Episode 200: The HRP Mixtape

Speaker 1 And welcome to the two hundredth episode of the Human Restoration podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Today's episode is a celebration. Eight years ago, Chris McNutt launched the HRP podcast, Things Fall Apart, as it was called at the time, to spread the word about progressive education by talking to educators, researchers, writers, and thinkers about these ideas and how to put them into practice. It was how I met Chris in the first place. Since then, as HRP has grown beyond our wildest expectations from being just a podcast to being an organization and a community, and we've turned these hundreds of conversations into a way of practicing education. First, that learning is rooted in purpose finding and community relevance, that social justice is the cornerstone of educational success, that dehumanizing practices do not belong in school, and that learners are respectful toward each other's innate human worth. Like I said at the top, today's episode will be a celebration, and I'll be doing a Casey Kaesem rundown of a selection from our top 10 most listened to episodes with clips from each, as well as hear favorite episodes from the HRP team and a couple of folks who sent us their top picks. But first, some trivia. These first 199 episodes have been downloaded over a 131,000 times. We've hosted over 200 guests and seven organizations from StimPunks to the ACLU with just 17 repeats. Doctor Susan Bloom gets the hat trick with her three separate appearances. You're probably listening to us from The United States, but one third of you are listening from outside The US, representing virtually every country in the world from poll to poll. We have nearly as many listeners in India as we do in Australia and Canada. And, of course, it's because of our listeners and the community that's been built around this podcast that we exist at all and continue to not only release quality conversations, but stay grounded with our work in schools. Thanks so much for everything you've done over the years to help keep us going. It's truly a privilege to listen and learn alongside you all. If you're new or wanna know more about what it is that we do, head on over to humanrestorationproject.org. And I'll start the celebration with Chris's top three. Beginning with episode 169, It's Like a Baby Jail, Power and Early Childhood Education with Chloe Keegan, released in May 2025.

Speaker 2 Well, the country needs to invest in children so that when they grow up, they can make us money, and it's an investment and a return. And it's just, what? Really? That's that's where the value is now? It's no longer about play and, you know, having, you know, emotionally regulated people and people who are interested in climate action or values that are important or people who can voice themselves in a meaningful way. It's now focused on do what you're told, comply, listen to what authority says, and then continue that when you're an adult. I... It's just I'm lost for words nearly. Well, where do we end up with that? Yes. I can do planning. Yes. I can do documents. I can do checklists. I can prove that these children are gonna do everything here in the next nine months. And I, again, will say it doesn't need to be done. We need to come back to remembering what's great about our sector, and it's play. It's socializing. It's interactions. It's being a child in childhood that isn't being schoolified to be this marketed product. You know, we need to come back to what does early childhood mean, and I think we're losing that a little bit.

Speaker 1 Chris's next pick is from episode one zero six, a school showcase featuring Assumption College in Kilmore, Australia, released in March 2022.

Speaker 3 About six years ago, Vaughn, myself, and and and Kendall and a number of the other leaders of the community were watching our student data really plateau and not... They didn't seem to be progressing in their learning. We were running a very traditional curriculum. And our cultural data that we were receiving from large scale surveys was showing, particularly in those middle years, you know, the 12, 13, 14, 15 year olds, they were just getting more and more disengaged in their learning. So we looked at all of that data, spoke to a number of institutions around the place and organizations, and really reflected ourselves and thought we need to do something radically different here to get our students back on track and really invigorate and and be able to demonstrate growth for these kids and provide them with interesting and, exciting pathways.

Speaker 4 One of the things that we found, you know, at Assumption is that the the narrative that was, quite common in the staff is that the kids were not motivated. And, you know, in many ways, you know, the way that our traditional curriculum was set up, you know, meant that students really struggled to engage with, you know, with classes and curricula that, perhaps didn't suit their needs. So one of the things that we wanted to do is to try to create a program that actually met, you know, the needs of the students. And hence, the origin of of MIMAP, you know, really is the work of Dan Pink and his work drive, you know, focusing on monetary autonomy and purpose. And it really is a take on, you know, self determination theory, from Dietschy and Ryan, where we wanted to create, environment that met the needs of the students.

