School Principals lead teachers and staff, set goals, and ensure students meet their learning objectives. They oversee day-to-day operations that range from handling disciplinary matters, to managing a budget, and hiring instructional staff. In the final installment of our A Mile in My Shoes series, we’re joined by Principals Paul Gumina (Renaissance High School for Musical Theater & the Arts), Candace Hugee (The Urban Academy School for Collaborative Healthcare), and Vanessa Williams (IS141, The Steinway School), who share the challenges and joys of the principalship and offer advice for anyone considering this role.

Teacher leaders guide a broad range of efforts, from modifying school-wide or content area curriculum, to supporting teachers in collecting and interpreting student achievement data, to improving instructional efficacy throughout a school. This week, we’re joined by three teacher leaders — Jennifer Castillo, Rachel Cerlen, and Garett Peters — who walk us through this complex role and reflect on their paths to becoming teacher leaders.

Broadly speaking, the function of teachers is to help students learn by imparting knowledge to them and cultivating the learning environment. However, teachers fill a complex set of roles, which vary from one society to another and from one educational level to another. Do we fully understand their roles? We’re joined by three teachers this week — Tanesha Cager, Chloe Chapel, and Leah Clark — who share their journeys and allow us to walk a mile in their shoes.

Educators often feel burdened by mandates and frameworks, as they usually signal changing expectations and a revolving door of initiatives. Can a new framework actually reduce this burden and help teachers to synthesize expectations in practical ways? In this episode, we’re joined by Leticia Pineiro, a Director of Teaching and Learning within the NYC DOE, to discuss the launch of our CR-SE guidebook — Centering Students: A Guidebook for Implementing Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education —  and how it’s making CR-SE clearer for teachers and school leaders.

In part two of our Exploring Equity series, we look at two additional books our community studied as we challenge ourselves to incorporate CRSP in our daily lives and work. Listen to our senior leaders discuss key takeaways from Cultivating Genius by Gholdy Muhammad, and Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces, by Detra Price-Dennis and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz.

Our community has been exploring equity and culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogy through shared reading as a form of professional development throughout the school year. In this week’s episode, we explore two of the four texts we studied as we challenge ourselves to incorporate CRSP in our daily lives and work. Tune in to hear our senior leaders discuss key takeaways from How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond.

Education policies directly impact teaching and learning, but often missing in policy decisions is the voice of educators. How can they become more involved and affect the trajectory of policies? Two former classroom teachers — Jasmine Bowles of Georgia’s Clayton County Public School Board and Mikayla Arciaga of the Intercultural Development Research Association — weigh in on the path to influencing policy.

In the third installment of our education policy series, we're joined by elected local leader Ethan Ashley and education advocate Justin McCorkle as we discuss the role school boards play in representing community needs in public education, setting hyper-local education policy, and defining the future of education for students.

Policies impact every aspect of education, but they’re often established with input from a limited number of voices. What role do educators play in interpreting and implementing policies that trickle down from the national level? Rani Corak of Teachers College, Columbia University and Dr. Basil Smikle, Director of the Public Policy Program at Hunter College, continue our policy series this week as they discuss the connection between national politics and the local impact of policies.

Our policy series kicks off with a look at the challenges involved when people with limited educational experience drive decisions that dictate what teaching and learning looks like. While we can believe these policymakers may be well-intentioned, we must also acknowledge the unintended consequences that arise in our classrooms as a result of their choices. Rani Corak joins us this week as we examine the gap between intent and impact when it comes to the myriad policies that surround educators today.