180 Days Podcast Featuring Dana Center K–12 Experts

The 180 Days Podcast—which focuses on providing the education community access to the successes, challenges, and opportunities in education through conversation—has featured six Dana Center staff members this season.

Each episode features conversations centered around creating systemic educational change and supporting teachers and schools in creating equity and excellence in education through professional learning.

Find the episodes below, and subscribe to 180 Days Podcast to hear more from experts from all areas of the K–12 education system.

Podcast Episodes
 
Supporting Leaders, Teachers & Students with Dr. Shelly LeDoux and Jacqueline LeJeune
The Dana Center’s Shelly LeDoux and Jackie LeJeune talk about equitable and excellent math and science education—where students are making sense and taking responsibility for their own learning, and teachers are facilitating that learning—and the ways we can help schools and districts get there. From different types of professional learning approaches, like train-the-trainer or asynchronous professional learning, to leadership qualities that support implementation and sustained change, they talk on a wide range of professional learning topics.

Elementary Approaches with Michael Greenlee & Tracey Ramirez
Tracey Ramirez and Mike Greenlee talk about their focus at the Dana Center, which is on developing and writing professional learning experiences for teachers and leadership at the system level (school, district, state). They explain the process of taking the needs of a ‘system’ and developing a learning experience based on these needs. They also discuss how important it is to take research-based practices and strategies and make them applicable to what teachers do in the classroom every day, and talk about their approaches to helping teachers create lasting changes. 

Secondary Approaches with Mary Davis and Denise Thornton
Using the context of the systemic and expansive work Dana Center staffers Mary Davis and Denise Thornton have done with large school systems, they share their thoughts and expertise on developing and delivering professional learning. They highlight the importance of long-term engagement between teachers, leaders, and professional learning experts to build organic and sustained growth—one that is developed with local educators and able to continue without outside experts. They also discuss the critical importance of vertical alignment as a part of the systemic change in a school or district and avoiding the ripple effect of skipping a learning standard.