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100: HRP's 100th Episode!
18 Plays3 years ago
It's our 100th podcast episode! In celebration, Nick and Chris discuss the ongoing pursuits of Human Restoration Project.
And we discuss:
- Our accomplishments over the years.
- Our favorite events, writings, and podcasts.
- Our major upcoming initiatives, which you'll want to stick around for!
- Questions from our listeners.
- And finally....host a trivia session on science fiction.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Milestone Celebration
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to episode 100 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:11
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a high school digital media educator from Ohio, joined by Nick Covington, who is a social studies teacher from Iowa.
00:00:18
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Ray O'Brien, Rachel Lawrence, and C. Billy Campbell.
00:00:27
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:29
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter,
00:00:35
Speaker
Instagram, or Facebook.
00:00:48
Speaker
Today is our 100th episode of our podcast and in celebration, Nick and I are going to discuss the ongoing pursuits of human restoration project.
00:00:59
Speaker
So we spoke about this before and we decided that we were going to summarize our accomplishments over the years and talk about our favorite events, writings and podcasts.
00:01:07
Speaker
Then we're going to talk about our major upcoming initiatives, which I think you'll want to stick around for.
00:01:12
Speaker
We're going to answer some questions from our listeners.
00:01:15
Speaker
And finally, we are going to host a sci-fi trivia session.
00:01:20
Speaker
More on why we're doing that here in a second.
00:01:23
Speaker
Before we jump into anything, Nick, how are you?
Showcasing Student Projects and Public Engagement
00:01:27
Speaker
I'm doing great, Chris.
00:01:28
Speaker
Good morning.
00:01:28
Speaker
How are you doing?
00:01:29
Speaker
I'm doing well.
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm very tired because we had expo night two days ago.
00:01:34
Speaker
So I'm probably going to forget to say things throughout this.
00:01:35
Speaker
We had at minimum 400 families show up and we didn't advertise for it.
00:01:43
Speaker
We intentionally didn't advertise because we thought maybe with COVID probably wouldn't be good to like pack the house.
00:01:48
Speaker
So it's fairly spread out, but still.
00:01:51
Speaker
a pretty darn decent crowd for students to showcase their work and talk about what they're doing.
00:01:56
Speaker
The students in my PBL create a video game.
00:02:00
Speaker
That was definitely a hit.
00:02:03
Speaker
One kid told me that her mom
00:02:07
Speaker
who she did not work on the video game project.
00:02:09
Speaker
She did a separate project, but her mom got into the video game room and didn't leave for 45 minutes.
00:02:14
Speaker
And she kept having to harass her to come hear her presentation because she got so engrossed in this kid's game.
00:02:21
Speaker
So I'll consider that to be a win.
00:02:24
Speaker
That is so awesome.
00:02:25
Speaker
The parent was playing their child's game?
00:02:27
Speaker
No, the parent was just playing some other kid's game that she was really obsessed with.
00:02:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:02:32
Speaker
The daughter was actually kind of mad because the mom wouldn't come visit hers.
00:02:38
Speaker
That's so awesome.
00:02:38
Speaker
I mean, that's the whole point of like that public facing work in the first place.
00:02:42
Speaker
Like that's, that should be a badge of honor by that kid.
00:02:45
Speaker
You know, you got someone else's parent to play your game for like 45 minutes.
00:02:48
Speaker
It really is such a cool thing.
00:02:51
Speaker
If folks don't do expo nights, it's not, I mean, it's really just going around and supporting the kids and what they're doing.
00:02:56
Speaker
I don't really do that much outside of help make sure that everybody knows where they're supposed to go and help the kids set up stuff as they go out throughout the day.
00:03:03
Speaker
But the kids honestly do love taking on like that,
00:03:06
Speaker
more serious role in knowing that their work matters, that folks are actually there to see it, and people actually do come to see it.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, and what a memorable thing for those families and those kids alike.
The Significance of Public-Facing Work in Education
00:03:17
Speaker
I mean, if you didn't make space for that, I mean, A, you have to think about what kind of work
00:03:22
Speaker
kids would otherwise just be doing that would just stay within those four walls of the classroom or, you know, even if it was sort of project based.
00:03:29
Speaker
But having that public face, inviting the community in just gives it another layer of of meaning, of relevance, of like lasting impact.
00:03:37
Speaker
I mean, that's the stuff that they're going to be talking about for years from now.
00:03:39
Speaker
Like, hey, remember when we went to that night and.
00:03:42
Speaker
And we got to see, you know, you do such and such a thing.
00:03:45
Speaker
I mean, it it kind of turns turns school into the the the academic side of school, I guess, into what we might think of as those fun parts of school, like the extracurriculars and all those other things that that kids come for.
00:03:57
Speaker
So why not?
00:03:58
Speaker
Why not make the academic part as fun as the extracurriculars?
00:04:01
Speaker
You know, exactly.
00:04:02
Speaker
And it builds naturally in that creation process.
00:04:05
Speaker
which I'm a huge advocate of just being able to take all of that work and then put everything up on the walls, the best of your ability.
00:04:13
Speaker
The kids really do like being able to see all of their work on display, even after they graduate.
00:04:19
Speaker
They like coming back and seeing like, Oh, my work's still on the wall.
00:04:21
Speaker
I worked really hard on that.
00:04:23
Speaker
And it serves as an inspiration for all the other kids doing some work.
00:04:26
Speaker
It almost has like that, that trio lifestyle feel where like you can, you can see like the different years and see how long things have been happening.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:34
Speaker
That's so awesome.
00:04:35
Speaker
And maybe, you know, if you sat down and, and I don't know, it did like some kind of deeper analysis on it.
00:04:41
Speaker
I wonder if you could find those linkages, you know, between years prior kind of inspiring the work of current years and kind of that chain of influence, you know, kids want to be part of something that's bigger than themselves.
00:04:52
Speaker
So if they know they can contribute to that.
00:04:55
Speaker
That body of work, you know, like you at your school have a student generated body of work that's like, hey, contribute to this.
00:05:03
Speaker
Like, what a tremendous thing.
00:05:05
Speaker
Other than just to walk away from school with a transcript and some grades and, you know, an ACT score or something like that.
00:05:11
Speaker
Like you've contributed to something greater than yourself.
Student-Driven Projects and Learning Innovations
00:05:14
Speaker
So cool.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
And one more thing on it.
00:05:17
Speaker
Speaking of just yesterday, a group of students came up to me about three years ago.
00:05:22
Speaker
Students built an arcade machine that was kind of like an aside to a project that we were doing.
00:05:28
Speaker
And it runs like emulators and has like Super Nintendo games on it.
00:05:31
Speaker
It sits in the lounge and the kids can play it.
00:05:34
Speaker
And I, it broke last year.
00:05:36
Speaker
And finally for expo night, sat down with a kid and helped him fix it.
00:05:40
Speaker
Cause it's just, we haven't had time to do it.
00:05:42
Speaker
And actually fixed it.
00:05:42
Speaker
This group of kids got obsessed with working with this machine.
00:05:46
Speaker
It runs off like a raspberry pie and it's like a full, like we built like custom.
00:05:51
Speaker
So now these kids next semester when they come back,
00:05:54
Speaker
Basically, so they want to stay after school every day and just work on this arcade machine.
00:05:58
Speaker
They want to make this thing like into a full on like it can run like more advanced games and it can do like almost anything, upgrade the monitor, make it all light up.
00:06:07
Speaker
Because right now it's just kind of like made out of wood.
00:06:09
Speaker
There's no lights or anything on it.
00:06:11
Speaker
So I was like, wow, it's awesome.
00:06:13
Speaker
So being able to like even improve upon previous work and make it better.
00:06:18
Speaker
It's a very exciting time to be a teacher.
00:06:20
Speaker
Chris, what does the rubric look like for the work that you're doing with kids redesigning that video game cabinet?
00:06:25
Speaker
Are there some specific standards or...
00:06:30
Speaker
grade categories that you're aligning that to or what what's going on with that i mean the conversation was basically hey mcnutt we we really like the arcade cabinet can we come work on it and i said uh i was like in the middle of doing something so i was like what and they were like can we work on this and i was like okay and then they left uh and then i checked up with them later and they were doing cool stuff
00:06:52
Speaker
So they had an awesome plan and ambitions.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:06:56
Speaker
I mean, what, what happens when we replace points and grades and rubrics and things with what relevance, you know, autonomy, self-regulated kind of learning environments where they can learn with each other too.
00:07:10
Speaker
And like have an awesome project in mind.
00:07:11
Speaker
Like I'm happy for those kids and like, what a, what a cool thing to, again, have that be part of someone else's legacy.
00:07:18
Speaker
You know, that's, that's an awesome thing to, to do.
00:07:21
Speaker
Wow.
00:07:23
Speaker
Now let's move into the stuff that we are going to talk about, which is, first off, I figured, hey, we may as well spend a couple minutes.
00:07:31
Speaker
I don't want to turn it into a clip show because no one likes those.
00:07:35
Speaker
No one likes just rehashing on all the old stuff.
00:07:38
Speaker
However, I do think it's worth noting just how much we've done in a very small period of time and just all the cool accomplishments that HRP has.
00:07:48
Speaker
has.
00:07:50
Speaker
First off, I know Nick and I want to thank everyone for supporting us.
00:07:54
Speaker
Literally the only reason we could do this is because of support we've had along the way, whether that be just folks reaching out to us and telling them we're doing a great job, or monetarily, or just inviting us
Achievements of the Human Restoration Project
00:08:06
Speaker
out to speak with them and learn from them.
00:08:07
Speaker
All of that has been quintessential and we couldn't have done any of this had folks not helped us out there.
00:08:13
Speaker
I just wanted to list off a few accomplishments.
00:08:15
Speaker
I have a list of things.
00:08:17
Speaker
So check this out.
00:08:18
Speaker
In the span of really since 2019, HRP has existed since late 2018, but we weren't a non-profit until a little later on.
00:08:26
Speaker
We have released obviously 100 podcasts, a few more if you count out some of the ones I cut out early on.
00:08:33
Speaker
We've released over 20 different free resources, most recently the Learning Loss Handbook.
00:08:38
Speaker
We've done a variety of PD.
00:08:40
Speaker
If you include our summits, that's over 25 different hour and a half to two hour long PD sessions.
00:08:46
Speaker
We have...
00:08:47
Speaker
three courses that are all available in a self-directed online PD space that award micro-credentials.
00:08:54
Speaker
We've established our own teacher action research program.
00:08:57
Speaker
We have a 500 plus research article database.
00:09:01
Speaker
We partner with another nonprofit to do 100 days of conversations and interview over 500 different educators and students.
00:09:07
Speaker
And we've just hosted a plethora of writings.
00:09:10
Speaker
I'm pretty sure there's over 200 articles.
00:09:13
Speaker
and counting on the HRP writing database.
00:09:17
Speaker
So, and it's almost entirely free for folks to come and access and learn from.
00:09:22
Speaker
And I was looking at even this year and thinking like, man, we've done so much, but if you take it back to the beginning,
00:09:30
Speaker
You know, I've been reflecting on a small, subversive, almost like radical art collective kind of thing where, you know, we would talk to talk to cool people and try to raise awareness for these kinds of ideas.
00:09:43
Speaker
And the resource development side wasn't wasn't really something that we were super focused on until.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, until we got that nonprofit status and stuff.
00:09:51
Speaker
But now we've really turned our attention to.
00:09:55
Speaker
the ways that we can actually transform those systems and actually put students in the driver's seat of their own learning to support teachers as professionals and leaders in their classrooms and in their buildings and in their districts, and really kind of focusing our PD models around that.
00:10:13
Speaker
You know, I think of both sides of the impact that that has had, both in the resource sharing and kind of the community building side, but then also so much of the work that happens
00:10:24
Speaker
not necessarily on social media and there's the public facing kind of stuff.
00:10:29
Speaker
It's kind of like the analogy of a duck, you know, from the surface, it just looks kind of like smooth and like it's going, but underneath the surface, it's just paddling like hell.
