About the Getting Smart Podcast
The Getting Smart Podcast covers trends, innovations and insights in K-12, higher ed, lifelong learning, leadership, investing and more. You can listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Every other Friday we publish an episode called “Catching Up” where Nate McClennen and Mason Pashia try to make sense of what’s going on in education, learning and human flourishing. Check it out.
If you’re on Spotify, we have built some great playlists to help you jump into some conversations we’ve been having over the last few years. You can go long on the following topics:
- Student Voice
- Pathways to Postsecondary
- Green Skills & Schools
- Microschools
- What’s Next in Learning
- AI in Education
- Next Generation Leadership
Interested in placing an advertisement in the podcast or sponsoring a series of conversations? Check out our sponsored content page to learn more.
Know of someone who would make a great guest on the podcast? Email Mason to pitch your suggestion or learn more about being on the podcast.
Subscribe to Our Podcast
This podcast highlights developing trends in K-12 education, postsecondary and lifelong learning. Each week, Getting Smart team members interview students, leading authors, experts and practitioners in research, tech, entrepreneurship and leadership to bring listeners innovative and actionable strategies in education leadership.
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What Students Want Principals to Know | The MAPS Media Institute
What does it look like when young people in rural, Indigenous, and homeschool communities gain access to professional media studios, real community projects, and instructors who actually see them? In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Mason Pashia speaks with MAPS Media Institute executive director Clare Ann Harff and two of her students, Laurel De Groot and Mikaela Doney, about the quiet revolution happening across Montana. Their conversation is a field guide for any education leader who wants to understand what failure-resilient, community-connected, learner-centered programming looks and sounds like when it is working.
This School Cut a Class Period for Career Time | Principal Kyle Scott
What does it actually take to rebuild a high school around the lives students are heading toward, not the schedule inherited from the past? Kyle Scott, principal of Warren High School in rural Appalachian Ohio, joins the Getting Smart Podcast to share how he moved from 41-minute periods and a dozen career-connected students to a full Flex Friday redesign rooted in student voice, workforce data, and community trust. This conversation is essential listening for any education leader ready to move from compliance to coherence and from programming to purpose.
Learner Wallets for Identity, Discovery and Pathways | Jacksón Smith
What if a credential wallet could do more than store badges, it could help a learner understand who they are and navigate toward what they want to become? In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Mason Pashia speaks with Jacksón Smith, co-founder and CTO of the Learning Economy Foundation, about building LearnCard as open-source public infrastructure grounded in three verbs: collect, understand, and navigate. From peer endorsements in Scouting to a real-time learner GPS that reroutes around adversity, this conversation reframes credential technology as a tool for identity formation, not just data storage. Education leaders ready to move beyond compliance-era transcripts will find this one worth the full listen.
20 Years Later, a Former Advisor Asks His Old Students What Stuck | Andrew Frishman on The Advisory
What does a high school experience look like when it is built around who you are rather than what you can produce on a standardized test? In this episode, Getting Smart host Mason Pashia speaks with Andrew Frishman of Big Picture Learning, Met alum Natasha Luigui, and current Met senior Daniela Moraes about the lasting power of advisory, internships, and exhibitions as tools for human development. Their conversation is a vivid reminder that the outcomes education leaders should be measuring are not visible at graduation, and that the structures we build for young people today ripple forward in ways we are only beginning to trace.
Can AI Make Math Class More Social? | Britte Haugan Cheng & Ann Edwards
What does truly inclusive R&D in math education look like when researchers, developers, teachers, and students design together from the start? In this episode, Britte Haugan Cheng and Ann Edwards of the AIMS Collaboratory unpack how their Gates Foundation-funded network is building public goods, harnessing pro-social AI, and centering priority students to raise outcomes for all learners. If you lead a school or system grappling with math proficiency and a crowded EdTech market, this conversation will sharpen both your vision and your discernment.