Brave New Teaching: A Podcast for High School and Middle School Teachers

Does teaching poetry intimidate you or make you feel insecure about your ability to effectively teach your students? You are not alone and we’re here to help build your confidence by breaking it down and making teaching poetry a bit more accessible for you! When we are teaching something we aren’t very confident in (like poetry!), finding engaging and effective ways to teach it can be a challenge....

This week's episode is all about the Bard! We took listener questions about Shakespeare - planning, teaching, assessing, and more - and answered them in the nerdiest teacher way we could! PLUS a big announcement - registration is now open for the 2021 Shakespeare Teacher Festival (April 5-10, 2021). This free festival includes our best teaching tips & strategies for including Shakespeare...

Do you find that your high school students have trouble allowing themselves to be creative in their writing? We have a solution for you! Enter The Inspiration Cube . We spent a lot of time curating this resource and have yet to share it with you! The Inspiration Cube is intended to help students break past their fear and anxiety of coming up with things on their own and gives them permission to le...

It’s time for a reading update! Get your notebook or notes app ready because you’re about to have a new TBR list just in time for Spring reading. We’re running through our recent reads, some we’ve enjoyed more than others. There’s a little something for everyone from memoirs to historical fiction to comfort reads and everything in between. We hope this reading update brings some new texts your way...

It’s officially Women’s History Month and we’re absolutely celebrating here at Brave New Teaching! While we firmly believe that we should be doing this work all year round, it’s still powerful to pause and have some intentionality behind what’s being celebrated this month. For us, that’s not only women’s voices, but also women’s issues, both past and present. In today’s episode, we’re highlighting...

How many times have you sat through a Professional Development Training and thought “This is not the best use of my time”? As an ELA teacher with a to-do list a mile long, there’s nothing worse than feeling like your time is wasted or you aren’t walking away from a PD session with strategies you can actually use to better your instruction. That’s where I (Amanda) come in! In 2021 I stepped away fr...

Do you enjoy assigning projects in your class, but have found that small group projects come with a whole new set of challenges? Whole-class projects may be your answer. Our guest today, Danielle Hicks, has found great success with whole-class engagement projects and is here to share about her experience. If the thought of one big giant project brings immediate overwhelm, stick with us. Sometimes...

Do you struggle to find a solution for unproductive student work time? We hear you, and we’re here to help with a new lesson plan rescue episode!  When our precious class time is not spent the way we hope for, it throws everything off balance like our planning, grading, and student progress…which is enough to drive you crazy! There’s no one hack to combat this, but instead, we’ve discovered the ne...

When AI first came on the scene in a big way, there was a lot of panic. In the world of education, there were (and still are!) concerns about how it could make cheating easier for students. However, we all know it’s here to stay and we’ve learned that there are lots of positive ways that AI is changing the classroom. Today we’re sharing four ways that you can use AI for good in the ELA classroom....

Do you batch anything in your life? Some people like to batch their meal prep or batch laundry duties. We’re big fans of batching here at Brave New Teaching, and that includes batch planning! Not only can batch planning save you time, but it can also keep you organized and better prepared for what’s to come in your teaching. Today we’re sharing all about what batch planning is, why it’s such a gam...

We’re spending 5 minutes a day for 5 days getting the rest of this year all planned out - it's going to feel SO GOOD when this is done!! Join us to plan the rest of your school year, from now, January of 2024, through the last day of school. In just 25 minutes, take your existing curriculum calendar from blank pages to organized and ready in just 5 minutes a day, and you’ll be able to see the...

We’re spending 5 minutes a day for 5 days getting the rest of this year all planned out - it's going to feel SO GOOD when this is done!! Join us to plan the rest of your school year, from now, January of 2024, through the last day of school. In just 25 minutes, take your existing curriculum calendar from blank pages to organized and ready in just 5 minutes a day, and you’ll be able to see the...

We’re spending 5 minutes a day for 5 days getting the rest of this year all planned out - it's going to feel SO GOOD when this is done!! Join us to plan the rest of your school year, from now, January of 2024, through the last day of school. In just 25 minutes, take your existing curriculum calendar from blank pages to organized and ready in just 5 minutes a day, and you’ll be able to see the...

