Teaching Unscripted

Students tend to weigh the social risks before taking any kind of action in math class. Staying silent tends to feel safer. So it’s important to create climates where students feel a sense of belonging and want to join in. In her new book, Motivated, Ilana Horn explores connections between the five motivational features of math classrooms —illuminating strategies that can make math more meaningful and foster students' sense of belonging.

We started our conversation with social risk. In Motivated, Ilana, who goes by Lani, opens the book with an examination into the big question of why students don’t want to talk in math class?

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When we rely on lecture to cover more content, we’re doing students a disservice. Although lecture can be engaging and even useful, lecture alone cannot give students real opportunities to learn, retain, and transfer the ideas, skills, and practices we’re trying to teach.

Authors Cris Tovani and Elizabeth Moje help us translate the time spent lecturing into powerful learning experiences where students interact and inquire into topics that matter. They write more about this in their book Not This But That: No More Telling as Teaching: Less Lecture, More Engaged Learning. We sat down with co-author Cris Tovani to talk more about why lecture is being overused.

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Mosaic of Thought, by Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann, became a runaway best-seller as the first book to explicitly describe the use and benefits of strategy-based comprehension instruction. To recognize the 20th anniversary of the book, Tom Newkirk, who served as editor, recently sat down with Ellin Keene to revisit how Mosaic of Thought came to be and the impact it had on education.

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Not talking about racism is not a solution. How do we have this conversation and how do we unravel assumptions about racism? Even if you don’t have the expertise we can create safe space for the conversation. How do we get started and move forward? How can these talks bring us together? 

Sonja Cherry-Paul, Cornelius Minor, and Sarah K. Ahmed hold a discussion.

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Do you know how you fit into your teaching team? And how do we build an effective teaching team? On any given day you could find Cornelius talking about members of the Justice League or The Avengers. And in a sense he still is on today’s podcast. Cornelius is helping us think through how we assemble our teacher teams by looking to superhero teams. Much like members of The Avengers, our teaching teams all have different strengths, and how we apply those strengths matters to helping build a successful team.

Today we’re talking about the importance of working together as educators. While that might seem obvious, there are a lot of layers to getting it right. Cornelius thinks about this a lot in his PD work, but it wasn't until a student asked him if all of his co-teachers lived together that it got him thinking more deeply.

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Feedback can sneak up on you in the most unlikely of places. For Cornelius Minor, it came from a former student at a laundromat. In our continuing series of conversations with Cornelius Minor we're talking about the importance of feedback and love in the classroom. 

Cornelius is a frequent keynote speaker and Lead Staff Developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in New York where he works with teachers, school leaders, and communities to support literacy reform in cities. In his work, Cornelius not only draws on his years teaching middle school in the Bronx and Brooklyn, but also on time spent skateboarding, shooting hoops, and working with kids. He’s also currently writing his first book for Heinemann. 

On a recent Saturday morning, Cornelius bumped into a former student while doing his laundry. As Cornelius explains, the meeting quickly became a lesson on feedback and love. 

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When we think about engagement we almost immediately focus on the student who won’t talk or just doesn't engage. But what about the student who is over engaged? On today’s podcast we’re continuing our series of conversations with Cornelius Minor. Today we’re talking about a student he has nicknamed “Prez” short for president of the class. 

Mr. Minor is a frequent keynote speaker and Lead Staff Developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in New York where he works with teachers, school leaders, and communities to support literacy reform in cities. In his work, Cornelius not only draws on his years teaching middle school in the Bronx and Brooklyn, but also on time spent skateboarding, shooting hoops, and working with kids. He’s also currently writing his first book for Heinemann. 

Cornelius says we need to use our teacher superpowers of engagement even with students like Prez, who Cornelius says, tends to take all of the space in the room.

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What do you do about the student in your class who doesn't like you? On today’s podcast, we’re continuing our series of conversations with Cornelius Minor. In his classroom, he’s facing the question: how do I recognize what the difference is between “can’t learn” and “won’t learn” ? 

Mr. Minor is a frequent keynote speaker and Lead Staff Developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in New York where he works with teachers, school leaders, and communities to support literacy reform in cities. In his work, Cornelius not only draws on his years teaching middle school in the Bronx and Brooklyn, but also on time spent skateboarding, shooting hoops, and working with kids. He’s also currently writing his first book for Heinemann. 

As Cornelius says, we all have students who consume our thoughts and keep us up at night. For Cornelius, this student, who we’ll call “Daniel,” is that worry. And the reason they're at odds seems so simple, but goes much deeper.

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“As a profession, we are gripped by fear.” Those are the opening words from Lucy Calkins in her forward to The Unstoppable Writing teacher by Colleen Cruz. As Lucy prepares the reader for Colleen’s words, she goes on to write:

“(Fear) is a cage that traps us, alone, into our worst selves. Into a space with demons only we can see. We become the person we dread being.”

In The Unstoppable Writing Teacher, Colleen Cruz tells us to name that fear. As a self-declared positive pessimist, Colleen guides us through building a better toolbox and helps us identify what stops us in writing instruction. Colleen’s honesty is on full display throughout The Unstoppable Writing Teacher. We began our conversation on those anxieties and why it was important to include them in the book. 

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“I think my parents hate me” 

That is how a student, who we’ll call “Earl,” recently started a conversation with his teacher, Cornelius Minor, after class one day. On today’s podcast we’re talking about advocating for our students with Cornelius Minor. Mr. Minor is a frequent keynote speaker and Lead Staff Developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in New York where he works with teachers, school leaders, and leaders of community-based organizations to support literacy reform in cities. In his work, Cornelius draws not only on his years teaching middle school in the Bronx and Brooklyn, but also on time spent skateboarding, shooting hoops, and working with kids. He’s also currently writing his first book for Heinemann. 

Cornelius says it best; "we may not have the answers for every situation we face, but we can’t choose to do nothing." So what did Cornelius do? How did he advocate for Earl and all of his students? Listen below to find out.

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