January 21, 2026: Clean Start

It is all about clean starts in this new year. In the case of education, that means sources of connection that can create long-lasting change in the lives and evolution of young students. Vilenti Tulloch is a local educator who not only is CEO of Academic Leadership Association, but has recently published a book about that work titled Engage to Excel: Building Trust, Belonging, and Success in the Middle School Years, and we’ll speak with him about the book and its respective release event this weekend at White Lion, and about the importance of those formative Middle School years. Then we’ll clean up our diets with healthy local food from our favorite local farms. Nourish Wellness Cafe has spent the past decade serving healthy local vegetarian and vegan creations to the community of western mass and this year sees them expand with a new location in the Eastworks building. We’ll talk with owner Casey Flaherty and partner Kyle Steinberg about moving into a new market and the importance of organic and local food to them and the area. And lastly we’ll clean up our language a bit as we speak with Word Nerd Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster about a tricky quirk of the English language that involves adjectival phrases, possession, and contractions.