Human Restoration Project

Most of us probably experienced a homogenous version of literacy in our English classes: read a book, answer a few questions along the way, and compose an essay at the end about how we viewed a key theme. Rinse and repeat. And in our current age of high-stakes testing and high-stakes literacy, some kids are lucky to ever encounter a book at all; however, those same students are also surrounded by the narratives and themes of English class - in the messages they send and receive and the virtual communities they participate in, the media they consume and discuss with their friends, and in the video games they play. The goal of my guests today is to expand our vision of what that English class could be and induct students into something of an animistic perspective of literacy, as you heard from one guest in the opening: that the narratives and themes of English class are everywhere for those equipped to see them as such. Their Reader-Player Interactivity Framework [https://drive.google.com/file/d/13UPvHceKUbhSYlw_1AOfN0moTjacJnhm/view?usp=sharing]aims to give teachers and students the tools and confidence to do just that. Their paper, linked in the show notes, is a collaboration between Karis Jones, Brady Nash, Virginia Killian Lund, Scott Storm, Alex Corbitt, Beth Krone, and Trevor Aleo, of which Karis, Brady, Virginia, and Trevor joined me for this conversation. Article: The Reader-Player Interactivity Framework: How Do Readers Navigate Diverse Varieties of Narrative Texts? [https://drive.google.com/file/d/13UPvHceKUbhSYlw_1AOfN0moTjacJnhm/view?usp=sharing] Unsilencing Gratia [https://digthisbird.itch.io/unsilencing-gratia]: a tabletop RPG book designed to be an easy introduction to collaborative storytelling, usable in a classroom setting. We Know Something You Don't Know [https://virginialund.itch.io/we-know-something-you-dont-know]: a tabletop RPG that invites you into the lives of students making their way day-by-day through the education system. You can reach any of our guests by email: Trevor Aleo: aleotc@gmail.com [] Karis Jones: karis.michelle.jones@gmail.com [] Virginia Killian Lund: vkillianlund@uri.edu [] Brady Nash: bradylnash@gmail.com []

When I sat down with James Mannion to talk about the educational polycrisis back in July, his long-time colleague, friend, and collaborator Kate McAllister was right there by his side. After the recording, Kate & I spent a long time catching up about her work and its intersection with our own, and we immediately vowed to remember to hit record the next time we chatted. Kate McAllister is both a co-founder of The Human Hive and the founder of The Hive in Cabrera, a school for ChangeMakers in the Dominican Republic, where she joined me from for this conversation. Kate has over 20 years' teaching experience and has spent much of that time training and developing teachers and educators all over the world. She is a passionate educator, published author, fellow of the Chartered College of Teachers and The RSA. The Hive, founded back in 2020, is Kate's answer to the question "what if?" What if learning could be different? What if we did education with not for others? What if we can become more self-determined in our learning? What if education can help regenerate the planet? And as you'll hear in this episode, Kate's personal and educational journey is a remarkable reflection of her dedication to the fully human messiness of growing and learning in community with others. The Human Hive [https://www.thehumanhive.org/]

The reach and impact of our food systems – that is, the complex, interconnected, and globalized web of institutions, resources, and processes that bring food from the farm, to the table, and into the waste stream – is universal: every single one of us has either worked in ourselves, or known people who work growing, raising, producing, processing, packing, transporting, preparing, or serving the food we all eat. In the food we consume, we become connected to the conditions, the labor, and the people of the food system that produces it. Fully 1 in 10 American workers, over 17 million people, work in paid frontline food system jobs. And millions more work at home to plan, shop, prepare, and in many households, grow the food their children and families eat. There are massive implications for schools as well, as they participate in the food system directly to bring literally billions of meals to children each year, and as labor in the food system impacts the families, children, and communities our schools serve. My guests today are Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares, associate professors and co-authors of Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain, available from University of California Press in September. Their book captures the grim realities faced by food workers alongside the opportunities for solidarity at every point in the system while amplifying the successes and challenges faced by movements to make food work, good work. "As long as people are suffering to get food to our plates," they write, "we need to center food workers in any vision for a just food system." Will Work for Food book from UC Press [https://www.ucpress.edu/books/will-work-for-food/paper]

