We are very good, as a culture, at celebrating where people end up. We are much less honest about how they actually got there.
“How I Learned That” is a podcast for parents who lie awake wondering if their child is going to be okay, and for the teenagers who can already feel that they don't quite fit the mold school was built for. It is a show that believes both of them deserve better than the stories we usually tell about learning and success.
Host Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer is one of Canada's leading learning strategists. Her work lives underneath the subjects, courses, and years, in the how of learning. In each episode, she sits down with someone who has done something remarkable and asks the questions that rarely get asked: what was your relationship with school? What is the hardest thing you have ever had to learn, and how did you learn it? Was there a moment when you finally understood how you learn, and what did it change?
Every guest brings a different answer, and every answer holds an offering of truth: you are far more capable of learning than any institution ever told you.
“How I Learned That” is not a show about exceptional people who made it despite the odds. It is a show about ordinary, extraordinary human beings who figured out how to learn, and what happened when they did. Short episodes, generous conversations, real people, and the real stories underneath their lives.