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

You are in for a treat today Brave New Teaching friends! I am interviewing my internet friend, Erin Castillo, who you may know better by her Instagram handle @affirmationsandaccessibility . We have an important discussion centered around providing accommodations for students and working collaboratively with your co-teacher.  Erin Castillo teaches English to students with mild to moderate disabilit...

This week's episode is a re-run of one of our favorites! This episode outlines the work we plan to do over the summer of 2020 to grow professionally. Books, podcasts, and online conferences to further Anti-Bias & Anti-Racist work in the classroom and beyond, as well as those with instructional strategies to engage and deliver content effectively... Enjoy! LINKS TO ALL RESOURCES MENTIONED...

How would you describe the teacher team that you’re a part of in your school? Collaborative and aligned? Divided and negative? The climate of your teacher team truly can make or break your experience as a teacher. If your team is the complete opposite of collaborative, and the dynamic is causing a toxic work environment, then it’s time to work towards fixing it. We are starting this important conv...

The day has come, friends. We’ve made it to our 100th episode! Whether you’ve been listening since episode one, or if this is your first episode…thank you for being here. We are celebrating this huge milestone by reminiscing on some of our very favorite moments of Brave New Teaching, PLUS we’re featuring audio messages from our listeners! SHOW NOTES: https://www.bravenewteaching.com/home/episode10...

Things like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and podcasting have expanded the teacher universe in a way that was never possible before. The technology has allowed the teaching community to explode their reach and make their voices heard. We both feel like we are better teachers because we found community in social media. Today we’re sharing our perspective on two social media platforms specifically -...

The countdown to our 100th episode continues! Today we’re going in a bit of a different direction and are talking about teachers becoming business owners. So often, teachers are taught by outside companies who have absolutely zero experience with teaching. That’s why it’s so incredible that we are in the midst of a movement of teachers taking back the reins of being the experts in teaching. To cel...

As teachers, we all know what happens when it starts getting warm outside. You’ve reached that point in the year where classroom management starts to get a little dicey. Yes, this always happens before a big break, but nothing compares to the end of the school year when it comes to behavior management challenges. This leads us to the topic at hand for today. It’s our number one, greatest-of-all-ti...

One of the most frequently asked questions that we get from you is some version of, “what books do you suggest using?”. Well, you asked and we listened! Today, we have our top recommendations of books that have been the most popular in our classrooms. Most importantly, we want to talk to you about the three things that we keep in mind when curating a list of book choices for a choice reading unit....

Are you ready to nerd out with us today on argument and rhetoric? I hope so, because we are really digging in! We’re discussing the potential for viewing poetry as an argument, and looking at poetry through the lens of rhetorical analysis. We want to help you see poetry from a different angle, and consider where you can incorporate this into your units.  Sign up for our FREE masterclass, Down With...

We love hearing from you about which topics would be helpful for us to cover on the podcast! A recent popular request is the topic of classroom management. So today, Marie is sharing her 3 C’s of behavior management - clear expectations, constant reminders, and consistency.  Join Curriculum Rehab:  curriculumrehab.com/course SHOW NOTES:  https://www.bravenewteaching.com/home/episode94 Follow us on...

It’s me, Marie, and I’m solo-hosting today’s episode! Today I’m telling you a story that I think you’ll appreciate as teachers. It’s a story of how I made a little oopsie and broke my students’ brains, and it’s one that comes with lessons that we can all benefit from! Join Curriculum Rehab:  curriculumrehab.com/course SHOW NOTES: https://www.bravenewteaching.com/home/episode93 Follow us on Instagr...

It's time for unpopular opinions part two! We love producing a mix of niche content as well as teacher life, and we’re excited to share the latter today! If you haven’t listened to part one, head to episode 82 to catch up. In part two, we’re sharing four unpopular opinions that our teacher listeners have, and our reaction to them! Sign up for our FREE Down with the Reading Quiz Masterclass: h...

This week's episode is a re-run of  one of our favorites. It is a walk-through of the absolute best formative assessment you'll ever give your students. It asks students to synthesize their understanding of content, explain that understanding through concise writing, and can be adapted to ANY CONTENT AREA. That's right. Any subject. Enjoy! Grab your ticket to The Shakespeare Teacher...

What’s March without March Madness, right? Well my friends, it’s time for not just March Madness, but Poetry March Madness! This is Amanda coming at you solo this week, and I am going to walk you through exactly how to get started with Poetry March Madness. You’ll hear which supplies you're going to need and how you can fit this into your classroom and unique schedule.  Grab my brand new reso...

If you read the title of this episode, you may or may not know what this episode is about or if you want to listen! We say this because most people have different definitions of what text pairings and supplemental texts are. We go into detail of how we differentiate these two types of texts and when we use them in our lessons.  As most of you already know, the texts we choose are not the main focu...

A lot of the feedback we get about Shakespeare-related content is that you feel like it’s just too much. It feels hard, and you don’t want to do it. We totally get that, and we’ve been there. But that’s why we get so excited about the things we talk about because we really have found ways to make it a part of the day that you and your students will look forward to. The practice of analysis can get...

Are you ready to nerd out with us? Today’s episode will be focused on one of our favorite topics, Shakespeare. We’ve done multiple episodes on Shakespeare, so it’s safe to say that we’re obsessed! This episode will be different than the others though, because it will give space for Shakespeare to be in conversation in any literature class. We don’t want to beg you to incorporate Shakespeare into y...

Today is part two of our episodes focused on what to do when our kids don’t read at home. If you missed last week’s episode, you’re going to want to head over to episode 85 and listen to that one first. Giving students choices is the first step towards giving them a sense of pride and ownership over their reading. But what happens when students still aren’t reading at home, even when they do have...

If your students aren't reading their novels at home, the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath. The second thing is to remember that in a unit of study, there are so many things for kids to learn beyond the plot of the novel. That may sound completely crazy to you, but stick with us here. In today's episode we are going to talk about how simple shifts you make can make  a big...

This episode will be a continuation of last week’s episode where we had Jolene Heinemann join us as a guest to talk about choice reading. Choice reading is so important because it truly helps compartmentalize the choices you have when designing units and creating reading programs. This episode will give you a clearer vision on what reading units are supposed to do on their own and what independent...

Observing fellow teachers is so beneficial and such a great way to collect new and inspiring ideas to take back to your classroom. Amanda was able to do this recently when she went into the classroom of teacher and author, Jolene Heinemann, to participate in a reader's workshop that Jolene was putting on. Following the workshop, Amanda and Jolene sat down for a debrief in this interview. In a...

Have you seen those “unpopular opinion” posts all over social media lately? There are so many different topics people have been sharing so we decided to get your feedback on your unpopular opinions about education. After minutes of asking our listeners to share their unpopular opinions, Marie was FLOODED with responses. There were so many good ones that we decided to share them all with you in not...

We’re kicking off season four with one of the topics that we get the most requests for, and that is all things related to essential questions. You want to know how to best write them and use them, so we are sharing a special Dystopian-themed essential question workshop. This workshop is unique because it features a conversation with one of our listeners, Taylor. You'll hear Amanda and Taylor...

Today's episode is a re-run of one of our favorites. Grab your pen and paper because you may want to take notes on the magic that happens in this episode. We’re doing a LIVE essential question workshop, which we haven’t done since last year ( by the way, doesn’t last year feel like a decade ago? ).  The point of this workshop is for Marie to plan and prepare essential questions for an upcomin...

Today's episode is a re-run of one of our very favorite episodes where we share 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...