Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers

The majority of the Truth for Teachers podcast episodes are on topics that will help improve your teaching practices with ALL of your students, but in some cases, I like to talk about specific student populations. It’s okay to focus for ONE episode on meeting the needs of English Language Learners, or students with special needs. And it’s okay to focus for an episode on students of color.  In this case, I chose to focus even more specifically on that: to talk about black males in particular. My guest today, Principal Kafele, is a black male himself and is a nationally-renowned authority on his work with black male students. There’s a tremendous amount of research showing that many black males in the United States are facing unique challenges and are underserved. We do a disservice to our students if we pretend that the outcomes that our students experience from our school system are all the same regardless of race. Our black male students can do better, and we can do better by them.  The question of HOW to do better is what we’re going to tackle today in my interview with Principal Kafele. Listen in to his message on helping students succeed by connecting with them, understanding them, and building relationships with them so that we can meet their needs better.  Click here to visit Principal Kafele’s website to learn more about him and the resources he offers.

In this coaching call with a teacher named Rachel, I think you'll recognize a very common dilemma for teachers: spending exorbitant amounts of time doing lesson planning, and still feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing from day to day. If you're caught in a trap of planning every night for the following day, forgetting to do certain things with students even though it’s in the plan, and constantly running out of time before getting to finish the lesson...this episode can be a game changer! Listen in as Rachel and I tackling all of these problems. Her lesson planning process is essentially done in three steps, and you’ll hear me articulate each of those steps as we go through them, because I think it’s a good model to follow. Certainly it's not the only way to plan lessons, but I think many teachers have never heard another teacher explain exactly how she plans, and everyone’s process is unique. It's fascinating to listen in on her process, which sounds great in theory, and try to figure out where the breakdown is happening. I hope this helps you identify missteps in YOUR planning process so you can streamline a bit like Rachel!  

I receive emails on almost a daily basis from veteran teachers who are completely overwhelmed at how the job they signed up for 20, 30, or 40 years ago is nothing like the job they are being required to do today. I want to amplify the voices of teachers who are experiencing this, let them know they're not alone, and talk about what can be done. My hope is that this is episode will be useful to you even if you're NOT facing this situation yourself, because every teacher works with at least one colleague who is in a similar place. You might actually be feeling frustrated with these teachers, believing that they are not pulling their weight and aren't changing with the times. So I hope this episode will strengthen the relationships between you and your colleagues as well. If you ARE that teacher--someone who changed children’s lives year after year and are suddenly finding the expectations on you to be exhausting and impossible to meet, I want you to know these 9 things shared in today's episode. To share this with other teachers (or get a printable PDF), go to: http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/ineffective/

In this episode I'm talking with Persida Himmele about how teachers can provide access to higher-order thinking opportunities for all students. We'll go through 5 specific examples which you can use in your classroom today. Learn why calling on students should be the last thing you do to find out what kids know, and how total participation techniques are a simple way to engage all students equitably. Click here to access the free resources and printables we discuss: http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/total-participation-techniques/  

Listen in on a coaching call I conducted with a graduate of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club. His name is Jim, and he’s entering his 4th year of teaching. Jim works on a grades 7-12 campus and is a high school geometry and 7th grade honors math teacher. The questions that Jim submitted to me were mostly about getting student buy-in with room arrangement and routines/procedures. But the part that I wanted to share with you here on the podcast is where we do a deep dive into getting student buy-in with a cell phone policy. Like most teachers, Jim already has most of the solution inside of him, and it’s just a matter of helping him uncover the different parts of that solutions and put them together. Notice how each of his responses to me is like a clue which leads us to the next piece of the puzzle, until we have the whole thing assembled. It’s a really fun process to participate in and I think it will be fun for you to listen to, also. What we’re doing in this conversation is partially about ironing out the details of the cell phone policy, about partially about figuring out which areas of the classroom to give kids ownership of, and where we need to provide more leadership and modeling. The value of this episode is in helping you ask YOURSELF the right questions, because honest self-reflection is what's going to get you to the right result.  

