Life of the School Podcast: The Podcast for Biology Teachers

Today, we discuss the presence and influence of other adults in our classroom.

Show Notes:

We kick off our episode with the question: What is something New and Exciting happening in your professional life in 2022?

Joining us from Texas is Lee Ferguson: I am starting classes for administrator certification on January 18.

Joining us from Missouri is Kelly Kluthe: I made a major change and moved from high school to elementary!

Aaron: I am going to have a Student Teacher!

Questions We Discuss:

Oftentimes, teaching can look and feel like you are isolated as an adult in a room working with young people. This has its advantages and its disadvantages, but it is also not really true. Other adults have a significant influence on how we do our work. Let's start with a basic question, are there other adults that ever walk into your classroom while you are teaching? Why are they there?

Who are the adults that are never in your room, that have an influence on the teaching and learning in your classroom?

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

Today we kick off 2022 by discussing how we go about revising aspects of our curriculum.

Show Notes:

We kick off our episode with a goofy question: Do you typically make a New Year’s Resolution or goal for the upcoming year? If so, what is your resolution for 2022?

How much pre-planning goes into your teaching? Do you have structured unit plans for the whole year? Do you plan unit to unit? Week-to-week? Day-to-day?

Amy: Our biology team determined our objectives for each unit, and we agreed on what we will access and how many points the assessments are worth. At the beginning of the unit, I set up a very basic schedule with the required summatives, and each day, I go in and plan the day by day formatives or make adjustments to the timing for summatives. Due to the pandemic, I feel that my planning takes up most of my time because I am always building my lesson plans with student ideas, and additional practice activities based on how my students perform on the work from the previous class.

Hannah: I am a whole year planner, but I also tend to do a lot of revision. My year-long plans are more of a basic roadmap- what content/activities to do and when, when to have assessments, etc. Then I go in and do more fine details usually the day (or this year...often the morning) before.

Aaron: As a department, we have a planned schedule and then set a class calendar as unit-to-unit. I have been trying to not be too dogmatic about these plans and build in some time for check-ins and revisions.

How do you get feedback that some aspect of your curriculum is not working? Is it from student formative work? Summative work? Discussion with colleagues? Discussion with supervisors?

Hannah: Student work is the most valuable feedback for me. This could be from conversations, or from their performance on assessments. I also check in with myself and my planning partner- if we aren’t feeling good about the curriculum, the students probably aren’t either!

Amy: I really believe that student work and feedback is the strongest indicator that the curriculum is not successful. I want the kids to be curious and naturally ask questions. I want them to find a connection to something they experienced that they are willing to share with others. I collect data using surveys and from formative assessments and summative assessments to gauge how well the curriculum I designed is helping students meet the goals.

Aaron: Historically, I have been most informed by discussion with colleagues and summative assessments, but I am working to use more formative feedback to inform our work.

What is the part of your curriculum you would like to redesign the most?

Amy: I would really like to have more wet labs and more inquiry. I feel that I am still the person in the room in charge of everything and the person who talks the most about science, and I would like to see the students directing more of the learning.

Hannah: I could talk about this for a long time…. In AP Bio I wish CB would split the course into a 1 and 2 sequence (similar to physics and calc). Especially as an AP bio as first bio school...the balance between flying through content vs making time for student inquiry, labs, etc is something I really struggle with.

Aaron: As I mentioned before, I really want to have student’s work to drive instruction. I have been doing more driving question boards, formative check-ins, and other student feedback opportunities into my classes. I have been tinkering with my practice a lot in this area throughout the year.

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

To say goodbye to 2021, I am joined by the hosts of the 2 Pint PLC to wrap up the year!

Show Notes:

We Introduced ourselves with the goofy question: What is one thing you learned this year from educational research about beer?

Laurence Woodruff: Dragons milk stout is giving me heartburn

Michael Ralph: wheat beers are not a monolith.

Aaron: Non-alcoholc craft beer is a thing

Today we say goodbye to 2021. While not quite as terrible as 2020, it was certainly a challenging year. With that said, we have all had some wins this year. What is one good thing you will take from the past 12 months?

