Next Education Workforce

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. John B. King, Jr.

Episode Summary

Brent Maddin talks with Dr. John B. King, Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Education, and president and CEO of the Education Trust, an education civil rights organization focused on education equity for low-income students and students of color, about equity and the education workforce today.

Episode Notes

Brent Maddin talks with Dr. John B. King, Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Education, and president and CEO of the Education Trust, an education civil rights organization focusing on education equity for low-income students and students of color, about equity and the education workforce today. 

• 2:48: Dr. King describes how his perspective has been influenced by his experiences as a student, as a classroom teacher and as a civil servant and policymaker. “The thing that saved me was school. The consistency, the nurturing relationships, the engagement at school is the reason I’m alive today.” He goes on to describe the enormous tasks that are assigned to educators and the lack of support systems to help teachers achieve everything society asks of them. “We don’t always provide the working conditions that folks need to stay in the work and feel good about the work, so we have work to do as a society.” 
• 5:09: Dr. King sees how the pandemic has affected students and the inequities it’s revealed. He hopes that this moment in time will be a “New Deal” moment, bringing major systemic change to the field of education and opening the eyes of society to the importance of investing in education for all students. 
• 6:19: Dr. King details the work going on in his state of Maryland around the concept of “schools as communities.” The idea is that schools are already involved with so many different agencies like healthcare, social services, and the criminal justice system. 
• 7:57: Dr. King gives examples of teams that are designed to address student needs as a group instead of relying on one classroom teacher. 
• 11:15: Dr. King offers suggestions on how to broaden the definition of an educator by looking at the work of our international peers who have found ways to subsidize their work to improve outcomes. Diversify the teaching profession by creatively including people in positions that are not always in the spotlight like tutors, coaches, behavior specialists, etc. 
• 14:07: Dr. King looks at healthcare as a model that takes a holistic approach to care for patients by assembling a team of specialists to serve them. Healthcare also offers an enormous range of career pathways to support the interests of healthcare professionals. 
• 19:03: Dr. King believes in the importance of social and emotional well-being as part of overall student success and shares his perspective as it relates to outcomes being more than just reading and math scores. “We have to be careful In our desire to be metric-driven that we don’t mistakenly narrow how we think about the purpose of education.” 
• 22:16: Dr. King shares his experience as a new teacher and some of the creative ways he had to figure things out. He also shares a strategy that one local program initiated to help their teachers better understand the students, assigning new teachers to community groups prior to student teaching. This allowed the teachers to get to know their students and their families as a whole before they worked with them in the classroom. 

What Dr. King is currently reading: Pregnant Girl: A Story of Teen Motherhood, College, and Creating a Better Future for Young Families by Nicole Lynn Lewis

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