This is the time of year when classroom set-up photos are everywhere. Each photo we see has more clever ideas and adorable decorations than the last. These images are inspiring and creative and so much fun to look through…but they can also be incredibly anxiety-producing. How do we each stay focused on our OWN vision for our OWN classroom and not get sucked into comparing ourselves to others? Listen in as I share how I've grappled with this issue over the years.  Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, or participate in the discussion:  http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/avoid-comparison/

The first day jitters are real, and most teachers have butterflies the night before. I think it’s okay to embrace that a little bit: give yourself a set amount of time to do some productive worrying. But the best advice I can give is for you to shift your thinking to a different line of questions. When you get stuck on your own insecurities, focus less on believing in yourself and more on believing in your kids. That’s what will empower you to transform lives. Listen in on this episode as I share how to change your thinking. 

The episode you’re about to hear is a free coaching call I conducted with a graduate of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club. It’s a combination of instructional coaching and life coaching all sort of rolled into one, where I’m answering teachers’ specific questions about productivity and balance and managing it all. This particular call is a teacher named Claire who teaches special education. She works with kids in grades K-6 and actually splits her time between 2 schools, so she’s at one school with one group of kids in the morning and another in the afternoon. Claire’s initial question is about how to use her summer to get ahead for fall when she doesn’t know the needs of the students in her classroom. Her caseload can change a lot from year to year and that makes it difficult to plan ahead. So we talk through some systems she and any teacher can create during the summer that will make the following school year easier to manage. We talk about getting digital files organized, getting procedures in place, and so on. I then challenge Claire to figure out 2-3 of her biggest time-wasters and use her summer to figure out a better way. It’s very hard to find the time and mental bandwidth to take a step back during the school year and analyze systems, so summer is really perfect for that. And when she told me what her biggest time suck is, when she talked about collecting data on student progress and grading their writing, she had a really big aha moment that I think is going to resonate with you in a powerful way, too. Claire and I dug really deeply into how to analyze if something really has to be done, if the things we perceive as mandated are in fact requirements, and analyze teaching practices through the lens of whether they’re actually effective for kids rather than if they’re the way they’ve always been done, and they way everyone else does them. I love that moment in our conversation and I can’t wait to share it with you.  At the end of the call, I mention a free on-demand video series I've created to help you plan out how to use your summer. You can sign up for that here: http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/secrets    

Today we're going to talk about the little things students do that are rude, disrespectful, or just annoying. The things that don’t necessarily warrant some kind of consequence, but that you don’t want to let slide every time. How should a teacher respond to eye rolling, teeth sucking, muttering under the breath, and so on? What do we do about bad attitudes? I don’t want to settle for trite rehashed info, so I reached out to Robyn Jackson because I knew she could take this conversation to a deeper level. Robyn was a National Board Certified English teachers in Maryland, just outside of Washington DC, and has since been and administrator, adjunct professor, consultant, and speaker. She’s been championing equity, access, and rigor for over 15 years. Robyn is seriously one of my favorite experts in the education space, because she has a deeper understanding of human behavior and motivation than anyone else I know, and she always keeps it real. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her speak in person a few times just hang on her every word--there’s so much good info there. She has this lovely way of uncovering the root problem and also sort of calling you out on your own mess instead of allowing blame-shifting. Grab a notepad when you listen to this one, because you’re going to want to take notes! Want to give your feedback on Season 5 of the podcast? Let me know what you liked and what you want changed here! 

I want to use this episode to dive more deeply into a topic that I’ve touched on quite a few times, which is problem of overwhelm. Overwhelm is a huge issue for just about everyone, but particularly for teachers. I want to help you understand an important contributing factor that a lot of people underestimate or just don’t give much thought to. Once you understand what’s creating or worsening your feeling of being overwhelmed, the solution because clear, simple, and pretty straight forward.  Listen in as I share how you can avoid overscheduling yourself, and create more margin in your life through building in buffer time.  Want to give your feedback on Season 5 of the podcast? Let me know what you liked and what you want changed here!