Michael: the affordances of digital/mixed presence are real.

Laurence: I have experienced a lot of new things in education that have affirmed a lot of my prior choices and priorities. I really don’t want to be an AP biology teacher. I really do want to be an AVID teacher. I really Do want to keep up with my mental health Mondays. I love being in a classroom with students.

Aaron: Improving student voice in my classroom using student generated questions

Aaron makes the rest of the panelists play a 2021 themed game!

We would love feedback! DM or Tweet @lifeoftheschool and share what you learned in 2021.

You should listen to 2PintPLC and you should contact them on their website twopintplc.com if you have ideas of articles they should check out or feedback

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life Of The School on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @lifeoftheschool

Today, as we find ourselves deep into the holiday season, we reflect back on the past few years and ask whether or not the grades have the same emphasis as they did a few years ago.

Show Notes:

We kick off our episode with a goofy question: What movie/tv show/or music signifies to you that it is holiday season?

Joining us from Illinois is Amy Kelly: “All I want for Christmas is you” Mariah Carey

Joining us from Colorado is Hannah Hathaway: Muppet Christmas Carol

Aaron: John Denver & Muppets Christmas album.

Did your school and/or your state do anything different in terms of grades, grade expectations, end of course exams during the 2020-2021 school year compared to past years?

Hannah: Our final exams were all open note last year (as most students were online), and they were condensed to cover only the most crucial standards. We also implemented more grading policies intended to show students grace (e.g. no zeros, accept late work, etc)

Amy: We did not give finals last year, and recently opted to cancel finals for this year. Our State offered flexibility regarding whether to administer the ISA last spring or this fall.

Aaron: Interestingly, our school had eliminated midyears and finals before the 2019-2020 school year, which was a bit contentious at the time, but hasn’t been discussed since. We had no state exams (MCAS) in 2020, but they came back in 2021. So we didn’t really have much of a change from last year.

Did any of those policies from last year carry over to this year (or did policies revert back to September 2019)?

Amy: I think we did attempt to return to the way things were before the pandemic but I feel many of us found the kids weren’t quite ready. When we gave quizzes in biology that prior to the pandemic would have taken 20-30 minutes at most, and found they were taking 45-60 minutes or more, we realized we had to hold back on administering large tests and focus on end of goal quizzes.

Hannah: we are continuing to make progress on grading policies, but the emphasis on depth over breadth does not seem like it will continue.

Aaron: School wide, we returned to our 2019-2020 school calendar and testing policies, but teachers have been up to ourselves to set grading policies. I have also found like Amy, stdents need to be taught some skills they didn’t develop over the past 2 years.

Did you change any of your own grading policies or grading expectations over the past few years?

Amy: I would say I have become a lot more flexible in general. 5 years ago, I did have late work penalties, and I do not penalize students for turning in late work during the unit even if it is substantially late. I also allow students to correct their work, so the corrections are accurate and I offer them a different version of the assessment to retake to try to show me they learned the material. I realize that not everyone is ready for the assessment at the time I offer it.

Hannah: Yes, I feel like I have come a long way on my grading journey, and still have a ways to go. I would eventually love to implement something along the lines of ungrading, but am anxious about being the only teacher to do so, and how it would work within gradebook requirements at my school.

Aaron: The pandemic helped codify my journey to integrate resubmission, revision, and no points off for late work into my class policies.

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

Show Notes: On our panel shows, we start with a goofy question, and as we are releasing this just before thanksgiving, what’s a Thanksgiving side dish that you have that may not be on everyones table?

- Kelly Kluthe: gooey butter cake

- Sedate Kohler: cheesy potatoes #Wisconsin

- Lee Ferguson: The most decadent scalloped potatoes ever.

- Aaron Mathieu: Mashed turnips and carrots.

Let’s talk about school culture. How big is the science department in your school? Are you expected to collaborate?

- Sedate: 7 people. 4 of us teach Biology, 3 teach Chemistry. Those two teams collaborate frequently, to varying degrees. Most of us also teach courses that we call “singletons”, and don’t have any others who teach the same course.

