New Teacher Talk

Before learning can begin, students need to feel safe. Some arrive carrying anxiety, uncertainty, or the effects of a chaotic morning. In this episode, Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran talk with Nola Kennedy, a teacher with 35 years of school experience, about predictable, affirming routines that put student voice at the center of your classroom. Nola shares four routines you can start...

Grades and progress reports have gone home, and now the conversations begin. If the thought of sitting across from a worried family makes your stomach flip, this episode is for you.  Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran and Dr. Beth Wilkins reframe the parent-teacher conference as an opportunity to help families understand what has happened and what comes next, not a one-time event where you must resolve every...

New Teacher Talk turns toward something new teachers feel deeply but rarely get real guidance on: how to care for students who are emotionally demanding without burning yourself out. Hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran welcome Dr. Jameelah Wright, a teacher education professor at William Paterson University, who uses her reading The Year of Isaiah, Classrooms as Transformational Pla...

New Teacher Talk takes on a topic most new teachers know matters but few feel ready to handle in the moment: digital citizenship. Hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran welcome Bianca Tolentino, a high school English teacher, who makes the case that digital citizenship is less a stack of lesson plans and more a set of conversations you have when real situations surface in your classroo...

New Teacher Talk tackles something every teacher pours hours into and often watches go to waste: feedback. Hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran welcome Dr. Aletha Williams, a program manager and educator development coach, to help you design feedback students will actually pick up and use, instead of the kind that gets skipped on the way to the grade. Aletha names the problem plainly...

New Teacher Talk turns a professional development session into something you can put to work right away. Hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran welcome Helene Alalouf, an instructional math and literacy coach, who shares two Mathematical Language Routines designed to deepen student thinking, strengthen mathematical communication, and turn your classroom into a place where students make...

New Teacher Talk takes on a part of the job that makes many early-career teachers anxious: the post-observation conference. Hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran welcome Dr. Amy Howerton, an English teacher and department chair at Oswego High School, and Dr. Ed Howerton, associate professor and director of graduate education at Aurora University, who together own Two Paths Educational...

New Teacher Talk welcomes Dr. Virginia (Ginny) Shank, an assistant professor of reading and former elementary classroom teacher and reading specialist, for a conversation about one of the most overlooked drivers of student learning: background knowledge. Hosted by Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran, this episode connects the research to three concrete strategies you can use across grade...

New Teacher Talk takes on a mindset that quietly wears teachers down: the belief that you have to support every struggling student entirely on your own. Hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran are joined by Amie Livengood, a high school family and consumer science teacher and former instructional coach, and Dr. Kelli Hamilton, a high school instructional coach, to offer a repeatable pla...

New Teacher Talk takes on a worry almost every new teacher voices: the feeling that you have to choose between following the pacing guide and teaching a lesson students actually care about. Hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran make the case that this is a false dichotomy, and they offer small, low-effort moves that work inside your curriculum rather than against it. The hosts start b...

The Science of Learning series continues on New Teacher Talk, with hosts Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran welcoming back Dr. Ken King of Aurora University. This time the focus is retrieval practice, one of the most powerful and most underused strategies in learning science, and Dr. King makes it practical enough to try this week. He starts by dismantling a common belief: that studying...

New Teacher Talk welcomes Christine Beardslee, a reading specialist and veteran educator with 26 years of experience in New Jersey, to walk you through one of the most practical safeguards you can build: a substitute teacher folder. Hosted by Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran, this episode turns a task that is easy to put off into a clear, doable checklist. Christine starts from the sub...

New Teacher Talk brings two generations of teaching into one conversation. Todd Leban, a 23-year veteran middle school educator in Oak Park, Illinois, joins his niece Abbey Leban, a first-year special education teacher serving kindergarten through fifth grade in Naperville, for a candid exchange on classroom management. Hosted by Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran, the episode pairs seas...

