414: Highly Recommended: Play the Whole Game

About this episode

Betsy Potash reflects on her father's impactful teaching methods and his dedication to engaging students in sociology.

This week would be my Dad's birthday. If he was still here, spice cake with thick caramel frosting would be in order, and a beautiful cross country ski outing through the snowy forests of Duluth. He taught sociology at the University of Minnesota when I was growing up. Once, while teaching a weekly three-hour Monday-night class, he dressed as a different famous sociologist every week to help get his students interested in the history of his discipline. Isn't that nice? Over the course of his career, he was voted both adviser and professor of the year at the university by his students. There was always a new sociology book lying around our house, with half the text underlined and his untidy notes scrawled in the margins. Whatever had just come out, he had it. He crafted new courses about the civil rights movement, religion in Northern Minnesota, and corporate corruption, to name a few, trying to make sure his classes taught both what he thought was important for students to know more about AND what was current and interesting to them. He took his students to Chicago by train over spring break many times to study the city and its neighborhoods, arranging police ride-alongs (since…

People in this episode

Host: Betsy Potash

Topics covered

• sociology
• education
• teaching methods
• student engagement
• personal stories

Keywords

• sociology
• education
• teaching
• student engagement
• personal stories

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Minnesota

Places: Duluth, Chicago, Northern Minnesota

More episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

• 423: Try this Multimodal End-of-Year Review & Reflection · April 29, 2026 · 10 min
• 422: 7 Research-Backed Steps to Better, Easier Feedback in ELA · April 22, 2026 · 12 min
• 421: Help for Teaching Poetry (Part II) · April 15, 2026 · 15 min
• 420: My 9th Grade Dream Curriculum (as I get an Unexpected Request) · April 8, 2026 · 23 min
• 419: Hate Teaching Poetry? Here's Help (Part I) · April 2, 2026 · 26 min
• 418: Highly Recommended: The New York Times Contest Calendar · March 25, 2026 · 3 min