In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Jessica Werner, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Northshore Learning, about why teacher burnout is better understood as a systems problem than a personal one — and what happens when schools try to fix it without addressing the foundations that are already shaky. Jessica draws on her doctoral research in Uganda, where a policy expanding secondary school access flooded classrooms without providing additional support, and connects that experience directly to what she's seeing now in U.S. schools facing school choice expansion, teacher shortages, and the pressure to adopt every new initiative at once.Together, Seth and Jessica explore why measuring teacher wellbeing is so difficult and why qualitative judgment still matters, how cultural context shapes what counts as a behavior problem and what motivates students, what schedules and workloads quietly signal to teachers about how much their effectiveness actually matters, and why adding initiatives on top of weak foundations accelerates burnout rather than solving it. Jessica also shares a specific example from a school in Colombia where an American teacher adapted her math instruction to work with — rather than against — the social, collective culture of her students, offering a concrete picture of what culturally responsive intervention looks like in practice.Key topics:Teacher efficacy as a component of job satisfaction and retentionThe limits of quantitative measurement for wellbeingCultural differences in student motivation: intrinsic vs. extrinsicSchedule design and its unintended impact on teachersAddition without subtraction: the workload problemSchool choice policy and the costs of rapid enrollment growthNeuroscience basics that translate directly into classroom managementSchool-student "match" as a framework for the future of school choiceLinks & Resources:Northshore Learning — coaching, school partnerships, and on-demand courses for educators: northshorelearning.orgJessica Werner on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jessica-werner-ph-d-818032163Northshore Learning YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCznAU47jszmmJyFBWd_1LvwHidden Brain podcast with Shankar Vedantam (recommended by Jessica): hiddenbrain.orgJustin Reich, MIT Teaching Systems Lab — referenced by Seth on "addition by subtraction" in schools: https://makeitmindful.transistor.fm/episodes/76-experiment-with-humility-teaching-in-the-ai-evidence-gap-with-justin-reichGuest Bio: Jessica Werner, Ph.D.Jessica Werner is the founder and CEO of Northshore Learning, where she works with schools in the U.S. and internationally to support teacher effectiveness and student behavior through personalized coaching, group training, and on-demand professional development. Her work is grounded in neuroscience and centers on what actually allows teachers to feel effective — and what systematically undermines that feeling over time. Jessica holds a Ph.D. in education, with doctoral research focused on the implementation challenges of Uganda's universal secondary education policy, and has over 20 years of experience as a classroom teacher, professor of education, and consultant.About the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See banyangloballearning.com.

In this episode, Mike sits down with Alisha DeLorenzo, educator and consultant from New Jersey, to explore her powerful framework of "Unleash Aliveness." Alisha shares how a deeply personal encounter with loss sparked her mission to help schools move from feeling like a "zombie apocalypse" to places of genuine energy and engagement.Key Takeaways:Aliveness is created when people feel significant and heardChange doesn't come from big initiatives — it comes from small, community-led sprintsLeaders don't need all the answers; the wisdom is already in the buildingTransformative principals are positively disruptive, human-centered, and willing to get out of the wayLinks:LinkedIn: Alisha De LorenzoInstagram: @alishadelorenzoWebsite: alishadelorenzo.com

On this episode the guys talk about the space program and the wonderful opportunities this next step brings for education, students and the world.

In this episode teacher leader Laura Stam shares personal experiences in her journey to continual improvement in her teaching practice.Laura also describes her experience of participating in an instructional coaching cycle for the first time.Links:X: @stamstam193Facebook: @Mrs.Stam.2021

In this episode, Priten speaks with Paul Blaschko, an assistant teaching professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University. Paul's work sits at the intersection of liberal education, critical thinking instruction, and course design. The central question driving their conversation: in an era of AI that can generate plausible-sounding arguments and explanations, can we still teach students to think critically—or must we fundamentally reimagine what critical thinking means?Key Takeaways:EdTech should solve existing problems, not create new ones. Paul approaches technology as a tool only when he's already facing a pedagogical challenge. This shifts the question from "what can this tool do?" to "what does my classroom need?"YouTube explainers preceded ChatGPT in reshaping how students research and learn. Long before AI, students were outsourcing understanding to video tutorials rather than wrestling with dense texts, revealing a deeper shift in how students approach knowledge.Critical thinking instruction requires direct practice with real arguments, not shortcuts around difficulty. There's no substitute for students actually constructing and defending their own positions through dialogue and written work, even when AI can do it faster.Scaling critical thinking instruction demands new infrastructure, not just new pedagogy. Paul and his team are testing whether platforms like Think Arguments can help instructors manage the feedback and iteration needed to teach reasoning at scale across institutions.AI may not replace the professor's role so much as expand it into explicit curation and judgment. In a world where explanations are abundant, the teacher's value shifts toward deciding which frameworks matter and helping students evaluate competing arguments.Paul Blaschko is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches God and the Good Life, a course dedicated to asking the big questions about meaning, morality, and faith. He also serves as the Director of the Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise, and Society, a program devoted to exploring how the humanities can help us find meaning in work. With Meghan Sullivan, he has co-authored The Good Life Method (Penguin Press, 2022), a book about how philosophy can help us live better lives. He is currently working on a book on the philosophy of work (under contract with Princeton University Press), and is the co-founder of a Notre Dame based tech start-up that aims to solve problems with dialogue on the internet.