Megan Marcus, on the Future of Educator Development

Amy Clark
Amy Clark
Nov 4 · 3 min read

Hi, I’m Megan, creator of: FuelEd and a new way of training and supporting educators that attunes to their social emotional development — it’s a critical lever to improving student outcomes.

Home base: San Diego, where I live with my family and new baby — I grew up here and in Dallas. And FuelEd’s main base is Houston. Many of our preK-12 partner schools are there.

10 years ago, I said: Teachers and counselors have similar roles — why is their training so different? There’s an expectation that counselors do the self-work required to stay healthy and able to guide others. What if we transform teacher training so teachers benefit from similar norms, training, support?

Today, I say: This is still true and we need whole school cultures to be deliberatively developmental — therapeutic workplaces where teachers can grow personally and professionally and be supported across their careers. Not as something extra they have to do, but built into the culture, part of their workday. When schools make this shift, student outcomes improve dramatically.

Surprising facts: 1) Trauma can be healed at any point in the life cycle. 2) Healing happens via healthy relationships. As a social species, it’s how we learn and grow. 3) The U.S. spends $7 billion on teacher turnover every year. A teacher’s training doesn’t match the task. Until we acknowledge the emotional and relational day-to-day lives of teachers, the high cost of turnover probably won’t change.

A turning point: I learned about the new field of social neuroscience at a conference and was captivated — it’s the science that explains why relationships drive learning and how teachers can serve as secure attachment figures for kiddos. Dr. Louis Cozolino was the presenter and I followed up with him to share my interests. Fortuitous timing—he was starting the book project that would become The Social Neuroscience of Education and invited me to join as a lead researcher. It was a two-year project and sparked me to start FuelEd in 2012.

Advice for 15-year-olds: Love and trust yourself. Understand your gifts, they are clues to purpose and finding out how you can contribute to the world.

On my bookshelf: The Drama of the Gifted Child. It’s about how people who go into “helping” professions like medicine, therapy, and teaching often come from families and backgrounds where they had to play the emotional regulator role, so they develop a heightened empathy or awareness of others’ needs and feelings. It’s a “gift” that comes with a dark side, though — they often bury their own feelings and needs. Fair warning: this book is a dense read, but an important core idea and the inspiration for a lot of our work!

Something I want to get better at: Creating more time and space for self-reflection and supporting the growth of others. I’ve started booking an hour every day for this — as an entrepreneur and now a new mom, it doesn’t happen if I don’t schedule it. So I’m learning to guard this time!

Next up for #FutureOf, I’m tagging: Two Ashoka Fellows. Casey Woods in Miami and Kristina Saffran here in San Diego. Casey is promoting a culture of gun safety — clearly a central issue for teachers and school communities. And Kristina is connecting with insurance companies so we incentivize wellness and prevention. I’m grateful to you both!

Megan joined Ashoka in 2015. You can read more about her and her work here. You can follow her team on Twitter @FuelEdSchools

This interview was condensed by Ashoka. You can follow us on Twitter @AshokaUS and see other leading changemakers in the series here.

A New Game

Ideas for a world in which everyone contributes

Amy Clark

Written by

Amy Clark

A New Game

Ideas for a world in which everyone contributes

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