Speaker 1 And lastly, episode one fifty one, nourishing caregiver collaborations with Naval Kuruni, released in July 2024.

Speaker 6 We're not one of those families that has, you know, tons of family heirlooms. But what we do have, especially because my father's side of the family, most of their items were lost in the Iran Iraq war that was subsequent to the revolution in the eighties. And so what we do have are few, but really important to me, gilims. And these gilims are super wonky and irregular and handmade and often vegetable dyed. And each of these gilims tell a story. The person who created those gilims may have looked out of the windows and and seen a cow or might be, you know, telling a love story that they are thinking about while they are doing the weaving. And so you see these random objects or these kind of telltale signs of different storytelling in the rug that holds you and grounds you. And I thought to myself, you know, this is how education should go. It should be grounding and natural and personal and also flexible and nimble and, you know, not packaged and from a factory, but tailored to the person who was creating it and for the people who are... Right? So... And that they're meaningful. And so that is how I kind of anchor my teaching pedagogy.

Speaker 1 The next set comes from Pick n Stone on our Discord. Starting with episode 169, teaching contentious topics in a divided nation with Ryan Sprott. Released May 2025.

Speaker 7 The biggest obstacle for teaching contentious topics to me has always been this efficiency model of education, not necessarily, like, divisive political rhetoric, because his teachers were so often pushed to move forward, to go fast, to push students towards some sort of standardized outcome, and to actually, like, build students thinking that there is a right answer on complex questions. And to arrive at that answer quickly is something that is good and and valued. I wanted to use teaching contentious topics to disrupt what I see as, like, a a really pervasive and insidious problem in education where there's there's just not much room for allowing for uncertainty, allowing students to be okay with not knowing the answer, to a difficult question. And because people grasp two contentious topics in really strong ways, I thought that this was the perfect place to push against that efficiency model and allow for more space of ambiguity, more space of exploration.

Speaker 1 Next up is from episode 189, what prison can teach us about school with Jennifer Berkshire, released in March 2026.

Speaker 8 They have a very strong sense that the purpose of education is to keep people in line. And what was so interesting was that it wasn't just them. Right? Like, could totally see how somebody who's been in prison for twenty years could reach this conclusion, but it was the people they talked to who worked at the prison. It was their own family members that they all felt like that, you know, it was not about getting ahead. It was not about democratic citizenship. It was about maintaining a fairly rigid hierarchy. I found that so eye opening and and frankly, like, a real wake up call.

Speaker 1 And Pick n Stone's last pick, building the Appalachia of the future with the Appalachian Futurism Project. Episode 198, released in September 2026.

Speaker 9 We tell you, Bill, all the time that when you're in the real world, this will happen and that will happen. But our teenagers are living in the World War every day. They go home. They work jobs. They have families. They have social events. They're living in the community already. It's not that they don't exist until they graduate high school, and they're currently disenfranchised. They can't vote. They have very few ways for them to express their needs and desires for what they want their communities to be. So how do we tie these two things together that we want young people to be involved in civic life and co creating the future that they are the ones inheriting but also currently living in?

Speaker 10 But I ended up spending my last two years of high school at Elizabethton High School, and I fundamentally believe it completely altered the course of my life and the path I'm on today. I still say that today, and that's before I started working here. So it really made me grow to love this region and this community. I say all the time that this community just completely embraced me as their own without a second thought, and that is something that I had never experienced before. So... Yeah. So we moved here when I was 16, fell in love with the area, the community. I consider myself to be Appalachian these days. First sixteen years of my life, I would not have told you that.

Speaker 1 This next one comes from Josh Rapun on LinkedIn, who sent this message. Far and away, my favorite episode was with Gary Stager, he says. In education circles, we try to be polite, calm, level, balanced, which means we are not often speaking the truths that are on our minds. Doctor Stager comes out of the gate like a gladiator in the arena. The bush burns, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater, the Red Sea parts, explosions are heard. While listening, I felt heard, seen, and understood. For a few minutes, he was my muse. Thanks, Josh. Here's a clip from episode one ninety, Reanimating the Art of Teaching with Gary Stager, released March 2026.

