When it comes to making an impact on school outcomes, Harvard Professor Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell says we often overlook the power of relationships within the school.

“I think the complexity of how relationships work is one of the reasons why the first place we often go when we're trying to improve schools is to something like policies and procedures,” she says. “It seems very concrete. Put the policy in place. Something's going to happen. Have a new procedure. People are going to follow it. Cross your fingers.”

But the real lever of change is in people. Bridwell-Mitchell studies the intricate dynamics of relationships within schools and how they shape outcomes for students, teachers, and institutions.

“So all the time in organizations, we are shaping the interactions, the relationships people develop. And so from my perspective, we need to be much more intentional about what those efforts are accomplishing in terms of relationships and what impact they might be having on the outcomes that we desire,” she says, pointing out how seemingly innocuous decisions like where to put an office and what time to schedule a class can impact the social dynamic of an organization.

Relationships in schools are nested, where connections among individuals can ripple through classrooms, schools, and the educational system. However, figuring out how to more intentionally develop relationships can be challenging amid time constraints and policy demands.

Still, Bridwell-Mitchell attests it is well worth the investment if schools want to transform for the long run. “Whatever great idea you think you have to make things better in your context, in your classroom, in your school, in your district-- how much you're going to get out of that -- the bang for the buck you invest,” she says. “What you get out of it will be so much greater if you can leverage relationships in the right way.”

In this episode, Bridwell-Mitchell shares how leveraging social networks can spark meaningful change, and why schools must embrace both the complexity and the power of human connection to achieve lasting success.

Andrew Tucker says the growing adoption of Portraits of a Graduate in K-12 education is a way to address gaps in education and prepare students to thrive in an evolving workforce. Portraits of a Graduate (POG) are frameworks, adopted by a state or district, that defines the skills and competencies students should have upon graduation, extending beyond academic benchmarks.

“For a long time-- maybe generations really-- in our K-12 system, we've really focused on a single metric for success, and that's been a four-year college degree,” says Tucker, director of policy at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). “We're beginning to recognize that there are other opportunities and other options for students and that we actually need to prepare students beyond just those minimum academic requirements that exist for enrollment into a four-year college.”

As part of a CASEL report this year, Tucker highlights how states and districts are adopting POGs to equip students with essential "durable skills" like critical thinking, collaboration, and emotional intelligence. About 20 states have created these frameworks. He explains that these portraits are developed with input from diverse stakeholders—educators, parents, employers, and community members—and aim to address the disconnect between what schools teach and the skills employers and society demand. Some states like Nevada, North Carolina, and Utah are implementing these frameworks and aligning them with career and social-emotional learning goals.

Tucker emphasizes a portraits potential to enhance student readiness for college, careers, and life, particularly as "human skills" become increasingly critical in an era shaped by AI and automation.

“We're in the era of AI. And artificial intelligence is going to be taking the place of a lot of the technical skills that people need. And what's going to be left? What's going to be left are these human skills,” Tucker says. “So we have to, as a society, and as an education system, and as a broader workforce system, we have to define these things in ways that there's a common language.”

In this episode, Tucker calls on educators and policymakers to embrace Portraits of a Graduate as a means to foster an equitable, relevant, and future-focused education.

Laura Chávez-Moreno says bilingual education inadvertently creates boundaries around Latinx identity by gathering Spanish-speaking students together.

“Bilingual education, rightfully so, has focused on language,” says Chávez-Moreno, an assistant professor at UCLA. “But there has to be also a recognition that bilingual education, because it is a part of schooling in the U.S., that it is also engaging in the process of creating ideas about race and about creating our ideas about racialized groups.”

In her new book, “How Schools Make Race,” she argues that while bilingual education aims to support students’ language and cultural identity, it often fails to address the broader racial dynamics affecting Latinx communities.

Chávez-Moreno believes that more could be done to integrate discussions of race and ethnic studies. “There's this national debate in the U.S. about whether schools should or not teach about race, and sometimes that gets called like attacks on critical race theory. I use that in scare quotes because it's really not critical race theory, but it's used…” she says. “It's causing a lot of fear in terms of what teachers can do. And instead of having that debate, we should recognize that schools teach about race already, whether we like it or not, in indirect and direct ways. But we should recognize that in order for us to then improve how we teach about it, we really need to take a more systematic approach to how teachers engage in this work. And unfortunately, that's not happening in our schools.”

She calls for an "ambitious" teaching model that would prepare educators to guide these conversations thoughtfully, helping students gain a deeper understanding of their place within a racialized society.

In this episode, she discusses how bilingual education programs influence the racialization of Latinx students and how a more nuanced approach could enhance bilingual education and better equip students to understand the complexities of race in the U.S.