The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

If you use rubrics, this episode is for you. I talk with administrator Mark Wise about five guidelines that can help make your rubrics more effective.

In this episode, I talk with Khan Academy's founder, Sal Khan, about the platform's new mastery learning feature, which allows learners to get personalized practice, filling much needed skill gaps and advancing at their own pace. And it's all completely free.

Many dress codes unfairly target students in certain populations, doing more harm than good. Is your dress code due for an upgrade? In this episode, equity writer Coshandra Dillard helps us learn what to look for when revising dress code policy, and high school principal Marcus Campbell shares his experiences in changing his own school's dress code. 

To master this craft, we need to choose our words carefully. This mini-makeover shows how revising our language in four common classroom scenarios can send a completely different message.

Could your school stop its normal routine for a full day and devote it entirely to unstructured play? That's what thousands of schools all over the world do every February for the Global School Play Day. In this episode I talk to GSPD founders Eric Saibel, Tim Bedley, and Scott Bedley about why play is so important for people of all ages.

This year's collection includes a discussion monitor, a tool that analyzes writing, a virtual reality tour maker, and my favorite new game.

Quality note-taking is a powerful learning tool, but to do it well, students need to be taught how to do it. In this episode, I talk with instructional coach Peg Grafwallner and chemistry teacher Abby Felten about a fantastic station-rotation lesson they developed to help Abby's students learn to take better notes.

Awareness of educational inequity is important, but we also need to take action. In this episode, professor and activist Pedro Noguera shares ten specific things educators can do to pursue equity in schools.

High school English teacher Jeff Frieden shares his Ongoing Conversations strategy, a simple, effective way to get students to have rich, one-on-one conversations about what they're learning—and get to know each other a little better in the process. 

In too many classrooms, we're expecting students to learn material without asking them to do much of anything with it. Why is this a problem? Where did it come from? And what can we do to fix it?