The Long Run Listen
Top Education Policy Podcasts for the Week of October 11
I am training for a half-marathon (I think). I am not sure I can call it training if I have not registered, yet (I will have to commit soon). My point is that I am going for long runs on Saturdays.
During my long runs I enjoy getting lost in podcasts. Sometimes I listen to education-specific podcasts and other times they are education-adjacent, but they always have a way of setting the tone for my upcoming week. In the spirit of creating some shared knowledge I’d like to share a new series of posts on my weekend long run listens.
We can and should create time for student voice, at home and school
This weekend I took a beautiful six mile run through the Reed College neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Reed College is where Steve Jobs went to college (eventually dropping out) and took the calligraphy classes that shaped his initial thinking about the expansive Apple fonts.
The Education Gadfly Show: Why boys flail
Relatedly, my first pod-share is the latest Education Gadfly show on Why Boys Flail. In this episode, Mike Petrilli and Richard Whitmire discuss why boys’ academic achievement, especially in the long-term, is so complicated and how the education community struggles to find the right path to get this issue on our shared policy agenda. Amber Northern wraps up the show with a great breakdown and conversation on the latest Data Note from the American School District Panel about the rise of virtual schools.
This American Life: Suitable for Children
Next up, I tuned into an episode from This American Life with Ira Glass (who in some ways inspired me to name my son Ira - a story for another time). The episode, Suitable for Children, covered stories of people recounting their childhood experiences with very grown-up matters and how it shaped their thinking into adulthood.
These pods had me thinking about my own kids, how they are experiencing this global health crisis, and our interactions as a family. It is difficult to create “air time” for our children or students to share and discuss their experiences when we are moving so quickly to soccer practice or the grocery store. But, this week, I am inspired to start unpacking my assumptions about what my own kids think and carving out more time for them to process out loud (even though they’ll probably all talk at once and my brain might explode).
Dr. Christine M. T. Pitts serves as Resident Policy Fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. As an Oregonian, raised by a multicultural family of educators, she brings over a decade of strategic leadership experience advancing a transformative vision for US education systems and bringing analytic skill to evidence-based policy agendas at all levels of governance. Prior to joining CRPE, Christine led research and evaluation for Portland Public Schools in Oregon and served as Policy Advisor at NWEA. Her academic research, focusing on accountability, governance, and social networks, can be found in Educational Researcher and Teachers College Record. As a lifelong educator, Christine has served in schools across the country as a teacher, reading specialist, and school and district administrator. Christine earned her BS and MAEd at East Carolina University, as well as her PhD at the University of Oregon. Christine lives with her husband and four children in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter @cmtpitts.