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.

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Alfonso "Fonz" Mendoza Jr. — Teaching and Learning Coordinator at Kami and host of My EdTech Life, a 373-episode podcast that has reached more than 8,500 educators — about what AI actually does and doesn't do for teachers, and what it means to find meaning in work when automation keeps changing what work looks like. This is a crossover episode, appearing on both Make It Mindful and My EdTech Life.

Together, Seth and Fonz explore the argument that teachers remain the ultimate technology in the classroom — not because AI isn't capable, but because the ability to read a room, improvise, and form genuine relationships with students isn't something that scales to a statistical prediction machine. They talk about the difference between cognitive offloading and cognitive stunting, the concern that students aren't just delegating skills they've developed, but missing the chance to develop them at all. Fonz pushes back on the language of "neural networks" and "learning," drawing on Dr. Emily Bender's stochastic parrots framework to argue that borrowing human vocabulary for these tools obscures what they actually are. They get into AI governance at the district level, including why Texas still has no state AI policy, what it looks like when a task force actually follows through versus when the conversation dies at back-to-school season, and why equal stakeholder representation (including parents) changes what a policy can do. The episode closes with Fonz's signature speed round, with finding meaning in the concept of NOW.

Key topics:

• The teacher as the ultimate technology in an AI-saturated classroom
• Cognitive stunting vs. cognitive offloading in student AI use
• Stochastic parrots and the danger of anthropomorphizing LLMs
• AI governance failures at the district level
• Trust between students, teachers, and parents in the AI era
• Finding purpose and meaning when automation reshapes work
• Generational differences in AI attitudes (Gen Z vs. Gen Alpha)

LINKS & RESOURCES

• My EdTech Life podcast — myedtech.life
• Kami — kamiapp.com (Fonz's current employer)
• Dr. Emily Bender — Stochastic Parrots paper — Bender, E.M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021). "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" FAccT 2021. https://s10251.pcdn.co/pdf/2021-bender-parrots.pdf
• Katherine Heavers episode — Make It Mindful https://mim.bepodcast.network/episodes/85-katherine-heavers
• Banyan Global Learning / Global Cohorts — https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

GUEST BIO: Dr. Alfonso "Fonz" Mendoza Jr.

Dr. Alfonso "Fonz" Mendoza Jr. is the Teaching and Learning Coordinator at Kami and host of My EdTech Life, a podcast now six years old and 373 episodes in. His work focuses on responsible AI adoption in K–12 education, cutting through the hype to examine what technology actually does for teachers and students, and what it can't replace. He is a Google Innovator, Adobe Education Innovator, and 2024 EdTech Digest Leadership Award winner for Best EdTech Author/Speaker or Podcaster.

ABOUT THE HOST

About the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning. 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. See https://banyangloballearning.com/

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Katie Hurley Wales — Executive Director of Brighter Children, an all-volunteer nonprofit that funds primary education across India, Colombia, Honduras, Kenya, and Guatemala — about what venture philanthropy actually looks like in practice, and what it takes to build schools that outlast the funders who supported them. Brighter Children doesn't bring educational models to the communities it works in; it identifies local leaders who already have the vision and the trust of their communities, and invests in their capacity to execute it.

Together, Seth and Katie explore what distinguishes a philanthropic investment from a transaction, why primary education is Brighter Children's specific lever for breaking generational poverty, and how a rigorous 46-factor due diligence process sits alongside gut instinct when finding school partners. They trace the arc of Brighter Children's work in Honduras, where Shin Fujiyama moved into a community with 65-70% out-of-school rates and gang violence severe enough that the school competed directly with MS-13 for recruits — and where this summer marks the fifth high school graduating class in an area that had a 0% graduation rate when they started. They also talk about what children in these communities understand about education that children in wealthier contexts often don't: not as an abstraction, but as a concrete pathway tied to health, economic mobility, and the stability of their family. The episode closes with a Kenyan student named Peter, a top-scoring secondary school student who wants to be an oncologist because his little sister died of cancer — and the question of what it means to invest in one child who might save hundreds.

Key topics:

• Venture philanthropy vs. transactional charity in education funding
• Trust-based philanthropy and local leadership
• Due diligence for selecting school partners (46-factor framework)
• Primary education as a lever for breaking generational poverty
• Community-led school models across India, Honduras, Kenya, and Guatemala
• Patient capital and long-term investment in schools
• What families in under-resourced communities understand about education

Links & Resources:

• Brighter Children: brighterchildren.org

Guest Bio: Katie Hurley Wales

Katie Hurley Wales is Executive Director of Brighter Children, an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) venture philanthropy organization that funds primary education for children in marginalized communities across five countries. Brighter Children's model centers on identifying exceptional local leaders — people who already have the vision and trust of their communities — and providing long-term financial and advisory support to help them build sustainable school systems. Before Brighter Children, Katie served as Executive Director of Invest for Kids and Interim Executive Director of Luminarts Cultural Foundation, and has spent her career in the Chicago-area nonprofit sector.

About the Host:
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning. 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. See https://banyangloballearning.com/