New Teacher Talk welcomes Abby Bartle, a fourth-year English teacher at Oswego High School in Oswego, Illinois, for an honest conversation about getting involved in your school community without running yourself into the ground. Hosted by Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran and Dr. Beth Wilkins, this episode is full of practical guidance from someone who has done a lot, running the school website, coaching, s...

New Teacher Talk welcomes back Dion Copeland, National Board-Certified Teacher and Assistant Principal, for a conversation that reframes what it means to teach in a Title I school. Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran set the stage around a deliberate choice: leading with an asset-based view of students and communities rather than a deficit narrative. Dion starts by clarifying what Title I...

New Teacher Talk welcomes Abigail Jarrett, an educator who specializes in managing extreme student behavior, for a candid conversation about what to do when a situation escalates past anything your training prepared you for. Dr. Beth Wilkins opens by naming something every new teacher needs to hear: when behavior reaches this level, it is usually not a reflection of your skill or your effort. Abig...

New Teacher Talk kicks off a special Science of Learning series with Dr. Ken King of Aurora University. In this first episode, Dr. King makes a case that may feel counterintuitive: the practice that feels easiest is often the practice that teaches the least. The focus is interleaved practice, the strategy of mixing different problem types and topics together rather than drilling them one block at...

Finding Your People in a New Building Guest: Samantha "Sammi" Katschke In this episode, Dr. Beth and Dr. Anna present Samantha "Sammi" Katschke, district band director and music teacher at Chadwick-Milledgeville, about a challenge new teachers rarely get warned about: loneliness. You can know your content cold and still walk into a building unsure of who to turn to when a lesson falls apart or a d...

Staying Calm and Staying Firm   Hosts: Dr. Beth Wilkins and Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran In this episode, Dr. Beth and Dr. Anna tackle the moment every new teacher dreads, the one where a student pushes and the whole room waits to see what you'll do. They reframe that test as a question rather than an attack, and show how the same core skills play out differently at every stage from pre-K through senio...

Two Teachers, One Classroom Guests: Leana Malinowsky and Paul Garcia In this episode, Dr. Beth and Dr. Anna introduce a conversation between Leana Malinowsky and Paul Garcia, two experienced co-teachers, about what it actually takes to make a shared classroom work. Leana, a teacher since 2008 and a structured literacy dyslexia specialist, and Paul, a 32-year special education veteran, built their...

Holding the Line on High Expectations Guest: Dr. Carla Braun, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning in Westmont Community Unit School District 201 In this episode, Dr. Beth and Dr. Anna invite Carla Braun to dig into a belief every new teacher holds and every new teacher gets tested on: that all students can succeed. Carla draws on years of classroom observations across districts nati...

What Your Union Card Actually Means Guests: Dr. Amy Howerton, English Teacher and Department Chair, Oswego High School and Katie Popp, President of the Indian Prairie Education Association In this episode, Dr. Beth and Dr. Anna invite Amy and Katie to unpack what union membership actually does for a new teacher. Katie brings 23 years in education and seven as union president to the conversation, a...

Structure, High Expectations, and Real Connection Guest: Chloe Lillie, first-year general music teacher In this episode, Chloe Lillie challenges the idea that student behavior is a puzzle to be solved, arguing instead that authentic, human connection is at the center of good classroom management. She shares hard-won lessons from her first year in the classroom. In this episode: Why interacting wit...

The Warm Demander Secret to Starting Your Year Strong Guest: Melissa Dudic, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, large suburban high school district In this episode, Melissa Dudic explains how three fundamental elements, present in every classroom whether teachers realize it or not, shape the culture for learning: time, routines, and relationships. She draws on resources including Creating Cult...

Classroom Management Part Two, Structure, Strictness, and Redirection Guest: Abby Bartle, fourth-year English teacher, Oswego High School, Oswego, Illinois In part two, Abby Bartle moves from big-picture classroom management into the daily habits and in-the-moment techniques that keep a classroom calm and focused. She emphasizes that classroom management is personal and that what works for one tea...