Episode 270 - Finding Our 7th Graders (S07E12)

Episode 270 - Finding Our 7th Graders (S07E12)

From Rebel Teacher Alliance by Rebel Teacher Alliance

April 2, 2026 · 39 min · Season 7 · Episode 12

About this episode

The hosts discuss updates in education, John's new role as a staff development teacher, and the importance of effective PLCs.

Welcome back to Rebel Teacher Alliance -- all three of us this time. We open with updates: Hawaii is slowly drying out, the California teacher strikes have resolved, and John survived a travel nightmare involving a five-hour airport delay, a missing rental car, and someone else's 5:30am alarm. Then John drops his big news -- he's back in a school building full time as a staff development teacher, working with seventh graders for the first time, and he is all in. Fabian talks about making the switch to Claude, including a newsletter automation he built for his Global Politics class that crawls the web and outputs a ready-to-send HTML email every week. And we dig into what makes a good PLC versus the cast of characters you actually find in most of them. We close with John pitching Castle Combo, a compact tableau-building card game that plays in 25 minutes and has him very, very excited. If you love what we're doing, subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts -- even a single emoji counts, we promise. Join the conversation on our Discord at rebelteacheralliance.com and find us on the socials below. Instagram: @rebelteacheralliance BlueSky: @rtalliance.bsky.social TikTok…

People in this episode

Hosts: Fabian, Jamie

Topics covered

  • seventh graders
  • staff development
  • PLC
  • newsletter automation
  • education updates

Keywords

  • Hawaii
  • California teacher strikes
  • Claude
  • Global Politics class
  • Castle Combo

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Claude, Castle Combo

Books & works: Finding Our 7th Graders, S07E12

Places: Hawaii, California

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