Kurt is and AP Biology and Pre AP Biology teacher at Hewitt-Trussville High School in Trussville, AL. Kurt has been teaching biology and environmental science for over 20 years in both private and public schools. He has also worked with very diverse learning needs, including elementary students in a progressive private school, and rural county schools in Alabama. Outside of the classroom, Kurt has worked as an education consultant for A+ College Ready, and has led professional development sessions at both state and national conferences.

LOTS87 - Kurt Kristensen

For the first 100 episodes, the Life Of The School podcast was a series of episodes where Aaron Mathieu interviewed different life science teachers to  discus their path to the classroom, work in the classroom, and hopes and dreams for the future. Starting in September 2020 (episode 102), LOTS became a panel discussion podcast, exploring various issues we face in our classroom.

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After 6 years, I am taking a break from podcasting. I am calling it a summer vacation for now, but we will see if the break is actually a bit longer. Before I go, I am going to leave you with a clips episode from some of my favorite conversations during the early years of the podcast. This episode could have easily been 60 hours long, but I hope you enjoy these 2 hours to keep you company during summer break.
Clips are from:
Episode 1: Brian Dempsey
Episode 7: David Knuffke
Episode 13: Paul Strode
Episode 14: Chi Klein
Episode 15: Lee Ferguson
Episode 16: Paul Andersen
Episode 17: Bob Kuhn
Episode 18: Ryan Reardon
Episode 21: Chris Baker
Episode 23: Chris Monsour
Episode 25: Mark Peterson
Episode 29: Valerie May
Episode 30: Jon Darkow
Episode 36: Jen Pfannerstill
Episode 38: Ryan Lacson
Episode 46: Brittany Franckowiak
Episode 61: Tanea Hibler
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

LOTS145 - Goodbye For Now

We made it?! I don’t know if it was that we had our expectations too high or that the pandemic has broken us all, but the 2021-2022 school year was rough. With that in mind, we are going to hunt for the silver linings to the storm cloud that was this past school year.

Show Notes:
We start this show with the goofy question: What is one of your favorite things to do by yourself on a completely free, unscheduled day? 
Joining us from Texas, Lee Ferguson: catching up on TV, shopping
Joining us from Wisconsin is Sedate Kohler: Walk my dog to Starbucks and listen to music (maybe sing out loud to the world as I do it)
Joining us from Ohio is Tanea Hibler:  Walk my dog, dance in my living room, roller skate, maybe record a podcast.  LOL!!
Aaron: Take myself out to lunch with a book.

Questions Discussed in this episode:
- What was one of your best interactions with students from the school year?
- What is one thing you learned or got better at during the past 2 years of teaching?
- What are you most looking forward to about Summer 2022?

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

LOTS144 - End Of The School Year!

One of the topics that teachers have been discussing a lot this year has been how issues with student behavior feel worse this past school year compared to the past. Today we discuss this topic and reflect on how we may reframe this issue next year.

Show Questions:
We start this question with the goofy question. What is a dumb rule that you have had to follow at some time during your life?

Joining us from Ohio is Tanea Hibler:  Honestly, most rules are pretty dumb, but we have them becuase humans are just dumb sometimes. Like in Arizona you don’t have to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, but you aren’t allowed to drive between the lanes like you can in California.  That’s just dumb to me.  And the rules vary so much from school to school and place to place that many rules start to feel arbitrary. One school had a rule where kids had to come into the lunch room and sit down and be quiet before they were allowed to get in line to get lunch.  They couldn’t eat outside, or kick back and relax during lunch time. So weird to “police” the kids during their one major break of the day.
Joining us from Texas, Lee Ferguson: (If you don’t say your school’s dress code Jeans Policy…) Ha! But yes, the dress code regarding “professional dress” is probably the stupidest thing ever. Context though--I work in a pretty conservative district in Texas and most districts here have similar employee dress codes. As far as I know, I taught an entire year (nearly 2) in jeans, and it didn’t affect how my students learned or performed. Hell, the year I wore jeans every single day my kids did the best they ever have on the AP exam, so…yeeeaaah, I’m gonna wear jeans when I feel like it. :) 
Joining us from Wisconsin is Sedate Kohler: I ride horses and am really involved in a youth equestrian program. We are similar to scouting and have a similar organizational structure, and a lot of spirit. We wear pins, which is unique to our org. When we compete, we wear our pins, it’s required. For a very long time, we were not allowed to wear our pins when we jumped our horses, because of the “risk of impalement”.
Aaron: Some of the rules around coaching and dismissals were strange. I would need to collect notes if parents wanted to take kids home from away games. So families would write notes, then I would see them as they left. It was weird. I recently found an old coaching folder with a tone of old notes.
Do you feel there have been more student behavior issues in your school/classroom this year compared to previous years? Are students just rebelling against rules trying to “control” behavior, or are there larger issues at play?

