We have a combined 20 years of teaching experience. We've presented to teachers from all over the country and taught or coached a couple thousand students. We are reflective and constantly honing our craft. This episode focuses on just a couple "Magic Words" that we use daily to positively affect our student lives and learning. Listen to our 5 favorite transformative phrases.

We love tech AND when we come across some instructional tech that has transformed our students learning and our teaching. Sutori.com is that tool right now. The awesome creators of Sutori have shared a promo code with us too.

The start of the year comes with some reflection of the summer and goal setting for the coming days of class ahead. On this episode, we think back to our #PDdecathlon and highlight Luke's Infographic Syallabus and Tom's World War II rap. We look ahead to the year and discuss what it means to collaborate with colleagues and better our retake policies. Those discussions stem from our own goals for the year. Join us and establish some of your own.

Summer sometimes leads to what Elena Aguilar in the book Onward calls “Sad Sunday.” Sad Sunday is that feeling on Sunday night that we all have when we did not accomplish any of our teacher to do list and look at Monday as a daunting return to the work week. Similarly, we set out on our summer journey with lofty goals of transforming our curriculum on our 2-3 month break yet accomplish very little. We return rested, but not deeper on our to do list.

Inclusion is a phrase kicked around often in education. We as podcasters will attack this topic in a future episode. Today's episode addresses a different side of inclusion. One that is essential as well. Ryan Brown, an ELL teacher from Harlem Middle School, joins us to address the tangible ways that we MUST include these English Language learning students in our own class and use their strengths rather than dwelling on their deficiencies.

On this weeks episode we are joined by another substitute podcaster. This week it is Adam Jensen from Pilgrim Park Middle School. Adam works as a TLS in the building mostly centered on being an instructional coach as well as the many hats that he wears. One of his prime areas of expertise is BreakoutEDU. He is a frequent recipient of grants centered on this gamified world of education. He shares some entry-level strategies to take the daunting fell out of trying this in your own classroom.

As teachers we are constantly influenced by those in the profession and those in our lives. We take an opportunity to celebrate our tenth show by acknowledging those top ten influences in our lives. We will cover those in the podcasting/Twitter world, those authors/presenters we constantly quote and those a bit more personal to our world. Join us and reflect on your own influencers. Maybe you will make some of ours yours.

On this episode we investigate simple ways to help guide our students towards asking better questions. In today’s world students are bombarded with information at their fingertips and have lost the desire to inquire. We have solutions to reignite that desire in your classroom.

In all teaching, assessing prior knowledge is a essential. Most often the "pre-test" lacks authenticity and is cumbersome. It frequently assesses what student don't know rather than what they know. In this episode we explore some strategies to escape the monotony of multiple choice pre-assessments that might evaluate how well they guess rather than what they truly know. We discuss a strategy called "Brain Dump" as a way to both assess prior knowledge, but activate it too. As a S/O to Episode 2 we share how it operates as an effective "hook" as well.

Luke is gone this week tending to his responsibility as a basketball coach. The first ¨substitute¨ podcaster is Cathy Holway from Combs Elementary in the Ferguson-Florissant School District of Missouri. She joins us and share her knowledge and an example of Project-Based Learning. Her example is an amazing creation based on 4th grade math standards answering the question: How can we as entrepreneurs develop a pizza company within a specified budget?