The Old School

Dr. Bourgeois and Mr. Miller welcome Ksenia Filatov, a doctoral candidate at Boston College, to discuss her background that has led to her research on teacher agency and how college teacher training can both help or hinder new teachers entering the classroom. As with many of their guests, there is also the idea that more episodes with Ms. Filatov could be in the future.

United World College Robert Bosch College in Freiburg, Germany is the mission-driven international school that Ksenia worked at between 2016 and 2020. In any academic year, about 200 students aged 16–19 from all over the world study and board there. Each cohort has students from over 90 different nations / states. Here is the founding, and now retiring, rector of the college, Laurence Nodder speaking about the ethos of the school. 

You can read more of Ksenia's thoughts about education and the teaching profession on her blog, On Teachers and Teaching. 


What is The Old School?

Dr. Steven Bourgeois and Mr. Ross Miller lead an informal discussion between a current and a former teacher on topics that challenge "best practices" in contemporary education. In keeping with Neil Postman (1979), we support the conserving function of education: “Its aim at all times is to make visible the prevailing biases of a culture and then, by employing whatever philosophies of education are available, to oppose them.”