Age of Awareness Podcast

Here we wrap up our second Coffee Chat and the second half of our conversation with professor and environmental scientist Stephen Mulkey. We touched upon advice for both students and teachers in the environmental world, the uncanny beginnings to the International Center for Tropical Ecology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the plastic industry, and the false promise of current geo-engineering technologies and engineering our way out of climate change. Thank you for tuning in!

Where to find Mulkey online:

• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• His Blog: The Environmental Century
• And be sure to check out his works on Medium.com

This is a fun conversation that touches upon Stephen Mulkey’s original motivation to pursue this path, how he has navigated academia in the face of climate-change denial, and how the youth can help shape the future of environmentalism—both as students and activists.

Mulkey has been active in the environmental science realm in almost every aspect. To helping start conservatories to leading the first university divestment process from fossil fuels, from research in the Amazon to spearheading science literacy programs, he has truly done it all. As an environmental educator, Mulkey and his works are a huge inspiration for me and so many others. 

To be honest, this past school year was chaotic and draining to say the least. I wanted to get back posting conversations months ago but had to do what was best for myself and wait until the end of the school year. I am super excited to get back posting here and sharing these wonderful insights from such amazing people. Oh, and we are happy to finally get around to posting Coffee Chats —the shorter conversation many were asking for.

Where to find Mulkey online:

• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• His Blog: The Environmental Century
• And be sure to check out his works on Medium.com

In this last episode of 2021 we end the year with internationally-acclaimed speaker Ken Shelton on the topic of technology in schools. We cover so many more topics and Ken provides us with several real-world examples that I think anyone in education can appreciate. Whether you are an administrator, educator, parent, or even student I think there is a piece of advice for everyone.
Read more about Ken’s writing on “techquity” here: "Techquity": Going from Digital Poverty to Digital Empowerment

This conversation with Ken is a great way to end the first year of the podcast as he comes to share insights and experiences from so many different perspectives in education (as a classroom teacher, education keynote speaker, consultant, and involvement with education policy). I know these past two years have been especially difficult for educators but Ken does provide advice that one could implement on Monday morning or over the course of a career. Enjoy the conversation and find our other conversations at aoapodcast.com.

Where to keep up with Ken:

• Website
• Twitter
• Medium
• Instagram

Opening music credits: Sad Away by Ketsa
Closing music credits: Surface by Robert John

This was a fun episode as we got a chance to speak with someone who has been contributing to Age of Awareness for years.  I actually discovered the insights and works of Sarah Mock on medium.com about five years ago. Now, she is a best-selling author with her recent book "Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm." This was a nice conversation about some of the major misconceptions of the "American farmer",  glaring issues with our farm subsidy system, and also things to be hopeful about in the coming years in the farming world.

We can't have any serious conversations about climate change without addressing our farming methods and that is why it is so critical that this is part of our mission with environmental education . We hope you enjoy the conversation and we hope you subscribe!

Be sure to check out our past episodes at: aoapodcast.com

Where to keep up with Sarah:

• Link to her book "Farm (and Other F Words)"
• Substack
• Substack Newsletter
• Twitter
• Website

This 8th episode was really fun to do. As a Design and Tech teacher, I really enjoyed hearing about the design process, the creative freedoms, and then the impacts of the final products they are producing over at Microsoft Education. For the educators listening in to this episode; you will notice that it is clear that Microsoft makes it a priority to communicate and collaborate with in-class teachers for their design phases. Enjoy our conversation with Microsoft Education's Mike Tholfsen and be sure to subscribe!

Connect with Mike Tholfsen and his work below:

• YouTube Channel
• Twitter
• TikTok

We had the amazing opportunity to sit down with Lorena Germán and to discuss so many great topics about her work and about her journey to where she is now.  Her new book, "Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Practices" is available for pre-order now and will be available in September. 
You may know her from one of her many other projects in education and education reform like Multicultural Classroom or the #DisruptTexts movement - I truly do not how she does it all.  We go into her projects and work but also her motivation and why she is hopeful moving forward. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did and be sure subscribe!

You can also find the work of Age of Awareness authors on our publication at Age of Awareness. There we are connecting 500,000 monthly readers with over 1,000 authors from around the world on the topics of all things education reform.

You can also find all of our podcast episodes on aoapodast.com. Thank you for listening! 

We had the privilege of chatting with one of the world's leading science communicators, Hashem Al-Ghaili. As a social media manager myself, I was just blown away by the numbers he was reporting: reaching 200,000,000 people each week just on Facebook alone?! Numbers that I couldn't even imagine seeing on the analytics boards. But we spoke about much more than just reaching so many people, we jumped into why it is so important to Hashem to reach those people. He is on a mission that inspired me as an educator, a social media manager, and just as citizen scientist learning along the way. Tune in to hear how and why this scientist  switched over from the lab to science communication - and became one of the best doing it.

You can find all of our episodes on: aoapodcast.com 

How were some teachers able to thrive during their time teaching from home during a global pandemic? How were some able to pivot so easily and transition from in-person teaching to remote teaching? Well, for thousands of teachers around the world The Modern Classrooms Project might be the answer. In our fifth episode, we jump into a conversation with their co-founder Kareem Farah. We explore the roles of blended-instruction, self-paced structure, and mastery-based grading in the classrooms of today and tomorrow. Listen to why and how this award winning teacher, Kareem Farah,  helped create a program has grown from 50 educators to over 22,000. Enjoy!

Kids can be entrepreneurs, too. That is what Stephen and Sean discover in this episode of the show when they sit down with Rocket Club founder and CEO, Alex Hodara. Rocket Club is a program for kids that combines the disciplines of coding, robotics, and entrepreneurship to teach kids valuable lessons they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. Alex talks about the origins of his own journey into entrepreneurship, the gap he saw in education at schools that led to the creation of Rocket Club, and shares some of the amazing accomplishments his members, who, mind you, are only kids, have achieved out in the world of business. We hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to subscribe on whatever platform you are using, and check out the Age of Awareness publication on Medium.com

In our third episode we had the opportunity to talk with science communicator and celebrity Steve Spangler. You may know him from The Ellen DeGeneres Show or from his presence on various other platforms (TikTok | YouTube | Instagram) We get into engagement strategies with students, learning to teach in a virtual/online setting, starting and managing several businesses, and being a lifelong learner.

Please join us in listening in and watching (YouTube Channel here) our conversation with Steve Spangler. From teachers to students and entrepreneurs to parents, we feel there is something to learn for all listeners. Enjoy!

Visit our publication Age of Awareness to view our published works and articles.