Be A Funky Teacher Podcast

In this episode, I step away from my normal format and simply talk about where I am right now. After more than 300 episodes, multiple podcast series, book ideas, websites, teaching, and constantly creating, I’ve reached a point where I’m mentally and physically exhausted and realizing that something has to give.

I share some of what my family has been carrying, including my brother’s recent hospitalizations, concerns about my dad’s health, and the emotional weight of returning to the same hospital floor where my mom died in 2024. At the same time, I’m trying to be present as a husband, a dad to three kids at very different stages of life, and a teacher beginning another school year.

I reflect on something my grief therapist told me: something has to give right now—not everything and not forever, but something. I’m beginning to understand that putting something down is not the same as quitting it. I still love Be a Funky Teacher, Saturday Stories, Sunday School for Teachers, the Teachers Are Not Broken series, and the projects I want to create, but they do not all have to happen right now.

I don’t know exactly what comes next, and I’m giving myself permission not to know. I want to spend a little less time producing my life and a little more time living it—being a husband, dad, brother, son, teacher, and simply myself. This isn’t goodbye. It’s me creating some space and trusting that when I’m ready to sit behind the microphone again, I will.

• Why I’m stepping back from a publishing schedule
• Reaching more than 300 podcast episodes
• Family health challenges and emotional exhaustion
• Returning to the hospital where my mom died
• Being present for my wife and children
• The difference between quitting and putting something down
• Giving myself permission not to know what comes next
• Spending less time producing life and more time living it

• Exhaustion does not always mean something is broken.
• Something important can be put down temporarily without being abandoned.
• Grief can return unexpectedly through places, memories, and experiences.
• Constant creativity and productivity can eventually become another obligation.
• Family seasons and time with the people we love do not last forever.
• Sustainability sometimes requires refusing to create another schedule.
• It is okay to say, “I don’t know what comes next.”

In this episode, I explore teaching in the age of AI through the lens of teacher sustainability. I use AI regularly to brainstorm, organize ideas, develop pacing guides, build starting points for assessments and practice, think through differentiation, and adapt materials. It can save significant time, but I don't believe that makes teachers less important. I think it makes professional judgment even more important.

I look at several ways AI can help teachers, including providing better starting points, supporting differentiation, organizing information, and identifying patterns in student data. But AI output is not professional judgment. Teachers still have to ask whether something is accurate, developmentally appropriate, aligned to curriculum, useful for their actual students, and worth using at all.

I also discuss the danger of allowing AI to replace the thinking students and teachers need to develop. AI should be a thinking partner, not a replacement for thinking. Schools need thoughtful policies around privacy, academic integrity, accuracy, environmental concerns, and appropriate use, but responding to AI with fear alone won't prepare students or teachers for the world they're entering.

Ultimately, I believe AI could make teaching more sustainable if we use it to reduce lower-value work and protect the time it saves. The goal shouldn't be making teachers produce more. It should be giving teachers greater capacity for the deeply human work technology cannot replace: relationships, judgment, empathy, creativity, leadership, trust, and helping young people believe in what they can become.

• How I currently use AI as an educator
• AI as a starting point rather than a finished product
• Differentiation and material adaptation
• Finding patterns in student data
• Why professional judgment still matters
• AI as a thinking partner, not a replacement for thinking
• Protecting the time AI saves teachers
• Why human teaching matters even more

• AI can save teachers time by giving them better starting points.
• AI-generated work still requires professional judgment and verification.
• Teachers need enough expertise to recognize when AI output is weak or wrong.
• AI should support student thinking rather than replace it.
• Schools need thoughtful AI policies instead of fear or blind enthusiasm.
• Efficiency should not automatically become permission to increase teacher workload.
• The more technology advances, the more valuable the human parts of teaching become.

In this episode, I look at one of the simplest realities behind teacher workload: there are still only 24 hours in a day. During my 24 years in education, the responsibilities surrounding teaching have expanded tremendously. Many of those responsibilities are individually reasonable, but when we continue adding them together, the total workload can become unreasonable.

I explore the invisible ways teacher time disappears through email, documentation, interventions, meetings, technology, behavior support, data collection, communication, safety responsibilities, and other expectations. Planning time is often consumed by everything except planning, but the lesson still has to be ready tomorrow. That's how work quietly migrates into mornings, evenings, lunches, weekends, and teachers' personal lives.