00:10:38
Speaker
So that's kind of what I think is happening, right?
00:10:40
Speaker
Like we're paddling like hell and people kind of see us as like, oh, hey, we got this done most recently.
00:10:46
Speaker
This week, you know, we won the silver in our category at the Reimagine Education Conference for
00:10:52
Speaker
for nurturing wellbeing and purpose.
00:10:55
Speaker
We were first shortlisted, which meant we were in the top 12%, I think of 1100 entries globally.
00:11:03
Speaker
I mean, we're talking in, you know, the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, South America, everywhere.
00:11:13
Speaker
And, you know, I think,
00:11:16
Speaker
I think there was a part of me anyway that was like really skeptical, just kind of thinking about us as small fish in such a big pond or small ducks, I suppose, to carry that analogy forward.
00:11:30
Speaker
And then it really was something –
00:11:34
Speaker
A huge kind of morale boost because there's a very extensive and prestigious judges panel that was evaluating all of the entries and evaluating our entry alongside, you know, long established university programs and a variety of other both nonprofit and for profit tech companies who are developing VR tools and web apps and LMSs and all these kinds of things.
00:12:03
Speaker
So it was really cool to see that there are a number of people apparently have faith that, you know, our human centered schools model, which we've since kind of we've been a little bit mum about that, I think.
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about it in a second.
00:12:17
Speaker
But but there's a lot of people who think that that is a cool idea that might be worth pursuing.
00:12:23
Speaker
So I guess a little bit of a pat ourselves on the back, but also just think that that can have a tremendous impact on the work that we do going forward.
00:12:31
Speaker
I mean, we're going to be.
00:12:33
Speaker
rebuilding what not only teacher PD looks like, but potentially, you know, the future of schools.
00:12:39
Speaker
And that's a cool thing.
00:12:40
Speaker
Right, right, right.
00:12:41
Speaker
And really what this is, is just a way for us to kind of, I guess, reach the hearts and minds of folks in even more ways.
00:12:50
Speaker
I know that for me, the purpose of Human Restoration Project, the reason why I'm so obsessed with this work is that it is very purpose driven to the reason why I want to be a teacher.
Mission and Educational Philosophy of HRP
00:13:01
Speaker
It's ensuring that students actually value their education, that they like being there, that they love learning, and that doesn't get diminished over time and all the facets that go into doing that.
00:13:13
Speaker
And then
00:13:14
Speaker
As a result, building a better society.
00:13:17
Speaker
It's kind of like that big picture look, but the goal of this work is to build a flourishing, democratic, fulfilled society where folks enjoy what they do and they love being alive.
00:13:28
Speaker
I hope at least that the work that we've done so far has helped other folks realign perhaps what has been lost over the years or what they could have always known to be true.
00:13:37
Speaker
looking at all the different things that we've done and even contributing to that work because it's not just us, it's all of our contributors as well, as well as they'll see now that we move into some new things that we're about to do, how we can reach even more folks in this space.
00:13:55
Speaker
I did want to briefly highlight some things in the last year.
00:13:58
Speaker
I wrote down three things that were my highlights from the year.
00:14:03
Speaker
My first highlight is we released our Learning Loss Handbook, which blew my mind.
00:14:09
Speaker
If folks haven't checked out our podcast on this, we have a two-part podcast that just walk through the Learning Loss Handbook, or obviously you can just download it on our website underneath materials.
00:14:17
Speaker
But when we first walked into doing the Learning Loss Podcast or the Learning Loss Handbook, I...
00:14:23
Speaker
I knew that there would probably be some questionable things that testing companies do.
00:14:29
Speaker
Like I know that large corporations, especially a large corporation like Pearson or something, do some sketchy things in order to generate money.
00:14:38
Speaker
I never expected it to be as on the nose and as obvious as what it was.
00:14:43
Speaker
It was a period of like an hour and it's like, oh, the data doesn't add up.
00:14:47
Speaker
Cool.
00:14:48
Speaker
And then it turns out other people know this too.
00:14:50
Speaker
And people have been writing about this for years.
00:14:52
Speaker
And why have I never known this before?
00:14:54
Speaker
And why is this not mainstream knowledge?
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, it really did feel like finding a thread.
00:15:00
Speaker
And then when you started to pull on that thread, I mean, just the whole kind of sweater of that unraveled and not just the motivations, but the incentive structure of kind of our standardized assessment complex.
00:15:14
Speaker
I don't know what else to call it at that point.
00:15:16
Speaker
It has linkages to the other complexes that we can think of as sort of being dominant in
00:15:24
Speaker
the wrong things in global society and in American life as well.
00:15:28
Speaker
So, yeah, it really does kind of sound conspiratorial to a certain extent.
00:15:33
Speaker
But then when you start to unpack it and you think, well, why is it so hard to push back against these structures and these systems?
00:15:41
Speaker
You'll find the reason once you pull on that thread.
00:15:43
Speaker
You know, it's attached to so many other bigger interests than just education and assessing student performance.
00:15:50
Speaker
So that was like my favorite, like, I guess, like resource slash research type thing.
00:15:55
Speaker
This is my favorite podcast and my favorite book from the year, which is Alex Venet's work.
00:16:01
Speaker
So the trauma informed equity center teaching book slash the podcast we did with her because that book perfectly aligns with everything that we do.
00:16:10
Speaker
It's like if HRP has like this big systemic structure where we focus on restoring community to education, you could pick up Alex Venet's trauma-informed equity center teaching and perfectly align it.
00:16:22
Speaker
Like there's even, I mean, the whole book is about changing systems in order to make a more equitable space that supports mental health.
00:16:29
Speaker
So yeah,
00:16:30
Speaker
It's perfect.
00:16:31
Speaker
I think people were too focused on the test scores and on what what does the data say on that?
00:16:37
Speaker
And then now we're seeing what teachers are exhausted because students are not able to or haven't been able to process, you know, the emotions of the last 18 months.
00:16:50
Speaker
They haven't been able to feel a sense of community or connection to adults or their classmates.
00:16:56
Speaker
Right.
00:16:57
Speaker
And you hear it all the time about students acting out in ways or acting in ways that have kind of been as unprecedented as the as the events that we've been facing.
00:17:06
Speaker
Um, so through, uh, I guess through a deficit lens, you know, you could say, oh gosh, these kids, kids these days and their cell phones, or, oh, they're just used to being at home, uh, um, uh, playing, playing Nintendo switch.
00:17:19
Speaker
Or, I mean, you could go one further and say, uh, masks and masking have interfered with their social emotional learning and, and all those other kinds of things.
00:17:27
Speaker
But really, um, that trauma informed approach, um, should be the lens through which we, you know, we
00:17:34
Speaker
We look at students not through their deficits, but in ways that we can support them through what is ostensibly a crisis.
00:17:40
Speaker
And we're all going through the same thing, too.
00:17:42
Speaker
So I know that I have less patience and desire to do more above and beyond my job description some days.
00:17:51
Speaker
And that should be fair from an adult lens.
00:17:55
Speaker
But we should also understand society at large right now is in the process of processing a lot of that trauma alongside kids.
00:18:02
Speaker
It builds into the last thing I want to highlight, which is kind of lessons learned.
00:18:07
Speaker
Things that through speaking with different experts and writing about things and things that I just wasn't really familiar with that I didn't.
00:18:14
Speaker
I feel like challenge being and maybe think of things differently.
00:18:17
Speaker
And one is actually in that Alex Venet podcast.
00:18:21
Speaker
And in her book, Venet talks about the idea that there's no such thing as like serious or less serious trauma.
Trauma-Informed and Decolonized Education
00:18:30
Speaker
I've had a tendency in the past to see I've seen certain traumas as being more extreme.
00:18:36
Speaker
And it's not that those situations aren't extreme.
00:18:38
Speaker
But it's also challenging the idea that if a student comes to you and says that they're going through some kind of trauma, you can't brush it off, even if it's something that you don't see as being that serious.
00:18:48
Speaker
To a student, all of these things actually are trauma, and therefore, you need to have just as much nourishment for that student.
00:18:55
Speaker
as anyone else.
00:18:58
Speaker
So ensuring that we treat all students like human beings, which is what the mission of Human Restoration Project is, in order to ensure that everyone is cared for.
00:19:06
Speaker
So that's one thing.
00:19:08
Speaker
And that builds into the second thing, which is also a highlight from this year, because up until this year, we've always been in a pandemic, it feels, since really almost HRP started at this rate.
00:19:20
Speaker
And we've never really been able to do on-site PD.
00:19:23
Speaker
So we got to do our first on-site PD this year, which we'll see if we ever get to do it again, fingers crossed.
00:19:29
Speaker
During that PD, which was a highlight of the year, we also spoke to Christina Torres.
00:19:35
Speaker
And Christina Torres taught me something new, which is the use of the word decolonization.
00:19:43
Speaker
A lot of times I've referred to in the past the concept of decolonizing the curriculum.
00:19:50
Speaker
as a way to challenge entirely, for example, white narratives of history or English or whatever that might be.
00:19:57
Speaker
She taught me something, which is the idea of for me to use that language or for me to be looking at this as a form of decolonization is almost in and of itself a form of colonization.
00:20:09
Speaker
That's not really what we're trying to do.
00:20:10
Speaker
The goal is to create something that is built by the folks in the room.
00:20:16
Speaker
As in the students are the ones forming their own curriculum, which is way different than decolonization.
00:20:20
Speaker
There's no hierarchical power structure of who's deciding for who, even if it's in, I guess, good intention.
00:20:28
Speaker
It ties back to a lot of the stuff that we talk about when it comes to self-directed education, when it comes to student empowerment and voice.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, that was my last highlight is the on-site PD and kind of lessons learned as well.
00:20:39
Speaker
I wanted to maybe throw a quick anecdote in there of some way.
00:20:43
Speaker
I think that that trauma informed approach has been really helpful for me this semester.
00:20:48
Speaker
I think I've had more students than I have I've ever had in my career really struggle with attendance this year.
00:20:55
Speaker
And in the first six weeks, you know, is kind of when in my senior econ class, I'm kind of building what what is supposed to become sort of a self-driven kind of autonomous, you know, evidence gathering adventure for kids and for kids who are missing some days.
00:21:14
Speaker
It's really time.
00:21:14
Speaker
tough.
00:21:15
Speaker
But when we get to that six week mark, we're trying to establish what, you know, hey, I got to put a grade in the grade book at six weeks.
00:21:21
Speaker
That's one of my systemic, you know, kind of requirements.
00:21:25
Speaker
And we start to have sit down and have those conversations about, you know, what's what's a struggle, like why what's what's working, what's not working.
00:21:32
Speaker
A student was pretty open and honest with me about the fact that they were missing a lot of school because they they struggle with migraines and migraines that just lay them out.
00:21:40
Speaker
And I know a lot of students and adults
00:21:43
Speaker
struggle with that.
00:21:44
Speaker
But their situation is beyond them because they're not able to drive themselves to the doctor's appointment so they can get a med check to get their medication renewed.
00:21:55
Speaker
And their parents work such odd hours that they just can't get it scheduled.
00:21:58
Speaker
So she's at school during the day and then can't get into the doctor to
00:22:03
Speaker
to get her prescription renewed so that way she can get her migraine medications.
00:22:07
Speaker
And there really was not a point in me sitting down, laying blame.
00:22:13
Speaker
You've missed so many classes, assigning punishments, giving her an F for saying, we'll put these in as zeros in the grade book or whatever.
00:22:21
Speaker
But just sitting down and having that conversation just opened up
00:22:25
Speaker
open it up for future dialogue to say like, hey, what's working and what's not about my space for you understanding where you're coming from and what you're what you're going through, you know.
00:22:35
Speaker
And I don't know if she had since been able to to get that support, to get the med check, to get back on the prescription.
00:22:41
Speaker
But, you know, that opened up a line of communication now where she can tell me what you know, when when things are going well and when they aren't.
00:22:49
Speaker
And, you know, frankly, her attendance has just been better.
