This week we are so grateful to have our friend and colleague from the Dordt University Social Work department, Dr. Tara Boer, in on our conversation about students’ mental health. This is a passion area for Tara, and she has expertise from her background and experience as a therapist. She has lots of helpful advice and encouragement about how parents and teachers can help kids with their mental health concerns. In this episode we talk about the impacts of social media, different ways that anxiety manifests in students, trauma responses in kids, and kids’ self perceptions. Tara shares a variety of strategies for parents and teachers who are looking for ways to help and support kids’ mental health. From questions to ask kids, to strategies for journaling with kids, to partnerships with professionals…Dr. Boer has a wealth of wisdom to share! We hope this longer-than-normal episode will be a blessing for you and the kids in your life.

• You can get more information about Tara and more resources at her website: https://drtaraboer.com. We urge you to connect with her, and have her speak at your event. She is an incredible speaker and will bless and equip your school, church, or community group with her wisdom.

“For the shortest month…February is the LONGEST MONTH.” In this light, Dave brings the question for  this episode: “How can we beat the February doldrums?” We think out loud together, as usual, and share some of our strategies. Some are small things, like just noticing how the days are getting longer. Others are bigger strategies, like dress-up days, or including intriguing projects, or saving a high-interest mini-unit that brings you delight to break up this stretch. We also think about how we sometimes need “permission to play”--and encourage ourselves (and our students) to be a little silly, playful, and whimsical. (Like leaving signs around your classroom that say, “It’s been 1000 days since the last bear attack on our campus.) We hope that this episode will get your creative juices flowing for how to spark a little joy and delight–for both you and your students alike.

Today’s conversation was sparked by an assignment Abby gives in one of her courses–she has her students write a “reading biography” to reflect on their process of becoming a reader, how they feel about reading, and how their stories impact their reading habits even today. This has us thinking about our own reading biographies, and we shared some of our own stories, including Matt’s love of hockey cards, Abby’s secret hiding places (stay out of the dryer, kids!), and the time Dave got mugged on his way home from the public library. (So many reading adventures!) Along the way, we find some nuggets of wisdom for helping nudge students towards becoming more joyful readers. We hope this conversation might prompt some reflection for you about your own reading biography!

Welcome to Season 6! We are excited to dive into more conversations with you. We begin this episode with a little reflecting on the journey that has brought us to this point; we’re so grateful to you, dear listener, for joining us on the journey.

This episode is inspired by the fact that Dave has been working on writing a book(!!!) and we spend a little time celebrating that he has completed the manuscript, and is piloting it in his Introduction to Education class this spring. The title is Always Becoming, Never Arriving: Developing an Imagination for Teaching Christianly, and we use this as a springboard to start thinking about how a “teacher imagination” develops, and how it’s a process of continuing to “become” a teacher. Also, Abby brings up the escaped hippos of notorious drug-lord, Pablo Escobar, and how they are causing all kinds of problems in Colombia. (Of course Abby would bring this up!) We hope this episode is delightful, encouraging, and thought-provoking for you in developing your own teacher imagination.

• If you’re interested in Dave’s book (thanks for that!) you’ll have to wait for now–Dave is hoping to get it published, and we’ll keep you posted about when and where you can get a copy.

It's a shorty solo episode from Dave this week, as the three of us haven’t been able to get together long enough in the same room to record an episode in the past two weeks! In this episode, Dave shares an old post from his now-defunct blog about the importance of taking breaks. We hope it’s an encouragement to you to embrace the change of pace that comes with Christmas break. We’ll be back with new episodes in January!

• If you’re interested in reading Dave’s original post, you can find it here: https://iteach-and-ilearn.blogspot.com/2012/12/on-importance-of-taking-breaks.html 

Matt and Dave had a great time away in British Columbia recording our last episode with our friend Darren Spyksma, but it sure is good to be back with our normal trio–we definitely missed having Abby with us!

