stacking ways to bring the cost back down if cost is a barrier.
Speaker: The full ticket price is $200 for four days.
Speaker: That includes four keynotes that we'll talk about in a second, three tracks, and a variety, about 20 different events.
Speaker: We have offered need-based scholarships that covers the full amount.
Speaker: Otherwise, you'll be able to find across our social media, various discount codes for creators to take $25 off.
Speaker: We also get kicked back to those creators to help us out.
Speaker: You can also use the code human at checkout, just H-U-M-A-N at checkout for $25 off.
Speaker: And then if you stour the internet enough, I don't know, there might be another discount code out there.
Speaker: I'm not even sure at this point, but they exist.
Speaker: If cost is a barrier, feel free to email us, chris at humanrestorationproject.org or nick at humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: We'll figure it out and we'll get you there.
Speaker: And again, it's a virtual conference.
Speaker: We actually just caught up with one of the keynote speakers yesterday, Cornelius Minor.
Speaker: Fun fact, University of Northern Iowa alum.
Speaker: That is three credit hours.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a side note.
Speaker: A little bit of Cornelius Minor trivia for you.
Speaker: Cornelius Minor did go to the university.
Speaker: That's Nick's alma mater.
Speaker: So a little bit of relatedness there.
Speaker: But yeah, we're excited to have Cornelius Minor join us.
Speaker: He's the author of We Got This.
Speaker: We actually use it at our PD this week.
Speaker: Jose Luis Wilson, who is the writer of This Is Not a Test.
Speaker: He does a lot of cool activists and teacher work out in New York.
Speaker: Dr. Antonia Darter, who has written many books.
Speaker: I mean, it's like, where do you even start?
Speaker: Culture and power in the classroom is really like a game changer for me.
Speaker: A lot of focus on critical pedagogy.
Speaker: She used to be at the University of Chicago, I believe.
Speaker: But she lives, I believe, in Puerto Rico now.
Speaker: She has a lot of really fascinating stuff.
Speaker: And finally, Iowa WTF is a student activist group, obviously out in Iowa, doing a lot of protests surrounding
Speaker: LGBTQIA plus rights, gun rights activism, like anti, like banning, I should say, as well as like CRT stuff and everything surrounding that.
Speaker: Because the fact of the matter is what's going on in Iowa right now is pretty ridiculous.
Speaker: We also have three learning tracks.
Speaker: We got our learning tracks running green and sustainability with David Hill.
Speaker: We have our anti-racist UDL track with Andrew Tesho Fitzgerald.
Speaker: And then we also have the new perspective using game design track with Matthew Farber, with Tracy Pullerton.
Speaker: Nick, what are you most excited about the conference?
Speaker: I'll be honest, my Iowa bias will come out in part because a former student of mine is part of Iowa WTF, but I'm just really excited about the work that they've done to bring a student activist perspective to the changes that have been happening throughout the state.
Speaker: Just to say how much what's happening is harming,
Speaker: the prospects for young people, how it's leading to brain drain, how it's harming, you know, their ability to stay in the state.
Speaker: So it's really, you know, them advocating for their own future, partnering with adults.
Speaker: And really, I think from the adult perspective, really showcasing our need for solidarity with the future and with younger generations.
Speaker: So that way we can really recognize how the changes that we want to make are going to be as a result of partnerships between, you know, adults, between kids.
Speaker: It's work that occurs in schools.
Speaker: It's work that occurs at the statehouse.
Speaker: So, yeah, I guess I'm excited for that one, first and foremost.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's the, I also have my own bias, not in any way personal to anyone, but mostly just because I love talking about video game design.
Speaker: And the video game design learning track, I just think it's going to be super cool.
Speaker: Tracy, Tracy Pullerton leads a gaming lab where they design indie games.
Speaker: And they've released like a lot of award-winning indie games.
Speaker: And what they do is, they're such a fascinating role.
Speaker: They train game designers what the pedagogy and learning is.
Speaker: so that people actually desire to play their game and understand how to work through it.
Speaker: So they're both like design thinkers, as well as video game designers, as well as Panagon.
Speaker: That's such an interesting way to look at how we design classrooms and what that means for us as teachers.
Speaker: A couple of bonus points just to name two of the events.
Speaker: Also super excited for Richard Joe Bowler is joining us.
Speaker: Huge idol, Railside School, super cool work happening out there in the California math framework stuff.
Speaker: as well as time in that video game space as well.
Speaker: Ludic Language Pedagogy is joining us for an event.
Speaker: Dr. James York and Jonathan DeHaan.
Speaker: Fun fact, I got to meet James in Tokyo like a few months ago because I'm based out there in Japan.
Speaker: So yeah, very excited for that.
Speaker: A lot of cool stuff going on.
Speaker: Definitely join us again.
Speaker: We've got group rates.
Speaker: We've got student activist-like rates.
Speaker: If you're like running like a student organization, like a club or something, and you want to join us, we can offer
Speaker: substantial discounts, so please reach out and let us know if you'd like to be involved.
Speaker: I should note the conference is brought to you by five different amazing organizations, Holistic Think Tank, Cortico, Antioch University, Education Evolving slash like Teacher Powered Schools, and Unruler, all of whom have been quintessential in how we operate HRP in general, and we thank them for their generous support.
Speaker: So yeah, this was just a brief update about what's going on at HRP.
Speaker: Obviously, we have a conference coming up in two weeks, so apologies for the elevator pitch, but we do genuinely think it's going to be pretty cool.
Speaker: So we hope you can be there with us.
Speaker: We do have two major upcoming announcements coming up that we can't unveil just yet.
Speaker: We've got a board meeting at the end of the month, so we've got to do official nonprofit things.
Speaker: But be on the lookout for some stuff involving some educational technology as well as some international stuff that may or may not be happening.
Speaker: That's very exciting.
Speaker: as well as our next podcast in two weeks will be with Jamal Bowman, Congressman Jamal Bowman, who is the sponsor or co-sponsor of the More Teaching, Less Testing Act.
Speaker: Fun fact about Jamal Bowman, I actually didn't know this, but he used to be a teacher in principle and led the opt-out movement towards standardized testing.
Speaker: A lot of interesting stuff there.
Speaker: So we're interested in sitting down with him and learning more and sharing that.
Speaker: So otherwise, this is going to be a sign-off
Speaker: Again, a brief podcast here from Chris and Nick, and thank you so much for listening.
Speaker: Let's restore humanity together.
Speaker: Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
Speaker: If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
Speaker: Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: Thank you.
