TEANECK, NJ, February 24, 2026 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Joan Gillman has been featured on the Marquis Masters Podcast. The podcast celebrates leaders and innovators who have shaped industries and inspired generations. Each episode features an intimate conversation with a Marquis honoree, uncovering the personal stories behind their professional success. The show reveals what it truly takes to lead with purpose, resilience, and authenticity.

In this episode of the Marquis Masters podcast, host Ryan Estes speaks with veteran educator Joan Gillman of The Browning School in New York City, an all-boys independent school founded in 1888 with a mission centered on curiosity, honesty, dignity, and purpose. Ms. Gillman, who teaches lower and middle school science and leads the school's environmental Green Team, reflects on more than four decades in education and explains how hands-on, inquiry-driven learning can cultivate both intellectual growth and character in students.

A central theme of the conversation is the intentional teaching of dignity. Ms. Gillman illustrates this through a second-grade engineering project in which students design and build bridges strong enough to hold the combined mass of four model elephants. Working in teams with recycled materials, students must calculate weight, choose appropriate bridge structures, collaborate, compromise, and support one another, especially if their design fails. By referencing real-world examples like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, she normalizes failure as part of the engineering process and reinforces a classroom culture where effort is celebrated and peers uphold one another's dignity.

Throughout the interview, Ms. Gillman emphasizes experiential learning as an antidote to shrinking attention spans and digital distraction. At Browning, students surrender their phones at the start of the day, creating space for immersive projects such as launching straw rockets on a New York City sidewalk, redesigning them after analyzing flight data, and simulating oil spill cleanups using feathers, sand, and vegetable oil to understand the real-world difficulty of environmental restoration. These lessons are not about memorizing facts for tests but about ownership, iteration, and critical thinking.

Her interdisciplinary approach blends science with history, art, writing, and culture. Students compare planetary features like Olympus Mons to Mount Everest to grasp the scale of Mars, study global constellation myths before designing and writing their own, and present natural disaster preparedness projects in formats ranging from talk shows to board games. Ms. Gillman argues that learning should reflect real life, where disciplines overlap and creativity enhances comprehension.

The conversation also explores the strengths and challenges of teaching in an all-boys environment, noting both the high energy and the focused atmosphere without social distractions. Ms. Gillman speaks candidly about the unseen labor of teaching, the importance of lifelong learning, and her commitment to professional growth through institutions like the American Museum of Natural History and National Geographic's educator certification program.

Beyond the classroom, Ms. Gillman's passion for music, particularly violin performance in regional orchestras, mirrors her belief in continual growth and the joy of shared experience. Whether in science labs, orchestras, or environmental activism through the Green Team's Central Park cleanups and disaster fundraisers, her work consistently centers on curiosity, resilience, and purpose.

Ultimately, the episode portrays Ms. Gillman as a model of lifelong learning, an educator who blends rigor with wonder, structure with creativity, and achievement with empathy, all in service of developing thoughtful, capable young men prepared to contribute meaningfully to the world.

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