Speaker 5 What a lot of schools are are facing today is, a rise of pedagogical authoritarianism. This remarkable certainty that we know how every child learns. They learn x things at y pace in z sequence, and any deviation from that is malfeasance. And teacher agency has been been removed. There was no teacher agency. There's no student agency. And there's this agency spiral of we remove discretion from teachers so their teaching becomes more automatic and systematized and rote and, standardized. And then the results suffer, and we respond to that by removing more agency from from them. And it keeps getting worse and worse. And we're left with this fraud called the science of learning, which is neither science nor learning.

Speaker 1 Next up are Cassie's top three, and she includes these notes alongside her picks. One of my favorite episodes, she writes, and one of the first I ever listened to, is Systemic Social and Emotional Learning with Doctor Emma McMain. I also recommend her essay, Breakfast, Basic Needs, and the Problem with Maslowing, which is featured on our website. I first heard this episode before I worked at HRP, and I remember feeling a sense of relief after listening. As a school counselor, I was becoming more and more aware of the systemic issues in schools, and I was struggling with SEL being treated as a box to check, mandated, prepackaged, and scripted. This episode validated something I'd felt every day but hadn't fully worked out, that social and emotional learning isn't separate from being human. It happens for all of us, all the time, and forever. Cassie says this episode helped me zoom out from feeling a constant need to rework my school counseling program to meet student needs and to start considering the interconnected systems that make that task difficult. Along with the essay, it's my go to recommendation to progressive school counselors and other educators interested in social emotional development and social justice.

Speaker 12 Disclaimer, not all SEL programs are scripted. But she's looked at ones like Second Step. And the example is a first grade classroom that's going through the Second Step lesson. Like, this is our thirty minute SEL block. And the prompt is for the teacher to ask the students, like, when is this recent time that you felt sad? And so a child raises his hand and he says, well, last night, I was really, really cold. This is like the middle of the winter, New England. I was so cold and there's no heat in my house and my blanket has holes in it. And I was shaking and I couldn't sleep. I was so sad. And so the teacher who, to be fair, like Cleo Sterns really believes as an empathetic person, is also feeling very much like she has to be... Maintain fidelity to this script. So the teacher goes, thanks for sharing. Now what do we do when we feel sad? We belly breathe. Sure. So it's just like Morbidly funny. Yeah. Like, it's it's like funny in a horrific way. Right? Yeah. So it's like, what happens when, okay, we did our SEL, but, like, here's this stark example of actually needing to look at the cause of why someone would legitimately feel something negative. And, like, what happens when the onus of responsibility is on kids to deep breathe through oppression and through misogyny or racism or whatever it may be, it's like, okay. If we if we emphasize, like, these programs more than, like, the meaning behind them, like, we're really doing a disservice at the end of the day. And I think a lot of SEL researchers would totally agree with that.

Speaker 1 Cassie's second pick is cultivating creativity and connection in the classroom with Tom Rendon and Zachary Steer. Cassie writes, I love this episode so much. I'm a sucker for anything around the connections between things. When this episode came out, I was working on a personal project and thinking a lot about what makes someone an artist. To me, creativity was a form of meaning making and a way to reflect on who we are and where we wanna go. I like to think about art as something defined by the creator and then again by each observer. However, I never considered the ways in which creativity is essential to evolution. It's a reminder to give my own kids as many chances as I can to explore what creativity means to them and to stay present enough to avoid interrupting their creative flow when it happens. Here's an excerpt from the episode.

Speaker 13 What it takes, though, is there's a component of creativity, especially for those with disability, that involves advocacy. And I don't think we do enough for self advocacy. I think there's this intimidation because you're advocating to authority, which would be, let's say, a teacher or even the principal or whoever. And even in your adult life, you're advocating maybe to your administration. But there's no... There shouldn't be any fear of that because all you're doing is standing up for yourself. And there's a way to do it eloquently, you know, because some people just don't know. People don't understand.

