Use the summer to prepare kids to comfortably start the year together. Offering some short, easy connection opportunities, like popsicles in the park, is good for teachers, parents, and students.

Trying to make big changes all at once can result in undesirable outcomes. Making changes, personally or professionally, can be a slow and steady process. Whether talking about personal fitness, redesigning your classroom, or getting kids to participate in silent sustained reading for 25 minutes, moderation and slow build will get you there.

The vagus nerve connects the brain to all bodily organs and is therefor affected by almost every internal and external stimulus. In this episode, Colleen and Jill discuss the importance of knowing some basics of neuroscience to help kids with self regulation and stimuli that affect classroom performance and behavior.

Seeing and hearing an unborn baby impacts pro-life beliefs and advocacy. Jill shares a story about an elementary school having live ultrasounds for the student body to experience life in the womb.

Interviews can be used as a flexible teaching, learning, and assessment tool in many classes and at any grade level. This episode highlights ways to integrate interviews to create perspective, teach critical thinking, and more.

The methods of qualitative research apply to grading papers, too. When grading a stack of papers, how do you categorize them by what you notice? Using codes to create different learning paths based on how students responded to particular quiz questions will help to improve your instruction for the next year. Connections to standardized test data is also discussed.

Learning to write is a long process with milestones at each grade level. In this episode Colleen and Jill discuss the fundamentals of learning to write in the lower grades using graphic organizers and having realistic expectations for idea development and grammatical and structural skills.

Which is better, Advanced Placement or Dual Credit? This episode debates the merit of offering these types of courses in high schools.

It's important for teachers to remember that student behaviors are not personal. This episode reveals 5 reasons why students misbehave and detach in school.

In this episode, Colleen and Jill discuss ways to get kids to read over the summer, specifically through trickery.