E66: Designing Forward

What do today’s students need from us if we are serious about preparing them for tomorrow?

In this episode of the Bold by Choice Podcast, Jim Goenner, Ph.D. turns the tables and interviews co-host Vashaunta Harris about her CharterFolk article, “Designing Forward: What Today’s Students Will Need Tomorrow,” which received a Brian’s Voice Award.

The conversation begins with a leadership practice that shapes much of Vashaunta’s work: listening. She explains how conversations with school leaders, board members, authorizers, families, and students can reveal patterns and signals that traditional data alone may miss—and why strong leaders have to pay attention to both.

From there, Jim and Vashaunta explore a central challenge facing education today:

This is not a moment for louder arguments. It is a moment for design.

While adults debate policy, technology, school choice, funding, and the future of the charter movement, students are walking into classrooms every day. As Vashaunta reminds us, “that third grader is only a third grader this year, and this year matters.”

In this episode:

• Why listening is one of the most important leadership tools

• How stories and conversations become meaningful data

• Why education leaders must move beyond debate and start asking, “What are we actually building?”

• How charter schools can stay focused on the promises made to students and families

• The difference between storytelling for branding and storytelling for leadership

• Why the best leadership stories include tension, failure, learning, and change

• What highly effective schools have in common beyond programs and playbooks

• Why schools must prepare students not only to graduate, but to live, work, adapt, contribute, and lead

• How educators can help students discover their gifts, talents, and future possibilities

• Why movements need honest voices willing to ask hard questions and keep pushing forward

Vashaunta also reflects on the meaning of receiving the Brian’s Voice Award, and why voice matters so deeply in a movement built on people sharing what they are seeing, learning, questioning, and trying to build next.

At its heart, this episode is an invitation to stop designing schools solely around what has worked before and start paying closer attention to where students, families, technology, and the world are headed.

As Vashaunta puts it, schools must broaden the definition of readiness. Success cannot stop at credits and graduation. Students also need the ability to know themselves, discover their gifts, solve problems, work with others, adapt, and make meaningful choices about what comes next.

The Bold by Choice Podcast, powered by the National Charter Schools Institute, brings together leaders, stories, and ideas that challenge us to expand possibility and build what students need next.

Hosted by Vashaunta Harris and Jim Goenner, Ph.D.

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