Hallway Conversations

It’s the beginning of the new academic year, and we are excited to begin again! In today’s wide-ranging conversation, we talk about the joys and stresses of first days, and we share some of the things we do at the beginning of the new academic year to foster a hospitable space and begin building community. We aren’t prescriptive here, but descriptive of some of the practices we have found to be successful and beneficial–both for us as teachers, as well as for our students. Here’s to new beginnings! (And our apologies for the creaky table noises throughout this episode–we’ll talk to Matt about not leaning so hard on the table next time.) :-)

BONUS EPISODE: Schooled!

Greetings, loyal listeners! We have had a terrible time finding shared times for recording lately, but don't worry--more new episodes coming your way soon. For today, one from the archives. In this episode, Matt asks the question, “What’s up with all this talk of failure and what do we mean when we talk about ‘failure?’ Is failure truly essential to learning? And how do we reconcile failure when we live in a culture that can hyper-promote excellence and success?” We try to define what we actually mean by “failure,” and we discuss why some schools seem to hold up failure as a key component to learning. We grapple with some students’ tendency towards perfectionism, and explore the grace that might be present in embracing risk-taking and missteps--and the importance of feedback--as part of the learning process. (One other fun fact...this is the first episode where Abby joined us as a full-time part of the team, and completely elevated everything about a show that was previously two middle-aged dudes blathering into a microphone.) :-)

Greetings, loyal listeners! We have had a terrible time finding shared times for recording lately, but don't worry--more new episodes coming your way soon. For today, one from the archives. In this episode, Dave is wondering about positivity, which is typically one of his strengths, but questions whether positivity can sometimes become toxic. We begin by talking about potentially-problematic positivity in our personal lives before turning our attention to our work as educators. We talk about how teachers can model for students and demonstrate appropriate ways to communicate emotions. We briefly touch on what to do with negativity in the staff room, and spend a little time thinking through how educators might be able to embrace healthy positivity even when things are hard. 

Today’s episode was inspired by Dave’s recent re-reading of David Smith’s book, On Christian Teaching. Dave is wondering about the work of imagination and how it connects to teaching “Christianly.” Smith encourages teachers to “see anew”--to reflect on our practices, and perhaps develop more of an imagination for the work of teaching, and the possibilities and potential of how we can help students to “see anew” through our pedagogy. We talk through different ideas for how this might play out for teachers in their work, and share some examples from our own teaching as well.

We’d always love to hear from you–whether with a question of your own, or feedback on this episode or any other episode. You can always reach out at [email protected]. And if you’d be willing to rate this show, or write a review, we would deeply appreciate it! 

• David Smith’s On Christian Teaching is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Teaching-Practicing-Faith-Classroom/dp/080287360X/ 

Today’s topic is substitute teachers–people we all celebrate! In our conversation we share about some of our happy memories of working with substitute teachers from our K-12 experiences, and some of the joyful experiences we have had serving as substitute teachers. We also have a few ideas about how to equip substitute teachers, so if you know someone who think could be an awesome “teacher on call,” share this episode with them! We love substitute teachers, and hope this conversation helps you celebrate the subs you’ve worked with as well.

We’d always love to hear from you–whether with a question of your own, or feedback on this episode or any other episode. You can always reach out at [email protected]. And if you’d be willing to rate this show, or write a review, we would deeply appreciate it!

We haven’t done book talks for a while, and since we have more time to read in the summer…it’s time to share a bit about the things we’ve been reading! We each brought in one book that we have read recently, and share a bit about our take-aways from the book. At the end of our recording session, we realized that though we didn’t discuss our choices ahead of time, they all seemed to “touch” and flow from one to the next. We hope that listening in on our conversation of some of the things we’re thinking about related to reading, and faith, and community will encourage you to think deeply about what you’re reading.

We’d always love to hear from you–whether with a question of your own, or feedback on this episode or any other episode. You can always reach out at [email protected]. And if you’d be willing to rate this show, or write a review, we would deeply appreciate it! 

Here are the books we discussed in today’s episode:

• Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst. Available here: https://www.amazon.com/Disrupting-Thinking-Why-Read-Matters/dp/1338132903/ 

• When Everything's On Fire: Faith Forged from the Ashes by Brian Zahnd. Available here: https://www.amazon.com/When-Everythings-Fire-Faith-Forged/dp/1514003333/ 

Welcome to “Season 5” of Hallway Conversations! We hope you’ll notice a couple of changes; most notably, we have new microphones, so we hope you’ll find the audio quality a better listening experience. But the basic idea of this show is the same: we hope these are meaningful conversations for you to listen in on that will encourage, challenge, and inspire you.

Today we have a question from a listener! Brenda asks us about what we might be able to “take off of teachers’ plates.” This is an idea we hear talked about quite a bit–and one we’ve even brought up on the show in the past–so we were excited to think this one through. We have a few ideas of the kinds of things school leaders might be able to do to address teachers’ workload. We hope this might spark some creative and courageous conversations at your own schools.

We’d love to hear from you–whether with a question of your own, or feedback on this episode or any other episode. You can always reach out at [email protected]. And if you’d be willing to rate this show, or write a review, we would deeply appreciate it!

Due to some unforeseen circumstances related to our summer travel schedules and other responsibilities, we were not able to get into the studio to record a new episode this week. (Sorry, loyal listeners!) But we have one from the archive: a question from some of our students prompted this discussion about the challenges of teaching today, and how to cope when it all seems like too much. We hope this is a word of encouragement to all educators who have completed a very trying, taxing year. Grace and peace to you all, and we hope to be back with a new episode very soon.

In this episode, Matt kicks things off by sharing a quote from Brené Brown’s excellent book, Dare to Lead. The key question we consider is, “How do we open our hearts to be receptive to feedback…and also still protect ourselves from criticism that we ought to dismiss?” Educators by the public nature of their work are often targets of critique, whether fairly or unfairly, and we think together about the ways we personally take feedback, and how we deal with criticism. We hope that you’ll be encouraged in this episode to be resilient in the face of critique, and continue to discern what feedback you should listen to…and what feedback you can disregard.

• Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead is available here: Amazon link