The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

No one likes it when an administrator plays favorites. But what if the favorite is you? In this episode, I share a story about one of the most difficult periods of my teaching years, and some advice to help teachers and administrators avoid a similar situation. 

If you're like me, you've been a little slow to warm up to the idea of makerspaces in the classroom. In this episode, John Spencer helps me understand what a makerspace is, how it can add value to any classroom, and what steps teachers can take to start and manage a makerspace of their own.

To do this work and stick with it long enough to get good at it, you need a level of emotional resilience most other jobs will never require. In this episode, my guest Elena Aguilar shares 12 habits teachers can develop that will build the resilience they need.

Grades impact everything from college admissions to whether students get to go on certain field trips. With so much at stake, how can we make sure our grades measure what matters?

Middle school students are a special breed, and I was lucky to teach them for years. In this episode, I'll share my own advice about what makes them tick, and how to work with those qualities, not against them.

Are your worksheets contributing to meaningful learning, or just keeping students busy?

Money and space are nice, but they are NOT prerequisites for learning-friendly design. In this interview with learning space expert Bob Dillon, we explore tons of simple things teachers can do to make their classrooms better places for students to learn.

The sit-and-get, one-size-fits-all model is disappearing. Taking its place are these 9 alternative models for teacher professional development.

With its focus on building relationships and repairing harm, rather than simply punishing students for misbehavior, restorative justice is being adopted by more schools every year. In this episode, RJ practitioner Victor Small, Jr., helps me understand the basics of restorative practices and how interested schools can get started.

You have so much good stuff to share, but to get anyone to actually look at it, you need to give it some polish. In this episode, we look at why the brain prefers good curation, some school-related situations when good curation skills would come in handy, a set of curation guidelines to follow, and a short list of tech tools that can help you curate digitally.