Speaker 14 I will tell you that I have never planned a lesson that ever came out the way I planned it. Never. So what is that telling me? Is that this even if I just wanted to do a skeleton, that's all I'm gonna have to use anyway because it's all I'm gonna be allowed to use given the sheer variety of reality that comes in and takes you off in a kind of different direction. So thinking if if you can reframe those moments of chaos when you go, uh-oh, we're really getting off topic here as where's the creative energy taking me and how can I ride that like a surfer rides a wave still getting down, getting back to the beach? Right? Just don't wanna get to the shoreline. But can I reframe that as an opportunity rather than as an obstacle? And maybe the newness and purpose can be a useful way of doing it.

Speaker 1 Getting everything else for this podcast together was actually pretty easy. The hardest part of it was going back through and trying to pick my top three. I could have gone with my top baker's dozen, to be honest. But I'll go ahead and start with a couple of deep cuts. The first is episode 40, shifting from industry to well-being with doctor Susan Engel, released in November 2018.

Speaker 15 Do what you're told and you pay attention in many places. Grown ups... If you, the child, does that. If you see a child... Child's focused on their work in front of them and not fidgeting and not looking around and not wriggling, you often... A tea... A teacher or an educator will think, oh, yeah. They're engaged. And probably what they really mean or what a psychologist would see is focus, which is important. It's not unimportant. And compliance, being able to follow rules. Again, not unimportant, but not the most important thing because actually if you flip this around and help a child get really engaged, which is to be absorbed by something, to lose awareness of what's going on around you because you're so focused on the task, to have an internal sense or drive to learn more or achieve more with the project, whatever it is, then oftentimes, children are focused, they do pay attention, and they're able to acknowledge or, you know, abide by rules. So engagement comes first, not after. And if you... And and like I said, developmental psychologists know this. I mean, watch any three year old who's wriggling around and looking around and shouting out or doing what three year olds do, and then watch them get really absorbed in something they care about. Building something with blocks or rolling a ball or watching something fascinating that's going on outside the car window, they become totally absorbed and totally engaged. And that's what you want... So the thing that educators often forget is that what the school should do is build on natural development, not try to redirect it or thwart it. And that's what I'm arguing for in the book. So so to go back to the question of curiosity or creativity and why those are important early on or well-being, it's because fostering those is the best foundation for the kinds of learning that are important later on. I mean, learning about mathematics or learning how to read a complex text or learning how to write software for a computer. It's not that those things are unimportant. It's just a question of what's the best way to get people able to do those things.

Speaker 1 Next up is episode one zero two, fighting back against debt with the debt collective, released in January 2022.

Speaker 16 You know, this is some work that Jason and I have really been pushing in the higher ed context, but it's equally as true, in some cases, and more so in the k 12 context, which is that this debt doesn't just burden individuals. It also burdens the institutions themselves. So budget cuts and the the decline of progressive taxation that funds higher ed and k 12 schools means that these schools themselves also take on debt, and they pass on a lot of that debt to students in higher ed in the form of tuition, which then becomes student debt. But that's also the cost that workers and the public bear in terms of program budget cuts, furloughs, all kinds of austerity pressures that institutions k 12 through higher ed face is a function of debt in a lot of cases. And there's... It's kind of, you know, for any kind of, like, budget nerds out there, it's really interesting when you start to look at your institution's budget and take a... Just begin to understand what portion debt service plays in the institution's budget. You know, in the the Philly public schools, it's it's close that they had to actually pass some laws saying that it couldn't grow higher than 10% of the budget. But it hovers around 9% right now of the whole school district's budget goes to paying the interest and the fees and the principal of borrowing money that they didn't have. So this this debt, I think a good way... I've heard Thomas say this before, and it really stuck with me. Debt is a poverty tax. It's the price that we pay from not having enough to begin with, and that is true from from the people, from students, from educators, and institutions themselves. So I think it's pretty comprehensive. When you put your debt goggles on, you start seeing it everywhere.

Speaker 1 And finally, it was such a joy, a treat, and a privilege to be able to talk with Diane Ravich for episode 186, changing my mind about schools and everything else from January 2026.