00:22:52
Speaker
I don't know if that's as a result of understanding she's in a safe and welcoming environment or if she kind of got things worked out on her end with her parents.
00:23:00
Speaker
But again, that trauma informed approach just
00:23:03
Speaker
comes at it from how can I support you?
00:23:05
Speaker
How can I change my behavior and the environment and make things work, you know, for, for you, which is the reason why I'm here, you know, to support you and your learning.
00:23:16
Speaker
And, you know, she's, she's been incredibly successful ever since those first six weeks.
00:23:19
Speaker
So I wouldn't have seen the point in, in terms of just failing or just saying, Hey, you know, this is not going to be something you're going to be able to recover from because she's recovered just fine.
00:23:29
Speaker
You know, it's not anything that was in school that would be worth worth punishing or approaching from that deficit lens.
00:23:34
Speaker
It's just structural barriers for her outside of school.
00:23:38
Speaker
So that that I think is is an example of of those kinds of mindsets in practice.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:44
Speaker
And I think incorporating that.
00:23:47
Speaker
That perspective and that lens into kind of all the various elements of progressive education is really the point of why pedagogy is so important and why it's important that the mindset comes first as opposed to the practice, because we can do a lot of things that look better.
00:24:05
Speaker
quote unquote traditional, but have the mindset of progressive education to ensure that students are loved and supported and that we do it in a way that is bearable, I guess, like knowing what our limitations are while simultaneously pushing that to the furtherness of our ability to make things okay.
00:24:21
Speaker
With that said, segue, wait.
00:24:25
Speaker
There it is.
00:24:26
Speaker
Segway, Sound Spaceship, whoosh, by, from soundboard.com.
00:24:30
Speaker
Transition.
00:24:32
Speaker
So up until this point, we have done primarily virtual PD.
00:24:36
Speaker
As a result of COVID, we work with various different schools, usually like small cohorts, 20 to 30 folks, onboarding them to progressive pedagogy, and we do workshops surrounding like how to do various things from like purpose finding to restorative justice, incorporating student voice, building a curriculum together, et cetera, all the things that we talk about
Expanding Professional Development and Upcoming Initiatives
00:24:55
Speaker
all the time.
00:24:55
Speaker
We've done
00:24:55
Speaker
that PD.
00:24:56
Speaker
And we were just talking about that.
00:24:59
Speaker
We finally got to do our first on-site PD post-COVID.
00:25:02
Speaker
It was super exciting.
00:25:03
Speaker
And we did ostensibly the same thing, just a little bit more involved because we were able to be there for a longer period of time than normal.
00:25:12
Speaker
With that said,
00:25:14
Speaker
This is getting into the new stuff that we're working on.
00:25:19
Speaker
So there's three things that I wrote down that I think we're ready to share.
00:25:23
Speaker
And there's one more that I don't want to share yet because it may or may not happen.
00:25:27
Speaker
So you'll learn about that next month if that's the case.
00:25:30
Speaker
You don't want to jinx it.
00:25:31
Speaker
The first thing, which connects to what we were just talking about, is our Human Centered Schools Network.
00:25:36
Speaker
There will be a video coming out about this relatively soon.
00:25:40
Speaker
The Human Centered Schools Network is a connection between all the different things that Human Restoration Project does.
00:25:46
Speaker
It's a connection between our research and writings and podcasts and PD resources to develop a collective of schools who push for this type of progressive pedagogy.
00:25:57
Speaker
And the idea is that we'll help schools onboard these ideas with their educators and students so that they can become human-centered schools as well.
00:26:07
Speaker
So it's a five-step process to briefly explain it.
00:26:11
Speaker
What we do is we work with the school and we first help educators understand what progressive pedagogy is.
00:26:17
Speaker
That's typically what we already do for PD.
00:26:19
Speaker
So the second step is we've made a partnership with this organization called Cortico.
00:26:24
Speaker
If you've been following our work with 100 Days of Conversations, they're the folks that do transcription and identify themes through conversations.
00:26:32
Speaker
So the second step is educators talk with students.
00:26:35
Speaker
We record those conversations, then we analyze it as a group.
00:26:39
Speaker
So for example, a question might be if students feel safe and supported or if they like their English class or whatever it might be.
00:26:46
Speaker
These are conversations where teachers are learning from their students and gathering feedback, which then can be analyzed.
00:26:53
Speaker
Then from there, we help teachers understand those systemic structures so that they can conduct teacher action research.
00:26:59
Speaker
where they're working with those students based off the information they just learned and based off progressive pedagogy to incorporate a new idea.
00:27:07
Speaker
For example, maybe they incorporate a student voice initiative in their English class to bring in more book selection.
00:27:13
Speaker
I don't know, whatever it might be.
00:27:15
Speaker
And then finally, those results are published and shared within the network so that everyone can learn from each other.
00:27:22
Speaker
So our idea is to be a connector between all these folks to support them no matter where they might be in the world.
00:27:28
Speaker
So really, this is just our standard PD model just expanded upon to ensure that we incorporate student voice and expanded upon to ensure that we can connect the different schools that are all doing this work that often feel like they're working in either like underground or I guess kind of like in their own pocket.
00:27:44
Speaker
And they haven't been able to find others.
00:27:46
Speaker
the power of that teacher action research is, is not even necessarily in that, that first year cohort.
00:27:54
Speaker
If, if the model is implemented really takes off then in that second year where the new cohort of teachers, right.
00:28:00
Speaker
Is learning from that previous year's models and lessons.
00:28:03
Speaker
And right.
00:28:04
Speaker
You kind of turn the, you turn the expertise in house.
00:28:09
Speaker
So like really we're kind of there to, to kickstart and to, to,
00:28:14
Speaker
to bring the kind of plumbing in to connect that school to the network that we have.
00:28:18
Speaker
But then as they build their own infrastructure in-house through their own teacher action research and developing their own teacher expertise, because we know teachers are the experts in their content areas, in their classrooms.
00:28:33
Speaker
And if we include the student voice piece, they're gonna be the experts in understanding how their students view school and the changes that they might want to lead them in implementing as well.
00:28:44
Speaker
So then building that infrastructure and not just creating schools as, I don't know, content warehouses, but as a place where other teachers can go and grow and connect to and be leaders in their own capacity in their own classrooms rather than, you know, feeling like they have to leave the classroom or go to academia or whatever.
00:29:04
Speaker
you know, become an administrator or instructional coach or something in order to enact some bigger kinds of changes.
00:29:10
Speaker
So that to me is a really exciting part of that is connecting to and cultivating teacher expertise.
00:29:17
Speaker
Final thing on that, consider this to be almost an advertisement.
00:29:21
Speaker
There are three goals to human-centered schools.
00:29:23
Speaker
So if you work in a school, so the first goal of this is to ensure that folks that are already doing this work are connected to the right people and have the right resources to support how to do these things.
00:29:35
Speaker
So we often talk about the why.
00:29:37
Speaker
And that's, I think, easy enough to understand for folks that have done the research, that have read about these things, that understand that things are not as they potentially should be.
00:29:46
Speaker
But then they run into trouble with like, well, how in the world do I do that with all of these different regulations?
00:29:51
Speaker
And as a result of all the work we've done over the last few years, we know a decent number of people that we can connect you with, and as well as give you the resources to help you do that.
00:30:01
Speaker
If you're an individual and you ever need help with anything, by the way, feel free to email us.
00:30:05
Speaker
We're more than happy to help.
00:30:06
Speaker
That's the first thing, helping you out, ensuring that you are able as a school to incorporate these ideas.
00:30:13
Speaker
The second thing that we do is help some folks that might be hesitant about implementing these ideas and believing that these things should exist.
00:30:22
Speaker
So bringing people on board to the pedagogy itself.
00:30:25
Speaker
Probably the best example of this was Shawn Michael Morris, who was answering a question from a teacher who asked something like, you know, why is it that you do what you do?
00:30:34
Speaker
Why do you bother taking all these risks or trying out all these new ideas, doing all this research, et cetera, et cetera?
00:30:42
Speaker
And his anecdote was that he was sitting at a Chick-fil-A with one of his friends and they were eating, obviously, chicken sandwiches.
00:30:51
Speaker
And he was like in the middle of the sandwich and he was talking with one of his friends about the poultry and meat industry and the fact that there's a ton of really egregious things that happen in that industry.
00:31:03
Speaker
And he's always wanted to consider being a vegetarian and he just hasn't been able to do it, et cetera, et cetera.
00:31:09
Speaker
And while he was in the middle of that conversation, he was like, you know what?
00:31:13
Speaker
Maybe I shouldn't be doing this.
00:31:16
Speaker
And he just stopped eating the sandwich and he's been a vegetarian ever since.
00:31:20
Speaker
And he used that as an example, the chicken sandwich movement to explain progressive pedagogy, which to me makes a lot of sense.
00:31:26
Speaker
It's the idea like you're doing something up until a point where you're like,
00:31:29
Speaker
hey, what I am doing is currently causing harm.
00:31:32
Speaker
Like this is a problem and I'm still doing it knowing that it's a problem.
00:31:36
Speaker
And there has to be a certain point there where that switch is going to flick.
00:31:39
Speaker
where I'm gonna be like, no, actually I have to find another way to do it because I know it doesn't work.
00:31:44
Speaker
So really the second goal outside of just implementing these ideas is figuring out why implement them and helping folks rediscover that purpose because I firmly believe that every teacher goes into this profession thinking that's what they wanna do
00:31:59
Speaker
And then once they get into the profession, get so caught up in that system that it's very difficult for them to navigate those waters.
00:32:07
Speaker
Or they've just been convinced that what they're doing actually is working without necessarily having the research to support that it might not be.
00:32:14
Speaker
Which is, it's a pretty hard thing to escape from.
00:32:17
Speaker
It's very like Plato's Allegory of the Cave style of instruction.
00:32:22
Speaker
Well, then, and imagining working to do what, you know, so that's where the student voice piece comes in as well, because if you're hearing that, you know, students think things are going great and nothing should change and you hear the same from teachers, well, there's probably not a great case to be made there for...
00:32:38
Speaker
for systemic change.
00:32:40
Speaker
But if there's tension between the feedback you're getting from kids and between what you're hearing from teachers, well, then how do you decide what's going to be the focus of making that shift?
00:32:50
Speaker
So that's why you have to listen to both halves of that conversation to know how do we actually shift things that's going to make those environments more
00:33:01
Speaker
more productive, more engaging, more relevant, more, right, whatever, whatever kind of the goals that you want to be.
00:33:07
Speaker
So yeah, sorry, go ahead.
00:33:09
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:33:09
Speaker
And finally, it's the fact that the professional development is meant to mirror the exact same practices that we value in our own classrooms.
00:33:18
Speaker
Being able to recognize that progressive pedagogy is not just limited to how we teach students and how we learn from students, but also how we teach educators and how we learn from educators.
00:33:28
Speaker
So our goal with this PD is to model that.
00:33:30
Speaker
We're not going to lecture for 90 minutes.
00:33:33
Speaker
We're not going to have teachers do very like silly, I guess like icebreakers and things that no one really likes to do.
00:33:41
Speaker
Instead, we're going to have teachers teach us by conducting the research.
00:33:46
Speaker
The whole goal of a teacher action research model is we provide some kind of, I guess like sparks, some ways to get started.
00:33:53
Speaker
And then educators just roll with that and do the research and ask us questions along the way as they need help.
00:33:59
Speaker
So these are very workshop style endeavors.
00:34:01
Speaker
They are not like two hour long lectures where at the end we ask for questions and then that's it.
00:34:08
Speaker
These are places for educators to do the work.
00:34:11
Speaker
When we've done that on site, that looks like educators leaving the building and going out and getting lunch and working on things or sitting around a table and just talking with each other and maybe...
00:34:21
Speaker
One of us sits down with our group for an hour because they have a bunch of questions and maybe we just answer a few questions for other folks and they send us an email afterwards.
00:34:29
Speaker
It's fairly informal, but that's the way that educators want to learn.
00:34:33
Speaker
And it also just treats people like we know educators and how they are.
