The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

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.

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.