Leaning on Connection to Lead through Crisis

Missed Milestones: Graduating High School During a Global Pandemic: In our third episode of Intersect Ed, we will hear from several members of the Class of 2020 in Houston about how school closures and emergency remote learning impacted their final semester of high school. School leaders and educators will also share the ways they tried to help these seniors navigate their final days of high school in the midst of a global pandemic. by Intersect Ed

16 min listen

Leaning on Connection to Lead through Crisis: In our fourth episode of Intersect Ed, we’re giving you the opportunity to be a fly on the wall for two fascinating group conversations as school leaders from across the state planned, prepared, and reimagined school for the 2020-21 school year. by Intersect Ed

19 min listen

Beyond the Classroom: How Teachers Are Coping and Connecting in the Age of COVID: In the second episode of Intersect Ed, hosted by Raise Your Hand’s Tessa Benavides, listeners hear from five teachers from across Texas. They share the challenges and successes they had dealing with a lack of access to reliable internet and technology, building an engaging virtual classroom, navigating student engagement through a crisis, and finding ways to meaningfully connect with parents and families. by Intersect Ed

17 min listen

Navigating a Pandemic: What's on Teachers' Minds?: This episode hosted by Raise Your Hand’s Victoria Wang, focuses on one key question: How has this been pandemic been affecting teachers’ mental health? Teachers have struggled to find a balance between their work and home life. They worry about their students and families. They ask themselves: Where are they? Why aren’t they responding? What are the scenes in every home? by Intersect Ed

14 min listen

The COVID-19 Crunch: In our fifth episode of Intersect Ed, we want to give you a landscape view of what school budgets look like for the upcoming school year and how the economic recession may impact school districts in the 2021 Texas Legislative session. by Intersect Ed

16 min listen

Time to Act: Why We Need the State To Ho-Ho-Hold Schools Harmless This December: In our sixth episode of Intersect Ed, we take an up-close dive into what “hold harmless” really means for school districts across the state and what effects schools will immediately feel if it expires. by Intersect Ed

9 min listen

Education Experts Go Deep on Texas' Second Annual Public Education Poll: We’ve said since the beginning that the Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation Poll is for everyone. It is for educators, researchers, lawmakers, and communities. It represents the voices of all Texans about an issue that impacts all Texans. It is Texas’ poll. The eighth Intersect Ed podcast episode features education experts from a variety of fields reflecting on the Foundation Poll data and how it impacts their work. by Intersect Ed

27 min listen

Who Vouchers Hurt — and Where School Choice Really Works: In the eleventh episode of Intersect Ed, part of our legislative agenda series, we debunk the myth that school choice does not exist in Texas public schools. by Intersect Ed

10 min listen

The Misconceptions of the "Missing Students": In our ninth episode of Intersect Ed, we hear directly from superintendents and educators who are working daily to ensure every student across Texas is connected to their school. by Intersect Ed

16 min listen

Pre-K: The Essential Pandemic Response: In our seventh episode of Intersect Ed, which is part of our legislative agenda series, we explore why pre-K is more powerful than ever — for all the research-based reasons we’ve touted for more than a decade, combined with the urgency of closing pandemic learning gaps and supporting the state’s economic recovery. by Intersect Ed

21 min listen

Teachers: Texas' Greatest Asset: Our 10th episode of Intersect Ed, part of our legislative agenda series, examines the imperative to invest in and improve the teacher workforce in Texas. In this episode, you will hear from Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath on increased challenges facing schools due to the pandemic; financial investments in how the state develops teachers; and the need to shift cultural perceptions of one of our most valuable professions. by Intersect Ed

19 min listen

Bridging the Digital Divide: What Challenge Does Texas Face? (Part 1): This episode (part 1 of 2) focuses on the digital divide — what it is, who is affected by it, how it is affecting Texas public schools and their students, and, most importantly, how experts and lawmakers can help to close the divide. by Intersect Ed

19 min listen

The Future of Virtual and Remote Learning: For some students and families, pandemic schooling has been unimaginably difficult. Other students, however, may have thrived off of this model. Moving forward, as online instruction becomes a more visible part of our educational system, it is essential that we find policies – at both the district and state level – that ensure our virtual schools are high quality. by Intersect Ed

19 min listen

Teacher Pay: Texas Teachers Deserve a Real Pay Raise: With just a few weeks left in the 88th Legislative Session, lawmakers are deciding how to spend a record-breaking $33 billion surplus, with tens of billions more in estimated growth in revenue over the next two years. And, as the hours creep closer and closer to the last day of the 2023 legislative session, they are not deciding to spend it on teachers. You may have seen headlines about some major legislation — Senate Bill 9 and House Bill 100 are two of the proposals out there that would increase teacher pay. But here’s what you need to know about those bills: they don’t come anywhere close to moving Texas teacher pay in line with the national average OR bumping their salaries enough to keep up with inflation. Hear from Raise Your Hand Texas teacher specialist JoLisa Hoover and three Texas teachers. They will share the reasons why a real pay raise is needed, and why one of the teachers is leaving the classroom at the end of this by Intersect Ed

