#65 – A New Story of School Based on Beliefs

Each month our Modern Learners Community (MLC) , we take on specific theme, and in August, our theme is "story." As in what is the current story of learning we are telling in our schools, how is that story changing, and what might the new story be?

And so to kick things off this month, in this podcast I interview Stephanie Pace Marshall, whose life's work has been centered around the transformation of learning and schooling. She is the founding president of the National Consortium for Secondary STEM Schools, and a past president of ASCD, and most relevant to our conversation today, her book The Power to Transform: Leadership that Brings Learning and Schooling to Life, is all about her work to name a new story, create a new map, and design a new landscape for life-affirming learning and schooling.

If you've been following our work at Modern Learners, you know that we talk a lot about being "in-between stories" as in the traditional story of education is breaking down but we've yet to really get clear on what the new narrative is. What I found so interesting about this conversation is Stephanie's perspective on how the story we've been telling got started, and why it's seems to be shifting so dramatically right now.

As I wrote in our latest blog post, we choose the stories we tell about learning and schooling. We're not required to promote an old and dying narrative just because others want or expect us to. And to that end, the story that Stephanie tells at the end of our talk speaks to the power we have to create new narratives if we choose to do so.

Hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

For more resources and links from this conversation, just click on the "podcast" topic in our MLC.