Season 2, Episode 1: Welcome Back

Hey, Michael.

Hey, Diane. How you doing?

Well, let me offer you greetings from the apocalypse. It's feeling like we're living in a dystopian novel here in California.

Yeah. So, I mean, I've been watching it, obviously from all the Instagram posts and friends sending pictures and what you all are going through right now, I mean, that's worthy of an entirely different podcast. But give me the quick rundown because I'm just curious, how are you coping?

Well, Michael, you know, you know me, I'm a really positive person, and I think I've been faring fairly well through all that we're all experiencing. But I'll be honest, I am having to draw on every habit, every routine I know to stay positive and emotionally stable. I mean, it is pretty tough right now in the west for folks. I think everyone's kind of like, really? What more can we take here?

Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, the West, I think, is exceptional right now in how rough it is. But it's rough all over the country. Right. And that's why we're back doing this podcast again, because when we launched Class Disrupted, we thought it would be a one season limited run, 10 episodes. Let's help you rethink schooling in this time of the pandemic and really make something out of a really big mess. But from a pandemic to a recession to a racial reckoning and now the apocalypse that you're experiencing, there's still a lot going on and a lot that is impacting education and creating, frankly, a larger and larger window to rethink. And we're both optimistic people, maybe even transform education in schools for the better.

Well, Michael, 2020 is not over yet. And given how much has happened so far, there's still a lot of time available to us. And it's no joke what we are collectively dealing with. And then, of course, many people are dealing with at much greater depth and urgency. And we never forget that that place of privilege we come with. But we do continue to be committed to connecting every week, every other week. I think this time to really break down the latest, most important storylines of what's happening in education, because it's so connected to parents and families and educators. And we want to bring a perspective and a lens that we introduced in the first season of Class Disrupted.

So for those listening out there, just. Diane, I want to give them a little bit of a sneak peek of what that's going to look like in practice, because it's going to look different from our first episode where we had guests and a lot of interludes and we heard from parents. This time we're going to get together, as you said, every other week, and we're going to bring each of us a story or a hot topic or a question that we really want to talk about with each other and break down. Like, I know there are a lot of questions on my mind that I am dying for your take. And there are a lot of complicated questions I think, right now deserving that sort of attention to shine a light on. How do we think about these storylines? How do we think about these headlines that are breaking, these things that are impacting our kids every single day right now? And what are the opportunities for change amidst them? How do we see what is. Feels overwhelmingly negative a lot of time as a positive that we can actually transform?

Exactly right. And for those who are listening, Michael, you're going to hear a lot of familiar themes, because what's happening right now, what people are facing and dealing with, everything from the importance of technology in education to doing meaningful work rather than busy work and worksheets, to the value of a teacher, to the purpose of school, I mean, we're really going literally back to the purpose of school and the opportunities that we're giving kids and how those opportunities need to be much wider and broader than we. We are generally thinking of in our schools. All of these themes are going to keep coming up because that's really what people are grappling with right now and what we're seeing every week in our country.

That's exactly right. So for those listening, stay tuned, because Diane and I are excited to dig in. We're feeling a pressing urgency that we all need to dig in, though, to not just the questions of in person versus hybrid versus remote, but what does all of this mean if we're thinking about what education in schools ought to look like so that all students can be prepared to lead successful and fulfilling lives?

And with that, Michael, I'm looking forward to our first conversation. And I'm really curious to hear the storyline you'll bring on the next episode of Class Disrupted.

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