I also challenge the idea that every workload problem can be solved through better time management. Organization, technology, automation, routines, boundaries, and good systems can absolutely help, but they cannot make 10 hours of necessary work fit into an eight-hour day. That's why I believe addition should require subtraction. If schools add something meaningful, leaders should also ask what can be removed, simplified, automated, delegated, or stopped.

Ultimately, I believe protecting teacher time is a teacher-retention strategy. Teachers are willing to work hard, but willingness to work hard should not become permission to continuously add more. Sustainable teaching has to leave room for teachers to remain human beings outside the classroom, and protecting that life may be exactly what allows great educators to keep showing up year after year.

• How the scope of teaching has expanded
• The accumulation of “just one more thing”
• Email and other forms of invisible work
• Why planning time keeps disappearing
• Teachers quietly donating personal time
• Why productivity cannot fix an impossible workload
• Addition should require subtraction
• Protecting teacher time as a retention strategy

• Individually reasonable responsibilities can create an unreasonable total workload.
• Every additional responsibility requires actual time somewhere in a teacher's day.
• When planning time disappears, preparation often moves into teachers' personal lives.
• Better time management cannot make an impossible workload equation work.
• Adding new expectations should require conversations about what can be removed.
• Protecting teacher time is a practical teacher-retention strategy.
• A sustainable teaching career must leave room for a life outside school.

In this episode, I continue exploring the changing realities of teaching by looking at how parent expectations and family-teacher communication have changed during my 24 years in education. Many of those changes are positive, but technology and increased access have also created new expectations around availability, communication, grades, and how quickly problems should be resolved.

I talk about the important difference between advocacy and entitlement. I want parents to advocate for their children, ask difficult questions, and speak up when something doesn't seem right. At the same time, children need opportunities to struggle, experience appropriate consequences, develop resilience, and discover that every uncomfortable experience does not need to be removed by an adult.

I also explore why assuming positive intent, gathering the entire story, maintaining professional boundaries, and documenting important situations can strengthen communication. Parents know things about their children that teachers don't, while teachers see students in environments and situations families may never see. Neither perspective is complete by itself.

Ultimately, I believe parents and teachers don't have to agree about everything to be on the same team. Strong partnerships are built on trust, respect, communication, accountability, and a shared commitment to helping a child succeed. Kids need great parents and great teachers, and they're at their best when those adults stand beside each other instead of on opposite sides.

• How parent expectations have changed
• Increased access and teacher availability
• Advocacy versus entitlement
• Why productive struggle matters
• Beginning difficult conversations with curiosity
• Professional boundaries and documentation
• How repeated conflict affects teachers
• Building genuine family-teacher partnerships

• Increased access to teachers should not mean unlimited access.
• Parent advocacy and trust in teachers can coexist.
• Children need opportunities to struggle and experience appropriate consequences.
• A child's version of an event may not be the complete story.
• Assuming positive intent can change difficult conversations.
• Professional boundaries help make teaching sustainable.
• Parents and teachers can disagree while remaining on the same team.

In this episode, I look beneath some of the student behavior we discussed in the previous episode and explore the growing emotional and mental health needs teachers are seeing in classrooms. After 24 years in education, I’ve noticed more anxiety, emotional dysregulation, school avoidance, shutdowns, anger, absences, and students needing significant adult support simply to navigate the school day.

I also talk about the limits of a teacher’s role. Teachers can notice, listen, build relationships, create predictable classrooms, document concerns, communicate with families, and connect students with appropriate support. But teachers are not therapists, and recognizing that a child needs expertise beyond what one classroom teacher can provide is not abandoning that student.

I reflect on the emotional weight teachers sometimes carry after hearing things they cannot unhear. A difficult conversation or crisis can happen, and then the bell rings and another class walks in. Students need teams of caring adults—families, teachers, counselors, administrators, mental health professionals, coaches, paraprofessionals, and others—not one heroic teacher expected to solve everything.

Ultimately, I believe students are not broken any more than teachers are broken. Young people can struggle deeply and still have tremendous potential. Teachers can become an important lifeline, but we do not have to become the entire life raft. We can care deeply, notice students, connect them with help, and continue believing in what they can become without believing we have to carry everything alone.