- Lee: There are 30 of us on campus, with another 10 at the STEAM center across town, but they are their own entity. As a department there isn’t collaboration among all of us since that really takes place in teams.

- Kelly: There are 3 of us: Me (biology), a chem/physical science, and a part-time environmental science/genetics & eugenics teacher. We collaborate with general science skills and with vertical alignment.

- Aaron: We are ~20 with 8 Biology Teachers. We have a strong collaborative culture.

Do you have any colleagues that you collaborate with to plan, develop, reflect with? Are these teachers in your building or from professional communities/PLCs? How long have you been working together?

- Lee: I have my team, which I am forever grateful for. In our current iteration we have worked together for the past year. There is one teammate that I have worked with for 5 years now. I also have an extensive network of colleagues that I’ve built over the past 18 years that I can collaborate with, and often do.

- Kelly: I definitely work with the other science teachers in my building to plan vertical alignment. Learn general teaching techniques.. Outside of my building, I collaborate a lot with people in KABT and UKanTeach grads. We’ve been working together since undergrad. Twitter/Facebook.

- Sedate: I have two people who I’ve been working closely with since 2019 Fall.

- Aaron: I tightly collaborate with 1 teacher who is new to our building for honors, but help coordinate our whole honors team and I collaborate with 1 teacher for AP. He is my work husband and we’ve been working together for 21 years.

Collaboration involves a lot of things that can be challenging in the time crunch of the school year: Building trust, letting others take the lead, sharing resources, and being vulnerable. Does your school do anything to make collaboration easier? If not, what could it do?

- Kelly: We have one dedicated hour of PLC each week, but I wish it were more. We also have schedules that allow us to observe each other. I’m observed each week and I often have the chance to sit in on other classes.

- Sedate: This year we have a new school schedule which has made collaboration (theoretically) a lot easier - Monday - Wednesday we have a “department prep” in addition to a personal prep hour. We are on a hybrid block schedule, so M-W are 47 minutes and Th-F are 90 minutes / class. Th-F our preps are both our own.

- Lee: The only thing that my school really does to make this a little easier is require that we have PLC twice a week for 30 minutes each time. We don’t get much time on district PD days to collaborate--it’s almost an afterthought. :(

- Aaron: We have (new this year) early release days each month for collaborative time. It would be good if that time was not taken up with district initiatives.

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

Show Notes:

- On our panel shows, we start with a goofy question, and as we are recording this just before halloween, did you dress up for halloween this year? If not, do you remember the last time you did?

Lee Ferguson: I did not...but I think the last time I did dress up for Halloween, I dressed as a hockey puck. Somewhere in my house there is photographic evidence of this!

Kelly Kluthe: My students always say I remind them of Ms. Frizzle, so I think I’ll lean into that this year and bust out my best biology dress.

Sedate Kohler: The last time I did dress up at school for Halloween I was “outer space” and had galaxy print leggings and hot glue gunned glow in the dark stars to a dress :)

Aaron Mathieu: This year, I am embracing my beard and will dress as Alan from the Hangover.

- Let’s start with some baseline, what are you teaching this year? What are the populations of students you have in each class?

Kelly: 2 sections of Health (9th & 10th), 3 sections of 10th Bio, 1 section of Dual-Enrollment Bio (11th & 12th)

Sedate: 4 sections of Biology (Freshmen, plus a few sophomores and juniors), 2 sections of AP Biology (Juniors & Seniors)

Lee: 4 sections of AP Bio (sophomores, juniors, and seniors), 1 section of IB Bio HL1 (all juniors)

Aaron: I teach 2 sections of honors biology (grades 9 & 10 mixed) and 2 sections of AP Biology (Juniors & Seniors).

- Do you have to meet any specific state or national standards with this group? Do you have autonomy to set your schedule & pacing?

