Human Restoration Project

Human Restoration Project

Since 2018, the Human Restoration Project Podcast has reimaged education through critical, progressive, human-centered learning!  Across nearly 200 episodes, and counting, we've explored every topic in education: ungrading and alternative assessment, interdisciplinary play-based and project-based learning, SEL, education reforms and systemic school change in society with students, teachers, leaders, researchers, and advocates around the world.  Join us on our mission to restore humanity to education, together!

  1. Crash Course Social Studies Education w/ Raoul Meyer

    12/20/2025

    Crash Course Social Studies Education w/ Raoul Meyer

    If you’ve taught or attended a high school course in the last decade, you’ve probably watched a Crash Course video. Their dozens of playlists on topics from Biology and Environmental Science to Economics and World History hold hundreds of videos and have collected over 2 billion views. Maybe even just hearing the title conjured John Green’s urgent cadence and the characteristic cartoon aesthetic in your mind, or the show’s outro, if you couldn’t hit the pause button fast enough, where John thanks the producer, the graphics team, and mentions, “The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer…” Today, Mister Meyer not only continues to teach, but earlier this year reached out to me about a new film project he’s working on with his brother Luke, scheduled for 2026 release, tentatively titled THE TEACHERS PROJECT. It’s described as “a compelling, character-driven journey into the lives of American educators as they navigate the intensifying culture war that has enveloped the nation’s schools since 2020. As political battles over sanctioned ideas, books, and lesson plans range from national headlines to local school boards, the film reveals the devastating consequences of this chaos and conflict for teachers, students, communities, and the future of American education.” And Raoul joins me to talk about Crash Course, the state of history teaching and the often untold stories of teachers wrestling with all of it. @mistermeyer on BlueSky

    1h 40m
  2. Are we Reader or are we Player? w/ Karis Jones, Virginia Killian Lund, Brady Nash, and Trevor Aleo

    11/22/2025

    Are we Reader or are we Player? w/ Karis Jones, Virginia Killian Lund, Brady Nash, and Trevor Aleo

    Most of us probably experienced a homogenous version of literacy in our English classes: read a book, answer a few questions along the way, and compose an essay at the end about how we viewed a key theme. Rinse and repeat. And in our current age of high-stakes testing and high-stakes literacy, some kids are lucky to ever encounter a book at all; however, those same students are also surrounded by the narratives and themes of English class - in the messages they send and receive and the virtual communities they participate in, the media they consume and discuss with their friends, and in the video games they play. The goal of my guests today is to expand our vision of what that English class could be and induct students into something of an animistic perspective of literacy, as you heard from one guest in the opening: that the narratives and themes of English class are everywhere for those equipped to see them as such. Their Reader-Player Interactivity Framework aims to give teachers and students the tools and confidence to do just that. Their paper, linked in the show notes, is a collaboration between Karis Jones, Brady Nash, Virginia Killian Lund, Scott Storm, Alex Corbitt, Beth Krone, and Trevor Aleo, of which Karis, Brady, Virginia, and Trevor joined me for this conversation. Article: The Reader-Player Interactivity Framework: How Do Readers Navigate Diverse Varieties of Narrative Texts? Unsilencing Gratia: a tabletop RPG book designed to be an easy introduction to collaborative storytelling, usable in a classroom setting. We Know Something You Don’t Know: a tabletop RPG that invites you into the lives of students making their way day-by-day through the education system. You can reach any of our guests by email: Trevor Aleo: ">aleotc@gmail.com Karis Jones: ">karis.michelle.jones@gmail.com Virginia Killian Lund: ">vkillianlund@uri.edu Brady Nash: bradylnash@gmail.com

    1h 1m
  3. Making School Finance As Public As Possible w/ David I. Backer

    11/08/2025

    Making School Finance As Public As Possible w/ David I. Backer

    We’re recording this episode the week the Iowa DOGE Task Force released their final 136 page report – you heard that right, that’s the state-level version of the Department of Government Efficiency convened by our governor back in February, tasked with maximizing return on investment of Iowa taxpayer dollars. As you can imagine, among their recommendations are ideas from the Return on Taxpayer Investment Working Group about improving education results “aimed at delivering greater value for taxpayers.” Fortunately for Iowans, this working group assembled a crack team of experienced education experts for the job, including the CEO of an ethanol plant, the former Chair of the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, and the chair of a civil engineering firm. Among their recommendations are to: "Establish a merit-based compensation framework –including a bonus structure, teacher professional development and incentives for those in high-need schools in order to improve student outcomes and financially reward high-performing teachers.” Merit-pay is of course a tried, tested, and failed idea. But teacher salaries are just one thread in the complex tapestry of how states pay for public education and the ideological tug of war in our public debates over school funding – how we pay for buildings, pensions, special education, Title 1, school food programs…every cost that goes into making schooling work…or not. If the Iowa DOGE report and the policy agenda that will inevitably follow could be titled As Privatized as Possible – doubling down on outcome-based school funding and accountability measures and even recommending AI-based bus route optimization to “cut costs and improve service”...what’s the alternative? My guest today asks, “What would it mean to democratize school resources? What would it mean to have truly public schools, down to the very means of resource creation and distribution that fuels them…what will it take to make school as public as possible.” It’s also the title of his upcoming book, As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Public Schools out this December. You can preorder it now from The New Press. David Backer is the author. He’s an associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall University whose research, teaching, and organizing focus on ideology and school finance. A former high school teacher, his research has appeared in a half dozen scholarly journals like the Harvard Education Review  as well as popular venues like The American Prospect and Jacobin. And you can find him on social media @schooldaves. As Public As Possible (The New Press) @SchoolDaves TikTok

    1h 7m
  4. Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain w/ Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern & Teresa M. Mares

    09/27/2025

    Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain w/ Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern & Teresa M. Mares

    The reach and impact of our food systems – that is, the complex, interconnected, and globalized web of institutions, resources, and processes that bring food from the farm, to the table, and into the waste stream – is universal: every single one of us has either worked in ourselves, or known people who work growing, raising, producing, processing, packing, transporting, preparing, or serving the food we all eat. In the food we consume, we become connected to the conditions, the labor, and the people of the food system that produces it. Fully 1 in 10 American workers, over 17 million people, work in paid frontline food system jobs. And millions more work at home to plan, shop, prepare, and in many households, grow the food their children and families eat. There are massive implications for schools as well, as they participate in the food system directly to bring literally billions of meals to children each year, and as labor in the food system impacts the families, children, and communities our schools serve. My guests today are Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares, associate professors and co-authors of Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain, available from University of California Press in September. Their book captures the grim realities faced by food workers alongside the opportunities for solidarity at every point in the system while amplifying the successes and challenges faced by movements to make food work, good work. “As long as people are suffering to get food to our plates,” they write, “we need to center food workers in any vision for a just food system.” Will Work for Food book from UC Press

    44 min
4.9
out of 5
35 Ratings

About

Since 2018, the Human Restoration Project Podcast has reimaged education through critical, progressive, human-centered learning!  Across nearly 200 episodes, and counting, we've explored every topic in education: ungrading and alternative assessment, interdisciplinary play-based and project-based learning, SEL, education reforms and systemic school change in society with students, teachers, leaders, researchers, and advocates around the world.  Join us on our mission to restore humanity to education, together!

You Might Also Like