A more humane education feels very necessary right now. Our planet and its inhabitants all over the world seem to be crying out for it. Humane Educators Zoe Weil and Rae Sikora created IHE In 1996 to do precisely this. And so it is a huge pleasure this week to be able to welcome Zoh While and her colleague Julie Meltzer from the Institute onto the podcast.

“Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.” This is a quote from the paediatrician, Rachel Naomi Remen, that my guest this week quotes in her fantastic new book The Impossible Question of Living Well: How do we hold on to what matters, while also knowing how to let go? Dr Helen Street has been banging the drum that living well should be a priority of educational institutions for years, but more importantly, that this is not a question of individual ‘hacks to happiness’ as she talks about in this episode, but a fundamental rethinking of how much context plays a role in enabling or preventing possibilities for living well.

Something we often forget is how powerfully language shapes how we view each other and the world and how we interact as part of it. For that reason, it is a key part of how we help young people to understand their experiences, Both as a means of relating and communicating and as a set of skills that they acquire. This week it is a huge privilege to be able to welcome ⁠Kevin Belin⁠ onto the podcast who is the Director of the Diné Bizaad Institute and Navajo Language teacher at ⁠Navajo Preparatory School⁠, in Navajo Nation in what is now known as the United States.

As you will have heard in previous episodes for example with Ray Ison, Mette Böll and others, there is a lot of interest currently in systems thinking approaches in education as a key competency for our young people. But what systems thinking means once you scratch the surface is a question that we need to ask. And if we’re supporting our young people (as well as teachers and leaders) to navigate complexity, Dave will definitely have something to say about that! 

Keeping educational experiences alive, responsive and moving with our young people is a key piece of what the best educators do, even more impressive as it is often in stark contrast to the rigid, static institutions in which they live, work and learn. This week it’s such a pleasure to be talking with Dr Gholdy Muhammad whose amazing work on Historically Responsive Literacies supports teachers in creating spaces for mutual empowerment, confidence, and self-reliance in students…