00:34:36
Speaker
We are educators.
00:34:37
Speaker
Like we know what we're doing.
00:34:39
Speaker
We just sometimes struggle with how to get started and what we should be doing.
00:34:42
Speaker
We need that direction.
00:34:44
Speaker
Right.
00:34:44
Speaker
The goal isn't to come in as PD is often conducted.
00:34:47
Speaker
The goal isn't to say, oh, here's a magic bullet.
00:34:50
Speaker
And if you just implement this process, we're going to train you how to do this.
00:34:52
Speaker
If you start doing that next week, your life will turn around.
00:34:56
Speaker
Because teachers are, we're just inundated in the weeds with, you know, acronyms and grade book categories and all these kinds of things.
00:35:05
Speaker
Right.
00:35:05
Speaker
It's all about just recognizing the fact that
00:35:08
Speaker
we're treating educators as experts and we're connecting them as educators to each other and as experts to each other.
00:35:14
Speaker
There's no silver bullet, there's no acronym, there's no get rich quick scheme.
00:35:19
Speaker
You gotta do the work.
00:35:20
Speaker
It takes a lot, but it's powerful once you get through that.
00:35:24
Speaker
So with that said, this is the second thing I wanted to share.
00:35:28
Speaker
So this is in addition to HRP, we'll still be providing free resources, we'll be publishing new resources, our podcasts, all that stuff is gonna continue.
00:35:37
Speaker
But a new thing that we're going to be advertising, likely starting in January, is HRP will be hosting a virtual conference.
Virtual Conference and Progressive Education
00:35:48
Speaker
So one thing that we've heard from educators over the years
00:35:53
Speaker
is that we have a lot of great resources at HRP for onboarding folks to progressive ed.
00:35:59
Speaker
So the basic stuff, like what is upgrading or what is purpose finding or what is restorative justice?
00:36:05
Speaker
And there's some kind of like intermediate level stuff, like diving maybe into behaviorism and why that's a problem or something like that.
00:36:13
Speaker
But we don't,
00:36:14
Speaker
really have a lot of resources that really get into the weeds uh everything is a little bit more intermediate so with that said the podcast uh is going to be tackling some more in-depth issues but then also we will be looking at a virtual conference so likely in late july our goal is to take
00:36:35
Speaker
kind of like what we were talking about with the PD model and kind of flipping it on its head to also then do the exact same thing with a conference, the conference to restore humanity.
00:36:45
Speaker
So we're drawing a lot upon digital pedagogy lab.
00:36:50
Speaker
Shawn Michael Morris, who's the head of that used to serve on our board, and he gave us a lot of great ideas to host our own conference.
00:36:56
Speaker
And
00:36:57
Speaker
This is really early, but the overall idea is that we'll have three keynote speakers talking about progressive ed.
00:37:04
Speaker
As opposed to traditional keynotes, they'll be videos coupled with a blog.
00:37:08
Speaker
That's just the script.
00:37:09
Speaker
So you can read it or listen to it.
00:37:12
Speaker
And then instead of the keynotes being just playing the video, the keynote itself is actually a Q&A session.
00:37:19
Speaker
So you would listen or watch this beforehand, and then you'd come in for the keynote, and it would just be a conversation where folks talk about what they learned and
00:37:26
Speaker
shared their thoughts and we can learn from them as well.
00:37:29
Speaker
Then from there, we'll be offering four to six tracks that are really deep into progressive pedagogy.
00:37:37
Speaker
For example, I really want to have a track on dismantling carceral pedagogy and learning about what that is and how that manifests itself in the classroom.
00:37:46
Speaker
So you would enter into one of these asynchronous tracks with a team of faculty there to help you, where they just provide you with a ton of stuff to do, ways to interact with others.
00:37:58
Speaker
We'll be working with a platform that allows you to connect with other people easily and speak with them and really mirror that environment of why folks really like going to conferences, which is the conversations that they have, not necessarily the keynotes themselves.
00:38:13
Speaker
We'll be trying our best to mirror that in a virtual environment.
00:38:16
Speaker
And then there will be like office hours offered throughout where that's the opportunity where you actually have a talk with those folks that are guiding you.
00:38:23
Speaker
The idea is that the current conference model, the only reason why I think it's really fun for most is that it's kind of a party, which at least that is for me.
00:38:35
Speaker
I like being able to go to like a cool new city and explore with other teachers and talk to them about what they're doing.
00:38:40
Speaker
But the actual conference itself is not necessarily the most exciting part.
00:38:44
Speaker
A lot of times, keynotes are just like, you feel like you're trapped and you can't really escape.
00:38:48
Speaker
It just goes on for a very long period of time.
00:38:51
Speaker
I'm the kind of person I have to move around.
00:38:53
Speaker
I can't sit still for 60 minutes and just listen to someone.
00:38:56
Speaker
I have to be doing something.
00:38:57
Speaker
So trying to humanize that a bit where you could be doing, I don't know, lawn work.
00:39:02
Speaker
I don't know what you might be doing, but you're just listening to it and chilling out.
00:39:07
Speaker
And then from there, the purpose of those tracks is to provide educators with tools they could use in their own context, as opposed to how a lot of workshops are conducted where it just feels like everyone's doing the exact same thing.
00:39:20
Speaker
And you're just kind of going through the motions.
00:39:21
Speaker
And then at the end, what you really wish you were doing is you were planning for your class.
00:39:26
Speaker
So we want to ensure that these tracks incorporate themselves into your own class, that you're taking something usable away from them.
00:39:34
Speaker
And then finally, kind of going back to what I was talking about before, these tracks are meant to be more intense than the typical topics that might be brought up in an ungrading conference.
00:39:43
Speaker
This is not aimed necessarily at folks that have no idea what progressive pedagogy is, even though they certainly could sign up if they're interested in it.
00:39:50
Speaker
The primary demographic are folks that are looking for this stuff and want to learn a lot more about some really deep, in-depth topics to walk away from this feeling inspired and with stuff that is just mind-blowing to them.
00:40:05
Speaker
That's what we're really aimed at doing.
00:40:08
Speaker
More details to come on what that will look like, as well as the thing that we didn't mention yet, which may or may not happen, but it will be very exciting if it does.
00:40:16
Speaker
Wow!
00:40:18
Speaker
All right.
00:40:19
Speaker
What is, Nick, the listener question?
00:40:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:40:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:40:23
Speaker
So this was something I asked Chris if he wanted to get the question.
00:40:26
Speaker
Wait, listener question alert.
00:40:30
Speaker
It's the same sound.
00:40:31
Speaker
They're all the same sound.
00:40:34
Speaker
Okay, whatever.
00:40:34
Speaker
Continue.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:36
Speaker
Now, I asked Chris if he wanted to get this question in advance so that way he might have some time to prepare for it or whatever.
00:40:43
Speaker
But he said no.
00:40:44
Speaker
So I had been thinking about it for quite a while.
00:40:47
Speaker
It's not to say that I have a response or an answer because I don't know if it's something, honestly, that we can provide necessarily a solid answer for.
00:40:57
Speaker
but just kind of frame sort of our take on this perennial debate.
00:41:01
Speaker
So on November 3rd, I don't know what I was tweeting in response to, but I said, knowing things is great, but I'm way more interested in learning how to learn.
00:41:10
Speaker
So how do you know when we're learning?
00:41:12
Speaker
How can we figure out what we don't know?
00:41:13
Speaker
And what are we going to do with what we know now?
00:41:16
Speaker
And I said, all of those are more compelling and worthy pursuits than just getting the answer right.
00:41:21
Speaker
And I've got a follower and he might be familiar to you, too, but Rod J. Naquin.
00:41:28
Speaker
Geez, Rod, I'm so sorry, man.
00:41:30
Speaker
Naquin.
00:41:31
Speaker
But he says, I love learning and learn so much from so many folks here.
00:41:34
Speaker
How do you square that with what seems here an emphasis?
00:41:38
Speaker
How do you square what seems here an emphasis on content agnostic skill?
00:41:42
Speaker
with what Natalie Wexler's journalism points out as a pivotal role of knowledge.
00:41:47
Speaker
When clear about the knowledge content, it can accelerate the skill.
00:41:52
Speaker
And I told them, I was like, I was like, Rod, I'm not ignoring your question.
00:41:55
Speaker
This is something that I think is important.
00:41:57
Speaker
I'll come back to it.
00:41:58
Speaker
And I never got around to typing up that, that 10,000 word response, because there's a lot to touch on there.
00:42:06
Speaker
So I don't know, Chris, if you want me to kind of start with where I'm at.
00:42:09
Speaker
what your initial thoughts are on that question.
00:42:10
Speaker
I can get initial thoughts.
00:42:11
Speaker
I can attempt this.
00:42:13
Speaker
So I think it kind of speaks to a myth of progressive ed, which is that people think that progressive educators don't value
00:42:22
Speaker
quote unquote, like core knowledge that folks that work in this field think that, oh, you know, you should just go create an art mural about Shakespeare.
00:42:33
Speaker
And that proves that you understand Shakespeare.
00:42:35
Speaker
It's not that's not true.
00:42:37
Speaker
It's not accurate.
00:42:38
Speaker
The folks that work in this space are not doing that type of work.
00:42:42
Speaker
What really this is, is that progressive educators want to challenge learners more by doing authentic tasks.
00:42:50
Speaker
If I'm going to, let's say, create an art mural about Shakespeare,
00:42:53
Speaker
and prove to the public that it's an art mural about Shakespeare, I have to understand who Shakespeare is and what he wrote about and have a really deep, like thematic understanding of what those different pieces of work are about.
00:43:06
Speaker
And as a result, that means that I did contain, I did learn all of that, that core knowledge before I even got started doing that thing.
00:43:14
Speaker
I think that a lot of folks that are really kind of obsessed with that idea of knowledge, like cognitive load theory, trying to ensure that everyone kind of learns the basics before they move on to anything else, they end it there.
00:43:26
Speaker
So they get through all the memorization, they check the box, they did well on the test, and then they move on to the next unit.
00:43:32
Speaker
And they miss out on the fact that those same students, as soon as you move on to that next unit, are going to forget the vast majority of what you just told them because it was never used authentically.
00:43:42
Speaker
So progressive educators, what it's meant to do, experiential education in general, is what you're doing, one, is authentic.
00:43:51
Speaker
You're doing real work.
00:43:52
Speaker
And as a result, when you do that real work, you're more likely to remember it.
00:43:55
Speaker
That's supported by research.
00:43:56
Speaker
You tend to learn things more as it's informed by something.
00:43:59
Speaker
And kind of coupled with that, because you're specializing in something that you enjoy, you'll remember it more and you'll be more interested in learning about it.
00:44:09
Speaker
And as a result, it's something fascinating to you.
00:44:13
Speaker
So I think there's kind of a misnomer there that folks think that, you know, folks that are engaging in this space just don't care about teaching the basics.
00:44:24
Speaker
They do.
00:44:25
Speaker
It's just that's not what we're starting with.
00:44:26
Speaker
We're starting with the end product and then we have to figure out the basic stuff on how to get there.
00:44:31
Speaker
It would be a failure as an educator if a student ended up turning in a piece of work that didn't demonstrate that they knew anything about what was going on.
00:44:39
Speaker
That's our role as an educator is to step in and go, I think you're missing a lot here.
00:44:44
Speaker
Let me help you find these things that you need
Understanding Progressive Education
00:44:46
Speaker
assistance with.
00:44:46
Speaker
That's what I spend 95% of my day doing is giving feedback to kids on how to do even better than what they're already doing.
00:44:55
Speaker
Right.
00:44:55
Speaker
And I mean, not to move it on a tangent, but I think you've unlocked the power of that iterative model, right?
00:45:04
Speaker
So what's interesting, I mean, I was just passingly familiar with Natalie Wexler.
00:45:07
Speaker
I have not read her work in particular, but I've read interviews and articles.
00:45:12
Speaker
Maybe I've seen YouTubes or listened to podcasts and stuff with her.
