Kyle Meador

Teachers Teaching Teachers #237 - Social Entrepreneurs Mike Town, Bill Ferriter and Kyle Meador, with Suzie Boss - 3.2.11

The day after this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Chris Sloan, a frequent co-host and planner on the show this year, wrote to Susan and Paul: “I have to say that last night's TTT was an inspiration. It's really got me re-evaluating my teaching.”

The focus of this week’s episode was on social start-ups. Suzie Boss helped us decide who to invite to a show where we were asking to better understand social entrepreneurship. One of the projects that Suzie thought we would want to know about is Cool School Challenge, which, in her description is:
an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of schools. It was launched by Mike Town, environmental science teacher at Redmond High School in Washington, and partners with Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. Participating schools set CO2 reduction goals, figure out their own strategies to achieve them, and track results (and $$ savings for schools) on their website: www.coolschoolchallenge.org

We caught up with Mike Town while he was traveling. Mike currently lives in Washington DC on a year-long Einstein fellowship with the National Science Foundation, and will return to teaching next year. We ask Mike specific questions about Cool School Challenge, but we also ask him to help us to think about the whole idea of working with students to learn about how social justice issues and entrepreneurship can go together.

Bill Ferriter (One Tweet CAN Change the World) was another able guide in our inquiry on this episode of TTT. We talk to him about his microloans club of which he and his students are pretty proud:  
One of the projects that I've begun to engage my students in is studying the world through microloans that we are making through Kiva.  We've spent the better part of the past 8 months raising money, studying countries, and selecting entrepreneurs that we are willing to support with loans ranging anywhere from $25-$100.  We've even created a Lending Team---called Team Kids Care---designed to encourage other classes to join us in our efforts. (See more on his Microloans wiki page on Digitally Speaking.)

Another social entrepreneur on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers was our colleague from New Orleans, Kyle Meador, who is the Director of Educational Programs at Our School at Blair Grocery. Their "About OSBG" page on their web site summarizes some of the work that Kyle does with Nat Turner (5 Years After Katrina, Teacher Tills Soil of Lower 9th Ward) and others in the Lower Ninth Ward:

Our mission is to create a resource-rich safe space for youth empowerment and sustainable community development.
Currently, we:

  • Employ 10 neighborhood teenagers in our Growing Growers program,
  • Operate as the Gulf Coast Growing Power Regional Outreach Training Center,
  • Operate a Community Supported Agriculture-style market (Our Market) and a restaurant sales business generating an average of $1,500 weekly from 1/3 acre of land with our students,
  • Engage and educate over 700 high school and college service-learners annually, and
  • Operate an independent alternative school with 5 total students
For listeners who want some background about social entrepreneurship, Suzie Boss provides a couple of a couple of introductory links:

The New Heroes is a PBS documentary series (now a few years old) that profiles social entrepreneurs from around the world. (Full disclosure: Suzie helped write the classroom materials). Details here: www.pbs.org/thenewheroes

Youth Venture is the sister organization Ashoka, which has been kind of the mothership for nurturing social entrepreneurs worldwide. Youth Venture aims to get teens (and younger students) involved in leading their own sustainable solutions, and offers start-up grants to teams that come up with good ideas: http://www.genv.net/

We hope you too will find inspiration and encouragement from these beacons of social vision and business sense that we were able to have on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.
The day after this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Chris Sloan, a frequent co-host and planner on the show this year, wrote to Susan and Paul: “I have to say that last night's TTT was an inspiration. It's really got me re-evaluating my teaching.”

The focus of this week’s episode was on social start-ups. Suzie Boss helped us decide who to invite to a show where we were asking to better understand social entrepreneurship. One of the projects that Suzie thought we would want to know about is Cool School Challenge, which, in her description is:
an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of schools. It was launched by Mike Town, environmental science teacher at Redmond High School in Washington, and partners with Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. Participating schools set CO2 reduction goals, figure out their own strategies to achieve them, and track results (and $$ savings for schools) on their website: www.coolschoolchallenge.org

We caught up with Mike Town while he was traveling. Mike currently lives in Washington DC on a year-long Einstein fellowship with the National Science Foundation, and will return to teaching next year. We ask Mike specific questions about Cool School Challenge, but we also ask him to help us to think about the whole idea of working with students to learn about how social justice issues and entrepreneurship can go together.

