Listen to this post as a podcast: Sponsored by Edge•U Badges and EVERFI The day it happened to me was in my fourth year of teaching. I was in a new seventh grade language arts position, one I’d started in January after a teacher retired mid-year, so I hadn’t had enough time yet to build the relationships that are the foundation of my approach to classroom management. That day, I was trying to get my second period to do an activity where small groups had to do some kind of sorting with a set of small cards — pieces of cardstock with words on them that I had spent way too long the night befor ..read more

Listen to my interview with Alex Shevrin Venet (transcript): Sponsored by NoRedInk and The Modern Classrooms Project This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What’s the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org? As a teacher, you probably find yourself in situations pretty often where you’re made aware of a student having needs or challenges that exceed what your school typically offers them. It might be a need for extra time or attention, a shortag ..read more

Listen to the interview with Connie Hamilton: Sponsored by EVERFI and Verizon Innovative Learning HQ This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What’s the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org? It’s pretty well known in educational circles that cooperative learning is supported by research, but so many teachers still struggle with it, so when things don’t work well, they give it up. In my observations of thousands of teachers, I’ve noticed that so ..read more

Listen to the interview with Alex Shevrin Venet (transcript): Sponsored by EVERFI and Listenwise This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What’s the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org? Among the many challenges teachers have faced since the onset of the pandemic, one that persists is this feeling that students have changed, that they are less motivated, more entitled, and more disrespectful than ever before. Even if a teacher can find plenty ..read more

Listen to the interview with Alex Shevrin Venet (transcript): Sponsored by EVERFI and Giant Steps This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What’s the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org? My understanding of the word “trauma” has evolved over the last few years. It used to be limited to incidents that were objectively harmful and almost always severe, events that involved some kind of violence, like experiencing or directly witnessing a physica ..read more

Listen to the interview with Jamie Chaves: Sponsored by EVERFI and Today by Studyo This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What’s the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org? “If it hasn’t been in the hands, it can’t be in the brain.” This is a quote I see every morning when I drop my daughter off at preschool. Even though she hasn’t studied sensory integration theory or neuroscience, my daughter’s teacher knows this from experience.  My bio ..read more

Listen to the interview with Catlin Tucker: Sponsored by CoderZ and Today by Studyo This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What’s the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org? The pandemic pushed many educators out of their comfort zones as the teaching and learning landscape shifted beneath their feet. Teachers experimented with new technology tools, learning platforms, and instructional strategies to engage students online, in concurrent classr ..read more

Listen to the interview with Connie Hamilton: Sponsored by Today by Studyo and Scholastic Scope This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. I wish, in my early career, I understood why some students tried so hard to impress their friends.  I recall the faces and circumstances of specific students throughout my career when students’ actions just didn’t make sense. Instead, I presumed they were simply exhibiting “attention-seeking behavior.” My antidote was to shower ..read more

Listen to my interview with Thom Gibson (transcript): Sponsored by Kialo Edu and Kiddom This might be the perfect time for this topic. At first I just thought it was a neat idea, something teachers could implement pretty easily, something that would be a nice change of pace from what we usually talk about here.  But now I’m thinking this might actually be the thing that helps wake up a lot of our remote and hybrid classrooms from the white-knuckle, just-get-through-it mentality many of us have settled into as the ’20-21 school year grinds through its second half. Just maybe. I’m talkin ..read more

Listen to my interview with Dave Stuart Jr. (transcript): Sponsored by Pear Deck and UL Xplorlabs If you’re reading this in August of 2020, you’re most likely in the midst of juggling a hundred different things right now. You’re managing all the messy details of starting a new school year under constantly changing circumstances. You’re scrambling for resources. You’re debating the pros and cons of various reopening scenarios. You’re wondering how any of this can possibly be accomplished, and deep inside you’re pretty sure it can’t.  As all of this swirls around us, it can help if we sto ..read more