Opens a window into stories of school transformation. Using the bestselling book Street Data as a frame for discussion, these inspiring hosts crack the world of education and data wide open. Through compelling interviews with thought leaders, administrators, students, and teachers, we hear how education can be transformed as we move beyond our fixation on big data as the supreme measure of equity and learning and toward data that is humanizing, liberatory, and healing.
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Thursday Aug 15, 2024
Thursday Aug 15, 2024
In this final episode of Season 4, Alcine and Shane return to a conversation with Dr. Sawsan Jaber, contributing writer to Shane’s forthcoming book Pedagogies of Voice: Street Data and the Path to Student Agency. They explore the impact of the genocide in Gaza, and the backlash against Palestinian advocacy, on Sawsan as a leading Palestinian educator voice. And Sawsan shares what it’s meant to her to be a part of this next Corwin Press project. In the second half of the episode, Shane and Alcine walk down the Season 4 Memory Lane, surfacing moments that moved them and stayed with them. They close with a sneak preview of Season 5, which launches in January 2025, a few months before the debut of Pedagogies of Voice. Join us to close out this dynamic season!
For Further Learning:
Envision Learning Partners’ criteria for high quality performance assessments
Read Shane’s article in ASCD’s Educational Leadership magazine, “Cultivating A Pedagogy of Student Voice”
Thursday Jul 04, 2024
Thursday Jul 04, 2024
In this penultimate episode of Season 4, Shane and Alcine explore the contours of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies with the illustrious Dr. Django Paris. Their conversation explores the ideas of shared communities and solidarities across difference, intersectionality, and chosen kinship. We learn how Django’s experiences of reading, writing, and art as a little person inform his scholarship and remind him “what it means to keep that voice and dedication to expression” as a scholar. We unpack the central tenets of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, including CPS as a pedagogical expression of both community care and the abolitionist ethos, “We keep us safe.” Finally, this intimate fireside chat uplifts the student-led movements for a Free Palestine that have emerged across the U.S. and beyond as spaces of abundance that resist a scarcity mindset. Don’t miss this groundbreaking, heartstring-tugging conversation with one of today’s educational dreamers and thought leaders.
For Further Learning:
To learn more about Dr. Paris and his scholarship, click here.
You can find his book Education in Movement Spaces: Standing Rock to Chicago Freedom Square at Routledge Press and the book series Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Book Series at Teachers’ College Press.
Dr. Paris’s new conversations series can be found at An Educational Otherwise
To learn more about the Popular University for Gaza at UW, click here.
Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
We are back for another re-release from season 2 with Young Whan Choi! In this episode, we explore ways of being and leading in education that truly center students. Young Whan implores us to “marginalize” standardized testing, or at least push it to the periphery, as he offers a vision of authentic, community-based, performance assessments that demonstrate what students know and are able to do. He exposes the irony that, while many new leaders evoke the principle of being “student-centered”, students themselves are often painfully absent from professional learning agendas, except perhaps as an aggregated data point. And finally, Young Whan helps us rethink where knowledge lives and where power exists within the system.
For Further Learning:
Get a copy of Street Data on Amazon, Corwin Press, or from a BIPOC-owned local bookstore.
Get a copy of Young Whan’s book, Sparks Into Fire: Revitalizing Teacher Practice Through Collective Learning at Teachers’ College Press.
Read Shane’s recent Ed Week article on standardized testing.
Watch Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price, Wayne Au, Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian discuss the racist history of standardized testing and its impacts today in The Racist History of Standardized Testing
Thursday Jun 13, 2024
Thursday Jun 13, 2024
In this beautiful conversation with BC-based education leader Jo Chrona, we step into Jo’s childhood as a voracious reader with a love of the land. We visit Jo on the bone-shaped, forested island of Haida Gwaii where she first learned the value of taking a pause to breathe in and out. From there, we visit the First People’s Principles of Learning, which Jo helped to author and describes as a “framework” for instructional decision-making. We engage in an important conversation about how to best use large-scale standardized data as a mechanism for moving toward equity, in which Jo offers guiding principles: it must not be high-stakes or negatively impact students’ wellbeing, and it must be a way to hold ourselves accountable for racialized disparities. We explore the interconnectedness between various parts of the education system, including teacher prep, curriculum, and student learning, accessing a window into the future from BC’s forward-moving approaches. Through this dynamic conversation, Jo helps us reframe the “achievement gap”, emphasizing that it is about the system, not the learner. Finally she challenges us to ensure we never homogenize groups of students, but rather get to know who our learners are through their stories. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss this enlightening glimpse of the future!