Speaker 17 It's the rich kids who are always at the top and the poor kids are always at the bottom. And if you don't do something to remediate and improve the lives of the kids at the bottom, nothing will ever change. That all that testing was enriching the testing companies and diverting money from teachers and from the things that schools need like capital repairs and doing nothing to help children. What... I mean, if children don't have medical care, if they don't have a roof over their head, if they don't have nutritious meals at least once, twice, or three times a day, they're not gonna do well in school. If they're sick because they don't have medical care, You know, they have all the negative impacts, social influences, and they don't do well at school. That should not be a surprise. And I once heard Bill Gates give a talk to an audience of teachers and he gave a speech on the virtues of standardization. And he said, you know, the great thing about standards is if you have a toaster and you plug it in in California and then you fly across the country and you plug it in in New York or Texas or Oregon or Iowa, it works. And it works because there's standardization. And then I kept thinking, but children are not toasters and teachers are not toasters. People are different.

Speaker 1 As you can imagine, several of our top episodes have been mentioned in these previous lists. So to wrap up with ones that we haven't played so far, here's a selection from our top 10 most listened episodes. Starting with episode 86, developing anti racist universal design for learning with doctor Andratisha Fritzgerald.

Speaker 18 We have to think about the individual decisions that we make that communicate value to those who are in our learning community. And so when we think about how our learners learn, when we think about what they need, what is comfortable for them, we build environments that say to them, you know enough about you to make decisions for you. The opposite of that is power, and that's what Lisa Delpit writes about this code of power. And in the code of power, the people with the power make the rules to make sure that they're comfortable because they make the rules. And so juxtaposed to a culture of power where you do what I say because I told you to do it because I am empowered because I am telling you to do what I believe everyone should do to be right, we have this culture of honor that says, I value you. I want to know more about you, that you are the expert on you. You make decisions that work for you, and together, we'll talk to... We'll talk together about what decisions govern your best outcome. So let's say, for instance, flexible seating. I'm not going to tell you where to sit, but together, we will evaluate whether your choice was the best choice for your learning, and do you need to make different choices for your best outcomes. This empowers the learner to make decisions and to customize any learner environment they go into, not just to comply. Because even if the the compliance led to an outcome that was good for them, will they be able to take you with them to make decisions in every learning environment they're in? No. So every learner needs to learn how to drive for themselves, whether that's how they take information in or what supports they need or how they show what they know to the world. These are the areas where learners need to be in the driver's seat. Putting them in the driver's seat says, you have the tools that you need to drive. Now I'm not gonna just turn over the keys to you and send you out onto the expressway recklessly, but we will take the steps together to make sure that your driving meets your needs, that you know how to arrive at your destination safely, that you know what you need in order to learn. You know what supports work well for you. And if you can't find ones that work well for you, you have the tools to advocate for yourself, to ask for what you need. And for the asking to be received respectfully is a culture of honor. And many times, black and brown children, when they advocate for themselves, when they speak up for something that's not working for them, is dismissed as disrespect. So as Samaria asked, how many geniuses are sitting in the office? How many geniuses are cast to the side because what is in the learning environment is not working for them? And so honor becomes integral to making change in education one learner at a time and change in how educators view the learners in front of them as valuable, as bringing something to the table, as having something to offer, and as expert enough on themselves to make decisions for themselves.

Speaker 1 Next is a very recent episode, episode one ninety six from August 2026, The Myth of the Unmotivated Student with Doctor. Erica Patel.

Speaker 3 Imagine a line fluctuating from day to day. And what it looks like is on days where students report that their teachers use more practices that, you know, we know to support needs, like giving choices and rationales and question opportunities and, being open to students' emotions and and all these kinds... Tailoring tasks to their interests. When teachers did those things, students experienced an increase in feeling like their needs were being met that day relative to the prior class day. And also, know, showed an increase in feeling engaged that particular day when teachers are using those practices. And when those practices go back down, students' needs and engagement go back down relative to the prior class day. So it was very clear, like, how motivation fluctuates with teachers' practices that are aligned with those needs.

