Teachers' Lounge

On a new Teachers’ Lounge podcast, we enter a math escape room with 5th grade teacher Dominique Yackley! She's a finalist for the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching.

"If you're working with clay, some people may think 'oh, this is just a teapot.' That teapot can be a lot more. There can be a lot of other issues spinning around up there."

On this week’s Teachers' Lounge, it’s time to ready your arguments and prepare to perform. We’re talking with English teacher and Forensics coach, Greg Solomon.

On a new Teachers’ Lounge podcast -- we’re diving into the top education issues you need to know about in 2023. Everything from mental health to school board battles and student-led classrooms.

On a new Teachers’ Lounge podcast -- we’re live from an ACTUAL teachers’ lounge at North Grove Elementary School talking to teachers about how the pandemic has changed them. We recorded these conversations on video, as well, so you can go over to our WNIJ Facebook and Instagram RIGHT NOW and check those out. You can watch the full interviews on our WNIJ YouTube channel

On a new Teachers' Lounge podcast, a school librarian on media literacy, technology, censorship and more.

Revisit some of the best education reporting from Teachers' Lounge this year.

As we wind down 2022, we take a look back at three of our favorite conversations with educators this year.

On a new Teachers’ Lounge podcast, Rheon is an educator who writes children’s books based on his experience as a school counselor. But those social emotional lessons? They’re not just for kids! We talk about his Dizz Wizz book series AND how writing books about fathers and sons has changed him as a father.

On a new Teachers’ Lounge, David Gray! He’s a social studies teacher at Logan Jr. High in Princeton, Illinois.

One-room schoolhouses, coal mines, watermelon seed spitting contests, and a traveling bookmobile. That’s all on a new Teachers’ Lounge!

Chicago assistant principal Charles Williams jumps into Teachers' Lounge to talk about how he's trying to change how people think about education. We also get seasonally scary with his show Spooky School Stories!

LIGHT Education Initiative founder Nick Haberman joins the show. LIGHT is meant to be a movement to empower students to become leaders in their own community in Holocaust, genocide & human rights education. Remember these tragedies and try to advocate for real change in their schools and beyond.

We're diving deep into the Teachers' Lounge archive to bring you a globe-trotting chat with bilingual education professor James Cohen!

We’ve talked with students before, we’ve talked with teachers, we’ve talked with teachers who just finished their student teaching -- but never any students still in the midst of their classes on how to become a teacher.

"Adults, people with families, people with jobs: lifelong learning happens well beyond this discrete moment in your life when you're 18-20 years old. And people can reap the benefits of continuing education and furthering their certifications and degrees and experiences for their entire lives," Illinois Valley Community College instructor Delores Robinson.

WNIJ's Peter Medlin takes a trip back to his hometown to talk to a P.E. teacher who he helped teach with nearly 10 years ago.

“One of the questions I learned to ask early in my career as an educator is, was my experience, maybe not everybody's experience, or was it?"

We're reflecting on speeches from the Class of 2020 as we near the 4th school year impacted by the pandemic.

“I was really terrified this year, this was my first year to put it where you say you got it,” she said. “I don't know for sure that meaningful, relational, creative learning yields test results. I know that people of my belief in academia say that. I know there's a lot of literature that says that, but you don't know you’re going to get that.”

Rachel joins Teachers' Lounge after a busy few months between getting a Master’s Degree, securing her first full-time teaching job, and finishing up student teaching AT HER OLD HIGH SCHOOL!

Our classroom correspondent tells the story of his school year – a year in the life of a teacher -- the ups and downs, holidays, tests, all of it. It's a month-by-month trip through the 2021-22 school year.

"When I started teaching, as a teacher, you were extremely isolated. You were closed in this room with them. In my second year of teaching, I had 50 3rd graders!"

Destiny Hudson was in 5th grade when COVID-19 shut down schools back in 2020. Now, she’s finishing up 7th Grade. Devin Snow was a sophomore when it all went down and now he’s graduating high school. They’ve both been through this weird learning experience, but at very different points in their education journey.

The 2022 Illinois Teacher of the Year joins Teachers' Lounge to talk about what it means to her, being a small-town educator, teaching new languages, and much more!