For Further Learning:
Visit https://luudisk.com/ to learn more about Jo Chrona’s work.
Explore the First Peoples Principles of Learning (FPPL)
Other podcasts featuring Jo Chrona:Brave New Teacher, Ep. 159
Free Range Humans, Ep 57
Additional Professional Learning Resources for Learning In Indigenous Education:Continuing Our Learning Journey: A professional learning experience (videos and workshop facilitator's guide) for educators on how to include authentic Indigenous knowledge, perspectives, and content in BC’s curriculum.
Pulling Together: A series of resource guides developed to support systemic change in post-secondary education.
Thursday May 30, 2024
Thursday May 30, 2024
Get ready for another re-release from Season 3! In this delightful dialogue with the wizard behind Cult of Pedagogy, Jennifer Gonzalez, and middle school drama teacher Amanda Liebel, Shane and Alcine walk alongside two brilliant educators to think about service, street data, and pedagogy. You’ll learn the origin story of the magical blog and podcast called Cult of Pedagogy. We’ll think about what it means to have a “heart of service”, as Amanda characterizes the deep work of teaching as always a reflective practice. We’ll also discuss how Shane, Jamila, and Jennifer came together to create a 9-hour free video series that follows two teams of teachers as they move through the messiness and richness of the Street Data process! Finally, this episode offers one-inch windows into a pedagogy of student voice, including:
How to receive difficult street data from students with an open heart
How to take deeper risks in the classroom (for example, to “Indigenize our learning spaces”)
Why being a perfectionist works against you as a teacher
And what it means to “walk alongside students” and listen to what they want
Enjoy this priceless conversation!
For Further Learning:
Listen to the original Cult of Pedagogy podcast episode with Shane and Jamila, “Street Data: A Path Toward Equitable, Anti-racist Schools” (October 5, 2021)
Access 9 hours of free professional learning in Street Data Cult of Pedagogy video series
Listen to the follow-up Cult of Pedagogy podcast episode about this learning series with Shane, Jamila, and Amanda (January 29, 2023)
Check out the mentioned Cult of Pedagogy podcast and blog on The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies
Education can be transformed if we eradicate our fixation on big data like standardized test scores as the supreme measure of equity and learning. Instead of the focus being on "fixing" and "filling" academic gaps, we must envision and rebuild the system from the student up—with classrooms, schools and systems built around students’ brilliance, cultural wealth, and intellectual potential. Street data reminds us that what is measurable is not the same as what is valuable and that data can be humanizing, liberatory and healing.
If you want to learn more about Street Data and get your hands on a copy of the book, visit Amazon, Corwin Press, or better yet, a local independent or Black-owned bookstore. If you like the show, subscribe and give us a 5 star review!
is a writer, coach, and facilitator who brings her expertise from nearly 25 years in public education – and her perspective as a white mom of multiracial children. Co-host Alcine Mumby draws upon her lived experience as a Black single woman and her 25 years as a national leader in redesigning assessment to center student-led demonstrations of learning. Together, they model new ways of being in conversation around challenging issues of race and equity.
is a dedicated educator who has spent that last 25 years teaching and leading traditional and charter public K-12 schools all over the country. She currently supports and coaches district and school leaders to develop high-quality performance assessment systems that center student-led demonstrations of learning and metacognition. Prior to coaching Alcine taught Humanities at one of the first small schools in the Bronx where project-based learning and portfolio defenses served as the foundation of instruction. Afterward Alcine became a founding principal of Envision Academy in Oakland an administrator in several small middle and high schools in Atlanta and DC and a leadership coach in DC Charlotte & Philadelphia.
Street Data is executive produced and hosted by Shane Safir and Alcine Mumby, and sponsored by Corwin Press. The senior producer is Maya Cueva.