Human Restoration Project

Building the Appalachia of the Future w/ Appalachian Futurism Project

"Appalachia has a history and culture worth preserving, and a future worth pursuing," reads The Big Idea on AFP's homepage. The Appalachian Futurism Project’s mission is

People-Based Learning w/ Dr. Jane Shore

In case you’re not familiar at all with the Katamari video game series. As the player, you navigate this ball that starts off small at first until everything in the envir

The Myth of the Unmotivated Student w/ Dr. Erika Patall

At some point every exasperated teacher has thrown up their hands and repeated some version of "these kids just aren't motivated." Yet schools respond to unmotivated kids

Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It w/ Dr. GInie Servant-Miklos

On Friday, July 31st, we hosted Dr. Ginie Servant-Miklos for a Q&A about her book Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It. This

The Power of Critical Play w/ Dr. Mary Flanagan

We all grew up playing games — I fondly remember playing Go Fish with my grandma and her next door neighbor, as a 90s kid who grew up with an NES, it felt like every cons

Restoring Humanity to "Special Education": Global Perspectives on Inclusion w/ Dr. Sarah K Benson

Hey there, Nick here at Human Restoration Project. We took the longest break in our podcast’s history last month, and I hope you were able to take a break, too. We’re bac

Teaching in the Wreckage of the Real: A Narration

This summer, HRP is reading Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It, by Ginie Servant-Miklos, and we’re inviting you to join us

We Are Worldbuilders: A Narration

Progressive education is a world-building project rooted in the radical hope that schools can become something fit for human beings. This summer, HRP is reading Pedagogi

The Future of Public Education is a Community School feat. Kelly McMahon, Jitu Brown, Angelia Ebner, and Dave Greenberg

This conversation started 2 years ago, when I ran into Kelly McMahon at a summer conference. Kelly’s a kindergarten teacher at Hoover Community School in Cedar Rapids, Io

The Promise (and Persistent Myths) of Montessori Education w/ Andrew Faulstich, Dr. Ayize Sabater, and Kelly Jonelis

Montessori schools are some of the few that wear their pedagogy on their signage: Cottontail Creek Montessori School. Montessori Children’s House. Acappella Montessori. (

Spring Break 2026: HRP Summer Book Club & Montessori Mythbusting

This summer, HRP is reading Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It, by Ginie Servant-Miklos, and we’re inviting you to join us

Reanimating the Art of Teaching w/ Gary Stager

There’s a quote from the great conservationist John Muir that goes, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." M

What Prison Can Teach Us About School w/ Jennifer Berkshire

Tomorrow, I’ll be trading Iowa for a couple days in Los Angeles, where the HRP team will be presenting for the third year at LearningInspirEd’s Student Power Summit. It’s

Making School Meaningful w/ Lauren Porosoff

Whether it was during her nearly two decades as a middle school humanities teacher or as diversity coordinator or grade-level team leader, my guest today kept returning t

From Meritocracy to Human Interdependence: Redefining the Purpose of Education w/ Yong Zhao

In a 2021 interview, Michael Sandel, author of the book The Tyranny of Merit argues that if merit can be understood as competence, a good thing to be clear, “The principl

Changing My Mind About Schools (and Everything Else) w/ Diane Ravitch

“This is a book about my life, about admitting ‘I was wrong,’ and about how important it is to say it out loud,” is how our guest today, Diane Ravitch, begins her 2025 me

Why Fascists Fear Teachers w/ Randi Weingarten

HRP is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3), and the views expressed by our guests are their own and do not constitute an endorsement. “Who’s the most dangerous person in the world?

Crash Course Social Studies Education w/ Raoul Meyer

If you’ve taught or attended a high school course in the last decade, you’ve probably watched a Crash Course video. Their dozens of playlists on topics from Biology and E

Cultivating Creativity and Connection in the Classroom w/ Tom Rendon & Zachary Stier

How do you define creativity? Would you be able to spot creativity in the wild? What about creativity in the classroom? This endless human quest to define the seemingl

Are we Reader or are we Player? w/ Karis Jones, Virginia Killian Lund, Brady Nash, and Trevor Aleo

Most of us probably experienced a homogenous version of literacy in our English classes: read a book, answer a few questions along the way, and compose an essay at the en