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.
Listen on:
Thursday Feb 09, 2023
Thursday Feb 09, 2023
In this brief retrospective episode, Shane, Alcine and their 'Magic Millennial' producer, Maya Cueva look back at Season 1, reflecting on the moments that nested deepest in their hearts. You’ll get to hear or revisit impactful clips from guests in Season 1 and hear about what our producer Maya Cueva is up to on her other projects. The hosts also talk about current innovations from outside of education, including sobriety “quit lit” and Dr. Gabor Maté’s incredible work on childhood development, trauma and the potential lifelong impacts on physical and mental health conditions that show up daily in our schools and classrooms. As we prepare to launch Season 2 in February, Alcine invokes Dr. Jamila Dugan’s invitation in Episode 4: “How do I dream bigger and in community? Who do I need to be in community with so that my dreams become bigger?” Join us and dream with us about next-generation schools that affirm love and value every child!
For Further Learning:
Learn about Producer Maya Cueva’s PBS project On the Divide
Host a screening of On The Divide vía GOOD Docs! https://gooddocs.net/products/on-the-divide
Episodes mentioned and excerpted include: https://www.onthedividemovie.com
Episode 4: “What Does it Mean to Freedom Dream?”: Disrupting Traps and Tropes with Dr. Jamila Dugan
Episode 6: “We Need to Marginalize Standardized Testing” with Young Whan Choi
Episode 8: “Connecting Present to Past”: The Impact of Critical Pedagogy with Rocky Rivera and Norma Gallegos
If you’re interested in listening to Tales of The Town, the podcast about Oakland — listen here. You can also get tickets to the Tales of The Town film: https://www.talesofthetown.info
Tales of the Town Podcast : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/introducing-tales-of-the-town-a-podcast-about-black-oakland/id1235932328?i=1000579592977
Get Dr. Gholdy Mohammed’s Cultivating Genius
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
In Episode 8, Alcine and Shane reminisce and dream with two of Shane’s former students, alumni of the BALMA Project featured in Chapter 5 of Street Data. Hip hop artist and journalist Rocky Rivera and auto technician/former paraprofessional Norma Gallegos share tales of growing up in San Francisco’s Excelsior District that are equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming. Looking at their own trajectories as learners, Norma and Rocky help us explore what success really means when we view education as a long game rather than a test-driven shell game. With tears and joy, the conversation explores the features of what Rocky calls “intentional pedagogy”: the kinds of assignments that cultivate deeper learning, the types of instructional experiences that cultivate student agency, and the impact of access to critical literacy and a community where you feel you belong. Don’t sleep on this episode.
For Further Learning
To follow Rocky’s work, subscribe to her Patreon, and/or get a copy of Snakeskin: Essays by Rocky Rivera, click here.
If you’re interested in watching a 15-minute retrospective video on the BALMA Project in Chapter 5 of Street Data, click here.
Visit Norma at Pat’s Garage in SF to get your car fixed. (or help her get a job at SFMTA if you got a hook-up!)
Friday Nov 11, 2022
Friday Nov 11, 2022
In Episode 7, Alcine and Shane lean in to listen and learn from Dr. Kevin Godden and Perry Smith, Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent of the Abbotsford School District near Vancouver. Through story and one-inch windows into an evolving system, the conversation distills the role of deep listening in school transformation. We talk about Kevin’s first day of school in Canada as a Jamaican immigrant, confronting the ugliness of racism, and his mom’s message. We learn Perry’s story of wanting to wear moccasins to school as a young Indigenous student, in Abbotsford himself, with virtually no representation around him. And we think about what it means to carry the heart of a teacher and lead like a teacher. Join us.
For Further Learning
Learn more about the Deeper Learning Dozen, a community of practice that supports superintendents to transform their school districts in ways that create equitable access to deeper learning experiences and outcomes.
Get a copy of Perry’s beautiful children’s book, Powwow Dancing with Family.
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
In an emotional Episode 6, Alcine and Shane get real with author and educator Young Whan Choi, witnessing his personal story of marginalization in school and how it took another Asian man–during college orientation–to help him see himself for the first time in American history. Together, they 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 Oct 27, 2022
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
In Episode 5, Alcine and Shane talk to rural Kentucky district leader Melissa Biggerstaff. They hear her story about growing up in a district where your zip code and last name determined your opportunities. Lean in to hear about a conversation with a high school counselor that Melissa will never forget and that continues to fuel her moral imperative to this day. Finally, Melissa unpacks what it means to show up fully as a leader–to learn from and really listen to community members–and why we need to meet people where they are- especially physically- if we want to create radically inclusive institutions.
For Further Learning:
Get a copy of Street Data on Amazon, Corwin Press, or from a BIPOC-owned local bookstore.
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.