The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

It can ruin even the most carefully designed lessons: An activity you had planned takes way longer than you thought it would. Or worse, it takes way less time. And sometimes it can be both, with some students finishing a task in five minutes while others need half an hour. Getting classroom pacing just right is an art that takes practice and technique. In this episode, I'll share 10 habits you can build into your classroom routine that can prevent many of these problems from happening, or help you deal with them much more effectively when they do. ___________________________ Thanks to Renaissance and Erikson Institute for sponsoring the episode. To read a written version of this podcast, visit cultofpedagogy.com/classroom-timing. To learn more about my upcoming course, Mastering the Lesson Plan, visit cultofpedagogy.com/teaching101.

Students are coming to school with more needs than ever, and a lot of those needs aren't strictly academic: anxiety, withdrawal, behavior issues, and learning differences that don't always have quick or obvious solutions. These are problems that often send us to the internet in search of answers, but the nuances of each individual situation can make it hard to find exactly what we need. Ideally, we'd have a colleague with a lot of knowledge and experience who would listen carefully to our problem, ask us questions to make sure they understood it, and offer solutions. Now there's a new platform called Ellis that may be the next best thing. This free, chat-based tool created by the Children's Health Council is designed to give educators practical guidance in those moments when something isn't working and you're not sure what to try next. In this episode, I talk to Cindy Lopez from the CHC about how Ellis works. All educators are invited to give Ellis a try now at askellis.org and see how it works for you! ___________________________ This episode was sponsored by Ellis. To read a full transcript of this interview or watch a video of how Ellis works, visit cultofpedagogy.com/ellis.

Have you ever watched students sit completely silent in math class, only to come alive the moment they're asked to share an opinion? That's what inspired my guest Chris Luzniak to start bringing debate into his math teaching — and the results have been remarkable. In this episode, Chris walks us through how he turns ordinary math questions into debatable ones, how he gets students making and defending arguments, and why he thinks this approach matters now more than ever. It's a conversation that will make you rethink what math class can look like. ___________________________ Thanks to Listenwise and Erikson Institute for sponsoring the episode. To read Luzniak's article about math debates, visit cultofpedagogy.com/debate-math. To find Chris online, visit DebateMath.com. To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

Teaching students to write well has always been challenging, and newer developments have made it even more difficult: The internet offers unlimited text to plagiarize, standardized testing has pushed us to teach more formulaic writing, and AI constantly offers to do our writing for us. Frustrated with her students' lack of confidence and the robotic style of their writing, language arts teacher Nashwa Elkoshairi tried adding freewriting before and after her inquiry-based units. The results, she says, were dramatic: Students became more confident as writers and their writing developed far more depth and complexity than she'd ever seen before. In this episode, she joins me to talk about how she weaves freewriting into her classroom practice. ___________________________ Thanks to Renaissance and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read Dr. Elkoshairi's article about how she uses inquiry-based freewriting, visit cultofpedagogy.com/inquiry-based-freewriting. To learn more about Grammar Gap Fillers, visit cultofpedagogy.com/grammar.

We're living in a time when having a difference of opinion is a potential minefield of hurt feelings, emotional outbursts, and severed relationships. If this has caused you to avoid certain topics in your classroom, the growth discourse framework used by the School of Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL) may offer a way to re-engage in these conversations. In this episode, I talk with SEGL founder Noah Bopp about how the growth discourse model works and how teachers can get started using it. ___________________________ Thanks to foundry10 and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read a full transcript of this conversation and find links to the growth discourse guidelines and the sample lesson plan we talked about in the episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/growth-discourse. To learn more about Grammar Gap Fillers, visit cultofpedagogy.com/grammar.