00:45:16
Speaker
But her book is called The Knowledge Gap.
00:45:18
Speaker
I didn't know if you had seen that at all.
00:45:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:20
Speaker
But the gist is exactly, yeah, it's well-trod ground for any one part of this conversation, right, that the content knowledge is going to be more predictive of particularly standardized test scores.
00:45:32
Speaker
And so she says, you know, that wealthier kids come into school with...
00:45:37
Speaker
more experiences and more background knowledge.
00:45:40
Speaker
So that way, when they approach reading, right, if background knowledge is the key to, you know, unlocking the skill of reading, then we need to directly teach background knowledge to kids from impoverished backgrounds.
00:45:53
Speaker
So that way they can access the reading skills.
00:45:55
Speaker
So if we want to close the knowledge gap, which is really and she admits it's a standardized testing gap, which, you know, we'll have our own criticisms of those things.
00:46:04
Speaker
then you need to direct instruct that background knowledge.
00:46:07
Speaker
But I think, you know, what that conversation really leaves out then is something that we are pretty passionate and focused on, which is that what and that why.
00:46:19
Speaker
So, right, as soon as you presume that like some kind of amount of background knowledge would be valuable to students and then should be taught to every single kid,
00:46:27
Speaker
kid, then the question becomes, well, what are we going to teach them?
00:46:30
Speaker
And so, you know, unless there's just some authoritative list somewhere out there, then that's where our conversation needs to be situated.
00:46:38
Speaker
And then we need to focus then on the why are they learning this stuff?
00:46:41
Speaker
Is it so they can answer the question on the standardized test or is it for, you know, some other kind of purpose?
00:46:48
Speaker
But what's really interesting is, you
00:46:51
Speaker
is now our development director, but Thomas White, back in 2020, he wrote a really interesting article, and I'll tweet it out after this too, but I was thinking about it.
00:47:02
Speaker
It's called, That Baseball Study Can't Tell You How to Teach, because it goes back to this 1988 journal article where kids were answering questions based on a reading about baseball, right?
00:47:13
Speaker
And
00:47:14
Speaker
The gist of it was that kids that had more background knowledge about baseball heading into the test got higher scores than kids who were just instructed on, you know, so-called reading comprehension skills.
00:47:25
Speaker
Those would be those content agnostic kind of things, right?
00:47:28
Speaker
But Thomas in that piece asks very smartly, but like, why should baseball be a thing that gets taught to all kids?
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:35
Speaker
And what is that taking the place of?
00:47:37
Speaker
And so those kinds of questions then lead you down the path of, say, someone like Edie Hirsch, you know, who has literally published the authoritative list on what every American should know, like that's his book and gets brought into those conversations a lot.
00:47:51
Speaker
Then you start to talk about the canon in English.
00:47:54
Speaker
And right, because if we're talking about the important things that are valuable enough for every single kid to learn, well, then,
00:48:01
Speaker
you're going to be prioritizing someone's perspective over those others.
00:48:06
Speaker
If you're not asking those critical questions about what goes into the curriculum, then you're kind of missing the point.
00:48:14
Speaker
I would add to that further, too, that the next step away from the what is then the how do we teach that.
00:48:22
Speaker
If the content knowledge is so important,
00:48:26
Speaker
right, then that kind of approach then justifies the subordination, you know, of student minds and bodies.
00:48:34
Speaker
And then you get the kinds of things, the kinds of schools like the uncommon schools or the techniques that are more behaviorist in their approach to efficiency and classroom management, like the teach like a champion models.
00:48:47
Speaker
And those are justified on what?
00:48:50
Speaker
Improving standardized test scores.
00:48:53
Speaker
And so,
00:48:55
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:48:56
Speaker
I said this earlier in the week as I was thinking about this question, but I said, you know, it's really interesting.
00:49:01
Speaker
I haven't seen a lot of evidence, maybe not even any evidence that I'm aware of that positively correlates democratic classrooms with improved test scores, while that correlation seems to exist strongly for authoritarian ones.
00:49:14
Speaker
And
00:49:16
Speaker
If that's perceived as being a slight against democratic classrooms to say we shouldn't implement those practices because they don't raise test scores.
00:49:23
Speaker
Well, that kind of gives away the game, doesn't it?
00:49:25
Speaker
That's saying the quiet part out loud, if you will.
00:49:27
Speaker
It's like I was thinking about now our board member as well, Young Joe.
00:49:33
Speaker
We just find all these people and incorporate them into the HRP blob, don't we?
00:49:38
Speaker
But Dr. Young Joe, he wrote this this wonderful rebuttal to last year's the release of last year's piece of scores.
00:49:46
Speaker
It might even be pre-pandemic, so it might have been early 2020, all this hand-wringing about America's PISA scores.
00:49:53
Speaker
And he wrote this scathing critique of it where he goes, hey, okay, so let's raise our PISA scores.
00:49:58
Speaker
Let's be more like China.
00:49:59
Speaker
Let's be more like Singapore.
00:50:01
Speaker
Let's be more like these authoritarian states.
00:50:03
Speaker
Great.
00:50:04
Speaker
If we want to model those classroom practices and the results that those government systems yield, let's be more like them.
00:50:12
Speaker
Well, that can't be something that we do if we want to also live in a democratic state.
00:50:17
Speaker
So there is, I guess, a cost to authoritarian kinds of controls.
00:50:24
Speaker
And, you know, it's very interesting that if we want to live in a democracy, we don't like to emulate those kinds of democratic practices for kids and their learning in schools because we imagine that the ends justify the means, you know.
00:50:39
Speaker
control the bodies, control the minds, control the curriculum, the what, the how, the when you're going to learn it.
00:50:45
Speaker
And well, how has that worked out for us so far?
00:50:47
Speaker
You know?
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's really interesting.
00:50:49
Speaker
It's the exact same thing I was thinking about.
00:50:51
Speaker
There's two things.
00:50:52
Speaker
When we say what, whose knowledge are we talking about?
00:50:55
Speaker
Speaking of like Edie Hirsch, like what is the canon?
00:50:59
Speaker
And helping students dissect that.
00:51:01
Speaker
And I think that this brings in like kind of like Lisa Del Pitt's work, which is all based around, yes, this is a problem, but we need to ensure that students know this in order to navigate the world around them, which I think is a fair critique of some progressive educators that
00:51:18
Speaker
would say like, well, we shouldn't teach anything that is core.
00:51:22
Speaker
Like everything should just be whatever it is.
00:51:25
Speaker
Because I think there is some space to say like, we are not a space in the United States where we can just tell folks that are, you know, discriminated against that you don't need to know anything to navigate like the white middle class world.
00:51:37
Speaker
I think you do.
00:51:37
Speaker
I think that you just have to be transparent in why you do the things that you do.
00:51:42
Speaker
Like when I'm working with a group of students and I say, hey, like you need to know how to send an email this way, even that's not how they traditionally send an email.
00:51:51
Speaker
I tell them like this is the way the world works.
00:51:53
Speaker
And if you want to like fight against in the future, here are the tools to do so.
00:51:56
Speaker
We did talk about it.
00:51:57
Speaker
I need to make sure that too, like you know how to code switch, like you know how to work in this environment and do things in this
Navigating and Challenging Societal Norms
00:52:04
Speaker
way.
00:52:04
Speaker
And I think that's really empowering for learners, honestly, to know like these are the tools you need in order to get by.
00:52:11
Speaker
Where I would disagree is that I don't think you need to know a lot of the things that are presented in the canon to navigate that world.
00:52:18
Speaker
I don't understand why, for example, understanding Shakespeare would allow you to navigate a college or career pathway any better than someone who is reading anime novels or manga, I guess.
00:52:31
Speaker
I don't understand why it makes any difference.
00:52:34
Speaker
That builds into that how do we do it type structure, which is, for example, if a student is struggling with reading,
00:52:41
Speaker
and we put them into an uncommon schools-esque reading program where they're just drilled and drilled and drilled, yes, their test scores might go up in reading and they may become better readers, but at the end of the day, they're never going to read another book and they're never going to read anything ever again.
00:52:58
Speaker
And while they might be okay, I guess, in the career-driven world, if they need to read instructions or something, and they are able to do that, you're not going to see the social mobility or social justice as a result of someone who would love to read, that could teach themselves more and become obsessed with knowledge in a way that, I guess, like a liberal, in the sense of liberal arts...
00:53:21
Speaker
society would flourish if everyone was very well educated and read and had experiences and connected those dots and fought for more.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yes, there is a space for ensuring that students know how to read and helping students learn how to read.
00:53:34
Speaker
But the way that we get there is by inspiring folks to read, by providing the most resources.
00:53:38
Speaker
I know, for me, the way that I learned how to read was through video games.
00:53:42
Speaker
I was obsessed with video games as a kid.
00:53:43
Speaker
I didn't go to school a lot.
00:53:45
Speaker
And the way that I learned how to read was playing Final Fantasy because it's all text.
00:53:49
Speaker
I wasn't the greatest reader starting off, but I read so much playing those games.
00:53:53
Speaker
That is what I was interested in.
00:53:54
Speaker
Therefore, I learned how to read.
00:53:56
Speaker
So again, I want to be clear, like I'm not saying that support structure shouldn't exist or that we should just let kids play video games all day.
00:54:02
Speaker
It's just that we have to be very careful on how we navigate those waters to turn it into like forcing kids to do things in the name of education, because that doesn't lead to the results that we want.
00:54:14
Speaker
um and speaking of that kind of leads to my second point which is uh really briefly uh all all of this discussion surrounding like the knowledge gap achievement gap uh helping folks navigate the world uh to quote unquote escape poverty is all presumed on the idea that we live in a meritocracy
00:54:36
Speaker
Which we don't.
00:54:37
Speaker
Just because you have super well-educated students who do great on standardized test scores that come from low-income backgrounds or traditionally, historically, disoriented against groups, does not mean that all of a sudden you're going to have this cohort of people that go on to do great things, at least when it comes to income.
00:54:57
Speaker
Like they're going to like move up the social ladder is what I'm saying.
00:55:00
Speaker
The data is just not there.
00:55:01
Speaker
I just wrote about this in the most recent thing I put out.
00:55:05
Speaker
The actual social mobility of someone who grows up in like the lowest 10% of income earners barely go up at all.
00:55:12
Speaker
Like your ability to move up the income ladder as a result of your education is actually quite low.
00:55:17
Speaker
And I think it's also it always has bothered me the idea of like the goal is to escape poverty as opposed to abolish poverty, as opposed to fixing the problem that exists at all.
00:55:28
Speaker
Like, why is it that we're OK with the idea that even if you were to fail out of school?
00:55:33
Speaker
that you should live in poverty.
00:55:34
Speaker
Like, that doesn't make any sense.
00:55:36
Speaker
So instead, all of these efforts to fix schools by eliminating standardized test scores, or by fixing standardized test scores, all of that effort would be so much better placed by ensuring that the families have access to all the supports they need and that poverty didn't exist anymore.
00:55:55
Speaker
you would by default have more quote unquote educated people because people would have more time to focus on the things that they want to do as opposed to being worried about their next meal or feeling like, hey, I need to take care of my siblings or all the various things that folks do that tend to struggle with school.
00:56:12
Speaker
These things should be very obvious, but the problem is we're trapped within thinking within these binaries of the system and how things currently are as opposed to advocating for more just societies in general.
00:56:21
Speaker
So, I mean, I don't think that we're taking sides in like the so-called reading wars and everything, because I'm not sure that we're well educated enough to necessarily do that.
00:56:30
Speaker
But just to kind of broaden the perspective on that particular question, right, there is a particular way of learning and assessing that particular skill of reading in that particular way.
00:56:44
Speaker
I'm really narrowing it down, right, that has that says that background knowledge and that reading are connected, but doesn't.
00:56:51
Speaker
Right.
00:56:51
Speaker
Answer any of those questions about what is it that kids should be reading and to what ends and, you know, how are we going to arrange the structures of schooling to make those things happen?
