NAIS New View EDU Podcast

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Season 8 Episodes: Spring 2025

Episode 72: Thriving Through Happiness

Available April 22, 2025

What does happiness have to do with achieving excellence and success? Do happy students learn more deeply and go on to more fulfilling careers and lives? Most educators understand the intrinsic connection between emotional well-being and deep learning, but “happiness” doesn’t tend to show up on our classroom rubrics. Dan Lerner, author, performance coach, and professor of the famous New York University class “The Science of Happiness” joins host Morva McDonald to discuss why we might want to rethink the value of positivity.

Dan shares his quest to understand the difference between highly successful people who appear to be leading happy, fulfilling lives, and those who are highly successful but appear to be deeply unhappy. He cautions that it’s not necessary to be happy to achieve success, but says there is an opportunity to set ourselves up for success through the practice of “priming” our emotions.

He explains the acronym PERMA—Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment—and how understanding the vital importance of each of these five aspects to overall success and well-being can profoundly impact our performance. And above all, he stresses the importance of being relational in our leadership, our feedback mechanisms, and our daily practices, to create the conditions for positivity to take root within our school cultures and within each individual in our communities. 

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 71: Exploring Generative AI in K-12 Schools

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be one of the hottest topics in education. Should we be using it? Should we allow students to use it? When, where, and how does it fit into our schools and our vision for the future of education? Yet despite all the attention, AI is so new and fast-moving that we don’t have a lot of evidence or research upon which to base decisions. That’s a problem that Chris Agnew and the Generative AI Hub at Stanford University’s SCALE Initiative are trying to address.

Chris joins host Morva McDonald to discuss the Generative AI Hub and how he and his team are thinking about the challenges and opportunities generative AI brings to the education landscape. He boils down the purpose of the initiative to three areas: research, tools, and engagement. He shares how they’re applying research to understand how schools are using AI and whether those uses are effective.

Critically, Chris points out, generative AI needs to be something we use not to put up more barriers between students and the real world, but to buy back time and opportunity to lean further into human-centered interactions and relevant real-world learning. He says we have a choice between using AI to optimize a flawed, tech-heavy system, or using AI to make education more efficient, human-centered, and relational. The work of his team at the Generative AI Hub aims to provide the tools and research needed to help schools do that.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 70: The Role of Schools in Cultivating Healthy Relationships

Relationships are central to the work educators do in schools: how educators connect to their students, and how connected students feel to their communities. As students leave their schools and go out into the world, their ability to relate to others, understand social nuances, and navigate everything from collegial relationships to friendships to dating will have an impact on their success and their well-being. But what role do educators play in helping them develop those interpersonal skills? How involved should schools be in educating students around different types of relationships, and how should educators be thinking about the messages students may be absorbing from the school environment? Health educator Shafia Zaloom joins NAIS President Debra P. Wilson to untangle the tricky dynamics.

Understanding that as kids grow, they have more complex needs and questions around relationships and that schools may not feel equipped to handle all of those concerns, Shafia says she is writing a new book based on deep research with schools across the country. She argues that we can’t avoid these issues, as they’re natural parts of development that kids will bring with them into school spaces. Her guidance aims to help schools handle sensitive topics in a caring, affirming, and nonjudgmental way, listening and understanding where kids are coming from, and providing the support and information they need to make good decisions. Helping them navigate questions, big and small, about relating to others in a healthy, balanced way is part of growing students who can confidently enter the world beyond our schools.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 69: Building Collaborative Learning Cultures

Professional development is an important part of educational leadership, but not all professional development opportunities are equally effective. When we’re seeking to improve teaching and learning outcomes in our schools, are we developing classrooms or cultures? Siloes or collaborative communities? Guests Elham Kazemi (left) and Jessica Calabrese (right), co-authors of Learning Together: Organizing Schools for Teacher and Student Learning, join host Morva McDonald to share how they worked together on a novel practice that built community, improved student outcomes, and changed how both teachers and learners thought about their work.

Jessica shares how she accepted a position as the principal of a struggling public school in Renton, WA, with the charge of turning the school’s test scores and learner outcomes around. Seeking a radically different approach to supporting the school community and introducing improvements, she partnered with Elham, a professor of mathematics at the University of Washington, to create an embedded professional development program at the school. Elham and her colleagues helped implement a specialized lab program, which transformed the teaching and learning culture. 

