Teaching Today

Questions come naturally to young children: Why is the sky blue? Where do butterflies go in winter? As they grow older, students need invitations to cultivate curiosity and teachers who are able to teach the skill of questioning. The Question Formulation Technique builds this lifelong learning skill, teaching students how to ask their own questions.

In this episode we're taking a journey into our podcast archives to a conversation with Dan Rothstein, Luz Santana, and Sarah Westbrook from The Right Question Institute to discuss how the QFT works and what we can do to cultivate curiosity through questioning.

The start of the school year can be full of hope and optimism, but our experiences as teachers highlight the need for flexibility and adaptability as we navigate the unpredictable nature of the classroom. Our guests, instructional coaches Maria Underwood and Dr. Laura Rigolosi, discuss the challenges of managing competing priorities, particularly in the beginning of the school year. They share how they struggled to balance getting to know their students, assessing their needs, and completing administrative tasks, all while trying to deliver effective lessons.

Establishing and forging meaningful relationships with students at the start of the school year can be challenging — students often have diverse backgrounds, needs, and personalities, and they need to feel a sense of trust in order to be vulnerable about their learning needs, their personal opinions, and their challenges.

In this episode we're taking a journey into our podcast archives to a conversation with Kelsey Hammond, a former ELA teacher and Lead Professional Development Coach, and Victoria Fernandez, a former Math/Special Education teacher and Lead Professional Development Coach about the importance of building relationships that foster a positive learning environment.

Understanding the day-to-day experiences and challenges faced by teachers in their classrooms is crucial for providing relevant and effective professional development. At the end of every episode, we say, “Your voice matters, send us your education questions, concerns, and promising practices and we’ll address them!” Today, we discuss the importance of starting with a clear unit plan as the foundation for effective lesson planning, especially in co-teaching environments, the ways a lesson planning toolbox of proven strategies can leverage precious time, and how complex questions engage English language learners in our classrooms.

Understanding the day-to-day experiences and challenges faced by teachers in their classrooms is crucial for providing relevant and effective professional development. At the end of every episode, we say, “Your voice matters, send us your education questions, concerns, and promising practices and we’ll address them!”

In this episode, we explore the challenges, benefits, and power of project-based learning (PBL) in the classroom by responding to questions from PBL workshop participants like, “How can we shift our mindset from grading to genuine exploration and learning as a collaborative process between teachers and students?”

Graduate students in education often leave the educational domain with less confidence and a fractured sense of self. Our guest in this episode, Dr. Emily Affolter, shares from experience and recent research the importance of respecting individual needs, fostering flexibility, and moving away from rigid, binary thinking in education in order to nurture student confidence and creativity. We discuss practices educators can adopt to maintain their well-being and sustain their passion for teaching, and strategies that can be implemented in graduate education programs to enhance the confidence and self-efficacy of future educators.

The episode explores Literacy Unbound — an initiative at the Center for Professional Education of Teachers (CPET) — which aims to reimagine traditional approaches to teaching reading and writing through play, creativity, and multiple modalities.

Our panel discusses how to bring the practices of an arts-infused, project-based curriculum developed around shared texts to increase student engagement and build empathy, to your classroom, particularly for students in challenging circumstances like those at East River Academy (ERA) on Rikers Island.

Special thanks to ERA's Principal, Tonya Threadgill, Dr. Jen Gowers, and Dr. Jameon Moss for your voices!

We explore the daunting challenges faced by early-career teachers as they strive to teach young children to read. Despite their formal education, many feel ill-equipped to meet the diverse needs of their students, especially with the added complexity of the science of reading.

LaMonica Williams, the Senior Director of Programs and Services at Teaching Matters, joins us to share how her organization is empowering these teachers with the necessary skills and resources to tackle these challenges head-on.

Understanding the day-to-day experiences and challenges faced by teachers in their classrooms is crucial for providing relevant and effective professional development. At the end of every episode, we say, “Your voice matters; send us your education questions, concerns, and promising practices and we’ll address them!” Today, we dig into questions posed by teachers from New York's New Visions High Schools about collecting student feedback, using formative assessments to inform next steps for teaching and learning, and bridging meaningful classroom writing and high-stakes assessment.

In this episode, we delve into the transformative power of writing and the importance of fostering authentic learning experiences for students. Diego Medina and Scarleth Tejada — students and published authors at the Global Learning Collaborative in New York City — join the podcast to discuss their experience with the Student Press Initiative and this unique writing experience. Their teacher, Sandra Woods, shares the power of student-led writing projects and why this process was one the highlights of her professional career.

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Check out this year's publication from the students at Global Learning Collaborative: https://bit.ly/glc2024