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

Listen to my interview with Nathan Maynard and Brad Weinstein (transcript): Sponsored by Public Consulting Group and ViewSonic 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. When students behave in ways that are disruptive, when they do things that harm others, or when they otherwise make choices that go against established rules, schools often respond with punishment: removal from class, a phone call home, detention, suspension, even expulsion if the behavior is considered ..read more

Listen to this post as a podcast: Sponsored by Learners Edge and Microsoft Teams 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. Most of my 9-week grading periods ended the same way: Me and one or two students, sitting in my quiet, empty classroom together, with me sitting at the computer, the students nearby in desks, methodically working through piles of make-up assignments. They would be focused, more focused than I’d seen them in months, and the speed with which they got ..read more

Listen to my interview with Coshandra Dillard and Marcus Campbell (transcript): Sponsored by Listenwise and OneNote Class Notebook A couple months ago, I saw two different news stories that broke my heart. Both were about dreadlocks. The first story was about Andrew Johnson, a high school wrestler in New Jersey who wore his hair in cheekbone-length dreadlocks. Moments before Johnson was about to go to the mat for a match, the referee told him he wouldn’t be allowed to compete because his hair was too long. Forced to choose between forfeiting the match for his team or cutting his hair on the ..read more

When something amazing happens in your classroom but only you see it, did it really happen? Sometimes I feel that way. There’s a moment: a quiet, kind interaction between two students who often bicker, or a new game that students manage to play well without a hitch, or when you suddenly remember a long-forgotten idea which is perfect for helping the student in front of you. These things happen and may even catch us by surprise. But then what do we do with those moments? In the rush of day-to-day teaching, I’m afraid that many of those moments may get lost. Or perhaps more likely, they get bur ..read more

Listen to my interview with Bob Dillon (transcript): Sponsored by Peergrade and simpleshow videomaker 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. A couple of years ago, I saw a picture on Facebook that stopped me in my tracks: It was the classroom of Michigan high school English teacher Rebecca Malmquist. It looked like a living room. Like a place you’d go to curl up and read a book, take a nap, or have a really good conversation. And yet it was a classroom. Now thi ..read more