How are the discussions about behavior being discussed? Are schools taking into account the pandemic? Are there discussions about restorative justice? Changing policies?

Do you think this is a temporary shift due to the pandemic or do larger changes need to take place? Are there things we could do in our classrooms to improve classroom culture to reduce behavioral issues?

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

LOTS143 - Student Behavior

As I have been reimagining my curriculum over the past few years, the idea of using a scientific phenomenon to hook kids into our work has been both exciting and challenging. Today, I discuss the concept of phenomena with Tanea, Mark and Jess. We definitely had a lot of fun, so we hope you enjoy the conversation.

Show Notes:
We start this question with the goofy question: What is an area of science that you find cool, but don’t really understand the underlying mechanism of (possibly nobody knows) 
Joining us from Minnesota, Mark Peterson: I ran across the idea of telescoping generations a few years ago at an NSTA conference. Aphids, reproducing asexually, have the next generation, fully formed inside them, and within that next generation is another daughter ready to form…and so on. Nature is just weird sometimes.
Joining us from Missouri is Jessica Popescu: I just learned from the book Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake that fungi mycelium transfer nutrients between plants, poisons, hormones and maybe even genetic material! 
Joining us from Ohio is Tanea Hibler: I suspect that us humans don’t understand a lot of things, so this is a hard question for me.  I’ll ponder a bit
Aaron: Why do we sleep? Why do we dream? What are the biological functions?

Questions Discussed on this show:
How do you define a scientific phenomenon? Do you use these in your curriculum?

Do you think that phenomena have to be something that is part of the students lives before introduction?

What is one of your favorite phenomena to engage students (I know this might be tough)?

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

LOTS142 - Phemonena

As we head into state assessment season (people who don’t spend their lives in schools call this spring), I thought it would be fun to talk about different forms of assessment and what this looks like in our classrooms.

Show Notes:
- We start this question with the goofy question. When was the last time you had to sit down to take a test?

Joining us from Ohio is Tanea Hibler:I don’t remember. Oh, it was when I took the GRE about 1-2 years ago.  I was totally freaked out and super nervous and actually did better on the English and writing then I did on the math.  I almost walked out of the testing center in the middle of the test as well. I think my scores might have been why I got waitlisted for the Vanderbilt PhD program : (  But I have moved on now, and I’m happy that things worked out the way they did.  I could tell you about what happened when I had to take the SAT’s too, there was so much instability and drama going on in my life and the SAT just was a huge source of stress for me.  I HATE TESTS.

Joining us from Minnesota, Mark Peterson: I'm going to turn the clock back to 1985 when I had to take the driver’s exam in Minneapolis, MN because I had moved from Iowa City, IA after grad school for my first HS job.

Joining us from Missouri is Jessica Popescu: I think it was my PRAXIS when I was becoming certified to teach in 2013? It’s been a while!

Aaron: Mine was way back in 2006 when I took my subject area test for my National Board Certification.

Questions We Discuss:
- Do you differentiate between formative and summative assessments in your class? Do your students know the difference?
- What does the concept of an “Authentic Assessment” mean to you?
- Do your students talk about Assessment/Test Anxiety? How do we help students manage this anxiety?

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

LOTS87 - Kurt Kristensen

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