00:57:03
Speaker
So, you know, Rod, I don't know if this is a satisfying answer to your question.
00:57:07
Speaker
But it's about as detailed as I wanted to get into it.
00:57:10
Speaker
Right.
00:57:10
Speaker
Because once you start with that, right, then it then you get into then what are we going to have our kids read?
00:57:17
Speaker
And and not to belabor the point any further, but right.
00:57:21
Speaker
Those are essentially political, moral, values driven questions.
00:57:25
Speaker
I mean, I've had a conversation with a very close elementary school colleague of mine who is in the midst of teaching their young, young children, young students how to read.
00:57:35
Speaker
But she has pulled.
00:57:38
Speaker
a book that deals with, you know, a child living through the civil rights era.
00:57:42
Speaker
I don't remember the name of the book off the top of my head, but she decided amidst our current political climate, you know, she goes, my kids are not going to be reading this book.
00:57:50
Speaker
So they're not going to be learning the content, the background knowledge of the civil rights that they would need to, you know, access that particular narrative because she doesn't want to be on the front page of, you
00:58:01
Speaker
some right-wing blog somewhere.
00:58:03
Speaker
We're accused of teaching critical race theory.
00:58:04
Speaker
So that's the next set of questions that we have to ask.
00:58:08
Speaker
What are we teaching kids?
00:58:10
Speaker
How are we going to do that and why?
00:58:13
Speaker
There's the answer.
00:58:15
Speaker
It's a balancing act.
00:58:16
Speaker
It's not that we want to throw out all core knowledge.
00:58:19
Speaker
It's just that there's a balance between navigating the system as it exists now and a navigation for social justice.
00:58:27
Speaker
And I think that most folks in this space are going to lean more on social justice.
00:58:31
Speaker
That doesn't mean that you throw everything out the window.
00:58:34
Speaker
There is a way that you can navigate and tread these waters.
00:58:37
Speaker
And students recognize that too.
00:58:38
Speaker
Students will help you get there.
00:58:40
Speaker
It's not all a decision of the teacher.
00:58:41
Speaker
In fact, I think primarily it's a decision of the student.
00:58:46
Speaker
Let's jump into how long ago is this?
00:58:49
Speaker
Two years ago, we were on Batsheva Frankel's podcast, Overthrowing Education, which might have been late 2019, maybe early 2020.
00:58:58
Speaker
I think it was 2019, yeah.
00:59:02
Speaker
She does a bit, too, where she asks quiz questions.
00:59:05
Speaker
We were on there talking about HRP, and she asked us questions about science fiction.
00:59:09
Speaker
And Nick and I both embarrassed ourselves because we were not able to answer the questions well and Given the name I mean human restoration project has a lot of sci-fi elements to it both Nick and I love science fiction But apparently we couldn't answer this question.
00:59:22
Speaker
So we figure hey Let's make the hundred episode very science fiction themed here at the end for our trivia This does not relate to education in any way.
00:59:29
Speaker
These are just pure science fiction questions So for all you science fiction fans get ready for all you non science fiction fans
00:59:35
Speaker
uh, can probably be very confused because these questions probably don't make any sense out of context.
00:59:39
Speaker
My, my game is simple.
00:59:41
Speaker
It's called, is it a Dune quote?
00:59:44
Speaker
Jeez.
00:59:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:45
Speaker
From the movie or from the book?
00:59:46
Speaker
From the book.
00:59:47
Speaker
Okay, good.
00:59:47
Speaker
I haven't seen the movie yet.
00:59:48
Speaker
I've been sitting there.
00:59:50
Speaker
So I have, so I pulled five quotes because they're real short.
00:59:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:54
Speaker
I pulled five quotes.
00:59:55
Speaker
I don't know what number in here are from Dune.
00:59:58
Speaker
They might not be from Dune, but your goal is to just figure out, is it from Dune or not?
01:00:02
Speaker
And if you get it right, I have a fun fact about Frank Herbert or the Dune universe.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:08
Speaker
And then, and if you get them wrong, we'll throw you out the airlock.
01:00:10
Speaker
Are they all real quotes from something or did you make them up?
01:00:14
Speaker
They're all real quotes from something.
01:00:16
Speaker
All right.
01:00:16
Speaker
That might help because it's been a while since I've read it.
01:00:18
Speaker
Ready for the first one?
01:00:18
Speaker
Sure.
01:00:19
Speaker
So for quote number one, it is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn and how many more believe learning to be difficult.
01:00:27
Speaker
That's so broad.
01:00:30
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that's a Dune quote.
01:00:32
Speaker
It's a Dune quote.
01:00:33
Speaker
You got it.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:00:35
Speaker
I remember they talk about a lot of philosophical...
01:00:38
Speaker
Okay, cool.
01:00:39
Speaker
Yes.
01:00:40
Speaker
Actually, I forgot how really philosophical it was until I went back and I was browsing both through my copy and then just like browsing on the internet for some good quotes.
01:00:49
Speaker
And I found that one, the intersection of learning and sci-fi.
01:00:52
Speaker
Like what a great HRP quote.
01:00:54
Speaker
So here's a fun fact.
01:00:55
Speaker
All right.
01:00:56
Speaker
In 1983, British heavy metal band Iron Maiden requested permission from Herbert's publisher to name a song on their album, Peace of Mind, after Dune.
01:01:03
Speaker
But we're told that the author had a strong distaste for their style of music.
01:01:07
Speaker
They instead titled the song To Tame a Land.
01:01:09
Speaker
So there is an Iron Maiden song named after Dune, but Frank Herbert did not like them.
01:01:13
Speaker
So he denied them permission.
01:01:14
Speaker
All right.
01:01:17
Speaker
Quote number two.
01:01:19
Speaker
We live in capitalism.
01:01:20
Speaker
Its power seems inescapable.
01:01:22
Speaker
So did the divine right of kings.
01:01:24
Speaker
Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
01:01:28
Speaker
Resistance and change often begin in art and very often in our art, the art of words.
01:01:34
Speaker
So I know that like Dune's all based around like nobility and like royal families and stuff.
01:01:39
Speaker
I don't do they critique capitalism in that book?
01:01:43
Speaker
I don't remember that being like a major part, like at least not as on the nose.
01:01:47
Speaker
I'm going to say that's not a Dune quote.
01:01:51
Speaker
That is not Dune.
01:01:52
Speaker
Very good.
01:01:52
Speaker
You're two for two.
01:01:53
Speaker
So that's from Ursula Le Guin, who had recently passed in 2018.
01:01:58
Speaker
Even though she was a contemporary of Frank Herbert's, they were both born in like the 1920s.
01:02:02
Speaker
She lived until, you know, in her 80s.
01:02:05
Speaker
Frank Herbert actually died in 1986.
01:02:09
Speaker
So very shortly after the Dune movie came out.
01:02:11
Speaker
So if you haven't read Ursula Le Guin, she's a sci-fi fantasy author, wrote the Earthsea books, Left Hand of Darkness, so many other ones, you know, multiple award winning.
01:02:21
Speaker
But yeah, what a great quotation on that one as well.
01:02:25
Speaker
So cool.
01:02:25
Speaker
You're two for two.
01:02:26
Speaker
All right.
01:02:27
Speaker
All right, here's another one.
01:02:28
Speaker
This one is in the form of a
Science Fiction in Education: Fun Quizzes and Discussion
01:02:29
Speaker
poem.
01:02:29
Speaker
Oh, geez.
01:02:30
Speaker
Real quick.
01:02:30
Speaker
All right.
01:02:31
Speaker
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
01:02:33
Speaker
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
01:02:38
Speaker
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
01:02:42
Speaker
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
01:02:46
Speaker
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
01:02:50
Speaker
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
01:02:55
Speaker
Well, I know that every Dune chapter opens up with like the hyper broad, like little diary quotes slash poems, and they're all written by like the old, like the families and stuff.
01:03:06
Speaker
And that sounds like something that they would write.
01:03:09
Speaker
So I'm going to say that's yes.
01:03:11
Speaker
God, that does sound like something.
01:03:13
Speaker
But however, that is not Dune.
01:03:14
Speaker
Dang it.
01:03:16
Speaker
But it does, right?
01:03:17
Speaker
It does.
01:03:18
Speaker
That is from Octavia Butler's Parable of the Talents.
01:03:22
Speaker
Wow.
01:03:22
Speaker
All right.
01:03:23
Speaker
So, yeah, if you don't know Octavia Butler, I mean, not you necessarily, but listener, you got to check her out.
01:03:29
Speaker
She's won every single award under the sun.
01:03:33
Speaker
The first MacArthur Genius Award winner for science fiction writing.
01:03:37
Speaker
which is crazy.
01:03:38
Speaker
And of course, I mean, her work was deeply intertwined in her perspective as a black woman and exploring family, race, hierarchy, survival, all those other things.
01:03:48
Speaker
So she actually has this great quote.
01:03:49
Speaker
Why aren't there more science fiction black writers?
01:03:52
Speaker
There aren't because there aren't because there aren't.
01:03:55
Speaker
What we don't see, we assume can't be.
01:03:57
Speaker
What a destructive assumption.
01:03:59
Speaker
So that's that's your fun fact about Octavia.
01:04:02
Speaker
Now I have two more.
01:04:02
Speaker
All right.
01:04:03
Speaker
So you got to get out of five.
01:04:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:07
Speaker
So we'll see how you do on my question.
01:04:08
Speaker
All right.
01:04:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:10
Speaker
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
01:04:13
Speaker
Yes.
01:04:14
Speaker
That's a Dune quote.
01:04:15
Speaker
That's so a Dune quote.
01:04:16
Speaker
Right.
01:04:17
Speaker
So that explains if you go back into the deep lore, they actually had this Butlerian jihad, right, where they essentially eliminated all of the thinking computers and AI, which is why there aren't computers in the Dune universe.
01:04:29
Speaker
Right.
01:04:30
Speaker
and why the computational tasks are kind of in these specialized people called the Mentats.
01:04:36
Speaker
And you see that in the, if you watch the film, they have the one character's eyes kind of roll back in his head a little bit.
01:04:42
Speaker
That is the first quote that I've known for sure.
01:04:44
Speaker
So I'm happy about that.
01:04:45
Speaker
Nice.
01:04:45
Speaker
All right, three in one.
01:04:46
Speaker
Yep.
01:04:47
Speaker
I thought that was a good one.
01:04:48
Speaker
So my fun fact real quick, since its debut in 1965, Frank Herbert's Dune has sold over 12 million copies worldwide, making it the best selling science fiction novel of all time.
01:04:59
Speaker
It is a really good book.
01:05:00
Speaker
In my opinion, a little slow to open, but once you get into it, great book.
01:05:04
Speaker
So here's the last one.
01:05:05
Speaker
It's a little bit lengthy, but it says, the universe is a dark forest.
01:05:09
Speaker
Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound.
01:05:18
Speaker
Even breathing is done with care.
01:05:20
Speaker
The hunter has to be careful because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him.
01:05:25
Speaker
If he finds other life, another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod, there's only one thing he can do.
01:05:34
Speaker
Open fire and eliminate them.
01:05:35
Speaker
In this forest, hell is other people, an eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out.
01:05:42
Speaker
This is the picture of cosmic civilization.
01:05:44
Speaker
It's the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
01:05:48
Speaker
I'm torn.
01:05:49
Speaker
Because part of me thinks that you wouldn't choose a long quote unless it was a Dune quote, because you want to highlight the fact that Dune's a cool book.
01:05:56
Speaker
But at the exact same time, I also don't recognize that quote at all.
01:06:00
Speaker
And it doesn't really sound like Dune outside of like, there is some religious imagery, which is really present in the Dune book.
01:06:09
Speaker
There also have been, how many Doom quotes are there actually?
01:06:12
Speaker
There's been actually three Doom quotes so far, right?
01:06:14
Speaker
Or two.
01:06:14
Speaker
That's true.
01:06:15
Speaker
Two Doom quotes so far.
01:06:17
Speaker
I limited mine to just the first book.
01:06:19
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to say that's a Doom quote.
