Fund for Teachers - The Podcast

President Theodore Roosevelt said, "…a special and peculiar debt of gratitude is owing to the men and women who are engaged in teaching, who are engaged in educating the body, mind and soul of the younger generation…” His Presidential Library is opened this month in western North Dakota (fittingly on July the Fourth) and just days after Eric Sullenberger drove though the Badlands, a rugged la...

July has been defined by two stories: the World Cup and America’s 250th anniversary. One has reminded us of what unites people across cultures—the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and, apparently, a shared appreciation for ranch dressing. The other has prompted us to look back in order to move forward. At the intersection of those two moments is the Fund for Teachers fellowship of Chandler...

In 2015, United Nations member states adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designed to end poverty, protect the planet, and create a more prosperous future for all by 2030. Together, these goals address some of humanity’s most urgent challenges, including hunger, poverty, gender equality, health and well-being, and climate change. As then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon famously stated...

Reidsville, Georgia, is a small town covering just 7.7 square miles, about an hour west of Savannah. According to Local Observer Daily , it is best known as a quintessential Southern farming community and as home to the Georgia State Prison. Agriculture—especially the cultivation of Vidalia onions—drives the local economy, and many of Sarah Jacques’ students and their families are part of that wor...

The theme of Earth Day 2026 is “Our Power. Our Planet.” According to earthday.org , this theme is “not a political statement, but a commitment to stewardship, resilience, and shared accountability — a call for every individual, community, and sector to use their power in service of the planet we all depend on.” For Krissy Ponden , a teacher at The Unquowa School in Fairfield, Connecticut, that sec...

Eighty-one years ago, on January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied Poland—a place where more than one million people were murdered as part of the Nazis’ so-called “Final Solution.” In November 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a time to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust...

As the fall semester speeds into winter break, Amanda Hinrichs ’ fifth graders at Hebron Avenue School in Glastonbury, CT, are pretty worked up. They’re stamping their feet and making bold hand gestures with eyes bulging and tongues out. And Amanda is loving every second. Her music students are writing and performing their own “ haka ,” a Maori tradition that Amanda observed all across New Zealand...

In the midst of the Dust Bowl—an agricultural catastrophe that decimated crops and devastated the livelihoods of thousands of Oklahomans—President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” Fueled by a lack of understanding about sustainable land management and the heightened demand for food during World War I, once-fertile plains were transformed into barre...

Rudyard Kipling penned the words, “East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” Except in the case of Fund for Teachers Fellows Natasha Alston and Denise Carter-Mataboge .  Natasha teaches at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, AZ, and Denise teaches at the Neighborhood Charter School: Harlem, NY. They didn’t even know each other a year ago. But they DID know they wanted to t...

The Way of St. James, perhaps more commonly known as the Camino de Santiago , has been since the 9th century an ambulatory avenue for reflection. The ancient path that stretches from the French Pyrenees to Spain’s Santiago de Compestela, was first traversed by Roman tradesmen, then Christians seeking “indulgences” from the Medieval Church. Today, various paths associated with the Camino are walked...

Winston Churchill said, “We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which through the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeus Corpus, Trial by Jury and the English Common Law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.” Agreed to by King John on June 15, 1215, the Magna Carta attests that the king i...

We’re publishing this podcast on the final day of Black History Month. The 2025 theme was "African Americans and Labor," focusing on the significant role Black people have played in the workforce – of their own accord or at the mercy and for the benefit of others. The economic aspect of Black history also inspired a Fund for Teachers experience of today’s guest and now informs the perspe...

Internationally renowned environmentalist Jane Goodall said, " What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. " In 2015, Barbara Dalio decided she wanted to make a difference for teachers. Connecticut teachers, specifically. Based on the formative role teachers played in the lives of her three sons, Barbara chose to invest in her home sta...

Welcome to our fifth season of Fund for Teachers: The Podcast. We launched this platform (after buying and annotating the book “Podcasts for Dummies”) when Covid shut down schools (and everything else) because we wanted to stay in touch with our grant recipients and support the stalwart work they were undertaking as our students first responders.  Forty-seven episodes later, we continue to welcome...

Teaching is a family business for this mother and daughter. When Daneé Pinckney was a student, her mom, Gail Bowers-Craig, enrolled in night school to earn a degree in education. In fact, Daneé says much of what she learned about teaching was from watching and listening to her mother in those years of study. It was Daneé, however, who blazed the Fund for Teachers trail.  Last summer, Daneé used he...

Virigina Hall studied at Radcliffe College and Barnard College (the women’s colleges of Harvard and Columbia) and spoke three languages. She served as a consular clerk in Poland and Turkey, where a hunting accident required an amputation below the knee. Noor Inayat Kahn studied child psychology at the Sorbonne and music at the Paris Conservatory . The daughter of Sufi Muslims, she was described as...

A 2022 piece by National Public Radio cited Anne Frank as “the most famous young author of all time,” as her diary, translated into more than 65 languages , is one of the most widely read books in the world. One such reader was Nikia Garland. Now a 24-year veteran teacher at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, she was once a sixth grader at nearby Farrington Elementary Shool where she p...

Spotify annually sends out its wrap up of your listening habits for the year and Fund for Teachers received a similar one for our podcast. The most downloaded podcast of our year was with today's guest. Stephanie Ascherl is our chief of staff and has been a program officer, as well. Because that episode was SO popular, we're bringing Stephanie back for another edition of "Tips you n...

Lhisa Almashy has amassed many accomplishments in her 28-year career teaching English as a Second Language (or ESOL): a master’s degree in education from the University of San Francisco; a doctorate in Leadership and Learning In Organizations from Vanderbilt; award member from and board member of Learning for Justice , the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education for the State of Florida and H...

When preparing to interview Fellows for this podcast, I’ll do a little research to provide listeners with some context. Usually, that Google search yields LinkedIn accounts, local media coverage, and sometimes statistics from high school glory days. With today’s guest, I ended up on IMDB -- an online database of information related to films, television series, and streaming content online. My curi...

Iceland is known as the Land of Fire and Ice, the most peaceful country in the world 15 years running, and – unfortunately for Big Mac fans – has zero McDonald’s. And, this year, it’s the fellowship destination for seven Fund for Teachers Fellows. Ranging in topic from sustainability and geothermal energy to yoga and elves, grant recipients from Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia will le...

According to a report published by Special Olympics and titled “National Snapshot of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities in the Labor Force,” only 44% of adults with ID aged 21-64 are in the labor force. This is compared to 83% of working-age adults without disabilities who are in the labor force. Furthermore, only 34% of adults with intellectual disabilities aged 21-64 are employed, and an appr...

While Fund for Teachers has invested $30 million in teacher grants for summer fellowships since 2001, this marks only the second year that we’ve awarded Innovation Circle Grants . To extend the value of our traditional summer fellowships, we created this space for FFT Fellows to connect and collaborate around key priorities in education. Fellows propose innovative inquiries into a predetermined se...

We’re winding down the month of February -- designated as Black History Month, first celebrated as Negro History Week in 1926 and expanded to a month in 1986 by the United States Congress. According to the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, the designation began in 1915 when University of Chicago alumnae Carter G. Woodson traveled from Washington, D.C. to Chicago to...

Since 1983, the third Monday of January is recognized as a federal holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. In the state of Alabama, that same day is also recognized as Robert E. Lee Day. Grappling with this simultaneous celebration, and the state’s complex civil rights history, is Blake Busbin – director of social studies education for the Alabama State Department of Education ....