21 min listen

Mentoring Teachers to Create High-Quality Classrooms: The formalized practice of having more experienced teachers coach those newer in the profession has the potential to help with a major challenge facing Texas public schools — teacher shortages. It also benefits everyone involved, from the experienced teachers acting as mentors who now have a chance to learn new skills, to the newer teachers they are supporting, and to the students who now have confident, calm educators in the classroom. Hear from current and former teachers Mario Piña, Regional Advocacy Director - Central Texas at Raise Your Hand Texas, Jennifer Cook, 7th Grade English Language Arts Teacher at Livingston ISD, and Jerome Johnson, 8th Grade English Language Arts Teacher at Channelview ISD in this episode. They will share how mentoring teachers can create higher-quality classrooms across Texas, and why Texas lawmakers need to take the framework of what’s already a good program and expand it so that more teachers — wh by Intersect Ed

14 min listen

Bridging the Digital Divide: What Challenge Does Texas Face? (Part 2): With conversations happening about virtual education options for the future, Texas must solve the digital divide and that solution rests on solving infrastructure and access issues. The solutions need to work for students in major metropolitan areas as well as the students in the most rural communities. In part two of Intersect Ed’s look at the digital divide in Texas, we focus on what innovative solutions communities are finding to close the gap between the haves and the have nots of the internet age. by Intersect Ed

15 min listen

How Much Is Your Student Worth to Texas?: What is the amount of money Texas pays to educate a student in public schools? What's known as the basic allotment is the per-student sum the state uses as the foundational building block to determine how much money it will pay to educate a student. Learn why it should be increased in the 88th Texas Legislative Session. by Intersect Ed

21 min listen

Rethinking the STAAR Test: Accountability, and the transparency it brings, is essential. We need to make sure the 5.4 million students in Texas public schools are provided with the tools they need to eventually enter the workforce, and that taxpayer money is being put to good use. This episode brings a superintendent, a school board member, a former teacher, a CEO, and an advocacy leader together to discuss why Texas students deserve to be graded on more than just one test on one day. by Intersect Ed

18 min listen

Advocacy and the 2021 Legislative Session: As the 87th Legislative Session kicked off last January, there was one word that could be used to describe how many were feeling — uncertain. Uncertain about school funding due to COVID budget woes. Uncertain about the logistics of navigating a legislative session in the midst of a pandemic. Nonetheless, thanks to the efforts of public education supporters around the state, billions of dollars are going to our schools. Listen as we reflect on this past session — the bruising moments and the bright ones — to uncover how, in the end, it was a win for Texas students. by Intersect Ed

24 min listen

The School Voucher Debate: Texas Rural Communities: We're taking on a topic that has become a marquee fight of the 88th Legislature: private school vouchers, which are also known as education savings accounts. On one side, we have our state's two most powerful elected officials, Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who say every parent should get the freedom to decide how to use taxpayer money in educating their children. On the other, we have every public education advocacy group in the state, including Raise Your Hand Texas, who all say that vouchers will do nothing but harm students, teachers, and communities. This episode discusses how vouchers will harm Texas’ rural communities and the implications and disadvantages of special education vouchers. by Intersect Ed

21 min listen

Recap of the 88th Texas Legislative Session: A Session Out of Balance: The 2023 legislative session started with a lot of promise. Lawmakers had a historic $33 billion dollar budget surplus, and there was energy and consensus to address a number of public education issues. Instead, lawmakers failed to give Texas public schools enough funding to even keep up with inflation, much less provide teacher pay raises to help stop the exodus of educators from the classroom. They lost efforts to improve our accountability system so that teachers could focus on their students’ learning instead of their performance on standardized tests. They did not pass any policies to help recruit and retain high-quality teachers. by Intersect Ed

21 min listen

Special Session: School Finance & Vouchers: We’re talking about the special legislative session that began Oct. 9, and the intense financial pressure facing Texas public schools. Gov. Greg Abbott has called state lawmakers back to Austin with strict orders to complete some unfinished business from the regular legislative session that ended back in May. And if you listened to our legislative recap episode, you know there’s a lot of that when it comes to education policy. But it’s not teacher pay raises, increases to per student funding to help districts keep up with inflation, or reforms to the state’s standardized testing and accountability system the governor has directed lawmakers to tackle. It’s passing an Education Savings Account that would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their kids to private schools. There are a lot of reasons why this is bad policy for Texas, and so many lessons we can learn from the mistakes of other states that have already adopted these vou by Intersect Ed

15 min listen

Rulemaking: How Agencies Change the Rules of the Game: Today, we’re talking about a big change that’s about to wallop Texas school districts. At the end of September, as lawmakers approach an anticipated special session this fall on private school vouchers, about one out of every four public school campuses will see the letter grade that marks their performance in the state’s A-F accountability system drop. What’s happening now with the rollout of new standards was not directed by the Legislature, it is an agency (Texas Education Agency) level decision. And to understand how we got to this point, we have to take a trip to the opaque world of agency rulemaking. by Intersect Ed

12 min listen

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Leaning on Connection to Lead through Crisis

Leaning on Connection to Lead through Crisis

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