Teacher Saves World!

Laurie & Matt pivot to a health and wellness focus for 2021, adhering to the familiar advice of securing their own oxygen masks before helping the child in the seat next to them in the great airplane of life. They start by focusing on ATTENTION, and how our brains are shaped by what we choose to feed it. The algorithms have their own agenda for what we should pay attention to, but are their suggestions really crafting the person we want to be and the life we want to live? Thoughtfully curating the items we train our attention on, and in turn shape our brains and ourselves, is as good a place to start a new year as any Laurie & Matt can imagine.

Items mentioned in the show: the books "Why Don't Students Like School?" by Daniel T. Willingham, "The Distracted Mind" by Adam Gazzaley & Larry D. Rosen, and the podcast "Making Sense" with Sam Harris, episode #226 (The Price of Distraction).

Matt references the SchoolRubric livestream event he moderated with Matt Rhoads, Serena Pariser, and Steven "ETIENNE" Langlois (all guests of our podcast in 2020) on educators becoming authors. Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB3LQ1kGRuQ&t=4s

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Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Voice Message: (559) 399-0966

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt are married high school teachers and parents of two teenagers, and they're trying to save the world, one teenager at a time. After starting their podcast in 2020 and recording 59 episodes in 8 months, covering territory from the unique challenges teenage boys present to classroom grading policies and everything in between, they've decided to pivot in 2021.

2020 taught us a lot about the need for heroes, and teachers and parents of teenagers are some of the most important heroes on the planet. 2020 also reminded us that heroes need to take care of themselves if they have any chance of helping those in their care. For those reasons, Laurie & Matt are dedicating their 2021 episodes to the health and wellness of the teachers and parents of teens. Let's get in the best shape of our lives together, emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually, so that we can help our teens recover from the year that was.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Voice Message: (559) 399-0966

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt, in their final episode of 2020, take a moment to establish some goals for the coming year. With a mix of personal and professional goals, and some questioning of whether there's any real separation between the two, they look forward to a year of growth and wellness, and putting the current one to rest. Finally.

Matt references the SchoolRubric livestream event he is moderating with Matt Rhoads, Serena Pariser, and Steven "ETIENNE" Langlois (all guests of our podcast in 2020) on January 5, 2021 at 5:00 PM Pacific/ 8:00 PM Eastern called "From Conception to Reality: Our Experiences in Authoring and Writing Books" aimed at educators interested in writing their first book. Here is the livestream link:

https://youtu.be/kB3LQ1kGRuQ

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt look back on the year that is coming to an end and ask, "How Do We Make Peace With 2020?" In a year where it feels like we've been shoved to the ground and kicked repeatedly in the gut, how do we find the strength to forgive and move on?

For all of the pain we've endured, there has been an incredible amount of growth. Laurie & Matt focus their attention there, along with some strategies that can help all of us get straight with a year that will never be forgotten, like finding inspiration in the stories of others that have endured historic hardships, and developing our ability to accept whatever comes our way. "The world is perfect and as it should be," is a concept that has helped Matt in this regard.

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt revisit an urgent topic, one they first rang the alarm on in the Spring with a widely read blog post. With half of the year almost complete, they're asking "Can We Still Save the Class of 2021?"

Matt rereads the blog post, and it sounds like it could have been written yesterday. If we knew so much and saw so much last Spring, why haven't we made more progress? It seems like everyone around Laurie & Matt are less optimistic about a Spring return to campus, and a general consensus seems to have developed around an entire year of distance learning. Is it just something that has worked itself into the conversation and everyone has adopted it, or have we lost the ability to work together to save our teens? It's a frustrating, tough conversation between two parents and teachers of teens that are seeing an important year of school slip away.

The "We Need to Save the Class of 2021" blog post can be read here:

https://teachersavesworld.com/blog/f/we-need-to-save-the-class-of-2021?blogcategory=Opinion

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt pull an old segment out of the Teacher Saves World! Vault, resurrecting the "If I Were Principal" segment that was a mainstay of their first 25 shows. This time Matt dusts it off and plays the principal role, pushing for a reimagining of our campuses' outdoor spaces, suggesting that in light of our current pandemic, and all of the wonderfully underutilized outdoor space many high school campuses have, why don't we put it to better use?

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt take a detour from talking about teaching and parenting to discuss one of their favorite subjects, music. Because they love the year-end lists that start popping up in December, they decided to make one of their own, choosing to Describe 2020 in Six Songs. Why six? Because five wasn't enough. It happens to be Laurie's favorite number too.

They take turns selecting songs (none of which were released in 2020) that they believe capture a critical piece of the essence of 2020, either through its title, the lyrics, its mood, some other association, or a mix of odd reasons. It's a year-end list you are unlikely to find anywhere else.

Find a playlist of these songs here:

Apple Music- https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/teacher-saves-world-laurie-matts-playlist-for-2020/pl.u-mJy8KERTyy0g0N

Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2EmSiz4egTInBLtHhLtcoh?si=McFC9SCOQPaK7VWz93jLJA

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt approach the timely topic of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) when they ask the question, "Is Social Emotional Learning Curriculum the Way to Go?" Laurie, forever the joiner of committees, shares some of what's going on with the most recent group she volunteered her time for, our school's SEL Committee.

SEL is not a new topic or concern, but many of our teens' inability to lift themselves up out of the hole dug by COVID-19, has made the need to implement something, anything to support them an urgent agenda item on most campuses. Laurie shares some simple ideas we can all do immediately, while Matt questions whether canned curriculum or shifting teacher mindsets is the better approach.

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt take a moment to give thanks to the year 2020. In a year that will not be remembered fondly, that will forever be used as an adjective to describe something horrible, there are positives to be found and appreciated. Laurie & Matt express their gratitude for the year that forced them to reflect and grow in ways they may not have otherwise.

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net

Laurie & Matt take a look at a tsunami that's coming, but few are recognizing when they ask the question, "Should Fs Be Given in a Pandemic?" Our teens are being asked to perform in an educational setting nobody would purposefully design in normal times, so why should we expect normal results and apply normal grading?

Laurie suggests this episode could be just a few minutes long, her answer and feelings on the topic coming swift and strong. Matt takes a little more pragmatic approach, but ultimately believes a similar, compassionate, and reasonable set of grading principles should be applied. Things get a little emotional when the topic of "parents not doing there job" is brought up, a phrase that too many use flippantly.

If you have a story to share and would like to be a guest on their show, reach out to Laurie & Matt through social media or by email.

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It really helps us become more visible and grow the coalition of caring adults dedicated to the health and wellness of our teens.

Get your copy of Matt's book Helping Teens Succeed in High School & Life at amazon.com/author/mattsavesworld

To connect with Laurie & Matt and find out more:

Visit their website: TeacherSavesWorld.com

Email them: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/teachrsaveswrld

Instagram: instagram.com/teachersavesworld/

Facebook: facebook.com/teachersavesworld/

Show music provided by Brian Karmelich of VirtualCampfire.net