If we're doing our jobs right as educators, students will gradually become independent, self-directed learners capable of monitoring, directing, and actively participating in building their own learning. But what if that's not happening? What if students continue to lean heavily on their teachers for step-by-step instructions on every task, never really taking the learning process into their own hands, and as a result, limiting their growth to only what their teachers happen to spoon feed them? In this episode, author Zaretta Hammond offers five "learn-to-learn" strategies we can coach in our students, moves that build their learning power and boost their cognitive capacity. ___________________________ Thanks to foundry10 and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read Hammond's article and get links to the book Rebuilding Students' Learning Power, visit cultofpedagogy.com/learn-to-learn. To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

Concept maps are graphic organizers or visual representations of knowledge. They're simple, they're low-tech, and they're incredibly powerful tools for learning. In this episode, cognitive scientist Dr. Kripa Sundar explains why concept maps are so impactful, then shares a handful of specific practices that will help you make the best use of them. Also joining us is Dr. Pooja Agarwal, editor of the book Smart Teaching Stronger Learning, which includes a chapter on concept mapping along with nine other high-impact teaching strategies. ______________________________________________________________ Thanks to Solution Tree and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode. For links to the book and a full transcript of this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/concept-maps. To learn more about the Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

Project-based learning can be a powerful instructional framework, but it is often structured in ways that exclude students who need a different approach. Too often, PBL becomes a space where accommodations and differentiation fall by the wayside. The good news is that we don't have to abandon PBL or dramatically overhaul it to make it work for diverse learners. In this episode, author and educator John Spencer shares five small but thoughtful structural changes we can make that will allow every student to thrive in a project-based environment. ______________________________________________________________ Thanks to EVERFI and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode. To read John's post, visit cultofpedagogy.com/accessible-pbl. To learn more about the PBL Master Course bundle, click HERE and use the code pedagogy at checkout to take an extra $20 off!

Sometimes the best instructional materials are sitting right in our classrooms. At a time when AI threatens to make human writing obsolete, using students' own work as a teaching tool offers a wonderfully authentic alternative. In this episode, educator Marcus Luther joins me to share four ways he uses student exemplars to teach craft lessons, build student confidence, practice giving feedback, and foster a much-needed sense of belonging. ______________________________________________________________ Thanks to Solution Tree and The School Me Podcast for sponsoring this episode. To read Marcus's post and see photos of these practices in his classroom, visit cultofpedagogy.com/student-exemplars.

The practice of collecting supplies and distributing them to all students over the school year has become a common practice in elementary schools. Unfortunately, not all parents are happy with it, and much of the trouble stems from a few key misunderstandings. In this episode, my guest Julie Lause explains why schools use these systems and how they ensure that time in class is used effectively and every student gets the best education possible. Thanks to Alpaca and the EVERFI for sponsoring this episode. To read Julie's guest post, visit cultofpedagogy.com/community-supplies. You can find Julie on TikTok at @thebossyhouse

As a life-long reader, English teacher Dan Tricarico wanted to bring the love of reading to his high school students, but the constant, irresistible presence of digital media made for tough competition. Rather than seeking out a high-tech solution, he brought back simplicity in the form of daily silent reading, and to his surprise, most of his students really took to it. In this episode, he shares his experience in the hopes that more teachers will resurrect this classic practice in their own classrooms. Thanks to Alpaca and the School Me Podcast for sponsoring this episode. To read Dan's guest post and find links to his books, visit cultofpedagogy.com/silent-reading.

Most special education efforts have focused on giving students with disabilities better access to the curriculum — but access alone isn't enough. In this episode, I talk with Amy Tondreau and Laurie Rabinowitz, authors of the book Sustaining Cultural and Disability Identities in the Literacy Classroom, about disability-sustaining pedagogy, a framework that helps students embrace disability as a cultural identity. We explore practical ways teachers can make their classrooms more inclusive, empowering, and identity-affirming for disabled students. Thanks to Alpaca and the School Me Podcast for sponsoring this episode. To read a full transcript of this episode and find links to related resources, visit cultofpedagogy.com/disability-sustaining.

While the shift to restorative practices should be improving student behavior, that's not happening in every school. Some teachers say the discipline systems at their schools have completely broken down, creating an environment where students do whatever they want with no consequences. This has made teachers feel frustrated, angry, unsupported, and in some cases, unsafe. What has gone wrong? In this episode, I have an in-depth conversation about this issue with restorative justice educator bink jones and trauma-informed educator Alex Shevrin Venet. Both educators are well aware that restorative practices are getting a bad rap for all the wrong reasons, they unequivocally validate the frustrations teachers are experiencing, and they explain what they think is going wrong in schools that aren't seeing good results from this framework. They offer a path forward for educators who are desperate for a healthy, respectful, productive climate in their schools. Thanks to ExploreLearning and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode. To read a full transcript of this episode and find links to related resources, visit cultofpedagogy.com/discipline-reform.