David Adams, CEO of The Urban Assembly (urbanassembly.org) joins the podcast to talk about social emotional learning, equity, and engagement in education. David discusses the role that engagement plays in driving equity, some of the tools educators have to promote engagement, and how equity is different from just equal access.

Andrew “Hutch” Hutcheson and Kinshasa Msola, Classcraft Learning Specialists, join the podcast to talk about their work partnering with schools and districts to help them create positive classrooms by improving student behavior with PBIS. 

Classcraft’s CEO and Co-founder, Shawn Young, talks about the launch of Collective Feedback, a new Classcraft feature that enables any school staff member — including teachers and administrators — to reward students for positive behavior. Shawn also discusses Classcraft’s evolution as a company, and how they shifted from being a classroom tool to something that helps school districts with PBIS and tiered intervention initiatives improve behavior at scale.

Dr. Maurice Elias, Director of the Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab at Rutgers University, joins the podcast to talk about the “hard truths” about soft skills. Dr. Elias covers the importance of compassion in moving our world forward, where SEL stands in 2021, and the connections between SEL and athletics.

Tony Williams, Instructional Tech Leader for New York’s Copenhagen Central School District, talks about inspiring, empowering, and engaging middle school students with the right edtech. Williams also shares strategies to make your school’s tech rollout a success and his perspective as a parent collaborating on an edtech tool that clicks.

Denise Zimmermann, Director of Mental Health for Spring ISD in Houston, Texas, joins the podcast to talk about the state of students’ mental health in a pandemic, why we also need to provide mental health support for teachers, and the differences between mental health and social emotional learning when it comes to education.

David Adams of The Urban Assembly joins the podcast to talk about how he defines equity, why promoting it in distance learning is so challenging, and the inextricable link between equity and education.

Harvard University’s Chris Dede joins Classcraft's Brian Belardi to talk about the differences between engagement and motivation, and why student motivation is so important in a remote setting.

Jennie Magiera, Head of Global Education Impact at Google, joins the podcast to talk about what equity means in education, the challenges to promoting equity while students are learning at home, and what we often get wrong when we think about equity. Jennie also discusses her love for gaming and why it can be such a powerful force in education.

Classcraft talks with New York City special educator and STEM coach Sean Arnold about why games and play are so effective in engaging students with special needs.