Bill Ferriter (One Tweet CAN Change the World) was another able guide in our inquiry on this episode of TTT. We talk to him about his micro-loans club of which he and his students are pretty excited:  
One of the projects that I've begun to engage my students in is studying the world through microloans that we are making through Kiva.  We've spent the better part of the past 8 months raising money, studying countries, and selecting entrepreneurs that we are willing to support with loans ranging anywhere from $25-$100.  We've even created a Lending Team---called Team Kids Care---designed to encourage other classes to join us in our efforts. (See more on his Microloans wiki page on Digitally Speaking.)

Another social entrepreneur on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers was our colleague from New Orleans, Kyle Meador, who is the Director of Educational Programs at Our School at Blair Grocery. Their "About OSBG" page on their web site summarizes some of the work that Kyle does with Nat Turner (5 Years After Katrina, Teacher Tills Soil of Lower 9th Ward) and others in the Lower Ninth Ward:

Our mission is to create a resource-rich safe space for youth empowerment and sustainable community development.
Currently, we:

  • Employ 10 neighborhood teenagers in our Growing Growers program,
  • Operate as the Gulf Coast Growing Power Regional Outreach Training Center,
  • Operate a Community Supported Agriculture-style market (Our Market) and a restaurant sales business generating an average of $1,500 weekly from 1/3 acre of land with our students,
  • Engage and educate over 700 high school and college service-learners annually, and
  • Operate an independent alternative school with 5 total students
For listeners who want some background about social entrepreneurship, Suzie Boss provides a couple of a couple of introductory links:

The New Heroes is a PBS documentary series (now a few years old) that profiles social entrepreneurs from around the world. (Full disclosure: Suzie helped write the classroom materials). Details here: www.pbs.org/thenewheroes

Youth Venture is the sister organization Ashoka, which has been kind of the mother-ship for nurturing social entrepreneurs worldwide. Youth Venture aims to get teens (and younger students) involved in leading their own sustainable solutions, and offers start-up grants to teams that come up with good ideas: http://www.genv.net/

We hope you too will find inspiration and encouragement from these beacons of social vision and business sense that we were able to have on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #223 - Changing the world through food: Can you do this? 10.20.10

Chris Sloan invited the director of Fresh, ana Sofia joanes to this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Paul Allison had fun asking her questions his students had for her after seeing the film earlier in the week. In addition, this podcast features Haley, a student of Susan Ettenheim's who had visited Our School at Blair Grocery this s

Also joining us were the educators from Our School at Blair Grocery:

  • Nat Turner, Founder and Head of School
  • Kyle Meador, Director of Education Programs
  • Qasim Davis, Teacher and Dean of Students

They had just won a grant from Fresh because of their wonderful garden.

We hope you enjoy this conversation, and that you leave thinking, "Yes I can!"
Chris Sloan invited the director of Fresh, ana Sofia joanes to this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Paul Allison had fun asking her questions his students had for her after seeing the film earlier in the week. In addition, this podcast features Haley, a student of Susan Ettenheim's who had visited Our School at Blair Grocery this summer.

logobig.png

FRESH is more than a movie, it’s a gateway to action. Our aim is to help grow FRESH food, ideas, and become active participants in an exciting, vibrant, and fast-growing movement.

When I write we, I don’t mean our small team (officially two of us, with lots of amazing helps from our interns and volunteers) but I mean YOU. All of you. FRESH is a grassroots efforts for a grassroots movement. It’s been tremendously exciting to see the movie catch on and spread like wild fire, being used all over the country as a platform to raise awareness and connecting people to the solutions available in their community.

Within a month of our launch, we’ve received over 20,000 visitors and hundreds of screenings have already been organized. We want to reach 1 million folks. Not just because that would totally feel nice to our ego (mine especially!), but because, we believe that FRESH can truly help get us to a tipping point, when sustainable food will no longer be just a niche market.

