The Broken Copier

Jim sits down with Cyndi Mahne, a veteran teacher and instructional coach from St. Louis. They talk about her experiences moving around different schools, running a student TV station for ten years, and especially her insights on trust and relationships as an instructional coach supporting teachers. We’d love to hear your thoughts! You can leave us an audio message for the next episode: fanlist.co...

Recent reporting from the New York Times details how school absences have “exploded” in just about every school district. On this episode, Marcus and Jim talk about how difficult this can make things for both students and teachers, and dig into the many challenges that arise in and outside the classroom as teachers try to navigate this new, disturbing trend in school absences. We’d love to hear yo...

The tenth episode of “Kicking the Copier” is all about how we as teachers tend to respond to “bad vibes” in our classroom (this time of year especially) in a way that sometimes makes those “bad vibes” even worse. In Marcus’s experience: by retreating from classroom community rather than leaning into classroom community. Today’s reflection, then, is about a realization he had in his own classroom a...

Lots of schools are trying out different approaches to grading, often met with mixed emotions from teachers. Mastery-based and minimum grading policies are popular, and this week Marcus and Jim were able to discuss how they see some of these ideas playing out. Grades are very important–to both high school students and teachers–as important vehicles for feedback, motivation, and recognition. As a r...

The ninth episode of “Kicking the Copier”—and the first of 2024!—is centered around the value of reflecting on our own past “mistakes” as teachers: practices and mindsets that existed in previous versions of our teaching that we no longer believe are the best for our students. This isn’t about being hard on ourselves—growth is a part of this work! Rather, Marcus makes the argument in this episode...

Welcome to 2024! As many of us are in a moment of reflection & adjustment, we were finally able to sit down & reconnect for this latest episode. We continue to be grateful for your support, especially since our recording schedule has become a little sparse in 2023–but we assume our audience of educators can understand a busy schedule, so thanks for sticking with us! Thanks to Adrian Neibauer Color...

The eighth episode of “Kicking the Copier” begins with a question: as a teacher, do you understand how your students see themselves as learners in the classroom? If not, the first step is asking them—and this episode briefly dives into the why before moving through three different quick ways to begin this shift in your own classroom. As always, thanks to:  Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former student...

This seventh episode of “Kicking the Copier” is very simple: a reflection and reminder about the value of a good classroom—how it can feel too often like it doesn’t matter in the broader scheme of things when it very much does matter. That’s all this episode is, really: a brief message about why the classroom matters and a thank you to all those who are doing what they can to make it a good place....

This sixth episode of “Kicking the Copier” is a reflection on how teachers so often are asked to do things beyond the basic responsibilities of their classroom—and how “saying no” to these above-and-beyond requests can be really challenging. Still, being intentional and confident in when and why to say “no”? That can be an underrated, important factor in a sustainable, positive teaching career. In...

It’s time to write recommendation letters again, which any teacher of seniors will tell you is the spookiest part of the entire season. As our students have an eye on all these college applications, we’ve seen a lot of different stories floating around about the value of college. Some of the more disingenuous politicians take pleasure in attacking the mere idea of college for political gain, throw...

In this fifth episode of “Kicking the Copier,” Marcus responds to one of our own reader’s questions about how to build a culture of accountability in the classroom without relying on late penalties. Marcus begins with a brief explainer on why he’s against late penalties and then shares two separate strategies for still maintaining a culture of accountability without relying on late penalties at al...

In this fourth episode of “Kicking the Copier,” our series of shorter solo episodes, Marcus reflects on how he has reacted in the past when a student walks in having a tough day—and how he tries to do better nowadays with a simple strategy: writing that student a note. Thanks to:  Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing u...

Jim already had his first day of school, and Marcus is about to start. Whether you’ve got your Q1 seating charts locked in, or are just starting to dust off the work laptop, we’re all getting ready for another exciting year in the classroom. In this episode, Marcus asks Jim about his thoughts on what makes for a strong start to the year, and Jim talks about a new exit ticket strategy that’s alread...

In this third episode of “Kicking the Copier,” our series of shorter solo episodes, Marcus reflects on how shifting the way teachers return our feedback to students can make a substantive impact on the culture of growth in our classrooms—and he offers three different steps to make for what he believes is a better feedback-return system. Here’s the link to one of the slide decks I used for this typ...

This is the second episode “Kicking the Copier”: a series of shorter solo episodes where we offer not a solution necessarily but rather an idea for teachers, akin to a copier kick, based on our own experience and thinking. These won’t be long, under 10 minutes, but we hope they can be valuable in offering ideas and also potentially beginning conversations around topics worth having conversations a...

This past week a report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education received a lot of coverage —including as fuel for a WSJ editorial—and then subsequent reaction for its targeted blame towards…you guessed it: teachers. Needless to say, Jim and Marcus weren’t happy about this at all—especially after digging into the rather-barebones report and seeing how disconnected the framing and coverage...

This is the first episode “Kicking the Copier”: a series of shorter solo episodes where we offer not a solution necessarily but rather an idea for teachers, akin to a copier kick, based on our own experience and thinking. These won’t be long, under 10 minutes, but we hope they can be valuable in offering ideas and also potentially beginning conversations around topics worth having conversations ab...

The dog days are in full swing, and we wish all the teachers out there a wonderful, restful, well-earned July. In this episode, Marcus and Jim connect to talk about how they solicit and respond to student feedback, especially as they look forward to the fall. Using Marcus’s recent Edutopia article , they discuss how this type of feedback process looks in their classrooms, and the importance of bri...

In this episode, Brett Vogelsinger joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Poetry Pauses: Teaching with Poems to Elevate Student Writing in All Genres . Brett shares about the background of his book as well as the numerous benefits he has found in “pausing for a poem” in the classroom—especially as a way to improve student thinking and writing in a much broader sense. This isn’t just an epis...

A conversation between Jim and Marcus about how their classrooms came to a close to finish the school year as well as some “teacher takeaways” from the year overall as they look forward. Though at times it dips into the weeds of HS English pedagogy and particulars, this episode tries to dive into the thinking and reflection of two different teachers about how to best “end” a classroom community—an...

Jim welcomes back Elizabeth Jorgensen with Dr. Lucy Park for a conversation about teaching Sijo–a traditional Korean poetry form. Similar to Haiku, Sijo offers students an accessible poetry structure to learn, play with, and develop their own creative voices and identities as writers. Liz and Lucy have recently published an award-winning book, Sijo: Kore’s Poetry Form , that offers teachers backgr...

We’ve finally made time in between walking the dogs, cooking, parenting, attempting to work out every once in a while, and our wildly easy teaching jobs with tons of flexible time built in. Seriously though, folks, there’s more to say about grading. In this episode, we took a deeper dive into some of our thinking around grading policies like late work, extra credit, and the no-zero discourse, and...

What’s the best way to grade student work? This is one of those questions that seems like it should have an obvious answer, but once you do a little digging, it turns out the answer is far from easy. Not only are schools entirely misaligned when it comes to grading practices and norms, but the more we ask why, the more it seems like nothing really makes sense at all. Marcus & Jim are starting a lo...

We’re getting into the swing of things now, as most of us have started a new semester. Marcus and Jim check back with each other about writing instruction in general, and continue the conversation around what AI might start to mean for classrooms. They talk about culture through content, and what authentic learning might start to look like in the next era of the internet. How are schools respondin...

Gwen Jorgensen became the first American to win a gold medal in the triathlon at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. Her mother, Nancy, and sister, Liz, wrote about her inspiring journey in their book, Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete. The book targets an important gap for middle grade nonfiction books–especially the importance of telling heroic stories about women and mothers a...