In the opening pages of my guest's book, she recounts a colleague's bumpy plane ride that provided the insight for the title of the book, Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership: "We are facing turmoil in education, and the job of good leaders is to 'tame the turbulence'...educators have been caught in this turbulence; it permeates our profession and we haven't been able to get above it. As a result, it is the role of leaders to help teachers see how even small, simple shifts can change a child's experience of school." Rooted in real-world stories, Taming the Turbulence offers solidarity and actionable strategies to education leaders committed to centering the needs of all learners in increasingly polarized societies. And the author, Jennifer D. Klein, is an experienced educator and advocate for student-centered, experiential learning as a catalyst for positive social change. With two-decades of classroom teaching across a number of diverse international settings, as a teacher in Costa Rica and a school leader in Colombia, she now focuses on inspiring and training educators worldwide, working with groups like What School Could Be, The Institution for International Education, and The Buck Institute. Her previous books include The Global Education Guidebook: Humanizing K–12 Classrooms Worldwide Through Equitable Partnerships and The Landscape Model of Learning: Designing Student-Centered Experiences for Cognitive and Cultural Inclusion, coauthored with Kapono Ciotti, who we spoke with about that work back in episode 159. You can connect with Jennifer at principledlearning.org [https://zencastr.com/preview/episode/68b24e6c1a00b16b37940368] Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership [https://www.corwin.com/books/taming-turbulence-ed-leadership-291724?srsltid=AfmBOoq4usON1WKOyXwtu3I2q_R74lFG6ZdTSQr5EV_PLn6doOGXRCf3#main-content] from Corwin

Back in December 2024, I got an email from Tom Rademacher raving about an upcoming book from a teacher who is now a licensed counselor that read, "The thing that hooked me when I read it the first time was a whole part on teachers recognizing their own triggers to their anger and stress and learning to understand and adapt to them... but the whole thing is gorgeous." The author was of course my guest today, Maria Munro-Schuster, and the book, which is now in print, is The Empathetic Classroom: How A Mental Health Mindset Supports Your Students – And You, which the HRP team was more than thrilled to contribute the forward: "The Empathetic Classroom provides therapeutic self-reflection activities and prompts for educators and colleagues, the psychological theories underpinning them, guidance for applying them with students, and scalable activities for classroom implementation. Maria Munro-Schuster's call to consider the mundane over measurement is essential in improving the current state of education. This proactive approach acknowledges that we are all learners and that all of humanity has something to gain from this mission. We can create school climates that are no longer so arid that a single spark or gust of wind sets everything ablaze. If we can do this we may find that the fires are more manageable and less frequent." Order: The Empathetic Classroom (Teacher Created Materials) [https://www.teachercreatedmaterials.com/products/the-empathetic-classroom-how-a-mental-health-mindset-supports-your-students-and-you-ebook-153688?srsltid=AfmBOor8uINrWPYrLI-3jK0tycK66qsuvi_zbUgRls-y7W-Af6hyh4JJ]

"We are a community affair. We're Autistic, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, Tourettes, schizophrenic, bipolar, apraxic, dyslexic, dyspraxic, dyscalculic, non-speaking, and more. We've collectively experienced rare diseases, organ transplants, various cancers, many surgeries and therapies, and lots of ableism and SpEd. We've experienced #MedicalAbleism, #MedicalMisogyny, #MedicalRacism, #MedicalTrauma, and #MedicalGaslighting. We understand chronic pain, chronic illness, and the #NEISvoid "No End In Sight Void". We know what it's like to be disabled and different in our systems. We know what it is like to live with barriers and what it means to not fit in and have to forge our own community. Disabled and neurodivergent people are always edge cases, and edge cases are stress cases. We can help you design for the edges, because we live at the edges. We are the canaries. We are "the fish that must fight the current to swim upstream." And that's just the opening statement on Stimpunks.org [http://stimpunks.org/]. Stimpunks has been among HRP's closest allies over the years, and I am so grateful to be joined by an amazing cross section of Stimpunks today -- Ryan Boren, Chelsea Adams, Norah Hobbs, and Helen Edgar, who also runs Autistic Realms – to speak to their roll your own, DIY, Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People. Chelsea had to step away during recording so you'll hear her voice just in the first half. This episode was a long time coming, and I hope you enjoy it. You can connect with Stimpunks and find all of the resources mentioned in this episode at Stimpunks.org [http://stimpunks.org/]. Mentioned in this episode: Stimpunks Website [https://stimpunks.org/] Community Discord [https://stimpunks.org/community/join/] Mutual-Aid [https://stimpunks.org/aid/grant/] Map of Monotropic Experiences [https://stimpunks.org/2024/10/21/map-of-monotropic-experiences/] The Five Neurodivergent Love Languages/Locutions [https://stimpunks.org/2022/01/22/the-five-neurodivergent-love-languages-2/] 10 Obstacles to Neurodiversity Affirming Practice [https://stimpunks.org/2024/07/29/10-obstacles-to-neurodiversity-affirming-practice/]