Please help us reach 1 million people (to start with that is.) Organize a home screening or a community screening. Get in touch with us, let us know what we can do more and better. We’re open!

http://www.freshthemovie.com

Also joining us were three educators from Our School at Blair Grocery:

  • Nat Turner, Founder and Head of School
  • Kyle Meador, Director of Education Programs
  • Qasim Davis, Teacher and Dean of Students

They had just won a grant from Fresh because of their wonderful garden.

FRESH 1% GRANT - WE WON!!!

At Our School at Blair Grocery, FRESH is one of our favorite documentaries. Every time we watch it, it inspires us in our work for food security and food justice for our community. Now, because of the amazing response from our supporters who voted for us to win the FRESH 1% Grant, we’ll also receive financial support from FRESH — 1% of their annual revenue for 2010.

We hope you enjoy this conversation, and that you leave thinking, "Yes I can!"

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #209 - Rethinking school with four Gulf Coast teachers - 07.14.10

Our guests on this episode of  Teachers Teaching Teachers are:

  • Kyle Meador, the Director of Education at Our School at Blair Grocery, New Orleans. To learn more about Our School at Blair Grocery, check out this video. Then click here to visit their photo slideshow. This is well worth your time! And while you are there, please contribute to their construction efforts. You'll find a donate button on the right side of the site.
     
  • We met Kyle on Edutopia’s “official PBL Camp kickoff” this Monday. This was a webinar led by Suzie Boss, and it was “attended by more than 100 campers. If you missed the live event, you can view an archived recording, and/or download the slide presentation.” Suzie also joins us on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teacher. There was a lot of synergy between Edutopia’s Problem-Based Learning Camp and our webcast this summer. It was great to be a small part of this work. All of of the materials of this camp areopen to everybody and there is PBL wiki.
     
  • On this episode, we also welcome two teachers from the Live Oak Writing Project which is on the coast in Mississippi. High school science teacher, Alicia Blair who had been with us the week before returns with a colleague, Stacey Ferguson who teaches 5th grade.
  • Middle-school science and technology teacher, Jeff Mason joins us once again to give us his perspectives from Pensacola, Florida.

Our guests on this episode of  Teachers Teaching Teachers are:

  • Kyle Meador, the Director of Education at Our School at Blair Grocery, New Orleans. To learn more about Our School at Blair Grocery, check out this video. Then click here to visit their photo slideshow. This is well worth your time! And while you are there, please contribute to their construction efforts. You'll find a donate button on the right side of the site.
     
  • We met Kyle on Edutopia’s “official PBL Camp kickoff” this Monday. This was a webinar led by Suzie Boss, and it was “attended by more than 100 campers. If you missed the live event, you can view an archived recording, and/or download the slide presentation.” Suzie also joins us on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teacher. There was a lot of synergy between Edutopia’s Problem-Based Learning Camp and our webcast this summer. It was great to be a small part of this work. All of of the materials of this camp areopen to everybody and there is PBL wiki.
     
  • On this episode, we also welcome two teachers from the Live Oak Writing Project which is on the coast in Mississippi. High school science teacher, Alicia Blair who had been with us the week before returns with a colleague, Stacey Ferguson who teaches 5th grade.
  • Middle-school science and technology teacher, Jeff Mason joins us once again to give us his perspectives from Pensacola, Florida.

On this show, we talk about getting a website ready in time for the students on the Gulf Coast, to make it easy for them to share their stories, poems, photographs, essays, and cartoons with us. Bill Fitzgerald and his colleagues at FunnyMonkey pulled it off! Students are coming back along the Gulf Coast this week and next week. "Voices on the Gulf" is ready. We expect that student voices will dominate on this site eventually, but we invite you to join now, and add a discussion. What are you thinking about the BP oil spill? How will this event change your teaching?

Please plan to join us to plan curriculum and make connections with teachers in the Gulf. Browse over to http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA every Wednesday in August./ World Times. We’ll see you then!

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

Subscribe to RSS - Kyle Meador