01:06:23
Speaker
It is not a Dune quote.
01:06:24
Speaker
Dang it.
01:06:25
Speaker
I should have gone with my gut.
01:06:26
Speaker
All right.
01:06:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:26
Speaker
What's that from?
01:06:27
Speaker
So you're three out of five.
01:06:28
Speaker
So you're good.
01:06:29
Speaker
But still, what I thought was interesting in picking these quotes.
01:06:32
Speaker
Now, this is from Lou Shishin from his book, The Dark Forest, which I've got right here.
01:06:40
Speaker
It's a sequel to The Three Body Problem.
01:06:43
Speaker
He's a Chinese author.
01:06:44
Speaker
He's won every Chinese sci-fi award.
01:06:46
Speaker
He's won Nebulas, Hugos in English speaking world.
01:06:51
Speaker
And his books have been translated into English, fortunately.
01:06:54
Speaker
So that way, folks like me can read them.
01:06:57
Speaker
So I picked these quotes not only then to kind of as an homage to Frank Herbert's obvious influence in all of sci-fi, but to point out just how kind of impoverished our view of sci-fi is if we leave out names like Le Guin or Butler or even new contemporary non-European, non-American sci-fi authors.
01:07:19
Speaker
Ted Chiang is my favorite.
01:07:20
Speaker
You know, for me growing up and getting into sci fi, the canon was always like Herbert, Clark, Asimov, Heinlein, Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Vonnegut.
01:07:30
Speaker
And they're all dudes, you know, white, white American dudes like me or British or, you know, whatever.
01:07:37
Speaker
But but have I mean, I have English ancestry as well.
01:07:40
Speaker
So, you know, those are people who would think and act like me and bring a certain perspective.
01:07:44
Speaker
And, you know, my perspective of the sci fi canon was impoverished until I encountered authors like Le Guin, Butler, you know, more recently with with Lou and in all of those.
01:07:56
Speaker
So.
01:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, both as a way to kind of pay an homage to Herbert and Dune's profound influence.
01:08:02
Speaker
And obviously, those are great books in their own context.
01:08:04
Speaker
But also, right, what is missed when we just narrow it down to kind of the same set of ideas and perspectives on white guy sci-fi?
01:08:12
Speaker
Nice.
01:08:13
Speaker
All right.
01:08:14
Speaker
Well, we're at 3 out of 5.
01:08:15
Speaker
Not too bad.
01:08:15
Speaker
Not too bad.
01:08:16
Speaker
All right.
01:08:16
Speaker
So I only have three questions.
01:08:19
Speaker
They're not nearly as... I don't think they're as hard as yours.
01:08:24
Speaker
So I did mine in three different forms.
01:08:27
Speaker
I have a question regarding movies, a question regarding TV shows, and a question regarding books or, I guess, novellas.
01:08:34
Speaker
And they're kind of like arranged in order from easy to hard.
01:08:38
Speaker
Two of them are multiple choice.
01:08:39
Speaker
I think this first question you should knock out of the park because I'm assuming that you've seen.
01:08:43
Speaker
So three questions.
01:08:44
Speaker
Here we go.
01:08:45
Speaker
You have to get at least two out of three.
01:08:46
Speaker
Set me up for success here.
01:08:47
Speaker
All right.
01:08:48
Speaker
So in the film Minority Report.
01:08:52
Speaker
You've seen Night Minority Report.
01:08:54
Speaker
Great movie.
01:08:55
Speaker
All right, that's based on the Philip K. Dick's work, right?
01:08:58
Speaker
So you got Tom Cruise, and I wrote this hastily, so I don't remember what the name of the character is.
01:09:03
Speaker
But whenever I watch that movie, I assume it is Tom Cruise doing this.
01:09:07
Speaker
That's true of every Tom Cruise movie.
01:09:09
Speaker
Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.
01:09:10
Speaker
Explains a lot.
01:09:11
Speaker
So Tom Cruise is an investigator who works in the pre-crime unit where he's solving crimes that have been seen to occur before they actually happen.
01:09:22
Speaker
Super simple question.
01:09:24
Speaker
Which of these is the name of the entities that predict the crimes in Minority Report?
01:09:31
Speaker
Can I just tell you before you give me the options?
01:09:33
Speaker
Sure.
01:09:33
Speaker
Sure.
01:09:35
Speaker
Precogs.
01:09:35
Speaker
They are precogs.
01:09:37
Speaker
They are precogs.
01:09:38
Speaker
I don't even need to explain to you.
01:09:39
Speaker
That was easy.
01:09:40
Speaker
All right.
01:09:40
Speaker
So that was an easy one.
01:09:41
Speaker
You don't even need to.
01:09:42
Speaker
You're not going to have a part.
01:09:42
Speaker
That's a 1-0.
01:09:43
Speaker
That's super simple.
01:09:44
Speaker
All right.
01:09:46
Speaker
That's a great movie.
01:09:46
Speaker
I got to go back and rewatch that.
01:09:48
Speaker
It's such a good movie.
01:09:49
Speaker
Second question.
01:09:50
Speaker
Get a little bit more into the weeds, a little more difficult.
01:09:52
Speaker
This is the intermediate question.
01:09:54
Speaker
All right.
01:09:54
Speaker
Have you seen the television show V?
01:09:58
Speaker
The single letter V. I have not.
01:10:01
Speaker
Okay, here we go.
01:10:02
Speaker
So in the 1980s, there was a miniseries called V. It was fairly popular.
01:10:07
Speaker
It's like science fiction fans.
01:10:09
Speaker
People really like this show.
01:10:10
Speaker
It's about what would happen if aliens invaded the earth, but they weren't just like Independence Day style, just like blowing everything up.
01:10:19
Speaker
So, V is a story about what would happen to religion, what would happen to politics, what would happen to all these different branches, even it gets into terrorist cells, and how would they interact with this idea of aliens just being in the center of New York City and other major cities across the planet.
01:10:38
Speaker
um so anyways in the late 2000s uh they rebooted this franchise on mbc like on mainstream uh cable and as you could probably expect a show like this did not do well on mainstream cable um so they cancel it after two seasons the question's an open-ended question i'll see if you can guess here it so for me this is by probably my favorite science fiction series the reboot because of the way the series ended
01:11:04
Speaker
So to give you a kind of a plot synopsis and spoiler alert coming up because I'm about to spoil the end of the whole show.
01:11:10
Speaker
But the plot follows a teenage girl and her boyfriend, as well as both of their parents, as well as like some FBI agents, etc.
01:11:21
Speaker
as they deal with how Christianity suddenly adopts this idea of aliens into the canon of the Bible.
01:11:31
Speaker
And it eventually dives into people trying to blow this up because they didn't like the religious context, et cetera, et cetera.
01:11:39
Speaker
Here's the spoiler, I guess.
01:11:40
Speaker
Aliens, it turns out, are offering to all human beings, I believe it's a vaccine that solves all problems.
01:11:47
Speaker
You literally cannot get sick.
01:11:49
Speaker
And if you are sick, they have like this machine that can make it so you're permanently healed.
01:11:55
Speaker
It's very similar to the plot of Childhood's End, which is actually my favorite science fiction book.
01:12:02
Speaker
I was just thinking about that.
01:12:04
Speaker
They cure everyone.
01:12:06
Speaker
And I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what the nefarious plot is.
01:12:09
Speaker
But somehow this thing that they're treating everyone is either programs people or does something where they can feed on them.
01:12:16
Speaker
So they can basically wipe off the human race.
01:12:18
Speaker
And I can't remember if they become slaves or if they literally are killing them to eat them.
01:12:23
Speaker
That's one of the two things.
01:12:24
Speaker
They somehow are subjugating the human race based around...
01:12:27
Speaker
uh this this vaccine that they're offering which i guess didn't age well in the modern day uh it would be kind of weird to release that now um regardless uh super that's a pretty yikes moment so anyways the show just kind of like tugs along like it it's it's very political it's not like there's like this like big overlapping plot like not like some huge climactic moment but they can't cancel after the second season while they're doing all these investigations and
01:12:51
Speaker
So in order for NBC to wrap up this show, and I guess the creators to wrap up this show, how do you think they did it?
01:12:57
Speaker
How did they tie together all the loose ends at the end?
01:13:01
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:13:03
Speaker
So there's a couple options, right?
01:13:05
Speaker
They could go like the it was all just a dream, you know, kind of like the the classic even lost kind of fell victim to that thing.
01:13:13
Speaker
Right.
01:13:15
Speaker
They could do it.
01:13:15
Speaker
It was all a dream.
01:13:16
Speaker
Or they could do something.
01:13:18
Speaker
You mentioned religion.
01:13:19
Speaker
So maybe that's a quote to say like the aliens are actually, I don't know, divine entities or something like that.
01:13:26
Speaker
Right.
01:13:27
Speaker
That's the point.
01:13:28
Speaker
Or, oh, you're, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:13:31
Speaker
You're penchant for the Matrix and that kind of stuff.
01:13:34
Speaker
You could be like, okay, they kind of built a Matrix-esque thing.
01:13:37
Speaker
So it's like a simulation that the humans are kind of in a simulated environment.
01:13:41
Speaker
Right.
01:13:43
Speaker
Which that can be the dream sequence as well.
01:13:46
Speaker
I'll go with that.
01:13:46
Speaker
Like they did like it's kind of a simulation kind of deal.
01:13:50
Speaker
Is that your final answer?
01:13:51
Speaker
No.
01:13:52
Speaker
I'm going to go with final answer.
01:13:54
Speaker
Go to the simulation idea.
01:13:55
Speaker
So it's not that.
01:13:57
Speaker
But this is the reason why it's my favorite, because it's actually really funny.
01:14:01
Speaker
So the creators of B could not get picked up by any other network.
01:14:05
Speaker
They tried to appeal to sci-fi thinking like, oh, sci-fi will take it.
01:14:08
Speaker
No one would take it.
01:14:09
Speaker
So the plot builds up and like, I can't remember exactly what it is, but like the teenage boy like becomes obsessed with like an alien girl and like the alien girl is like meant to be like this good guy character who's like the link between humanity and the aliens and like she's like taking the other side and the girls like ambassador to investigate with her parents and like go up to the alien spacecraft and their ambassadors and trying to help everyone.
01:14:31
Speaker
The way that V wrapped up is like building action, building action.
01:14:35
Speaker
Like, oh, the humans are going to figure it out.
01:14:37
Speaker
Like, it's all going to be good.
01:14:37
Speaker
Like, no, war's about to break out.
01:14:39
Speaker
No, V ended its final season by killing all of the major characters.
01:14:44
Speaker
It is the funniest ending to a television show because like you think like all these things are good.
01:14:49
Speaker
No, the girl betrays the guy, kills him in his sleep.
01:14:52
Speaker
Both the parents get like massacred.
01:14:55
Speaker
They blow up all these buildings.
01:14:57
Speaker
Like just everyone dies.
01:14:59
Speaker
And then it just ends by just saying like an aliens took over the planet, the end.
01:15:04
Speaker
Like that to me is like the funniest way to end the show where it's like we got cancelled so screw you everyone's dying.
01:15:11
Speaker
Like all of these characters, all of these plot ends, all these good things that happen, all the bad things that happen, nope.
01:15:16
Speaker
This was before like Game of Thrones so like people I guess like weren't used to like the jarring nature of killing off main characters out of nowhere.
01:15:26
Speaker
I'm pretty sure the daughter lives and it like just like leaves on like a cliffhanger where she's like exploring the ruins of society.
01:15:33
Speaker
Which is also kind of similar to Childhood's End, FYI.
01:15:36
Speaker
I guess spoiler for Childhood's End.
01:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:15:38
Speaker
Great book.
01:15:39
Speaker
It's a great book.
01:15:40
Speaker
All right.
01:15:40
Speaker
Final question.
01:15:41
Speaker
We're one for one.
01:15:43
Speaker
Or one for two, rather.
01:15:45
Speaker
One for two.
01:15:46
Speaker
Okay.
01:15:46
Speaker
So this is really fringe, but it actually calls back to Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, etc.
