In the opening segment of the Education series episode 22, host Virginie Glaenzer conducts a round‑table introduction with four panelists—Nora, Luz, Shawna, and Joe Callender. Each participant shares a brief bio and their personal stake in rethinking education. Nora, raised by a systems‑thinking father, works across ecology, economics, health, and art, and is interested in how perception‑action dynamics can reshape schooling beyond industrial‑era constraints. Luz, a former scientist turned educator, has traveled worldwide interviewing alternative education projects, producing the documentary “Killing Curiosity” and designing a learning expedition for teachers. Shawna, a charter‑school educator and longtime homeschooler, co‑founded uSchool.com, a consultancy that matches families with educational opportunities, likening her role to a financial advisor for learning pathways. Joe Callender, a life‑science technology professional, draws on his experience with project‑team dynamics to advocate for systems‑thinking in workplace education, noting his personal burnout from traditional public‑school teaching. Virginie frames the discussion by critiquing the current industrial‑model education system—standardized, IQ‑focused, one‑size‑fits‑all—and posits the COVID‑19 pandemic as a moment to reflect on and redesign learning for schools and workplaces. The segment sets up the central question: “What might the lessons of the pandemic be for a learning revolution?”
Chapters
So before we begin our conversation, let's do as we always do, begin with a tour de table and have each of you tell us your name, what you do, and why you're interested in this topic in about a minute. So why don't we begin with you, Nora?
Okay, thank you. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here and to be with all of you, so thank you for inviting me. I work with systems and complexity and in lots of different arenas, so in ecology and economics and education and health and art and in biology and, and all sorts of different sort of ways of thinking about how our perception is formed and how that perception then becomes the world that we are living in. So what the relationship is between perception and action. And so of course, education's at the core of this. I had the extreme benefit of growing up with systems thinker for a father, and so I had a unique experience of being a child and being exposed to, um, I don't even want to say these theories because they weren't theories, they were a way of life. So, so I guess I think what I'm interested in is how that experience that I had as a child is possible for others, and what it means to an education system to actually take those ideas on board and not be blocked by the impossibility of what the classroom is and has been.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for being here. I'm excited. It's your second time, and your voice really matters to me and to other people. So thank you for being here. Luz, do you want to introduce yourself?
Yeah, sure. So yeah, my name is Luz. I'm from Spain, but I was, I was trained as a scientist. And I have been working in that research for 5 years, but then I wasn't really fulfilled with that. And then I— there was something that I was super passionate about, and that was education. I always knew that the key of all the challenges to solve the problems that we have right now in the world was education. So then I decided to train, to be trained as a teacher. And then is when I realized that the methodologies that they taught me to use weren't— it seems that they didn't evolve much in the last 200 years. So that kind of started a quest of what else is out there. And then I started traveling around the world interviewing different educational projects, trying to learn from the teachers and from the facilitators in all these spaces. And now I'm trying to make a documentary movie to summarize the experience. And also because there wasn't a space for the— 130 interviews that we have. So then we are trying to create also a learning expedition for teachers in order for them to share in more detail all the things that we saw. So that's more or less what we have been doing now.
Fantastic. I saw the trailer of Killing Curiosity, your documentary, which is fascinating, and I can't wait to be able to see the full movie. So thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Shawna.
Good morning. Thank you so much for having me, and it's really— I'm really excited to learn from you all today. I live in Sacramento. I've been working at a charter school here, which is a non-site-based charter. Our students learn at home. This is my 17th year starting off. Very interested in education that happens outside of the classroom. We have 6 children and we've homeschooled on and off, which has been fun. I think it's really important to listen to what the kids need and that changes year to year. Also, family life is very important, ebbs and flows, and what works for families, what doesn't work at certain times. As a homeschool mom, I found it very challenging to find opportunities for my kids. That started me to meet up with my co-founder and we started uschool.com. Which is basically a consultancy, education consultant. We work with families and help them find the best educational opportunities and situations for their kids and for their families at that time. I'm like a financial advisor, but for education. Our goal is to work with families from preschool to career and serve as another advocate for their children and their children's learning styles in the education space. So that's what I'm working on.
Fantastic. Thank you for being here, and we will come back to your uSchool website. I have a couple of questions that I might find the time to, uh, question, to ask. Um, and finally, Joseph.
Hi everybody, I'm Joe Callender. I'm, uh, Located just outside of New York City. Not really an educator or in the education field professionally. I work in the life science industry with technology, but it's kind of through that observing what's going on with project teams and just the ongoing symptom mitigation that goes on within these projects. And okay, what's kind of working backwards, you know, what may be leading to that. And, you know, thinking about, you know, educating people and getting them to think more about the complexity of systems as opposed to symptoms within the systems. So I'm married to a lifelong educator who just retired. So, and that's— I'm surrounded by a lot of educators, a lot of family friends. I did teach for 2 years, but I burnt out within 2 years. In public school. So it's always been an interest to go back to education and look at what we can do. And I think the last couple years I've been really delving into systems thinking and just feeling like that, you know, if we can create more systems when these people go to work, there's more people sitting around the boardroom table saying, hey, we need to address the system, not not the symptoms. And hopefully, we can start creating that kind of talent for the future of work.
Absolutely.
Well, I think that's it. Yeah.
Welcome, Joseph. And Joe, I mean, I call you Joe.
Joe.
It's Joe for being here. And it's always important to have people that think about system versus symptom. And I know you're passionate about this. So welcome. So I think it feels, at least to me, it feels safe to say that our current education education system is built on the Industrial Revolution model and primarily focuses on IQ memorization and standardization in a one-size-fits-all model. The pandemic offers us a chance to reflect on established processes and methodology and really to question how we can shape the future of learning in school and in the workplace. Nelson Mandela said education is the the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. I'm not a fan of the word weapon, but he's correct about the power of education. So why don't we begin our conversation with this first big question: What might the lessons of the pandemic be for learning revolution? And Nora, I'd like to invite you to share your thoughts on that big question.
