What could solve the challenge of teacher shortages around the world? What inspires teachers to become teachers in the first place? How do teachers find a connection with their students?

In this episode, Nina talks to Carlos Vargas, Head of the Teacher Task Force Secretariat at UNESCO. The Teacher Task Force was formed in 2008. Its mission is to fill the gap in quantity of teachers and quality of teaching, to provide equitable, inclusive and quality education for all. “We forget that the working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students”, Carlos says. He argues that motivation will suffer if teachers do not have good working conditions or believe they’re making a difference.

Next, Nina meets Teemu Kuutila, a teacher of primary and middle school children in Jyväskylä, in the north of Finland. Teemu loves his job, and finds teaching very rewarding. He tries to be a good role model, he uses humour, and he brings personality into his teaching. “My advice would be to share about your personal life with the students. I've noticed that it has a tremendous effect”, Teemu says.

Nina then talks to science teacher Hina Mahmood, in Bahawalpur in Pakistan. Hina takes an integrated approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), giving students projects that involve applying knowledge to real world situations. “I love my subject area and want to share that enthusiasm with my students”, Hina says. “ I chose this profession because teachers influence the thoughts, values, beliefs of the students, helping to mold the next generation of citizens.”

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Guests and resources
Carlos Vargas-Támez - Teacher Task Force website, resource centre, Strategic Plan, on YouTube, on X, on LinkedIn
Teemu Kuutila - on YouTube
Hina Mahmood - Roots Ivy International Schools on Instagram

Teachers are one of the most influential and powerful forces for equity, access and quality in education. They provide children with the knowledge, skills, attitude and tools needed to reach their full potential.

Join Nina Alonso for the fourth season of the podcast in which she shares powerful stories from teachers around the world, talking in their own words about their own experiences. Every episode, Nina invites international experts on learning and child development to give their thoughts on the big topics in education.

How does teacher wellbeing impact student wellbeing? How important is sleep for learning? What does strong school leadership look like? Explore these questions and many more in our fourth season, and hear from inspiring teachers and amazing guests.

Contact

Join us on social media: https://twitter.com/BOLD_insights and https://twitter.com/VoicesTeachers

Listen to all episodes of Teachers’ Voices here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/teachers-voices

Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning when you subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter here: https://boldscience.org/

Get in touch with us: podcastteachersvoices@gmail.com

The final episode of Teachers’ Voices season 3 opens with Sister Zeph, winner of the 2023 Global Teacher Prize, talking directly to teachers. “You are a future maker”, she says. These words inspired the rest of this mini-episode, which explores futures literacy. What is futures literacy? What do students gain from futures literacy? How can teachers incorporate it into their classrooms?

Former teacher Michelle Blanchet, co-author of the Startup Teacher Playbook and Co-Founder of The Educators’ Lab answers these questions for Nina. Michelle is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Futures literacy is “a way to encourage young people to use their imagination and their agency to adapt, invent, recover, prepare for all the changes that we're experiencing”, Michelle explains.

Teachers’ Voices will be back for season 4 later this year.

Join the Teachers' Voices WhatsApp group and read the community guidelines.

Guests and resources

Sister Zeph - LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Global Teacher Prize
ZWEE Foundation of Sister Zeph - Facebook, Instagram

Michelle Blanchet - LinkedIn, Twitter/X
The Educators’ Lab - Twitter/X, Medium, Facebook

UNESCO - Futures Literacy

Contact

Join us on social media: @BOLD_insights and @VoicesTeachers.

Listen to all episodes of Teachers’ Voices.

Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter.

Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning at bold.expert.

Get in touch with us: podcastteachersvoices@gmail.com.

Why is it important to make sure children have words to name their emotions? How can teachers promote mental health and wellbeing? Is it possible to remove academic pressure from school?

In this episode, Nina first meets Sarah Griffiths, a Senior Research Fellow at University College London and Co-Director of the Wellbeing and Language Lab in UCL’s department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology. “Language, particularly words for emotions, are critical for understanding emotions,” Sarah explains. Emotion understanding is not innate, children learn about emotions through conversations.