01:15:53
Speaker
So Human Restoration Project, we use a variety of out-of-copyright science fiction pulp novels to build our aesthetic.
Pulp Science Fiction's Progressive Roots
01:16:02
Speaker
And I think most folks are familiar with the fact that like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Phil K. Dick, et cetera, the way that they got their start was they wrote short stories inside these pulp magazines.
01:16:12
Speaker
And personally, I'm a huge fan of pulp science fiction.
01:16:16
Speaker
I really like short stories.
01:16:18
Speaker
I like it being over relatively fast.
01:16:19
Speaker
I can read it in one sitting.
01:16:21
Speaker
There's not like a lot.
01:16:22
Speaker
It's just like exploring interesting ideas.
01:16:24
Speaker
But I think what's even more fascinating about historic pulp is something I've always been interested in is that
01:16:30
Speaker
how progressive a lot of these early pulp magazines were.
01:16:35
Speaker
There were many female writers in the era.
01:16:37
Speaker
About 15% of writers between the 1940s and 1950s pulp sci-fi movement, the golden age of sci-fi, were female.
01:16:45
Speaker
And a lot of them used fake names or et cetera to appeal to what was... Even though it's estimated that 50% of readers were female,
01:16:55
Speaker
The interpretation was that publishers thought that most of the readers were male and wouldn't want to read work by female authors.
01:17:02
Speaker
Regardless, and interestingly enough, there are a lot of problematic ways that women, any marginalized group, are treated in pulp.
01:17:10
Speaker
But Pulp was also the place where if you found the right magazine series, you could find extremely progressive stuff.
01:17:18
Speaker
Like we're talking back in the 40s and 50s.
01:17:19
Speaker
There are stories about like LGBTQIA stuff, like lesbian main characters.
01:17:25
Speaker
There's female empowerment.
01:17:26
Speaker
There's stories that are all about like anti-racist action.
01:17:30
Speaker
It's fascinating how many different ways that science fiction writers could use their craft to
01:17:35
Speaker
to, to work in this way.
01:17:36
Speaker
An example from like the movies would be like the first interracial kiss was on Star Trek.
01:17:42
Speaker
Like a lot of these concepts were explored really early in science fiction.
01:17:46
Speaker
Anyways, one of the most famous female pulp writers was C.L.
01:17:52
Speaker
Moore, which was Catherine Lucille Moore.
01:17:56
Speaker
So she wrote a lot of stories, but which of the following is not a story that C.L.
01:18:02
Speaker
Moore wrote?
01:18:04
Speaker
So hit me.
01:18:06
Speaker
I've got this.
01:18:07
Speaker
A. Earth's last citadel.
01:18:10
Speaker
B. The Mask of Cersei.
01:18:14
Speaker
C. The Dark World.
01:18:17
Speaker
Or D. The Robot Who Killed Me.
01:18:20
Speaker
I think so.
01:18:21
Speaker
What what era was she writing in?
01:18:22
Speaker
This is like 40s, 50s, and I think a little bit into the 60s.
01:18:26
Speaker
Okay, because I'm trying to think of like pulpy tropes, you know.
01:18:30
Speaker
So the last one, like the robot that killed me sounds right up that alley.
01:18:34
Speaker
So that could be a distractor.
01:18:36
Speaker
That would be a great distractor.
01:18:37
Speaker
The Dark World kind of sounds like, you know, that could be from any kind of era, but I'll say that that one is as well.
01:18:43
Speaker
And that second one was like the Mask of Cersei.
01:18:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:47
Speaker
I'm also going to say that that one sounds like something that would kind of be in that that pulpy, you know, it has that classical connection.
01:18:54
Speaker
You know, I think that that would hook readers in the first one about the Citadel.
01:18:59
Speaker
What was that first one again?
01:19:00
Speaker
Earth's last Citadel.
01:19:03
Speaker
Earth's Last Citadel.
01:19:04
Speaker
That seems a little bit more modern, perhaps, than some of the other ones.
01:19:08
Speaker
But I mean, I could be wrong.
01:19:09
Speaker
I'm going to say that A is not one of the pulpy titles from CL.
01:19:14
Speaker
All right.
01:19:15
Speaker
Interestingly enough, Earth's Last Citadel is actually CL Moore's probably most well-known work.
01:19:22
Speaker
It's her most famous one.
01:19:23
Speaker
She was ahead of her time.
01:19:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:25
Speaker
So this is the plot of Earth's Last Citadel.
01:19:28
Speaker
It happens during World War II, where four people, two from the Allies and two from the Axis, they are in the Tunisian desert.
01:19:37
Speaker
And they find a vehicle that takes them into the far, far future where Earth has been conquered by aliens and mankind is extinct now.
01:19:47
Speaker
They're the only humans as they travel into the future, and they come across this giant castle.
01:19:50
Speaker
Dude.
01:19:51
Speaker
Belongings of humanity.
01:19:53
Speaker
The cover is super cool.
01:19:53
Speaker
A holdout for humanity.
01:19:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:56
Speaker
Oh, that sounds amazing.
01:19:57
Speaker
I'm looking at it up right now.
01:19:59
Speaker
Published in 1943, which is wild to me to say.
01:20:02
Speaker
So as World War II was happening.
01:20:04
Speaker
Yes, as World War II was happening.
01:20:05
Speaker
It's just fascinating.
01:20:08
Speaker
She also wrote The Mask of Cersei, which I'm not sure what that one's about, and The Dark World.
01:20:13
Speaker
I made up The Robot Who Killed Me, because I figured that sounded real.
01:20:17
Speaker
It sounds like an Isaac Asimov type thing.
01:20:18
Speaker
Okay, so my reasoning was right.
01:20:21
Speaker
Yes, your reasoning was right.
01:20:22
Speaker
I figured you out, McNutt, and then I doubted myself.
01:20:25
Speaker
So this one's actually... I'm not a little Ursula Citadel like right now.
01:20:28
Speaker
This is kind of complicated.
01:20:30
Speaker
Ursula Citadel is written underneath the pen name Louis Padgett, I think.
01:20:37
Speaker
who is actually C.L.
01:20:39
Speaker
Moore and her husband, but then a modern historical interpretation is that her husband kind of just helped out, and she was primarily the writer who was doing this work.
01:20:51
Speaker
She also did Vintage Season, Valley of the Flame, The Fairy Chessman,
01:20:56
Speaker
The Dark World, if you're interested, The Dark World is about, there's a guy who discovers that he shares his body with a wizard, and they go to an alternative dimension where they basically, it's like Lord of the Rings almost, where they become this wizard.
01:21:15
Speaker
I don't know.
01:21:17
Speaker
I love this kind of stuff.
01:21:18
Speaker
I'm a huge fan of this pulpy sci-fi exploring.
01:21:21
Speaker
It's kind of like Dark Mirror just explored in the 1940s.
01:21:26
Speaker
I think I won.
01:21:27
Speaker
If you search for Earth... Yeah, I think you did.
01:21:30
Speaker
That's the first time, I think.
01:21:32
Speaker
Shoot me out of the airlock here real quick.
01:21:33
Speaker
Wait, wait, wait.
01:21:34
Speaker
I need the... What sound effect did I use?
01:21:37
Speaker
Just do it, man!
01:21:41
Speaker
No!
01:21:41
Speaker
No!
01:21:43
Speaker
There it is.
01:21:44
Speaker
There you go.
01:21:45
Speaker
Okay.
01:21:46
Speaker
So I got blown out the airlock.
01:21:47
Speaker
Now, now if listeners are interested, I mean, if you just search for earth, earth's last Citadel, uh, you can get used copies for dirt cheap.
01:21:55
Speaker
I mean, we're talking as low as a dollar 50.
01:21:57
Speaker
Obviously you're going to have to pay some shipping in that, but like for five bucks, you can get a paperback copy of that thing where I'm sure that's, if it's out of the, if it's in the public domain, you can probably just find that the PDF, but I love the, those old, um, you know, paperback books from the fifties and
The Role of Sci-Fi and Closing Remarks
01:22:11
Speaker
stuff.
01:22:11
Speaker
I have, uh,
01:22:13
Speaker
Clifford Sinek is another one of my old school favorites.
01:22:16
Speaker
I got this vintage copy of his book City.
01:22:18
Speaker
I'm trying to see if I have it.
01:22:20
Speaker
It's this wonderful Clifford Samac.
01:22:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:24
Speaker
City has got this wonderful pulpy copy of this robot.
01:22:27
Speaker
But yeah, this is from what year is this from?
01:22:31
Speaker
This is from 1952.
01:22:32
Speaker
So this book was published in 1952.
01:22:33
Speaker
I just love the old cover art and everything on those.
01:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, I encourage you to check out Lisa.
01:22:44
Speaker
I looked it up.
01:22:44
Speaker
Lisa Yazzek, I believe is how you pronounce it, Y-A-S-Z-E-K.
01:22:49
Speaker
She teaches a class on science fiction studies.
01:22:52
Speaker
I listened to her on a podcast.
01:22:55
Speaker
I saw an article about the same podcast called Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, which is via Wired, where she talks about basically like all of the classic female science fiction writers and how they portrayed women in pulp.
01:23:10
Speaker
Because as I said before, like a lot of the interpretations are very problematic, like a lot of like very over-sexualized, like anyone who's like probably pictures pulp in their mind, like thinks of like the scantily clad woman with like dinosaurs or something.
01:23:22
Speaker
But there was a specific subset of pulp that is
01:23:26
Speaker
incredibly progressive that you would never expect out of like when we think of the 1950s and how like in the united states how female housewives were portrayed you would never expect there to be like science fiction authors talking about women like and like their power and changing the world and being warriors and not like in like an
01:23:45
Speaker
like a fetishized like Amazonian sense, but in like a true like, no, I'm just a female lead character doing cool things.
01:23:53
Speaker
So yeah, it's really cool stuff.
01:23:55
Speaker
Classic science fiction.
01:23:56
Speaker
Well, I mean, it might, it might have been a little bit later, because I don't know exactly the origins.
01:24:00
Speaker
But I mean, Afrofuturism kind of tackles a lot of the same issues from, you know, the black American perspective, too.
01:24:07
Speaker
um, during the, during that time period.
01:24:09
Speaker
So again, you know, Octavia Butler, I don't know to what extent she kind of overlaps that Afrofuturism, but certainly by the, by the sixties and seventies, you know, kind of post civil rights, we're, we're kind of deep into, you know, imagining, um, those, those spaces as well.
01:24:23
Speaker
So yeah, sci-fi has always had really cool, um, maybe that's the attraction to it.
01:24:27
Speaker
I don't know, like a cool ways of re-imagining, um,
01:24:30
Speaker
You know, the biases of the present and kind of a bigger, more more holistic, more humane kind of way, you know, so and plus, there's a reason why a lot of that kind of thinking, both in terms of abstract art, both in terms of jazz and stuff is criticized in fascist regimes and authoritarian regimes as being degenerate and not in line with their ideas, because you imagine a new world.
01:24:55
Speaker
And probably why a lot of folks haven't really heard about some of these authors, even though they were super well known.
01:24:59
Speaker
during the day but yet we know a lot about like asimov uh etc um yeah exactly yeah the cannon if you will
01:25:07
Speaker
All right.
01:25:08
Speaker
So with that said, that had nothing really to do with what we were talking about before, but I hope you paid attention and you learned a lot about science fiction stuff because that's it's cool.
01:25:17
Speaker
I love this kind of stuff.
01:25:18
Speaker
Anyways.
01:25:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:20
Speaker
Thanks for joining us.
01:25:21
Speaker
Thanks for sticking around.
01:25:22
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into our 100th episode.
01:25:23
Speaker
Appreciate all of you.
01:25:25
Speaker
We all love you.
01:25:25
Speaker
And that's that's about it.
01:25:27
Speaker
All right.
01:25:27
Speaker
So good luck out there.
01:25:28
Speaker
Let's restore humanity together.
01:25:36
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
01:25:39
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
01:25:43
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.