Holistic Education with Dr. Lauran Kerr-Heraly

SEEing to Lead

Dr. Lauran Kerr-Heraly is an award-winning educator and author. She currently serves as a history professor and Innovation Fellow at Houston Community College. Her innovative teaching includes turning a classroom into an escape room, multidisciplinary projects showcasing personal food histories and environmental justice, and playing with experimental learning spaces. As an executive function coach, she has a holistic approach to school success, which includes a focus on essential skills, executive function, and emotional awareness, using gamification to motivate and engage. Lauran shares a nerdy and adventurous life with her spouse and 10yo in Houston.

Key Takeaway:

This podcast episode features an engaging conversation with Dr. Lauran Kerr-Heraly, an award-winning educator and history professor at Houston Community College, known for her innovative teaching methods and commitment to holistic student success. Dr. Kerr-Heraly discusses her unique approaches to teaching, such as transforming classrooms into escape rooms and focusing on personal food histories to teach environmental justice. She highlights the importance of a holistic approach to education that encompasses scholastic, social, and emotional skills, underpinned by executive function and emotional awareness. Through examples like her escape room project, Dr. Kerr-Heraly illustrates how innovative, multidisciplinary projects can help students develop essential soft skills, foster empathy, and enhance academic engagement. The conversation touches on the challenges and rewards of implementing innovative teaching methods, the significance of multidisciplinary projects, and the impact of empathy and flexibility in educational leadership.

00:00 Meet Dr. Lauran Kerr-Heraly: Innovator in Education

01:13 A Deep Dive into Holistic Education with Lauran

03:27 Innovation in Teaching: Bridging Rigor and Empathy

10:21 The Power of Multidisciplinary Projects and Innovation

24:21 Escape Room in Education: A Case Study of Innovation

28:53 Wrapping Up: Insights on Education and Innovation

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Who am I?

I’ve been an educator in Massachusetts for 23 years. I’m finishing my 16th year as a building leader. I’m a teacher centered Principal and passionate about continuous improvement and the idea that success is not a destination, but a process. I’m active on social media, vlog about continuous improvement on a weekly basis, and wrote a book also called SEEing to Lead as a way to help everyone improve education as a whole by promoting my “just cause”: improving the educational experience for as many people as possible by being purposeful, acting with integrity, and building character.

SEEing to Lead Extras!

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