As COVID-19 rocked America’s schools and parents gained a front-row seat into their children’s schooling, they had questions. Big questions.

With the launch of Summit Public Schools founder and CEO Diane Tavenner’s book Prepared and her group Prepared Parents, she was getting a lot of calls and emails with questions that didn’t just have answers grounded in the present. The questions begged for more in-depth answers that talked about the roots of and need for transformation of the education system — a system that made a lot of sense for when it was created but is hopelessly out of date with the needs of today’s society and the goal of preparing all individuals for a life of success and fulfillment.

The concept for our podcast came together quickly. Over 10 weeks, Diane Tavenner and I recorded 10 sessions of Class Disrupted. Midway through recording the episodes, George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, and America embarked on another set of gut-wrenching and important conversations and demonstrations about race.

Simultaneously, Diane was working to keep her network of schools moving forward for students, and I was working half time as my young daughters’ school went remote. Suffice to say, we had done some planning, but we also were learning together on the fly.

Here are 5 of the lessons I’ve taken away from our podcasts.