Next, Nina meets Riffat Arif, known as Sister Zeph, winner of the 2023 Global Teacher Prize. Sister Zeph talks to Nina from Gujranwala in Pakistan. She has given thousands of marginalized children and women access to learning. “Mental wellbeing has always been my priority”, Sister Zeph says. The children at her school are traumatised from poverty, hunger, and physical and mental violence, and Sister Zeph provides them a safe space.

Nina speaks to Virna Talarico, a teacher working in primary education in Zurich in Switzerland. Virna shares that they talk about emotions in the classroom - children have the right to feel emotions and other children have to respect that. “It is important that the children feel they are taken seriously”, she says.

Nina’s final guest is Joyce Mininger, Learning Director of the LearnLife primary years hub near Barcelona in Spain. “We take away the pressure of school”, Joyce explains. At their school, they reduce academic pressure to support children’s wellbeing. They also foster healthy relationships between learners, and work on teacher wellbeing too, which impacts children’s wellbeing.

Join the Teachers' Voices WhatsApp group and read the community guidelines.

Guests and resources

Sarah Griffiths - Lab, Twitter/X, UCL

Sister Zeph - LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Global Teacher Prize
ZWEE Foundation of Sister Zeph - Facebook, Instagram

Joyce Mininger - LinkedIn
LearnLife, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter/X

Dr Ross Greene explains Plan B, a technique to solve problems collaboratively with children

Virna Talarico

Contact

Join us on social media: @BOLD_insights and @VoicesTeachers.

Listen to all episodes of Teachers’ Voices.

Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter.

Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning at bold.expert.

Get in touch with us: podcastteachersvoices@gmail.com.

What types of physical activity benefit students? Can bringing movement and play into different academic classes help children learn? How can spaces and classes for movement be inclusive?

Nina first meets Fotini Vasilopoulos, a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia. “Physical activity is important for physical health, for mental health, and it also can drive behaviours for learning.” Fotini suggests giving children different types of experiences - not just sports, but also play and dance, which can foster inclusivity.

Next, Nina speaks to Saumil Majmudar in the Himalayas, India. Saumil is the founder of Sportz Village, India's largest youth sports platform. “We do something very simple,” Saumil says, “we just get kids to play”. The Sportz Village approach is to give children the time and space to play safely with others their own age.

Nina also hears from Tanya Sheckley, founder of the Up Academy and host of the Rebel educator podcast. Tanya is based in California in the US. Tanya’s school incorporates movement and play into classroom time, and students can have breaks from work on a large monkey bar structure.

Join the Teachers' Voices WhatsApp group and read the community guidelines.

Guests and resources

Fotini Vasilopoulos

Saumil Majmudar - LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook

Sportz Village - LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook

Tanya Sheckley – LinkedIn, Facebook, Rebel Educator podcast
UP Academy - Twitter/X

Contact

Join us on social media: @BOLD_insights and @VoicesTeachers.

Listen to all episodes of Teachers’ Voices.

Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter.

Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning at bold.expert.

Get in touch with us: podcastteachersvoices@gmail.com.

In what ways do students differ from each other in their learning? How does one student vary in their own learning from day to day? How can schools embrace these types of learning variability?

In this episode, Nina talks to Julia Leonard, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Learning variability, Julia explains, is both “my learning might be different than your learning” and “my learning one day might be different from the other day”. It is also that “my learning in one class might be different than another class”. Julia’s research asks how educators can create contexts that bring kids to the top of their potential.

Nina also meets Guyot Betoto, a secondary school teacher from Madagascar. Guyot teaches large groups of students and is always looking for ways to adapt to student variability. He explains how he moves around the group and identifies learners’ needs, and empowers students to lead and motivate others in the group: “They do it with pleasure”.

Next, Nina speaks to two edupreneurs from LearnLife in Barcelona, where students’ interests and passions are at the centre of their learning. Emma Buckle, Community Partnerships & Development Director, explains that the LearnLife approach is a “truly personal model that helps learners focus on and find their own personal passion”.

