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

We cannot even begin to contain the excitement we have to share this episode with you. We had the pleasure of interviewing author Ruta Sepetys about her journey as a writer and her latest novel, I Must Betray You . The interview begins with Ruta reading an excerpt from I Must Betray You . This is the perfect clip to play for your students if you practice “First Chapter Friday”!  Then we delve into...

Cheers to everyone who has made it to the end, or almost the end, of this school year! We’re celebrating you and giddy with excitement for what’s to come this summer at Brave New Teaching. In case you haven’t heard, we’ll be hosting Camp BNT, which is essentially a Nerdy English teacher book club. But here’s the best part - we’re actually interviewing the authors right here on the Brave New Teachi...

We love sharing and celebrating diverse voices here at Brave New Teaching, and today is no exception. With May being AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) month, what better time to highlight some of our fan favorites written by AAPI authors. The texts that we’re sharing today are loved by both us and our students. We literally can’t keep them on our classroom shelves! From memoirs to dystopi...

Are you ready to nerd out with us today on argument and rhetoric? I hope so, because we are really digging in! As teachers, poets are uniquely positioned for us in the context of history in a different way than authors are. With that, comes a lot of really great opportunities. So today, we really are discussing the potential for looking at poetry as an argument and looking at poetry through the le...

Do you prefer to teach poetry as a standalone unit or sprinkled in throughout the school year? We think both options are valid, and in this episode we’re considering the merits of each! One thing is for sure. It’s important to be intentional about when and where poetry is taught in the curriculum. When you can take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you can create meaningful and impactful...

Brave New Teaching friends, it’s Amanda here, and I’m so incredibly excited to share today’s guest episode with you! It features Dr. Michael Theune, who was one of my professors during undergrad.  This conversation highlights two topics that are, in my experience, unequivocally the areas where students often feel lost, and that is poetry and creative writing. We’re here to dispel the myth that poe...

We love to share our favorite resources and activities that we’ve used in our classrooms here with you on the podcast. We’ve done a series on “The Best Thing I Ever Taught” in the past, and we’re bringing it back today.  This time we’re getting into the best poems we’ve ever taught. Now, we have a lot of favorite poems, so let’s just say that we had a really difficult time choosing only one. But w...

We’re giving you a re-run of a two part series we did on poetry at the very beginning of the podcast!  Amanda and Marie dive into teaching poetry - the why, the how, and more! Listen for an in-depth breakdown of actionable strategies to build your poetry-teaching confidence! Show Notes: https://www.bravenewteaching.com/home/toteachpoetry Click here to join Happy Hour! "Send us a message - ple...

We’ve been fully embracing spring over here at Brave New Teaching and today marks the third and final episode in our Teacher Spring Cleaning series. So far we’ve talked about spring cleaning our texts and topics and instructional strategies and practices. Today, we’re spring cleaning our curriculum and activities that we’re doing with our students during this time of year. This is all about refres...

Last week, inside episode 142 , we talked about spring cleaning our instructional practices and strategies. This week, the spring cleaning continues! This time, we’re moving on to texts and topics. Specifically, we’re looking at what we’re planning to purge and what we’re going to give new life to. If you are thinking of some texts and topics that you’d like to purge or refresh, leave us a voice m...

With spring right around the corner, it’s the perfect time to revitalize your classroom, especially if everything is starting to feel a bit stale and overdone. It’s not quite time to throw in the towel yet, so let’s slap a fresh coat of paint on our strategies and bring things back to life! Today’s episode marks the first in a three-part series on teacher spring cleaning. To kick things off, we’re...

What type of reader have you been lately? Are you moving through books like crazy or barely getting through a chapter a week? Either way, we get it. Just because we’re ELA teachers, that doesn’t mean we always have the time or energy to read outside work hours. Back in episode 131 , we shared our list of books we couldn’t wait to read in 2023, and well, let’s just say we haven’t gotten to them all...

