Education Suspended Intricate Roots

In today's episode we sit down with Joel Pippus, the Project Lead for Push to Heal, which uses skateboarding as a component for treatment and education with high needs students. Joel highlights different ways skateboarding can be used as an education tool and mental health strategy to support growth with students. He shares different ways it promotes regulation and can build executive functioning abilities. Joel's own personal story directly shines the importance of the continued need to think outside the box for better ways to serve our students.

Joel Pippus is a certified Child and Youth Care Counselor with Hull Services, a non-profit organization in Calgary, AB. Currently, Joel works at Hull’s program Pathways To Prevention: A Centre For Childhood Trauma as the Project Lead for Push to Heal and Training and Education Facilitator. Joel has presented locally and internationally about the Push To Heal project, and continues to develop resources (like the Push To Heal short film) and partnerships in the social skateboarding space.

Join us for as we spend time reflecting on some of our big takeaways from the previous four episodes.

In today’s new episode we talk with Becky Arndt, who is a Drama Teacher in the Racine, Wisconsin Public School System. Becky shares with us her Actors Tool Box and connects ways we can utilize those tools in other areas of education. She highlights the importance of environments that foster student strengths and belonging. Becky also talks about the important role Specials’ teachers play in education. Becky is a product of the Racine Unified School District and a third generation educator. She is in her eighteenth year teaching and is a strong believer in the power that the arts have on student growth.

In today’s episode of Education Suspended we connect with Dr. Mark Gooden, PhD., who is the Christian Johnson Endeavor Professor in Education Leadership and Chair of the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Gooden talks about the barriers that exist in our ability in education to retain strong teachers of color. He highlights the power of education to be the passport to the future, and how that leads to an obligation for us to make the system better for future generations. Dr. Gooden is co-author of the award-winning book Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership (ASCD, 2021) and co-author of the Principal's Legal Handbook, 5thEd.

Today we connect with Micaela DeSimone, who works in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Boston University. Micaela shares with us her experience as an educator and the impact burnout had on her. Her story is powerful, shedding light on the experience of so many in education. Micaela highlights steps needed to begin repairing the relationship between our educational system and our educators. Micaela (she/her) is from Queens, New York, where she spent the past seven years teaching middle school. During her tenure as a teacher, she also participated in and helped facilitate DE&I focused initiatives, while pursuing her Ed.D from Johns Hopkins University in Urban Leadership & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Micaela was also featured on PBS' "Brief but Spectacular" wherein she discussed issues that she faced as a teacher, as well as elaborated on her reasons to leave the field.

Welcome back to Education Suspended! Today we kick off Season 4 with a wonderful interview with Joe Mailander of the Okee Dokee Brothers. The Okee Dokee Brothers’ music focuses on community and harmony; we explore the importance of those two elements in our schools. Joe highlights the need for exploration, curiosity, and slowness in education. He reminds us that sometimes in order to learn we have to empty out first, unlearn, in order to learn again.