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Make It Mindful: An Education Podcast

Make It Mindful: An Education Podcast

By: Seth Fleischauer
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Make It Mindful is a podcast for educators and school leaders who think seriously about how learning is changing and want to explore what to do next. Hosted by Seth Fleischauer, founder of Banyan Global Learning and former classroom teacher, the show covers three territories: what AI actually changes about teaching and learning, what it takes to help students connect meaningfully across cultures, and the human conditions — belonging, awe, trust, emotional regulation — that learning depends on regardless of what else changes. Guests include district administrators, researchers, clinical psychologists, curriculum designers, and classroom practitioners. Conversations are long-form and honest. Produced by Banyan Global Learning.© 2025 Make It Mindful: An Education Podcast
Episodes
  • #86 Pitchforks for Edtech: The Techlash with Tiger Team Edu

    #86 Pitchforks for Edtech: The Techlash with Tiger Team Edu
    Jun 29 2026
    In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Grant Atkins and Dr. Caroline Miller — a researcher who studies how educational technology gets implemented and whether it works, and a former high school teacher who left the classroom just as generative AI was beginning to reshape how students write — about the current backlash against ed tech and what's actually driving it. The conversation takes place inside Seth's long-running professional learning community, which gives it a candor that more formal interviews rarely allow.Together, Seth, Grant, and Caroline explore what's getting lumped together under "ed tech backlash" — social media, pandemic-era screen fatigue, and generative AI — and why those distinctions matter for the decisions teachers and administrators actually have to make. Early in the conversation, a detail surfaces that reframes the whole discussion: a twelve-year-old who told Seth she could tell when her teachers were using AI to write her feedback, and that it bothered her because she felt it was their job to do it themselves. They look at the research on when technology supports learning and when it substitutes for the human relationship at the center of teaching, and at the SAMR framework as a lens for evaluating whether any given tool is doing something genuinely new or just digitizing what was already there. The conversation also turns to what parents should be asking schools about technology use, and why that gets harder when it requires parents to examine their own screen habits alongside their children's. It closes on something Grant says plainly and without hedging: he doesn't think anyone knows yet what acceptable AI use looks like, and the conversation schools and families need to be having is still largely unfinished.Key topicsEd tech backlash and what's behind itSocial media, classroom tools, and AI as separate conversationsSAMR framework for evaluating technology integrationTeacher burnout and technology as workload supportParent-teacher communication about screen useAI disclosure and student-teacher trustProfessional learning communities for educatorsLinks & ResourcesBrookings Institution report on AI and education — Rebecca Winthrop, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, and co-author of a ~200-page report on AI risks and potential in education drawing on research from 50 countries. Note: Seth referred to her as "Rebecca Chapman" during the recording — her name is Rebecca Winthrop. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-new-direction-for-students-in-an-ai-world-prosper-prepare-protect/Justin Reich, MIT Teaching Systems Lab — researcher on ed tech hype cycles and lateral reading as a source-evaluation strategy: https://tsl.mit.edu/SAMR framework — Ruben Puentedura's model for technology integration in education (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition): https://www.3plearning.com/blog/connectingsamrmodel/Banyan Global Learning — Seth's organization, connecting K-12 classrooms to global peers through live virtual exchange programs: https://banyangloballearning.com/Equity Maps — participation-tracking tool for discussion-based classrooms: https://equitymaps.com/NoRedInk — adaptive writing and grammar platform: https://www.noredink.com/Guest Bio: Dr. Grant AtkinsDr. Grant Atkins is a researcher who studies professional development and the effectiveness of educational technology in classrooms. His work examines how ed tech tools are implemented at the school and district level and whether they achieve the learning outcomes they promise. He and Seth have been colleagues since meeting at Princeton University.Guest Bio: Dr. Caroline MillerDr. Caroline Miller spent nearly a decade teaching advanced high school students before leaving the classroom as generative AI was beginning to reshape how students approach writing. Her teaching experience spanned discussion-based and writing-intensive classrooms, where she worked closely with students on critical thinking, source evaluation, and independent inquiry. She and Seth have been colleagues since meeting at Princeton University.About the HostAbout the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of two podcasts: Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning and Why Distance Learning? 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.
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    44 mins
  • #85 The Biology of Trust with Dr. Katherine M. Heavers

    #85 The Biology of Trust with Dr. Katherine M. Heavers
    Jun 15 2026

    In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Katherine M. Heavers — a high school biology teacher, evolutionary biologist, and co-author of Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In — about what it actually takes to build authentic relationships in a classroom. Heavers draws on her doctoral theory of the "telling break" and 12 years of research conducted while teaching full-time to argue that the relational work great teachers do is learnable by anyone.

    Together, Seth and Kate explore the biology of trust — why authenticity isn't soft or sentimental, but a survival mechanism the mammalian brain has been running for 200,000 years. They talk through Kate's theory of the telling break, the moment a teacher's personal disclosure cracks open a shared space of curiosity in the room, and why that moment is at the center of learning rather than on its margins. Kate makes the case that vulnerability, emotional safety, honest feedback, and the willingness to name your own failures in front of students are all trainable skills — not personality traits — and that any teacher can be brought to them given the right conditions and inner work. The conversation ends with a genuine surprise: after three and a half years of exploring AI tools, Kate recently deleted her ChatGPT account because her teenage niece's ethics teacher changed her mind.

