Third Rail Classroom

It's been three years since the release of Chat-GPT, which has caused seismic shifts in the way that we think about technology in the classroom, but as Santha and John discuss in this episode, teachers are often left to fend for themselves because there has been little guidance, policies, or professional development to help them. Students from Santha's school join in the conversation to...

PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021 with nearly 7,000 taking place in the 2024-25 school year. Coinciding with Banned Books Week , Santha and John discuss their own personal experiences with censorship in the classroom, which pale in comparison to the challenges faced by their colleagues in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and others. Then, Dr. Ann...

Santha and John are back for a new season to discuss the latest developments in education and their impacts on the classroom; this time with 25% more profanity! This season they will focus on book bans, artificial intelligence, policies affecting trans students and those who are undocumented, as well as grading approaches and college admissions. You can support our show at buymeacoffee.com/thirdra...

In this final episode of the second season, Santha and John reflect on the topics they discussed during this season about improving teaching quality, including building level-PD, incorporating student feedback, and the teacher evaluation process. They also reflect on the teacher strike they went through earlier in the school year and the role that teacher unions might play in the future. Last, the...

Recorded live at the College Board’s annual Advanced Placement conference in Las Vegas, John and Santha host an engaging roundtable of teachers from around the country who represent multiple disciplines and grade-levels about they continue to improve as professionals. The guests are Kate Cordes, an English teacher from Billings, Montana, Matt Ellington, a social studies teacher in Chino Hills, Cal...

Throughout this season, Santha and John have been  talking about how to get better at their jobs as teachers, but have missed an invaluable resource for teacher improvement that is right in front of them…literally right in front of them: their students. In the first part of the episode, Santha coaches John on how to develop an effective survey of his students to get actionable feedback from them,...

Nationally, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were considered chronically absent last school year, up from 15 percent before the pandemic. While we know that this severely impacts students’ learning, what exactly is the role of the classroom teacher in addressing this issue? John and Santha discuss the need for a systemic response by schools and districts, and then Santha shares in...

Throughout this season, Santha and John have been looking at the different tools available to help teachers to get better at their jobs, one of which is the evaluation process that most teachers are required to go through every year. Do they actually help teachers or are they just another hoop for them to jump through? To try to get some answers, John interviews Dr. Josh Bleiberg, an Assistant Pro...

An expectation for most teachers at the beginning of each school year is to write goals for their students’ learning. Too often the goal-setting process is tedious and inauthentic for many teachers. In this episode. Santha helps John to develop a meaningful professional goal for the year by asking four simple, but essential questions.  Please consider supporting our show using this link (buymeacof...

In this bonus episode, recorded over the summer, John describes his history with and feelings about the teacher evaluation process and interviews one of his building administrators, Sean Murray.   Please consider supporting our show using this link (buymeacoffee.com/thirdrailclassroom) and be sure to visit our website (https://thirdrailclassroom.com/) to access all previous episodes and links to l...

In this special episode, John and Santha share their thoughts on the unprecedented teacher strike in Portland, OR that lasted for more than three weeks. They recount the reasons for the strike and give first-hand descriptions of their days on the picket line and the first day back with students. John and Santha end by sharing some lessons learned for other educators who might find themselves parti...

We are seeing an unprecedented amount of labor actions in the past few years with a number of teachers unions around the country deciding to strike for higher pay, better working conditions, and stronger supports for students. There are prevailing ideas among some people that teacher unions fight mainly to protect teachers’ jobs, but in John’s interview with University of Utah economics professor...

Few classroom teachers love going to staff meetings at the end of a long teaching day, but they are usually the only times we can get together to learn from each other. John interviews Megan Harowitz, a staff development teacher in Rockville, Maryland, about the benefits and challenges of building-level professional development. Megan offers specific approaches and suggestions to make this time va...

In this first episode of the second season, John Golden and Santha Cassell, two long-time educators, discuss the need for teachers to continue to get better at their work and the challenges they face in trying to do so. The framework they present for teacher learning will act as the guideposts for the rest of this season of Third Rail Classroom .  Please consider supporting our show using this lin...

In the second season of Third Rail Classroom , longtime teacher and instructional coach Santha Cassell joins John Golden to examine the hot-button topic of teacher quality. Lots of people discuss this issue, but rarely from the teacher perspective. John and Santha know first hand about the challenges teachers face in the classroom and will be sharing specific approaches to help teachers to get bet...

Recorded live at the College Board’s annual Advanced Placement conference in Seattle, John hosts an engaging roundtable of teachers from around the country who represent multiple disciplines and grade-levels about the challenges of grades and grading. The guests are Kate Cordes, an English teacher from Billings, Montana, Matt Ellington, a social studies teacher in Chino Hills, California, and Jim...

Recorded on the last day of their school year, John and Alex reflect on what they’ve learned through the process of focusing on their grading practices, and then they discuss their hopes for a better future with grading and with the larger education system. Next, John interviews Mike Flanagan, the CEO of the Mastery Transcript Consortium, about national trends in education reform with a specific f...

With just a few weeks left in the school year, John and Alex reflect on some unanticipated consequences of their grading practices and then quickly move to the main topic of the episode: grading biases. Specifically, they discuss what causes these biases and, most importantly, what teachers can do to limit their impacts. Then, John interviews Dr. Tina Curry, a teacher and literacy coach in Chicago...

Rapidly approaching the end of the school year, Alex and John turn to a key question: how to calculate final grades for students? It might seem like there’s an obvious answer, which is to take the average of all of the points earned and divide by the number of points possible. For generations of students and teachers, this was the ONLY way to calculate a final grade, and it is still the most commo...

At the halfway point in the school year, Alex and John take some time to reflect on how their new approaches are going and have a discussion on why it might be appropriate to assign an "Incomplete" to a student rather than a "D" or an "F." Next, they talk about some very common grading practices: taking off points for late work, giving a "0" for plagiarism,...

Nearing the end of the first semester, John and Alex provide an update on how their new grading practices are going with a discussion on the different ways that they approach revision. Then, some students from their classes join the podcast to share their often very frank, thoughtful, and surprising views of grades and grading. After they leave, John and Alex reflect on changes they will make base...

Now at the end of the first marking period of the year, John and Alex provide an update on how it's going so far, including very frank feedback from some of John's students. Next, Alex and John explain why, in their experience, grades rarely provide the kind of motivation they're hoping for. Then, Timothy Klein, co-author of How to Navigate Life , joins to share what the research sa...

With the first progress report grades submitted, Alex and John give some updates on how their approaches are going so far and then dig into the very contentious issue of homework. Neither John nor Alex is assigning homework in their classes this year, but they wonder about what is gained and lost in their choices. John then interviews Boston University professor Dr. Janine Bempechat, co-author of...

Why is grading a "third rail" issue? Why do teachers and the larger education community rarely talk about it? Because it's personal and very complex. In this episode, Alex and John begin unpacking these essential questions. John also interviews Sarah Brown Wessling, 2010 National Teacher of the Year.  Please consider supporting our show using this link (buymeacoffee.com/thirdrailcla...

Teachers have been using roughly the same grading practices for as long as we've had public schools, but we rarely examine the potential harm of these approaches. Alex and John define what they mean by "traditional grading" practices and begin to identify the damaging effects they can have on students. Also, John interviews Jim Burke, author of The English Teacher's Companion a...