S5E21: Inwood Academy Pioneers the Science of Learning

My name is Dr. Zach Groshell and welcome to my podcast!

This season, I continue to explore the science of learning—especially what the work actually looks like when schools try to build their instructional models around it. We talk a lot about evidence-based practice in education, but far fewer conversations focus on how schools implement those ideas coherently across classrooms.

This is a two-part conversation with educators from Inwood Academy For Leadership in New York City.

In Part 1, I sit down with Christina Reyes and Bianca Mercedes, leaders at Inwood Academy, to talk about how their school has worked to pioneer an approach grounded in the science of learning. We explore their professional journeys, how their instructional vision developed, and what it takes at the leadership level to build systems that support consistent, evidence-informed teaching.

In Part 2, I’m joined by Ciary Lugo and Janitza Santana, teachers at Inwood Academy, who bring the classroom perspective to this work. We discuss what these instructional shifts look like day to day, how teachers experience the implementation of learning-science-aligned practices, and what it takes to make those approaches work with real students in real classrooms.

Across both conversations, a central theme is implementation. What does it actually take to move from research ideas to consistent classroom practice? How do leaders support teachers in adopting explicit, evidence-informed approaches to instruction? And what structures—coaching, collaboration, and shared instructional routines—help sustain that work over time?

Together, these two episodes offer a look at the leadership and classroom sides of building a school around the science of learning.

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🚨 Registration is open! 🚨

Love what you heard? Inwood Academy is hosting my The Explicit Teaching Institute—a five-day deep dive into the science of learning and the highest-leverage moves in explicit instruction – in New York City this summer.

We’ll spend our mornings unpacking the research, our middays studying expert teaching on video (courtesy of Steplab!), and our afternoons rehearsing the moves that make instruction clear, efficient, and reliable—so you leave with a practical toolkit you can use on day one. 

🗽 NYC | July 27–31, 2026

👉 Learn more + register here: 🎟️ Explicit Teaching Institute registration 

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Books I can recommend…

The podcast you’re listening to is sponsored by John Catt from Hachette Learning and hosted by Dr. Zach Groshell. John Catt publishes some of the best books in education, including my book, Just Tell Them: The Power of Explanations and Explicit Teaching.