    Key topics:

    • The telling break — what happens when a teacher steps out of instruction and becomes a person in the room
    • Teaching as a learnable craft vs. an innate gift
    • The biology of trust and why authenticity is an evolutionary strategy
    • Emotional safety and productive struggle — how to hold both at once
    • Self-reflection and inner work as professional practice, not personal disclosure
    • Confronting bias as an ongoing relational obligation
    • AI, cognitive offloading, and what we give up when we stop thinking for ourselves

    Links & Resources:

    • Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In — Katherine M. Heavers & Valerie Kearns, Routledge, 2024. https://www.routledge.com/Transforming-Teaching-Through-Relationship-Building-and-Self-Reflection-Finding-Our-Way-In/Heavers-Kearns/p/book/9781032798103
    • Daring Greatly — Brené Brown (mentioned by Kate as essential reading for teachers)
    • The Atlas of the Heart — Brené Brown (mentioned)
    • Adam Grant and Brené Brown's collaborative content - The Curiosity Shop Podcast
    • Grace and Frankie — Netflix series (Kate's media recommendation)
    • "Toward a Theory of the Educational Interruption: A Conceptual Model of the Telling Break" — Katherine M. Heavers, doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 2012. https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/37293/

    Guest Bio: Dr. Katherine M. Heavers

    Dr. Katherine M. Heavers is a high school biology teacher at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in New Jersey and an adjunct professor in teacher education at Rutgers University and The College of New Jersey. Her work sits at the intersection of evolutionary biology, the philosophy of education, and classroom practice — she spent 12 years earning her EdD in Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Rutgers while teaching science full-time, developing her theory of the "telling break" along the way. She is co-author, with Valerie Kearns, of Transforming Teaching Through Relationship-Building and Self-Reflection: Finding Our Way In (Routledge, 2024).

    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 — building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts
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    46 mins
  • #84 Hidden Oases: The Programs Holding Schools Together with Dr. Maggie Broderick

    #84 Hidden Oases: The Programs Holding Schools Together with Dr. Maggie Broderick
    Jun 1 2026
    In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Maggie Broderick — academic program director of the Master of Arts in Social Emotional Learning at National University's Sanford College of Education — about teacher dispositions, the classrooms inside schools where marginalized students find belonging, and what's happening to teacher attrition when emotion labor goes unsupported. Maggie's current qualitative research centers on what she calls "hidden oases" — music rooms, art classrooms, and specialist spaces — and builds on her published work integrating SEL into the formative development of educator dispositions.Together, Seth and Maggie explore why SEL became politicized and why Maggie chose not to rebrand around the backlash, how critical thinking and perspective-taking sit alongside SEL as facets of the same whole-human education, the link between teacher emotion labor and the attrition crisis, and the role of arts and specialist classrooms as belonging infrastructure for students who don't feel at home in the rest of the building. Maggie shares an early finding from her in-progress study: many of the teachers she's interviewed told her no one had ever asked them about the students who came to school primarily because of their music or art class.Key topics"Hidden oases" — specialist classrooms as belonging infrastructureSEL across the full age span, including adult and doctoral learnersTeacher emotion labor and the attrition crisisPerspective-taking and critical thinking as parts of SELEducator dispositions and how they're formedStarting small with vetted SEL resourcesLinks & ResourcesDr. Maggie Broderick — National University faculty page: https://www.nu.edu/degrees/teacher-education/faculty/margaret-broderick/Maggie on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maggie-BroderickMaggie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggie-broderick-19321414/International Journal of Online Graduate Education (Maggie, editor): https://joge.scholasticahq.com/Email: mbroderick@nu.eduCASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning): https://casel.orgHarmony Academy: https://harmony-academy.orgAmerican Educational Research Association (AERA): https://www.aera.netWorld Savvy (referenced in conversation): https://worldsavvy.orgBroderick, M., & Lyn, A. E. (2022). "Integrating Social Emotional Learning Into the Formative Development of Educator Dispositions," in Dispositional Development and Assessment in Teacher Preparation Programs (S. Clemm von Hohenberg, Ed.). IGI Global. https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/integrating-social-emotional-learning-into-the-formative-development-of-educator-dispositions/308385Broderick, M. "Development and Evolution of Teacher Dispositions Framework and Assessment." IGI Global. https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/development-and-evolution-of-teacher-dispositions-framework-and-assessment/308394Guest Bio: Dr. Maggie BroderickDr. Maggie Broderick is an academic program director and dissertation chair at National University's Sanford College of Education, where she leads the Master of Arts in Social Emotional Learning and directs the Advanced Research Center — an online hub supporting faculty and graduate-student scholarship. Her research examines educator dispositions, SEL across the full age span of learners, and the role of specialist classrooms — music, art, theater, language — as "hidden oases" for students who feel marginalized elsewhere in their schools. She holds a Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Pittsburgh and is the editor of the International Journal of Online Graduate Education.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 — building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores. See https://banyangloballearning.com/
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    34 mins
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