Sedate: Loosely Wisconsin State Science Standards for Biology, and the CED for AP Biology

Lee: No state standards, but there’s the CED to contend with in my AP course, and the IB curriculum for my IB course. This group of students will sit their exam next spring, and it’ll be the first group of kids I’ve taught in 3 years that will have taken an IB exam since my last group to take an exam was in 2019--exams were cancelled in 2020, and our school opted not to give exams in 2021 because we didn’t feel it could be done safely.

Kelly: We align to the NGSS but have a lot of autonomy about pacing and what it looks like. My department has been using the OpenSciEd and iHub storylines for Physical Science, Biology, and Chemistry. I basically modify the AP Bio curriculum for my Dual-Enrollment course.

Aaron: We have an MCAS test for our first year honors students that is in June based on some NGSS like standards and the AP is based on AP CED. We have general unit flow that the biology teachers developed for our honors curriculum, but have a lot of autonomy on schedule, but we do have common unit assessments. For AP, the AP teachers cooperatively plan our units.

- Do you need to coordinate with any other teachers in any or all of your classes?

Lee: Absolutely--I am one of a team of 3 AP teachers, so we plan and design assessments together. All three of us teach IB as well but each of us teaches a different level so we don’t so much plan together as we do support one another.

Kelly: I’m the only life science teacher at my school, so no, no requirements. I have to look to my professional organizations for collaboration. NABT and KABT help me tremendously.

Sedate: This year I am one of 4 Biology teachers. 3 of us are pretty collaborative.

Aaron: I am 1 of 5 Honors teachers and 1 of 2 AP teachers. We are expected to collaborate and we do… I could do a whole show on this dynamic.

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

For this episode, I am reposting episode #1, but be before that audio, I chat with my colleague and first guest Brian Dempsey to reflect on how the last 5+ years of podcasting has shaped our teaching practice.

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

Show Questions:

- How did you become a science teacher? What did you do before teaching?

- I am curious about how you became a co-teacher of a biology course. How did that begin and how has it changed while you have been doing this?

- I know that you typically teach a forensics science course, even though you are not teaching it this year. What is that course like? How is it different from your biology course? Do you hope to teach this course or a different elective in the future?

- In the upcoming years, what are you looking forward to in the classroom?

- When you are not teaching, what do you like to do?

- Any questions you have for me?

Pick of the Week:

Amy: Institute of Human Anatomy: The institute of Human Anatomy utilizes human cadavers as instruments for anatomical education. They have a YouTube channel and share anatomy videos on TikTok.

Aaron: Teaching Climate Change Essentials: a nine-week teacher professional development program designed to engage and equip elementary, middle, and high schools teachers with the tools needed to successfully incorporate climate change into their classrooms

Credits:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

On this episode, we will be discussing the concept of Universal Design for Learning.

Show Notes:

- To kick off the episode, we will start with our goofy question: You will only be able to watch episodes of 1 TV show for the next year, what show do you pick?

- Have you had any discussions of UDL at your school or as part of your own personal development? Where are you on your journey?

- UDL is often organized into three principles: Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression? Focussing on Enagement, are there ways you provide students multiple options for engagement with material in your classroom? What’s an example?

- Reviewing the UDL Guidelines for Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression, are there any areas where you think you would like to improve the design of your class?

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool

On this episode, I am joined by one new panelist and one old friend to discuss IEPs, 504s and other accommodations in the classroom.

Show Questions:

To kick off the episode, we will start with our goofy question: You are in a rock group, what is your role in the group?

Joining us from Illinois, is new panelist Amy Kelly: Lead Singer

Joining us from Minnesota, Mark Peterson: Rhythm Guitar

Aaron would be a roadie or the sound engineer.

Additional Questions:

How is the start of the school year going in your neck of the woods?

How do you get informed about what accommodations your students need? What sorts of accommodations are you most often providing?

Do you feel that there is a stigma from students about accessing accommodations in your school? Is this expressed by students? By parents?

Credits:

Please subscribe to Life of the school on your podcast player of choice!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LOTS

Music by: https://exmagicians.bandcamp.com/

Show Notes at Lifeoftheschool.org

You can follow on twitter @MrMathieuTweets or @lifeoftheschool