We’re spending 5 minutes a day for 5 days getting the rest of this year all planned out - it's going to feel SO GOOD when this is done!! Join us to plan the rest of your school year, from now, January of 2024, through the last day of school. In just 25 minutes, take your existing curriculum calendar from blank pages to organized and ready in just 5 minutes a day, and you’ll be able to see the...

We’re spending 5 minutes a day for 5 days getting the rest of this year all planned out - it's going to feel SO GOOD when this is done!! Join us to plan the rest of your school year, from now, January of 2024, through the last day of school. In just 25 minutes, take your existing curriculum calendar from blank pages to organized and ready in just 5 minutes a day, and you’ll be able to see the...

We’re teachers, and this is a teaching podcast, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have interests beyond the world of education! We want to be a consistent reminder to you that as much as we love nerding out over curriculum, and as much as we love what we do, teaching can’t be the only thing we do. We talked about setting intentions inside episode 185 and shared a free Intention Journal that you can d...

It’s the beginning of a new calendar year, which means planning is probably a hot topic on your mind. Today’s episode will help you get your wheels turning in terms of planning the upcoming second half of the school year, or whatever time of year may be ahead of you! Teacher planning is a subject that we talk a lot about on the podcast, so we’ve put together some of our best tidbits from episodes...

Happy 2024! It’s a new year, so we thought we’d try something new to help you really get the most out of 2024. Today we’re debuting The Brave New Teaching Challenge, and it’s all about setting intentions for your year. Here’s the best part about this challenge. We’re doing it together one step at a time. We know from firsthand experience that we are better teachers when we are in community with ot...

In episode 183 , we shared our top reads from 2023. You can probably guess what we’re going to do next. That’s right, it’s time to make our 2024 TBR list. New year, new books, new you! If you’re new around here, you should know that we are total book nerds. We like reading books by ourselves, with our students, with our children, and in book clubs.  Hard copy, Kindle, Audible…give us all the books...

Friends, the time has come. Another year is coming to a close and that means it’s time for our favorite kind of yearly reflection…a recap of our favorite books read in 2023! With our new obsession of Audible, we’ve gotten through lots of great reads this year. Today we’re sharing our top books of 2023 across all genres. You’ll hear our nominations for ‘best audiobook of the year’ and a book that w...

Have you ever felt a little intimidated to teach an advanced course like AP Lit? Well, after hearing from today’s guest, Gina Kortuem, we think your feelings may shift to pure excitement! Gina is someone that we’ve wanted to bring on the podcast for a while now because we see a lot of similarities in our teaching styles. Gina brings us a reality check about what teaching advanced courses like AP L...

It’s time to unleash the sass! We’ve got another unpopular opinion episode for you today. These episodes are always popular with our Brave New Teaching audience and today some of YOU are contributing to the conversation. If you despise the way that final exams are traditionally given, you are most definitely not alone! There is a good reason that you feel this way. Final exams are not research bas...

We understand the importance (and challenge) of finding engaging and effective ways to assess student learning. That’s why we created a F-R–E-E masterclass that walks you through three formative assessments that will change the way you teach reading. In this episode, you’ll hear a snipper of this masterclass, which focuses on the one pager quiz. Generally in the world of ELA, one pagers are though...

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! We are so very thankful for YOU and all that you do to support this podcast. We wanted to do something fun for today's episode, and if you know us then it probably comes as no surprise that fun sometimes comes in the form of formative assessments! Specifically, a Sesame Street Quiz. That's right, we've got a  Thanksgiving themed Sesame Street Quiz on tod...

We’re excited to share another installment of our unit makeover series. This time we’re delving into teaching rhetoric analysis in the classroom. We’ve noticed a pattern in the feedback we receive from you, our listeners, and we’ve decided to structure this episode as a mini-professional development session for teaching rhetoric.  You’ll hear our two main approaches to teaching rhetoric: a focus o...