Did you catch episode 139 with Dr. Jenna Copper? We talked all about independent reading and student choice at the high school level. Today we’re continuing our independent reading series with our friend, Abby Gross. This one is for all of our middle school teacher friends! Abby was a high school teacher who recently moved to middle school. This transition is what gave her the chance to wake up to...

When we decided to do a series on independent reading, the first name that came to mind was our friend, Dr. Jenna Copper. Jenna has just as much passion and excitement for independent reading and student choice as we do. Plus, she shares Marie’s love of YA fantasy books, which is just the icing on top! In this conversation, we talk about what independent reading has looked like in our classrooms....

Does giving your students choice come easily to you? For some teachers it does, but for others it can be extremely difficult to release that control! Incorporating choice requires a major mindset shift as you learn how to navigate your students all doing something different.  In this listener favorite rerun, we’re showing you how you can allow students to have choice without letting go of having a...

We're bringing you a re-run of one of our favorite episodes - an exciting COLLABISODE with listeners to the podcast! Valentine’s Day is a fun “holiday” to celebrate in the classroom and we thought we’d bring some new ideas your way by handing off the microphone to six amazingly creative teachers. These six teachers have ideas that will help you brainstorm your own take on a Valentine’s celebr...

We’ve got a lot of things to worry about as teachers, and now we get to add ‘plagiarized stuff that was written by a bot’ to the list!  That’s right - it’s time to chat about ChatGPT. If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT, it’s an AI chatbot system that can be used to help you write all kinds of things. It’s building buzz quickly in the teaching world, and causing a lot of panic because students have us...

Welcome to part two of our series with Andrea Michelle. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, (episode 134) then push pause on this one, and check that out first! In this series, we’re doing a unit makeover on Night , by Elie Wiesel. Andrea has taught this unit before, but she wants to make some tweaks to improve the experience for her and her students. So, that’s exactly what we’re doing in th...

If you’re a long-time listener of Brave New Teaching, then you know how much we love a good unit makeover. If you’re new to the show, then today will be a great introduction! We are joined by high school teacher, Andrea Michelle, who is sharing all about a unit that she has taught using the anchor text, Night . This episode will be part one of a two part conversation with Andrea. In part one, Andr...

We’ve officially entered into 2023, and you’re probably either feeling like you are ready to take on the world or feeling like you need [at least] another two weeks of winter break. Today’s episode is going to walk you through an exercise that will help you to feel prepared to take on the second half of the school year. We’re going to talk about how you can get things on your calendar now, and pla...

It’s the last Brave New Teaching episode of 2022, and the time of year for reflection, goal-setting, and thinking about next steps. But first, books!  Today, we’re sharing our top picks of books we can’t wait to read in 2023 because if we’re being honest, that’s kind of a top priority for us. Books are a form of self-care, and that includes talking about them and finding different types of books t...

We are constantly gushing over our latest reads to each other behind the scenes, and realized that we should probably record these types of conversations for you!  As English teachers, books are a huge part of our lives, but not just in the classroom. We love books because they bring us joy, they entertain, they educate, and they can be a great way to connect with others. So, why not talk to you a...

Today’s episode is truly a gift to the Brave New Teaching community. It’s Amanda here, and I’m joined by my dear friend and life coach, Blair Wilson. I met Blair during 2020 when I was taking my first steps in seeking out therapy and mental help support during the overwhelming experience of pandemic teaching. I knew that I needed to have someone to talk to in order to process through my aspiration...

Enjoy a sneak peak of the content that will be coming to you on our brand new private podcast inside the Brave New Teaching Happy Hour! You can sign up for Happy Hour here - https://www.curriculumrehab.com/happyhour Mentioned in this episode: Get more Brave New Teaching each week: Join BNT Happy Hour Here! "Send us a message - please include your contact information so we can chat soon!"...

As a teacher, do you ever feel like you have to choose between fun and rigor? Early in our teaching careers, we definitely got sucked into the “edutainment” culture, where we felt like we needed to constantly be performing. We had to keep things fresh and fun. We quickly learned that that led to two things - burnout and poor classroom management. Not to mention that centering all of your lessons a...