In this episode, I explore with special guest John Marheineke how he supports students as they work to meet his expectations as a teacher.  His insight and experience provide valuable lessons for all teachers, regardless of subject, experience level, school setting or teaching philosophy.  Enjoy the wisdom of John!!

In this episode, I explore how expectations schools, administrators, counselors and teachers hold of students of color and low income students contributes to the tracking of these students into a vocational track that despite, the intelligence and skills necessary to carry out these "vocational" careers, nevertheless, denies students the CHOICE or OPTION of attending a university which is both immoral and neglectful on the part of our K-12 schooling system.  

In this episode I examine how schools, administrators and teachers can deny the role that race plays in the classroom and how far too many educators refuse to confront their own implicit biases.  In doing so, they fail their students and leave them to suffer the negative consequences of teachers living in denial and running from the truth.  It's time to WAKE UP TEACHERS and own your implicit biases!!!

One of the things that plagues too many social studies classrooms is an unwillingness to be brutally honest with our students about America's ugly past and its shameful present.  Too many teachers have a sanitized curriculum.   Have the courage to be honest and transparent with your students, even if the subject matter is extremely controversial like the truth about 9/11.  We can't ask our students to be agents of change if they don't know the problems that exist that people, including teachers, are reluctant to talk about.  

In this episode, I reveal how, this past week in my US History classes, I was very honest and transparent with my students about how my personal life was impacting my teaching and how they, as teenagers, deserved better from me as their teacher.  I used TPR (Total Physical Response) to engage them in this dialogue and, in doing so, they had the opportunity to be very honest and open with me about the first 4 weeks in my classroom.  

In this episode, after thanking the many people who took the time to listen to my first podcast and clarifying some of the mistakes I made on the first podcast, I will examine the notion of classroom management and turn it on its head by arguing that classroom management should not be the focus.  Rather, finding ways to respect your students should be what teachers emphasize from day one.  If you can garner respect from your students, classroom management will take care of itself.  

On my very first podcast of how to be an effective teacher, I give an overview of my teaching experience, what the episodes will be like and what my listeners can expect from me moving forward.  I also provide my first tip while also making my first mistake as I didn't realize the recordings on Anchor are limited to 5 minutes so my first recording was cut off right in the middle of a point I was making.  However, instead of editing the podcast, I want to present episodes that have no editing but, rather, are authentic recordings that will have mistakes similar to what teachers experience in the classroom environment.  Consequently, my first podcast is broken into two 5 minute segments with the hope that, in the future, I will be able to recored sessions that are longer than 5 minutes.  

I hope everyone enjoys this first episode and tunes in next week to hear my second tip on how to be an effective teacher in the classroom.

Have an excellent week!!

Take care,

Anthony Rojo