Brothers Who Teach

We are giving into the bitterness from all the LaCroix and taking this episode to vent. We get into the pet peeves we have as teachers, and the frustrations go beyond just the students. We go back and forth with our various peeves and weigh in about if the peeve is irrational or if we are totally in agreement. Joesph has a funny story about chess in math class, and then tries to answer a trivia question generated by ChatGPT.

Teachers usually have some, hopefully not many, students who struggle. They might struggle for all kinds of reasons: fatigue, apathy, learning issues. What do we do in these situations? How much time do we spend trying to help? We attempt to answer these questions, first for students who fall asleep (6:45), then for students who don't seem to care (17:00), and finally for students who do care but are not succeeding (24:15). Then Jameel tells a funny story from Arabic class and tries to answer the trivia question to give Joseph yet another LaCroix.

In this episode, Jameel gets to catch up on what he missed last week, and to pay homage to Mr. Newlove and Mrs. Anderson (who taught him the trombone in the first place). We exchange stories from our time in high school, including high points and regrets, and talk about how the schools we've been to since don't compare, band-wise. Joe provides a funny story from the week and tries to finally get the trivia question right.

This episode features some of our most anticipated guests: Mr. Dane Newlove and Mrs. Rebecca Anderson, our band directors in high school! These two provided over 60 years of music teaching not just at St. Marys Memorial High School, but for grades 5-8 as well. Jameel was not able to join for the interview, so Joseph handled this one on his own, beginning with their background in music and how they arrived as band directors, how they handled their huge teaching loads (6:55), what allowed SMABB, St. Marys All-Brass Marching Band, to thrive where other marching bands don't (10:25), and the non-marching band aspects of their teaching (16:50). We also ask how they see and are involved in music programs today (27:45). The Great Dane and Mrs. A also provide some funny stories from their legendary tenures (36:00).

We will have a follow-up episode with Jameel so he can weigh in on this interview, as well as go over the trivia question for this week.

We brought in reinforcements for our battle with the bots: Jack Lynch, science teacher at Christ School, joins us to continue our conversation about ChatGPT. Jack begins by explaining what exactly sets ChatGPT apart from other iterations of artificial intelligence (6:20), and then talks about why he is optimistic about it, both in the classroom and for society in general (11:55). It turns out some of our fears regarding ChatGPT *might* have been overstated. As Jack explains, this technology may eliminate paperwork and drudgery and let people spend more time doing meaningful, enjoyable work (26:00). Jack wraps up our conversation by re-stating a point  we hit on in the first episode: this is forcing teachers to re-evaluate how they evaluate their students (31:30). We get a funny story from Jack getting called out by a student using ChatGPT, and then Joe gives Jameel an animal trivia question.

You may be thinking "What is ChatGPT?" That's because 1) it's new, and 2) no one totally knows yet! But in a nutshell, it is a website where you can type in any kind of question, and it will answer with remarkable accuracy and eloquence for a machine. We spend this episode test driving it, with questions and requests like:

- conjugate "to go" in Arabic (5:50)

- what are the answers to exercise 1 in my Arabic textbook? (9:00)

- what is the equation of the tangent line for a circle with a center at (3,5) and a radius of 5 at the point (7,8)? (10:30)

- write a poem in Arabic (14:00)

- explain ch. 1 of Pride and Prejudice (15:36)

- write three paragraphs about the competition between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla (18:25)

- write me a love song (30:00)

- give me an idea for a startup company (31:45)

And along the way we discuss some of the implications of all this. ChatGPT provided jokes for our funny moments section, and Joe attempts to answer a Star Trek trivia question.

Try ChatGPT out for yourself: https://chat.openai.com/auth/login

*Sorry for some sections of poor audio. We hope that this was a one-time issue.

It’s our first installment of Career Day! The field is nursing, and our guest is Saji Kuttab, our cousin from California. We talked to Saji about his schooling and how he got interested in science and medicine (7:00), his experience with nursing school and standardized testing (17:30), and how nurses are educated “on the job” (29:00). We also asked what he would do if given the chance to design his own nursing school curriculum (32:30). Then Saji has a funny story from his time as an EMT, and he provides the week’s trivia question, related to nurse demographics (38:00).

On this episode, we get into our strategies when it comes to planning. First, we talk about how far in advance we plan our classes. What happens if you get ahead of or behind those plans? (6:03). Then we discuss what our daily plans look like (11:50). Do we plan every minute out, or leave some room for flexibility? How much variety do we include within one class period? (17:45) And how much do we tinker from year to year, as opposed to having a class be a carbon copy of what was done the previous year? We finish by broadening out the topic: how can these lesson-planning strategies work for people outside of education? (27:25) Then, Joseph has a funny story about Slope Dude, and Jameel takes his first shot at the Question of the Day.

Slope Dude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcSrJPiQvHQ&ab_channel=MathGivesYouPower

Planbook lesson planning software: www.planbook.com

We're back with Season Two of Brothers Who Teach! For the first episode of the season, we want to catch you up on what the Brothers have been up to, including:

1) A Brothers Who Teach BBQ Crossover Episode from the summer: https://brennemanbbqtour.wordpress.com/2022/06/26/awards-show-2022/

2) An article about the podcast in the Christ School Galax Magazine: https://bit.ly/3YbfBz5

3) Our focus for this season, which is to interview anyone with a non-teaching job. We want to talk about how they were trained (or train others) to do what they do. Let us know if you want to be on!

We then talk about changes we have experienced from last school year to this one. Some changes are relatively small, like teaching different courses, and some are big, like moving to the East Coast! We start with Jameel's three biggest changes (7:00), and then Joe's (18:35), before getting to a funny story (37:00), and ending with the Question of the Day, which will be replacing the Numbers Game (38:25).  

We have just finished the #brennemanbbqtour in Texas, and we wanted to talk about our trip, so we're using our other project, this podcast, for our discussion. We start with an overview of the trip, getting into stuff that didn't show up on the blog and answering some Q&A. Then our Awards Show begins at the 34:00 minute mark. Awards include best brisket, ribs, sausage, pulled pork, sides, and dessert. Then, we each rank our Top 5 Restaurants from the tour. All the results are at brennemanbbq.wordpress.com. Learn 'em good and smoke 'em if you got 'em!