• Growing student mental health needs
• What mental health struggles can look like in class
• Teachers are teachers, not therapists
• When student needs outgrow school capacity
• The emotional weight teachers carry
• Why students need a team, not a hero
• Students are not broken
• Being a lifeline without becoming the entire life raft

• Mental health struggles do not always look obvious in the classroom.
• Understanding behavior does not mean excusing harmful behavior.
• Teachers can notice and connect students with help without becoming clinicians.
• Student mental health support must extend beyond one classroom teacher.
• Teachers experience real emotional labor when students share difficult things.
• Students need networks of caring adults rather than one heroic educator.
• Teachers can care deeply without carrying everything alone.

In this episode, I begin week two of the series by talking honestly about something many veteran educators have noticed: student behavior has changed. I’m not saying kids today are worse, but after 24 years in classrooms, I’ve seen changes in emotional regulation, frustration tolerance, attention, peer conflict, technology use, and the intensity of some behaviors.

I explore some of the forces that may be contributing to those changes, including COVID, technology, social media, trauma, mental health, and changing childhood experiences. I also explain why trauma-informed teaching should never become expectation-free teaching. Understanding why a child is struggling can help us respond more effectively without lowering our belief in what that child is capable of becoming.

I also address the difficult balance between supporting one struggling student and protecting the learning environment for everyone else. Empathy and accountability are not opposites. Relationships and boundaries can coexist. Consequences can teach instead of humiliate, and temporarily removing a student from a classroom can sometimes be part of helping that student successfully return.

Ultimately, I believe teachers cannot solve complex behavior alone. Strong schools need clear systems, behavior support, counselors, administrators, families, and other professionals working together. Teachers are not broken because they sometimes need help. They are human beings doing incredibly complex work, and real support matters.

• How student behavior has changed
• COVID and the disruption of childhood
• Technology, attention, and frustration tolerance
• Why trauma-informed should not mean expectation-free
• Empathy and accountability together
• Protecting the learning environment
• Consequences that teach
• Why teachers need systemic behavior support

• Student behavior has changed, but that does not mean kids are worse.
• Trauma can explain behavior without excusing harmful behavior.
• Empathy and accountability belong together.
• One student’s needs cannot erase the needs of everyone else.
• Consequences should teach rather than humiliate.
• Students need both high expectations and high support.
• Teachers should not be expected to solve complex behavior alone.

In this episode, I reflect on Jesus’ Parable of the Sower from Matthew 13 and what it means for educators. Jesus describes a farmer scattering seed onto different kinds of soil, and I’m reminded that the farmer’s responsibility is to faithfully sow even though he cannot control what happens with every seed.

I connect that story directly to teaching because educators are constantly planting seeds. We plant knowledge, encouragement, curiosity, confidence, expectations, kindness, hope, and belief. Sometimes we get to see those seeds grow immediately, but other times the results may not become visible until years later.

I also reflect on how difficult that can be for teachers because we naturally want to know that our work matters. A student may not understand a lesson until the following year. They may not appreciate a boundary until they are older. They may not recognize the importance of an encouraging conversation until adulthood.

As I prepare for another week, I’m reminded that my responsibility is not to force growth. My responsibility is to faithfully create opportunities for growth. I may never see what becomes of every seed I plant, but that does not mean the planting was meaningless.

• Jesus’ Parable of the Sower
• Understanding the four kinds of soil
• Teachers as seed planters
• Planting knowledge, encouragement, and hope
• Why growth may take years to appear
• Faithfulness when results are not immediate
• Trusting that unseen seeds can still matter

• Teachers plant seeds every day.
• We cannot control how quickly every student grows.
• Some of our greatest impact may appear years later.
• Different students may be ready for different things at different times.
• Our responsibility is to faithfully create opportunities for growth.
• A seed can matter even when we never see the harvest.

In this Saturday Stories episode, I continue the Leadership Kit focus on imagination with the skill Read Lots of Books. Through the story The Story That Changed It, I explore how a student who wasn't even looking for a book discovers one that gives him a completely different way to think about a challenge in his own life.

I share how books can do far more than help students practice reading skills. Stories can introduce us to people, places, experiences, and perspectives we may never encounter otherwise. They can help us understand other people, solve problems, become curious, and sometimes better understand ourselves.

I also provide discussion questions teachers can use throughout the week to help students reflect on how books influence their thinking. The goal is to help students see reading as more than an assignment and begin noticing the connections they make between stories, characters, ideas, and their own experiences.

Ultimately, this episode is about helping students develop imagination through reading. Sometimes we choose a story because the cover catches our attention, but every once in a while, a story gives us exactly the idea, encouragement, or perspective we needed at that moment.

