Alec Patton talks to Michael McDonald, Stephen Rinaldo, and Tarima Levine about how Yonkers Public Schools and Bank Street Education Center improved eighth grade math proficiency particularly for students who are Black, Latinx, or experiencing poverty.

Learn more about the curriculum Yonkers used, i-Ready Mathematics

Read this Case Study to learn more about Yonkers' work

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Alec Patton talks to PBLWorks Lead National Faculty in Math Bryon Demerson about why led him to shift from being a highly successful "traditional" math teacher to embracing project-based learning.

Read Bryon's blog post: Overcoming PBL Hesitancy in the Math Classroom: A Teacher's Journey

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Alec Patton talks to Dr. Kim Carter, superintendent of Battle Creek Public Schools in Michigan, about how her district broke a pattern of outmigration through building relationships with families and local businesses and nonprofits based on transparency and LOTS of conversations.

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Alec Patton talks to Paola Capó-García about "Politics of the Personal," the twelfth-grade English project she created in which students chose a topic of personal interest to write an essay about—and create a piñata

Read more of Paola's poetry

See photos from the project

Learn how you can do professional development with Paola and the rest of the team

Learn more about the San Diego Teacher Residency

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Bell Middle School reduced its D/F rate from 51% in 2022 to 28% in 2024. That's a 23 percentage point reduction.

Even more impressive, for low income students, the D/F rate was 67% in 2022, and Bell cut it by more than half, down to 29% in 2024.

In this episode, Alec Patton talks to science teacher Teddy Meckstroth about how they did it.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman
• How to do the 2x10 Strategy (article) (video)
• The CARE Network

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In this episode, Alec Patton talks to Hamilton Elementary Principal Dr. Brittany Daley and San Diego County Office of Education Executive Leadership Coach Julia Bridi about how Hamilton cut its chronic absenteeism rate from 24% to 10% in a single year, using creative parent communication, home visits, data checks, and public sliming

See photos of the sliming, silly string, and Brittany's rainbow mohawk here!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Attendance home visit script
• ICAN school team self-assessment rubric
• How to do a 2x10 intervention (article) (video)
• Interview with Simon Breakspear about the Pruning Principle (podcast episode)

Learn more about how the RAISE Network is tackling chronic absenteeism in California here

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Alec Patton talks to Derek Mitchell, CEO of Partners in School Innovation, about his daily reading rituals. Mentioned in the episode:

• Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto
• Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews
• Jeanie Daniel Duck, The Change Monster
• Sheldon Eakins, Leading Equity
• Brian McClellan, The Powder Mage Trilogy (strictly speaking, Derek mentioned Blood of Empire, which is part of the trilogy that follows the Powder Mage Trilogy)

Derek’s recommendations to get started: Morning reading:

• Barack Obama, Dreams from my Father

Lunch reading:

• Rudy Crew, Only Connect

Evening reading:

• Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

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In this episode, Alec Patton talks to Maria Curtis, director of the Early Childhood Center at La Jolla Country Day School, in California, and Junior Kindergarten teacher Kristin Owen, about how they turned the discovery of a mud nest being built outside a classroom into a year-long project.

You can see photos from the project, including photos of the book, here (as soon as the link is live).

This episode is part of an occasional series on Regenerative Education. Here are the other episodes in the series (so far):

• Derek Mitchell and Scott Sampson on Regenerative Education
• Green School: Regenerative Education in the Balinese Jungle
• Green School Student Louis Lacour
• A Story of Butterflies, Regeneration, and Hope
• Solar for All Schools [guest episode from the Climify podcast]

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