The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

There's a lot of confusion about how to use leveled texts in the classroom. In this episode, I interview literacy expert Jen Serravallo about the mistakes teachers and administrators make with leveled texts and which practices Serravallo has found to be most effective.

When we blame our teaching problems on the collective inferiority of a generation, we only make things worse. In this episode, we explore the problem of teacher nostalgia, why we give into it, and how we can stop it.

Voice of Witness is an organization that curates oral histories, stories told by people whose voices are rarely heard: Migrant workers. Refugees. Prisoners. Factory workers in developing countries. Undocumented Americans. Their stories, in their voices. In this episode, I talk with Voice of Witness education program director Cliff Mayotte about the books and free classroom materials that can help you bring the power of oral history to your classroom

In classrooms all over the world, students take notes every day. What does academic research tell us about the best ways to use note-taking in our classrooms? In this episode, I'll share 8 important take-aways. 

Want your students to have rich, complex discussions about the texts they read? In this episode, high school English teacher Marisa Thompson shares a method she calls TQE, which requires almost no prep or grading and leads to the kinds of classroom discussions you thought only happened in college.

Imagine a professional development scenario where you are given funding, choice, and time to collaborate with others in your specialty area who energize and inspire you. That's the basic gist of a teacher fellowship program, and in today's episode, we're looking at how one of these programs work. My guests are Megan Roberts and Ashraya Gupta from Math for America, a fellowship program for exceptional teachers of math and science.

Explore the impact of storytelling on societal change and perspectives with a step-by-step plan for teaching narrative writing. Enhance writing through collaborative feedback and peer reviews using tools like OneNote and Peer Grade. Engage students in crafting stories, providing model stories, and analyzing narrative structures. Introduce a three-week narrative writing unit, focusing on revise, edit, and publish strategies, including reading aloud for clarity and peer review for feedback.

To mark the milestone of 100 episodes, I'm sharing one of my favorite posts, Lessons in Personhood: 10 Ways to Truly Lead in Your Classroom. Thank you to everyone who has appeared as a guest on this podcast, and to everyone who has listened, reviewed, and recommended it. I have lots more to come!

Is your tech tool doing the work you think it is? Or could it actually be widening the same gaps you're trying to close? In this episode we explore the problems that can arise when a tool isn't carefully scrutinized, then look at seven strategies educators can use to deeply assess a tool for its impact. My guest is Rupa Chandra Gupta, who is the founder of the ed tech company Sown to Grow.

American Slavery is a difficult topic to teach, and for decades, we haven't been doing a very good job of teaching it. In this episode, I interview history professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries about the Teaching Hard History framework, a free set of resources aimed at giving our students a more comprehensive look at how slavery started, its fundamental role in our country's history, and how it continues to impact our society today.