• Continuing the Leadership Kit value of imagination
• The skill: Read Lots of Books
• How stories can change perspective
• Helping students connect books to their lives
• Discussion questions for the classroom
• Encouraging students to recommend books
• Reading for discovery, empathy, and imagination

• Books can expand students' imagination and perspective.
• Stories can help students understand themselves and others.
• Reading can inspire persistence and new ways of thinking.
• Meaningful book connections deserve to be noticed and celebrated.
• Students should experience reading as discovery, not only an assignment.
• Sometimes the right story reaches us at exactly the right time.

In this episode, I wrap up the first week of the Teachers Are Not Broken series by asking what actually walks out the door when a great teacher leaves. Schools don't simply lose someone who knows the curriculum. They lose relationships, institutional knowledge, mentorship, leadership, professional judgment, trust, and years of influence that cannot simply be replaced by filling an open position.

I also share my own experience of leaving a school district after more than two decades without leaving the teaching profession. That experience taught me an important distinction: sometimes a great teacher doesn't stop loving teaching—they need a different environment where they can continue loving it. In my current district, professional trust, autonomy, respect, accountability, and opportunities to lead have helped me feel energized and excited about teaching again.

I explore how leadership, teacher voice, professional autonomy, accountability, and working conditions influence whether great educators stay. Compliance is not the same as commitment, and teachers can follow every directive while slowly becoming disconnected from their organization. I believe strong schools need educators who think, ask questions, advocate for students, contribute ideas, and respectfully challenge thinking when they believe something can be better.

Most importantly, I don't believe teacher retention should mean keeping every teacher at any cost. Sometimes leaving a school, district, role, or even the profession is the healthy decision. But when skilled educators still love teaching and feel forced to choose between their well-being and the profession they love, we should pay attention. Instead of simply asking teachers to become tougher, we need to ask what conditions would allow great teachers to thrive.

• What schools actually lose when great teachers leave
• Why relationships and institutional knowledge matter
• My experience changing districts after more than two decades
• How trust, autonomy, and accountability can coexist
• Why compliance is different from commitment
• When leaving may be the healthy decision
• What schools can learn from teachers who leave
• Creating conditions where great educators can thrive

• Replacing a position doesn't replace everything a great teacher contributed.
• Sometimes teachers leave an environment without wanting to leave teaching.
• Trust, autonomy, accountability, and professional respect can coexist.
• Teacher voice matters because compliance isn't the same as commitment.
• Schools should become curious about why strong educators leave.
• Retention shouldn't come at the expense of a teacher's well-being.
• Sometimes changing the conditions can help a great teacher rediscover their passion.

In this episode, I widen the conversation about teacher retention because I believe this crisis reaches far beyond teachers and schools. When a great educator leaves, the effects ripple outward to students, families, colleagues, communities, businesses, and eventually society itself. Education helps prepare the people who enter every other profession, which means all of us have a stake in the strength of our schools.

I explore what instability can mean for students and families, especially when schools experience repeated turnover, larger classes, substitutes, disappearing programs, or the loss of experienced educators. I also discuss the professional judgment veteran teachers develop over thousands of interactions with students and why schools need both the energy of new educators and the accumulated wisdom of experienced ones.

I also connect strong schools to strong communities and a strong future workforce. The doctors, nurses, mechanics, electricians, entrepreneurs, farmers, business owners, and community leaders of tomorrow are sitting in classrooms today. Education can expand possibilities for young people, help them discover their gifts, and give them hope that they have something meaningful to contribute.

Ultimately, I believe teacher retention belongs to all of us. Teachers have responsibilities to grow and serve students well, but society also has a responsibility to create conditions where great educators can do their work effectively. Keeping great teachers isn't doing teachers a favor. It is an investment in students, families, communities, our workforce, and our collective future.

• Why teacher retention affects everyone
• Education’s role in every profession
• How instability affects students and families
• Why veteran teacher experience matters
• Schools, communities, and the future workforce
• Education as a source of possibility and hope
• Our shared responsibility for teacher retention

• Teacher retention is bigger than an education issue.
• Students often experience the first effects of teacher turnover.
• Veteran educators carry professional judgment and institutional knowledge.
• Strong schools help create strong communities and workforces.
• Education expands possibilities and gives young people hope.
• Keeping great teachers is an investment in society’s future.