Devin Carberry, LearnLife’s Barcelona Hub Lead, tells Nina about the way students direct their own learning. “Amazing projects come out of this because we give learners a space to reconnect with learning how they like to do it.”

Join the Teachers' Voices WhatsApp group and read the community guidelines.

Guests and resources

Julia Leonard - Lab website, Twitter/X

Guyot Betoto

Emma Buckle - LinkedIn, Twitter/X

Devin Carberry - LinkedIn

LearnLife - website, Facebook, YouTube

Contact

Join us on social media: @BOLD_insights and @VoicesTeachers.

Listen to all episodes of Teachers’ Voices.

Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter.

Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning at bold.expert.

Get in touch with us: podcastteachersvoices@gmail.com.

How can teachers help students make a positive change in their communities? How can schools better connect education with the future of work?

In this bonus mini episode of Teachers’ Voices, Nina hears practical tips from last episode’s guests Alison Yang, Barbara Bilgre, Maud Seghers, and Larisa Akrofie. Nina is also joined by Tanya Sheckley, an edupreneur and host of the podcast Rebel Educator. All share their tips and inspiring resources for instilling an entrepreneurial mindset and preparing students for the future of work.

Join the Teachers' Voices WhatsApp group and read the community guidelines.

Guests and resources

Alison Yang - LinkedIn, website

Barbara Bilgre - LinkedIn

Global Issues Network
Round Square
African Leadership Academy

Maud Seghers - LinkedIn

VVOB - website, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook

Larisa Akrofie - LinkedIn, Twitter/X

Tanya Sheckley - website, Rebel Educator podcast

Contact

Join us on social media: @BOLD_insights and @VoicesTeachers.

Listen to all episodes of Teachers’ Voices.

Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter.

Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning at bold.expert.

Get in touch with us: podcastteachersvoices@gmail.com.

What is an entrepreneurial mindset? Why should educators nurture entrepreneurial mindsets in young people? What entrepreneurial projects have teachers developed in classrooms around the world?

In this episode, Nina first speaks to Maud Seghers. Maud is a global education advisor at VVOB in Belgium, an international organisation devoted to education development. An entrepreneurial mindset is not just about starting and managing projects, programs, and businesses that generate wealth, Maud says, as a lot of entrepreneurs and young people also want to “maximise benefits to society and the environment”.

Next, Nina meets Larisa Akrofie in Ghana. Larisa is Lead of Skills and Education at the Mastercard Foundation and believes that building entrepreneurial attitudes in the growing young population in Africa is really important. “High rates of entrepreneurial skills will go a long way to empower young people to create their own opportunities and contribute to the diversification of economies and address social challenges”, Larisa says.

Nina then speaks to Alison Yang, an international school teacher in Hong Kong who specialises in entrepreneurship. Alison explains that students often acquire skills and knowledge but don’t necessarily know how to apply them outside the classroom. “That's why we have the entrepreneur project”, she explains, to explicitly show students how to apply their “knowledge and interest to create something that's useful”.

Finally, Nina hears from Barbara Bilgre, a marine biologist and science teacher in India. Barbara believes that “if you're going to be setting up a business, you should have in mind a purpose for social improvements and social justice”. Barbara tells Nina about the benefits of connecting schools with social entrepreneurs who are working to improve the environment.

Join the Teachers' Voices WhatsApp group and read the community guidelines.

Guests and resources

Maud Seghers - LinkedIn
VVOB - website, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook

Larisa Akrofie - LinkedIn, Twitter/X
Plugging African Youth - WhatsApp Channel

Alison Yang - LinkedIn, website
IB Middle Years Programme - Twitter/X

Barbara Bilgre - LinkedIn

Contact

Join us on social media: @BOLD_insights and @VoicesTeachers.

Listen to all episodes of Teachers’ Voices.

Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter.

Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning at bold.expert.

Get in touch with us: podcastteachersvoices@gmail.com.