After a little good-natured joking around, we turn much more serious, thinking about the Advent season we are now in. All three of us love Advent! Matt brought along an Advent prayer that we used to open our conversation today. Dave recently shared an Advent story in his email newsletter, which became a big part of our conversation today. Dave shares some of that story here, and if you’re interested in reading more, you can read the full post–it is linked below. We hope this episode is a blessing for you, and encouragement to slow down as you move towards the manger this year.

• Dave’s newsletter post, which is entitled “Advent is the Antidote” can be read in full here: https://drdave.substack.com/p/advent-is-the-antidote 

Matt and Dave recently had the opportunity to travel to British Columbia for the InspirED Christian Educators’ Conference, and while we definitely missed Abby, we loved having the opportunity to record a live episode while we were there. Regular listeners will notice a dip in audio quality–hazards of recording a live episode in a large room! (Thanks for listening anyway; we think there will be a good bit of wondering and curiosity for anyone who listens in.)

Because we’re used to being a trio now, we asked our good friend, Darren Spyksma to join in the fun. Darren serves at the Society of Christian Schools British Columbia. Darren has a wonderful rhythm of tweeting out an “Ed-thought of the day”: something that will challenge and/or encourage reflection on the part of Christian educators. We tackled a couple of his prompts live to try our normal thinking-out-loud of our hallway conversations. We also took questions from the audience as prompts for our conversation. In this episode our conversation ranges from the difference between compliance and learning, the beauty of a well-placed semicolon, the faith-formation aspects embedded in the curriculum, how to manage the burden of the ALWAYS MORE nature of teaching, and what to do with “Indiana Jones” teachers. Something here for everyone! We hope you’ll enjoy this longer-than-normal episode with all the silliness and joy.

• You can follow our friend Darren Spyksma on Twitter: @dspyksma 

Matt kicks off our conversation this week by sharing about a book he is currently reading entitled Why Kids Love (and Hate) School. Reading this has prompted him to wonder about whether more kids love school or hate school–and it got us thinking about our own experiences as students and how that has shaped the way we all feel about school, even as teachers. We share our own stories from school, and think about what it is that we liked (and disliked) about school, and think through ideas of what schools can do to make them perhaps more hospitable spaces for all of our students. We would love to hear from you, dear listeners, about what kinds of things you are doing at your schools that are making a practical difference in helping kids to love school.

• The book Matt mentioned, Why Kids Love (and Hate) School: Reflections on Practice is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Kids-School-Academy-Educational-Studies/dp/1975500997 

This week: a short bonus episode with more wisdom about teaching the Bible from our friend and colleague, Dr. Gayle Doornbos. After we “finished” recording our last episode, Dave left the mics on and kept recording. Gayle had more wise things to share about faith formation as part of a Bible class. We hope you’ll be encouraged, challenged, and blessed by what she has to say here!

• A peek behind the scenes: this is almost always how we end our recording sessions--with Dave just leaving the mics on. Once in a while, we have a great moment that gets edited into the episode…but most of the time it’s ridiculous drivel. Maybe sometime we’ll have a whole bonus episode of our hijinks? (Probably not!)

This week, Abby was not able to join us for recording, and while we definitely missed her, we were grateful to have a good friend from the Theology Department join us, Dr. Gayle Doornbos, Associate Professor of Theology at Dordt University. Gayle teaches a course entitled “Teaching the Bible,” and knowing this, we invited her to join us for a conversation about teaching the Bible as an academic subject. As Matt and Dave both have had their own (mis)adventures in teaching Bible classes, we thought Gayle’s insight and experience would be worth sharing with our listeners, as we have learned a lot from her! Our conversation today covers a lot of ground–we discuss many parts of the joys and challenges of teaching Bible, from helping students develop a theological imagination, to the understanding the difference between knowing the facts of Bible stories with knowing the Big Story of Scripture, to the question of what should be included in the curriculum of biblical studies, to moralism in teaching the Bible, to whether “anyone can teach Bible” vs. whether we should have specially-trained Bible teachers in Christian schools. Gayle encourages us to think about studying the Bible as not just an academic exercise, but also as a formative experience for shaping students’ faith life–even though that is challenge! We hope that Gayle’s wise words will be an encouragement to anyone called to teach Bible in a Christian school setting.