In this episode, Kelli shares her biggest takeaways from the 20th Anniversary M-Enabling Summit... from thought-provoking sessions on accessibility ethics, AI, and accessible procurement to the hallway conversations that ended up being the most memorable part of the conference. Join her as she reflects on meeting passionate advocates, educators, and innovators, discovering shared experiences with new friends like Mike and Logan from Ablr, and witnessing a conference that truly modeled inclusion in action. Along the way, we'll explore why accessibility is about much more than compliance... it's about people, relationships, and creating a world where everyone belongs. Transcript Resources: M-Enabling Summit Ablr CAST Lainey Feingold Karl Groves Aaron Page

Summary Grace Bastidas joins Reading Inspires to talk about the stories, books, and cultural traditions that shaped her as a reader—and how she is passing those gifts on to her own children. Grace is a journalist, speaker, parenting expert, and the former editor in chief of Parents. Drawing on her Colombian heritage and experience raising bilingual children in a multicultural home, Grace shares practical ways families can use books, language, and storytelling to build connection, curiosity, and a stronger sense of identity. Chapters 0:00 — Welcome and meeting Grace Bastidas 0:43 — Family stories, Colombian roots, and discovering books 2:31 — The reading medal Grace still treasures 3:09 — Passing culture and language on to the next generation 5:05 — Encouragement for parents raising bilingual children 8:30 — Making language learning consistent and joyful 12:00 — Books as a bridge to culture, identity, and belonging 17:30 — Grace’s advice for helping children become readers Show Notes Guest: Grace Bastidas — gbastidas.com Instagram: @brooklynwriter LinkedIn: Grace Bastidas Grace’s work has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, and NBC News Now, and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Magazine. Reading Inspires is a podcast from Reading Is Fundamental about the people and ideas helping children discover the joy and power of reading.

NCEA President Dr. Steve Cheeseman joins John Mihalyo to talk about what he's seeing in Catholic schools across the country, a new fellowship for future Catholic school leaders, and what leaders can do right now to get ready for the federal tax credit. After two years on the road, more than 30 dioceses, and well over 100 Catholic schools, Dr. Steve Cheeseman keeps coming back to the same word. Hope. In this conversation, the president of the National Catholic Educational Association shares why he sees it everywhere, from big-city schools to Native American reservations, and why roughly 40 percent of Catholic schools now have waiting lists. Steve and John talk about investing in people before programs, why Catholic schools don't need to chase public schools, and what it means to stay rooted in mission and the dignity of every child. Steve also walks through the NCEA's new framework and its three priorities: being the national voice for Catholic schools, forming teachers and leaders in both faith and operational vibrancy, and connecting schools across the country so no leader has to figure things out alone. He gives listeners an early look at the new De La Salle Fellowship, a program supported by the Christian Brothers that helps aspiring Catholic school administrators build the skills, mentors, and network they'll need before they ever step into the principal's office. Then the conversation turns to the federal tax credit. Steve explains where things stood at the time of recording, why this is about kids and not public versus private, how donors can still claim the credit even if their state doesn't opt in, and why advancement teams need to start thinking differently now. As he puts it, Starbucks makes its money one cup of coffee at a time. The episode closes with a preview of the NCEA convention in Indianapolis and a word of gratitude for everyone doing this work: it isn't easy work, but it is holy work. Federal tax credit details reflect what was known at the time of recording in September 2026. Watch the full video interview: youtube.com/@ElementaryAdvancement Learn more about the NCEA: ncea.org Work with John: elementaryadvancement.com Contact John: elementaryadvancement.com Contact Steve: scheeseman@ncea.org

YouTube: https://youtu.be/g_siWStFloA

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth, Allyson, and Tami conclude their conversation with Dr. Mark Deschaine — Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi — with a look at the practical frameworks for building and sustaining institutional knowledge in a period of rapid change. Deschaine traces the Five Cs of digital curation from its origins as a college-level literacy tool to its current life as an organizational knowledge management system, and closes by announcing agentagogy — a forthcoming framework for learning with agentic AI, grounded in the specific role of productive struggle. Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Mark explore the Five Cs — collect, categorize, critique, conceptualize, circulate — and how they've evolved from individual educator practice into a knowledge management container layered above continuous improvement cycles, allowing organizations to hold onto what they know across staff turnover and structural change. Mark revisits No Child Left Behind's standardization mandate as a case study in the gap between quantitative accountability and qualitative story-telling, and asks whether 30 million individualized stories can ever aggregate into policy — or whether the market is already answering that question by moving outside the system. He drops news that Andreessen Horowitz is building its own AI-driven university, framing it as the clearest signal yet that innovators have stopped waiting for traditional structures to catch up. The conversation closes with two connected ideas: that distance learning, from correspondence courses to TikTok, has always existed outside the formal system — and that agentagogy, the framework Mark is currently developing, asks what happens to learning when the agent is no longer the learner but the AI. His answer is specific: productive struggle is the mechanism learning runs on, and an AI that removes all friction may be training us to stop developing the capacity to do the hard part ourselves. Key topics: Five Cs of digital curation as organizational knowledge management Continuous improvement and the Process Improvement Guidelines framework No Child Left Behind and the limits of quantitative accountability Andreessen Horowitz building an AI-driven university Distance learning as always-existing informal practice (TikTok, YouTube, correspondence courses) Social learning, Zone of Proximal Development, and the role of productive struggle Agentagogy: a framework for learning with agentic AI ADIL 34th Annual Conference Links & Resources: "The Five Cs of Digital Curation: Supporting Twenty-First-Century Teaching and Learning" — Deschaine & Sharma, InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281641256 "Digital Curation: A Framework to Enhance Adolescent and Adult Literacy Initiatives" — Deschaine & Sharma, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2016. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jaal.523 ADIL — Association for Distance Education and Independent Learning (34th Annual Conference, online, free for students): https://adeil.org/adeil-34th-annual-conference/ Journal of Contemporary Research in Education (JCRE): https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jcre/ Guest Bio: Mark E. Deschaine, PhD Mark Deschaine is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he prepares MA, EdS, EdD, and PhD candidates for school and district leadership roles and serves as editor of the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education. His research focuses on online learning policy, special education in virtual school settings, and differentiated instruction — grounded in a practitioner career spanning building-level principal, special education teacher, and paraprofessional. He is a Research Fellow at Michigan Virtual and a Leadership Team Member for the National Standards for Quality Online Learning. About the Hosts: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org