#84 Hidden Oases: The Programs Holding Schools Together with Dr. Maggie Broderick
In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Maggie Broderick — academic program director of the Master of Arts in Social Emotional Learning at National University's Sanford College of Education — about teacher dispositions, the classrooms inside schools where marginalized students find belonging, and what's happening to teacher attrition when emotion labor goes unsupported. Maggie's current qualitative research centers on what she calls "hidden oases" — music rooms, art classrooms, and specialist spaces — and builds on her published work integrating SEL into the formative development of educator dispositions.
Together, Seth and Maggie explore why SEL became politicized and why Maggie chose not to rebrand around the backlash, how critical thinking and perspective-taking sit alongside SEL as facets of the same whole-human education, the link between teacher emotion labor and the attrition crisis, and the role of arts and specialist classrooms as belonging infrastructure for students who don't feel at home in the rest of the building. Maggie shares an early finding from her in-progress study: many of the teachers she's interviewed told her no one had ever asked them about the students who came to school primarily because of their music or art class.
Key topics
- "Hidden oases" — specialist classrooms as belonging infrastructure
- SEL across the full age span, including adult and doctoral learners
- Teacher emotion labor and the attrition crisis
- Perspective-taking and critical thinking as parts of SEL
- Educator dispositions and how they're formed
- Starting small with vetted SEL resources
Links & Resources
- Dr. Maggie Broderick — National University faculty page: https://www.nu.edu/degrees/teacher-education/faculty/margaret-broderick/
- Maggie on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maggie-Broderick
- Maggie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggie-broderick-19321414/
- International Journal of Online Graduate Education (Maggie, editor): https://joge.scholasticahq.com/
- Email: mbroderick@nu.edu
- CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning): https://casel.org
- Harmony Academy: https://harmony-academy.org
- American Educational Research Association (AERA): https://www.aera.net
- World Savvy (referenced in conversation): https://worldsavvy.org
- Broderick, M., & Lyn, A. E. (2022). "Integrating Social Emotional Learning Into the Formative Development of Educator Dispositions," in Dispositional Development and Assessment in Teacher Preparation Programs (S. Clemm von Hohenberg, Ed.). IGI Global. https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/integrating-social-emotional-learning-into-the-formative-development-of-educator-dispositions/308385
- Broderick, M. "Development and Evolution of Teacher Dispositions Framework and Assessment." IGI Global. https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/development-and-evolution-of-teacher-dispositions-framework-and-assessment/308394
Guest Bio: Dr. Maggie Broderick
Dr. Maggie Broderick is an academic program director and dissertation chair at National University's Sanford College of Education, where she leads the Master of Arts in Social Emotional Learning and directs the Advanced Research Center — an online hub supporting faculty and graduate-student scholarship. Her research examines educator dispositions, SEL across the full age span of learners, and the role of specialist classrooms — music, art, theater, language — as "hidden oases" for students who feel marginalized elsewhere in their schools. She holds a Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Pittsburgh and is the editor of the International Journal of Online Graduate Education.
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/
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