Speaker 1 Our third most listened to episode and the one that has the most listens across podcast platforms is from June 2025, episode 171 with Chenay Bond, reclaiming teaching and learning in the age of AI.

Speaker 19 What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Because if it is in service of an essay or a, you know, 54 question test, like the STAR test in Texas, where they are going to get a number of questions right or wrong, and then their essay is gonna be graded by AI, and that determines whether or not they graduate high school. If that's the end game, then, okay. Maybe AI is what your students should be using. Right? If that's the value that that you're building, that your district, that your institutions have placed on education, then some of the students have got it right. Right? They know they've they've they've they've decoded the game and they're doing exactly what we expect them to do. But if the value is on citizenry, if the value is on thought, if the value is on articulation and the ability to be in community with other people, then I think that building level administrators, district level administrators, educators, department chairs, everyone and students, and then home adults. Right? I think that that's a big part of it too. We need to come together and think about what we value as a community and how are those values showing up in our classroom. If we say that we value student voice, then, like, outsourcing student voices to a machine is nonsensical. If we say that we value community voice, then, like, not getting community voice and instead, like, generating something about what we think the community represents, nonsensical. We need to start, like, practicing what most of our mission and vision say... Statements say that we we preach.

Speaker 1 Our second most listened to episode is with none other than Cornelius Minor. From July 2019, episode 51, We Got This, Equity and Access in Schools.

Speaker 20 You know, so much of of what I call Hallmark branded teaching Mhmm. You know, that that there's a kind of the the real gritty work of teaching, and then there's the... What they show you on the hallmark channel or what they show you, you know, in Michelle Pfeiffer movies or, you know, Hilary Swank movies. And and and I think that we, as a profession, have really subscribed to this hallmark brand of teaching where we say things like, I believe the children of the future and, you know, love the kids. And and and all those things are really, really beautiful statements of ideal, but I think they they undermine our work. And so so we say things like we believe the children of the future, but then we engage in teaching that is all monologue. So I've got an adult at the front of the room pontificating, you know, and if we truly believe the kids are the future, then we believe that they have the answers and it's our job to help them to to really, like, amplify those. And so one of the things that I've been thinking about is my pedagogy itself, that how much of the teaching and learning that happens in the classroom is my voice and how much of it is kid voice. And one of the things that we know that is often said in education is the person doing the most talking is doing the most learning. And so one of the things that I've been thinking lots about in a very simple way is how do I design pedagogy, classroom practice that that puts the intellectual labor in the hands of the children? That if I'm standing in the front of the room doing all the intellectual labor and people are passively listening to me, then no learning is occurring. That's indoctrination. But I think, you know, when we hand power to kids in this way, one of the things that that means that for me is I've gotta decenter myself, that that so much of teaching has become this kind of cult of personality about the teacher. And really, it has to be about the community of kids that I'm serving. And so I'm really interested in, again, to answer the question really specific ways of moving from this, like, teacher monologue to authentic dialogue where we are engaging with children about crafting sustainable futures for them.

Speaker 1 And our most popular episode shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's been following us for any amount of time. The video of this talk is our most watched on YouTube. So we'll wrap up episode 200 hearing from Henry Giroux's Critical Pedagogy in a Time of Fascist Tyranny. Thanks so much for listening. I can't wait to see what the next 200 episodes bring. Take care.

Speaker 11 Finally, I wanna suggest that in the society in which democracy is under siege, it's crucial for educators to remember that alternative futures are possible and that acting on those beliefs is a precondition for making change possible, radical social change. At stake here is the courage to take on the challenge of what kind of world we want, what kind of future do we wanna build for our children. The great philosopher Ernst Bloch insisted that hope taps into our deepest experiences and that without it, reason and justice cannot prevail. In the fire next time, James Baldwin, my favorite novelist, adds a call for compassion and social responsibility to this notion of hope, one that is indebted to those who follow us. He writes, generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them. The moment we break with one another, the sea engulfs us and the lights go out.

Speaker 1 Thanks again for listening. If you wanna learn more about how schools are using Polaris to put student voice front and center, visit polariseducation.ai and sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date.