Elham and Jessica highlight the key aspects of the lab program: instructional coaches were provided to work directly with teachers in the classroom; real-time professional development work done while teachers were with their own students; teachers planning and trying new lessons and ideas together; and embedding the learning for educators into the classroom work, so professional development happens during the learning day, not as a separate task.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 68: Technology Innovation in Independent Schools

AI and other technological advances are moving at an almost incomprehensible speed, and schools have to adjust. Some are choosing to enact phone bans and efforts to make the school day as low-tech as possible. Others are adopting new technologies and trying to strike a comfortable balance. And some school leaders are embracing a vision of technological innovation as a cornerstone of their plans for the future. Jalaj Desai is one of those visionary heads of school, and in this episode of New View EDU, he joins NAIS President Debra P. Wilson to share how he’s using AI to transform Saddle River Day School (NJ).

Coming from a background in computer science, engineering, and education, Jalaj started his tenure at Saddle River during a time of transition and instability for the community. Immediately, he says, he convened the staff for a retreat to envision the path forward to a more robust and exciting future. Within just five years of his headship, they’ve been able to bring many of those plans to life: a Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, expanded honors and AP course offerings, business programs, honors gateway diplomas, advanced computer science coursework, and enhanced visual and performing arts programs.

But those changes are only the beginning of what he envisions for the future at Saddle River. Eighteen months ago, the school began working on a revolutionary AI integration across all facets of programming—teaching, learning, family communications, and even external partnerships.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Season 7 Episodes: Fall 2024

Episode 67: Leadership Through Listening

We most often focus on how we are educating our students. But how are we also educating our leaders, across every level of our schools? In the Season 7 finale of New View EDU, NAIS President Debra P. Wilson sits down with three education leadership experts from top programs at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt University. They discuss the importance of listening in developing the leaders of the future, and how to help them grow the skills and capacities to meet the evolving challenges of our times.

Nicole Furlonge (left), Carrie Grimes (center), and Steve Piltch (right) are seasoned educators who head programs for education leaders and whose careers developed through deep experience in independent schools. They have created a strong collaborative relationship and a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing educators right now. They begin the conversation by delving into the topic of listening and how it shapes their work.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 66: School in a Time of Hope and Cynicism

How good are people? How well can you trust your neighbors? How much do you agree with others on fundamental values and ideals? Sometimes it can feel like the answers to these questions skew negative. But author and researcher Jamil Zaki says we’d be surprised by the reality. He sits down with host Morva McDonald to talk about his book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, and what his findings mean for school leaders.

Jamil says one of the most surprising things about human goodness is “how surprised people are by human goodness.” He offers examples that demonstrate trends toward kindness, generosity, and agreement on key issues. Yet research also shows that people believe the opposite—that kindness and generosity are declining, that others cannot be trusted, and that we are more divided than united on important matters. However, the bright spot is that when people are specifically asked those same questions about their own communities and those closest to them, the answers change. We are inherently more trusting and optimistic about the people we interact with regularly, even if it’s just the grocery store clerk who checks us out every week or the bus monitor who helps our kids get to school. 

What does that mean for school leaders? Jamil says education institutions are uniquely positioned to uplift perceptions of human goodness by how they impact their communities. Building trust within the classroom and the school, and helping students look outward to those around them who are trustworthy, is one potentially effective antidote to cynicism.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 65: Leadership and Design for the Future of Schools

Being a school leader is a complex job, and it has only grown in its scope and challenges in recent years. How can we develop our capacities as reflective changemakers, dynamic leaders, and future-focused thinkers in a culture that often demands we react rather than being proactive? Carla Silver, executive director of Leadership + Design, has partnered with schools for over 15 years to create cultures of learning and foster human-centered design thinking. She joins host Morva McDonald to discuss leadership and where schools are headed.

Carla outlines the three pillars of Leadership + Design’s work as: developing reflective changemakers; instilling the habits of human-centered design thinking; and creating the capacity for leaders to become optimistic futurists. She reflects that 30 years ago, school leaders might not see much change in their scope of responsibilities over a five-year span; but now, the pace of leadership is evolving rapidly alongside societal changes. Not only do leaders have to be more comfortable with ambiguity as technology, innovation, and expectations evolve, but Carla notes that they’re often asked to wade into the territory of responding to global events in a way that school leaders of the past would not have been called upon to do. She also stresses that leadership now is grounded in the need to be more curious than certain and can come from anywhere within a community—not just those who are tasked with the role and title of “leader,” but those who practice the dispositions of leadership from any position.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 64: Pluralism in Education

Navigating polarities and fostering respectful dialogue are responsibilities that weigh heavily on many school leaders right now. How, in the current social and political climate, can we build bridges of cooperation rather than perpetuating barriers that divide us? How can we create space for ideas and opinions while balancing our obligations to nurture student safety and well-being? Eboo Patel, author and director of Interfaith America, sits down with NAIS President Debra P. Wilson to talk about his work on the role of pluralism in schools.

