Raising Curious Learners – Details, episodes & analysis

At Britannica for Parents, we’re all curious learners. One of the important topics that seems to come up a lot in our work and in our conversations is the environment – how to protect it and sustain it. One crucial way to do this is by protecting bee populations. Co-hosts Ann and Elizabeth speak to Parent's adviser Marianne Gee (co-founder of Gees Bees Honey Company) about how we can help bees and what it's like having a family business.

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Ebony Underwood is the founder of We Got Us Now, a nonprofit nonpartisan advocacy organization amplifying the issues children and young adults with incarcerated parents face due to mass incarceration. Co-hosts Ann and Elizabeth welcome her to the Raising Curious Learners podcast to talk about her work and how we can better support children with incarcerated parents.

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Doing everything from home during COVID-19 means that parents have had to blend their work and family lives together in ways like never before. Simply coping with this transition is a triumph on its own, so our hosts were particularly impressed by a family with young children that has been able to turn these trying times into something wonderful. Sharing their story in this episode of Raising Curious Learners, professional musicians Rob and Ariella Johnson set the stage in their living room for a series of short performance videos for the Houston Symphony that feature both their three sons and popular orchestral pieces. This musical couple discuss the media coverage, music's role in their family, the virtue of patience, and how they've made the most of this time together.

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Reading, writing, arithmetic, and...how to mute yourself on a Zoom call? The remote and hybrid classroom settings of this school year has made tech-savviness and digital responsibility (and patience!) key skills for students and their grown ups. Parents especially have had to expand their own technical expertise, taking on the additional roles of teacher, student, and on-demand IT professional in their households. Our Raising Curious Learners hosts Ann and Elizabeth virtually tapped CyberWise founder Diana Graber to help address the concerns parents may be dealing with during the pandemic and explain how we can all be smart, productive, ethical, and empowered digital citizens in this ever-evolving space. They also discuss her vision for the post-COVID world in which technology usage can be shaped by curiosity and creativity, rather than just necessity. 

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What's the one trait that parents and caregivers can cultivate in their children to guarantee their future success? Internationally recognized educator, speaker, and best-selling author Dr. Michele Borba says it's empathy. In this episode of Raising Curious Learners, Dr. Borba explains to Ann and Elizabeth how kids and adults alike benefit from feeling "with" others and being open about their emotions. Their conversation leads to timely advice on how to fend off "compassion fatigue," cope with stress, and continue social-emotional learning during difficult times.

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The "tell me a story" phase is all too familiar to parents and caregivers. As part of the bedtime routine or demanded over and over again throughout the day, stories keep young imaginations thriving and provide an excellent opportunity for bonding. After recounting their own fond experiences, our Raising Curious Learners hosts get into the crucial role that story time has in children's development, discuss what makes a good story, and encourage parents to engage their kids in the storytelling process.

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Early-childhood experts often like to say that a child's environment is one of their most important teachers. But what can our built environments learn from children? This Raising Curious Learners episode, Ann and Elizabeth welcome a special guest who makes a strong case for listening to our most creative citizens. Mara Mintzer is a mom, author, speaker, and the co-founder and director of Growing Up Boulder, which taps into play as a strategy and lifts the voices of young people in the city planning process.

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Parenting has always been one of the hardest jobs on Earth. Now, in addition to raising and forming relationships with our children in a very tech-centric, high expectations world, parents and caregivers must also navigate all the new anxiety triggers that the coronavirus crisis has created. To help make coping just a little bit easier in these uncertain times, the hosts of Raising Curious Learners were joined by clinical social worker and author, Dr. Carla Naumburg. Her latest book, How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t with Your Kids, acts as a practical guide for parenting in a more mindful, self-compassionate, calm, and joyful way. 

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For the majority of students across the United States, this back-to-school season means going back to a screen. Some parents and communities have found creative and safety-minded ways to fill the gaps in their children's remote learning experiences; but for many without access to these so-called "pandemic pods" or other extra resources, the digital divide and opportunity gap have both only continued to widen. For this episode, our Raising Curious Learners co-hosts welcomed Erica Ramberg, faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Education, to consider how to best address inequities in education for students of color—those evident long before 2020 and especially exacerbated by COVID-19. 

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The portrait of a "traditional" household—with a mom and dad raising two biological kids under one roof—is just one of many in an expansive gallery that also portrays families with single parents, same sex parents, foster and adopted children, grandparents as guardians, step-siblings, and more. In this Raising Curious Learners episode, our hosts add to a larger conversation happening at Britannica for Parents: how do we better represent different types of families? They are joined by Juliet C. Bond, social worker and co-author of the award-winning "Jazzy's Quest" series, which features adoptees as main characters plus family structures and real life situations not often covered in children's literature.  

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