The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

Any time we teach our students something, we need to check to see how well they learned it. If we only do this check at the very end, after all the teaching is done, and we find that our students haven't learned the material, it's too late to do anything about it. That's why we really need to do formative assessment — checking along the way — so if there are problems, we can fix them. In this epis...

If our students are going to thrive, they all need to feel safe, accepted, and loved while under our care. This week, we're focusing on what that looks like when it comes to gender-expansive students — kids whose gender expression or identity is different from what they were assigned at birth. For these students, creating a school that feels safe and accepting isn't simply a matter of being nice t...

Students learn better when movement is included in a lesson. In this episode, theater educator Jocelyn Greene teaches us four fun improv games that can work in most classrooms to get students actively engaged and make the learning really stick. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks to  EVERFI  and  The Wired Classroom  for sponsoring this episod...

Teaching is intense, vulnerable work that brings up a range of emotions all day, every day. If we really want to help teachers thrive, we need to go beyond the technical parts of the job and look at how our core human needs show up in this work. In this episode, author and instructional coach Elena Aguilar joins me to explore what it looks like when a teacher's needs for belonging, autonomy, compe...

The act of thinking about our own thinking, or metacognition, plays a huge role in how well our brain holds on to information. If we can get a better understanding of how metacognition works, we can tap into it to improve our learning and teach our students to do the same. In this episode, cognitive scientist Megan Sumeracki explains how we can make that happen. Thanks to EVERFI and The Wired Clas...

All students can benefit from learning and practicing executive functions, the skills we use to control our attention, keep ourselves organized, initiate tasks, and manage time. But where do we find the time to teach them? In this episode, educator and author Mitch Weathers shares his proven 5-step system for integrating executive functions into regular class time without taking away from the regu...

The podcast is on a break this summer because I'm working on a big project. I thought I'd take a few minutes and tell you a little bit about it.  More on the project here . Be back soon!!    

When teachers and students feel heard, the climate of a school just gets better, and semantic pulse surveys can make that happen. In this episode, we'll learn what about this fresh approach to surveying and how teachers and administrators can create their own to gain better insights about the students and teachers they serve.  This episode is sponsored by Alpaca . School leaders can get 15% off a...

You can never have too many ideas for helping struggling students, right? In this episode, you'll get a few more that you may not have tried. My guests are two teachers — learning specialist Sarah Riggs Johnson and math teacher Nate Wolkenhauer — who share their system of strategies that help all students learn better, a kind of pyramid where the ones at the bottom apply to all students, the middl...

The rights of parents to choose the best school for their children — also known as school choice — may seem simple on the surface, but it's anything but, and it has the potential to impact teachers and students all over the country. In this episode, I talk with Cara Fitzpatrick, author of The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America. We discuss why school cho...

Annotation can be a powerful way to improve comprehension and increase engagement, but its effectiveness can vary depending on how it's taught. In this episode, two teachers share their classroom-tested approaches to teaching students how to effectively annotate texts: 3rd grade teacher Andrea Castellano and high school English teacher Irene Yannascoli.  Thanks to  Listenwise  and  Studyo  for spo...

If your school is lucky enough to have a full-time certified librarian, it's likely they are not being utilized to their full capacity. In fact, yours may be one of a growing number of schools that are eliminating librarians altogether, and that is a terrible idea. In this episode, I sit down with four accomplished librarians — K.C. Boyd, Barbara Paciotti, Lauren Mobley, and Karina Quilantan-Garza...

Many states are seeing record high numbers of teacher turnovers and vacancies. While the problems that caused this shortage have not gone away, there are groups of people who are coming up with some creative ways to address this situation, new and surprisingly affordable pathways for training good, enthusiastic teachers. Two of these programs are Oxford Teachers College at Reach University and Edu...

Crying in front of your students can be a humiliating experience. Not the kind that happens when you're moved to tears by a poignant story or you react to upsetting news; those moments can actually bond you to your students. It's the kind that comes from frustration, shame, anger, or loss of control. It might be something you experience as a new teacher, but it can also happen well into your caree...

It's happened to so many teachers: You teach your heart out. Really just knock it out of the park. Then you ask a question all students should know the answer to … and nothing. What's going on? In this episode, educator and writer Blake Harvard offers four possible explanations for why we get the blank stare, along with four solutions that will help us see a lot less of it. Thanks to  Edge•U Badge...

As our student population grows ever more diverse, many schools haven't been quite as successful as they'd like to be when trying to connect with students' families. If current efforts aren't working, it's time we tried a different approach. In this episode I talk with Nawal Qarooni, author of the new book Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations about the specific approaches teachers can take to more...

When high school English teacher Dan Tricarico started taking photos of his colleagues, he didn't expect them to create new bonds among his staff. Teachers rarely get an opportunity to have their humanity and uniqueness showcased in this way, but these beautiful portraits do just that — and anyone with a smartphone can do the same thing for the teachers at their school.  Thanks to  WeVideo  and  T...

Standardized testing has, without a doubt, created a lot of problems in education, and far too often, our conversations about these problems end in statements like "we need to just get rid of them all" or "Oh well, nothing we can do to change things." In this episode, education researcher Jenn Binis joins me to talk about a different approach to solving the problems around standardized testing: mo...

It's a brand-new year, and to celebrate the launch of the 10th edition of our Teacher's Guide to Tech, we're exploring 8 tech tools that are worth a look in 2024. I'm joined by my team of ed tech geniuses — Brandie Wright, Lucia Hassell, Kim Darche, and Marnie Diem — to talk about a collection of tools that can make your teaching richer, more efficient, and more satisfying. Enjoy! Thanks to  WeVid...

As a teacher, you probably find yourself in situations pretty often where you're made aware of a student having needs or challenges that exceed what your school typically offers them. The list of student needs in so many schools is never-ending, and your desire to help meet them is probably pretty strong, too. But attempting to meet these needs on your own — to become a kind of "savior" to your st...

Our classrooms have the potential to be spaces where we learn how to have conversations about challenging topics with respect, curiosity, and kindness. Contrary to the voices that say race is not an appropriate topic for school, in this episode we're saying just the opposite. My guests are Matthew Kay, author of the book, Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classr...

I have no new strategies or tools or books to share with you this week. Nothing new to implement. Just a simple call to action for administrators to start giving your teachers more specific, genuine positive feedback. They need it.  Thanks to  NoRedInk  and  The Modern Classrooms Project  for sponsoring this episode. You can read this podcast as a post at  cultofpedagogy.com/your-teachers-need-a-w...

Cooperative learning can be a powerful learning strategy, but only if it works well. In this episode Connie Hamilton, author of Hacking Group Work, returns to the podcast to share 17 small changes you can try that will make group work more effective in your classroom. Thanks to  EVERFI  and  Verizon Innovative Learning HQ  for sponsoring this episode. You can read a full transcript of this podcast...

At a time when student behaviors and attitudes seem more troubling than ever before, we may need to approach their behavior in a different way, too. In this episode, Alex Shevrin Venet returns to talk about unconditional positive regard, a philosophy that offers students care no matter what — they don't have to earn it, and nothing they do can make it go away. This approach can transform some of t...

Giving students time for reflection on their learning is so good for them: It builds their metacognitive capacity, it teaches them to take agency for their own learning, and it helps them and YOU see more clearly what they have learned and what they need next. But when we have so much other stuff to do, reflection often gets shoved out of the way. In this episode, high school teacher Marcus Luther...