In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Travis Moyer - Banyan Global Learning's Director of Programming - about Global Cohorts, the four-week virtual exchange program he piloted this spring with three classroom cohorts, and what happens when students design their own festivals for an international audience. Moyer has written previously about designing for flow and deep engagement in virtual classrooms, and that thinking shows up directly in how the program's activities are structured.

Together, Seth and Travis explore the origin of Global Cohorts in Banyan's 18-year partnership with Tsai Hsing School in Taipei, the recurring failure points of ad hoc classroom-to-classroom partnerships, and how running multiple cohorts in parallel solves for one partner dropping out mid-unit. They walk through the festivals unit step by step - how students share their own local festivals, study festivals from around the world, get matched with partner schools ahead of time, and eventually use AI to visualize a festival of their own design. The conversation lands on what happened when the exercise reached a cohort of Ukrainian students who'd been scattered by the war: without being prompted to, nearly every student built a festival about family and cultural preservation.

Key topics:

• Global Cohorts program design and origin
• Banyan's 18-year partnership with Tsai Hsing School, Taipei
• Solving classroom-partnership dropout with parallel cohorts
• The festivals unit: weekly structure and cadence
• Using AI to visualize student-designed festivals
• Ukrainian student cohort and displacement
• Place-based identity themes across cohorts (Minneapolis, Calgary)

Links & Resources:

• Banyan Global Cohorts program: https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts
• "The Flow State and Education: Deep Focus, Engagement, and Productivity" — Banyan Global Learning blog, December 20, 2024

Guest Bio: Travis Moyer

Travis Moyer is Banyan Global Learning's Director of Programming, where he oversees new program development, including Global Cohorts. He spent over a decade as an elementary and high school science teacher in the U.S., and with Banyan has specialized in live, synchronous distance learning. He holds an M.Ed. from Pepperdine University and a B.S. in Biology from Duke University.

About the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores.