Few people have influenced the implementation of Universal Design for Learning as deeply as Dr. George Van Horn. In this episode, George shares the story of how a commitment to learner variability, educator collaboration, and systems-level change helped shape one of the nation's most recognized examples of sustained UDL implementation.  From leadership lessons to practical insights, this conversation explores what happens when schools intentionally design for all learners and how that work can continue long after the original champions have stepped away.  Transcript Resources: A Long, Strange Trip: Honoring George Van Horn’s Lasting Impact on UDL and Inclusive Learning  Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation

Are you spending your days putting out fires instead of leading instruction? The problem might not be your time management, it might be your systems. In this episode of The Principal's Handbook, I'm sharing how clear, simple systems can reduce interruptions, prevent recurring problems, and free up your time for instructional leadership. You'll learn how to identify where your school needs better systems and why keeping them simple and sustainable is the key to making them work. Plus, I'll introduce my new mini-course, Transform Your Time, designed to help principals create systems, delegate with confidence, and prioritize what matters most. Because the goal isn't to do more. It's to spend more time doing the work that matters. Get my mini-course, Transform Your Time, for only $27!

About This Episode Dr. Erin Bailey talks with Dr. Geoffrey D. Borman, Alice Wiley Snell Endowed Professor at Arizona State University, about what happens when children have sustained access to books they can choose, enjoy, and take home. Borman shares the research behind a five-year randomized trial in high-poverty elementary schools and explains how book access can support reading practice, motivation, and achievement. The conversation connects evidence to action for schools, families, nonprofits, and policymakers. They discuss summer learning loss, the importance of choice and relevance, the role of a home library, why multi-year book distribution matters, and what researchers still need to learn about the literacy experiences that happen after books go home. What You’ll Learn Why access to books can help interrupt reading loss during out-of-school months. How reading volume, choice, and personal relevance can reinforce motivation and literacy growth. What a five-year randomized trial found when students received books over multiple years. Why sustained, scalable book distribution can complement more intensive interventions. What schools, literacy organizations, and policymakers should consider when designing book-access programs. Chapters 0:00 — Reading Inspires introduction 0:42 — Dr. Geoffrey Borman and the case for book access 1:45 — From summer learning loss to literacy research 6:04 — Access, ownership, choice, and reading achievement 12:49 — Why study book ownership with a randomized trial? 20:26 — The five-year book-distribution intervention 23:13 — Achievement gains and a scalable intervention 27:20 — What happens when books go home? 31:34 — Replication, language, and future research 33:23 — Turning research into literacy action 35:13 — What does reading inspire for Dr. Borman? 36:53 — Closing Resources Bernie’s Book Bank: Findings From a Randomized Controlled Trial — Background on the randomized trial and literacy impact discussed in this episode. Geoffrey D. Borman on LinkedIn — Connect with Dr. Borman and learn more about his work.

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Rebecca Winthrop - senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Disengaged Teen - about the four modes of student engagement her team identified across a decade of research, and what those modes reveal about how generative AI is reshaping students' relationship to learning. Her framework, grounded in work by researcher John Marshall Reeve, finds that students who take initiative in their own learning not only feel better, they out-achieve achievers - a finding with direct implications for an era when AI can produce the proxy products that schools have long used to measure learning. Together, Seth and Rebecca explore what it means that engagement modes are states and not traits, why self-awareness about which mode you're in may be the skill that matters most in an AI-saturated classroom, and why the resistors - not the achievers - are actually closest to explorer mode. Rebecca distinguishes cognitive stunting from cognitive bypass: the concern isn't students using AI to speed up work they can already do, but students outsourcing cognitive work they haven't yet built. She unpacks her task force's central finding - that "teach-not-tell" AI use narrows risk while "wide AI use" accelerates disengagement - and argues for a burden-of-proof model before new AI tools get scaled. And she makes the trust problem concrete: anti-plagiarism posturing turns teachers into police, ruptures relationships, and produces exactly the kind of environment that research says is worst for learning. Key topics: The four engagement modes: Passenger, Achiever, Resistor, Explorer Why states - not traits - is the crucial distinction Metacognition as the lever for mode-shifting Cognitive stunting vs. cognitive bypass "Teach-not-tell" vs. "tell-not-teach" AI use Why trust - not detection - is the right lens for academic integrity The pre-mortem methodology behind the Brookings AI task force Links & Resources: The Disengaged Teen by Rebecca Winthrop and Jennifer Wallace - https://www.thedisengagedteen.com/ Brookings report: A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect (2026) - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-new-direction-for-students-in-an-ai-world-prosper-prepare-protect/ John Marshall Reeve's work on agentic engagement - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00405841.2019.1702451 Dr. Amy Berry's research on student engagement - https://www.amyberry.com.au/ Dr. Trevor Soponis - https://mim.bepodcast.network/episodes/67-building-sustainable-professional-development-across-cultures-with-dr-trevor-soponis Guest Bio: Rebecca Winthrop Rebecca Winthrop is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of its Center for Universal Education, where she leads research on student engagement, learning quality, and education in crisis contexts. She co-authored The Disengaged Teen based on a decade of research across thousands of students and families, and recently chaired a global task force assessing the risks and benefits of generative AI in education across multiple countries. Her work focuses on how schools can shift from high-stakes proxy assessments to learning environments that build the capacities students actually need. About the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: An Education Podcast. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators - building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

In this deeply personal episode of The Smarter Campus Podcast, Zach sits down with his sister, Mia Kinzler, a sophomore studying Psychology at Loyola Marymount University, to talk about an experience that is often discussed about students but rarely heard directly from them: what it actually feels like to navigate higher education with severe learning disabilities. Mia was diagnosed in fourth grade with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and ADHD. She has spent years learning how her brain processes information and developing strategies to succeed academically. But in college, she has encountered a different challenge: a system of accommodations that can be far better at checking boxes than understanding how an individual student actually learns. Mia describes being able to demonstrate her understanding of material verbally in a matter of minutes while struggling for hours with a written multiple-choice exam—not because she doesn't know the content, but because the format itself creates processing barriers. She shares the exhausting amount of self-advocacy required to receive support, what happens when an accommodation doesn't fit neatly into an institution's existing options, and how repeatedly struggling in environments that don't reflect what you know can change the way you see your own intelligence. The conversation also offers a very different perspective on AI in education. For Mia, generative AI isn't a tool for avoiding thinking. She uses it as a cognitive translator—talking through her own ideas and asking AI to help structure those thoughts into the written formats college requires. She specifically tells the AI not to give her answers. Yet in an environment increasingly suspicious of AI use, the same technology that can provide accessibility can also expose students with disabilities to assumptions that they're cheating. This episode isn't ultimately about AI. It's about whether higher education is willing to recognize that equal opportunity doesn't always mean asking every student to demonstrate learning in exactly the same way. And Mia's message to educators is remarkably simple: when a student tells you how their brain works and asks for help, trust them.