Outlining his personal journey from what he calls an “angry identity activist” to the head of the largest diversity organization in America, Eboo says he had to move from viewing the world through the lens of oppressor vs. oppressed to a place of understanding identity as a source of pride and cooperation as a source of strength. Diversity is a fact, he says, but pluralism is an achievement. Pluralism, as Eboo defines it, results from people of diverse identities working positively together. Pluralism is hard but important work, and learning to navigate it is a lifelong skill we can instill in our students.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 63: Building Academic Resilience

Resilience is a hot topic in education. We wonder if our students display enough of it, how we can help them build it, and whether resilience alone is enough to help kids thrive in an increasingly demanding and uncertain world. But what if we need to expand our thinking beyond building resilience in individuals and start considering a systems-based approach? That’s what Megan Kennedy is exploring with her team at the University of Washington Resilience Lab.

Megan joins host Morva McDonald to share what the Resilience Lab does, how their efforts are shaping campus culture, and what their research shows about the efficacy of a systems-based approach to fostering resilience. She says that as the demand for mental-health care among college students remains high, the Resilience Lab seeks to offset the need for those services by better equipping students with personal skills and support. However, she’s clear that it’s not about downplaying the importance of mental-health services, nor is it about focusing on personal responsibility. Rather, she says, they’re trying to remove the onus of responsibility for mental health from students’ shoulders by taking a campus-wide, deeply embedded approach to helping everyone, from faculty and staff to the community at large, learn and practice resilience-building skills.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 62: Wisdom Road

If you had an RV full of gas and the chance to spend months traveling anywhere, what journeys would you take? For Grant Lichtman, this wasn't just a hypothetical. It became a passion project called Wisdom Road. He traveled across North America seeking perspectives, traditions, and knowledge that our society risks losing. Now, he's sharing his experience with New View EDU host Debra P. Wilson.

Grant says his journey was about discovering the threads that still bind America together, even in a time of deep division. However, he didn’t ask about politics. Instead, he encouraged people to talk about themselves, their lives, and their values. From these conversations, he found a profound sense of shared humanity.

Grant’s experiences on the Wisdom Road were transformative. He emerged with an urgent sense of what’s missing in education today: foundational skills in civil discourse. He shares how his own communication evolved as he let go of the need to debate or defend and simply listened. Now, he challenges educators to help students engage with people and viewpoints outside their own. Learning to recognize and respect differences, and hold productive dialogues, is a vital skill in our increasingly global society.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Episode 61: Reflecting on 60 Episodes of New View EDU

For the past six seasons, Tim Fish has been the voice of New View EDU. Now that he has departed from his role at NAIS to start his own firm, NAIS President Debra P. Wilson and Vice President of Leadership and Governance Morva McDonald will be taking the reins. But first, Debra sits down with Tim to reflect on his 60 episodes of the podcast, what he’s learned from his long career in education, and what he thinks may be next for independent schools.

Tim and Debra begin by reflecting on Tim’s favorite episodes. He says if there were one theme that stands out, it’s the importance of student agency, and how a connection to the work and a sense of mattering transforms students’ experiences in school. He shares with Debra a new idea he’s working on, which is a redefinition of “excellence” in education, contrasting “old excellence” with “new excellence.” To allow for student agency and “new excellence,” Tim says his dream school would be designed with a smaller student body, more flexibility in age groupings and class sizes, a creative and more minimalistic approach to physical plant, and a well-defined, central role for teachers that also allows for the influence of innovation and technology.

• Go to the episode page for highlights, discussion questions, key takeaways, and additional resources.

Archives: Episodes and Resources from Past Seasons

• Season 1: Fall 2021
• Season 2: Spring 2022
• Season 3: Fall 2022
• Season 4: Spring 2023
• Season 5: Fall 2023
• Season 6: Spring 2024