The Broken Copier

This past week a report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education received a lot of coverage—including as fuel for a WSJ editorial—and then subsequent reaction for its targeted blame towards…you guessed it: teachers.

Needless to say, Jim and Marcus weren’t happy about this at all—especially after digging into the rather-barebones report and seeing how disconnected the framing and coverage of it was from the actual “data” it was built upon. In this episode, Jim and Marcus discuss not only the contents of the report but also the way it has been covered and, more broadly, the implications of how quickly and haphazardly narratives can be formed in the current moment.

Spoiler: buckle up for two not-happy-at-all teachers.

Links to referenced report and coverage articles:

* Full CRPE report link

* Education Week article covering report

* Wall Street Journal editorial based on report

Thanks to: 

Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

This is the first episode “Kicking the Copier”: a series of shorter solo episodes where we offer not a solution necessarily but rather an idea for teachers, akin to a copier kick, based on our own experience and thinking. These won’t be long, under 10 minutes, but we hope they can be valuable in offering ideas and also potentially beginning conversations around topics worth having conversations about. Because sometimes kicking the broken copier works, right? 

Today’s topic: a reflection by Marcus on why being overly concerned with trying to catch students cheating—particularly with the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence tools in education—might not be the best mindset for teachers to hold.

As always, thanks to the following: Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

The dog days are in full swing, and we wish all the teachers out there a wonderful, restful, well-earned July. In this episode, Marcus and Jim connect to talk about how they solicit and respond to student feedback, especially as they look forward to the fall. Using Marcus’s recent Edutopia article, they discuss how this type of feedback process looks in their classrooms, and the importance of bringing students into curricular decisions in meaningful ways.

SPOILER ALERT: Around 33 minutes, they also talk about season 2 of FX’s The Bear, since they’re both big fans of the show, and thought there are tons of interesting ways the different characters, conflicts, and themes in the show intersect with teaching.

We’d love to hear your thoughts & ideas that help you make grading efficient, fair, and do its most essential job–provide meaningful, actionable feedback for students to improve. You can leave us an audio message for the next episode:

podinbox.com/brokencopier

Thanks to: 

Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

In this episode, Brett Vogelsinger joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Poetry Pauses: Teaching with Poems to Elevate Student Writing in All Genres. Brett shares about the background of his book as well as the numerous benefits he has found in “pausing for a poem” in the classroom—especially as a way to improve student thinking and writing in a much broader sense. This isn’t just an episode for English teachers, either. Brett and Marcus talk about what it means to bring something “new” into any classroom, and how leaning into a new, innovative system can open myriad doors for students and teachers alike.

Interested in getting the book yourself? You can find it at the publisher’s website, https://us.corwin.com/books/poetry-pauses-282912

Thanks to: Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

As always, you can email thoughts and feedback to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

A conversation between Jim and Marcus about how their classrooms came to a close to finish the school year as well as some “teacher takeaways” from the year overall as they look forward. Though at times it dips into the weeds of HS English pedagogy and particulars, this episode tries to dive into the thinking and reflection of two different teachers about how to best “end” a classroom community—and then moves into a broader reflection on wins from the year that they will try to carry into the next school year. (After a much-needed summer break, of course.)

Thanks to: Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

As always, you can email thoughts and feedback to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

Jim welcomes back Elizabeth Jorgensen with Dr. Lucy Park for a conversation about teaching Sijo–a traditional Korean poetry form. Similar to Haiku, Sijo offers students an accessible poetry structure to learn, play with, and develop their own creative voices and identities as writers. Liz and Lucy have recently published an award-winning book, Sijo: Kore’s Poetry Form, that offers teachers background of the form, beautiful collections of famous Sijo, award-winning student samples, and lesson plans.

"SIJO: Korean Poetry” (Edited by Lucy Park and Elizabeth Jorgensen) is sold on Amazon. 

Also, complimentary copies of this book are available for educators who teach SIJO in classes in the USA. Send an email to [email protected].

Online Sijo course for teachers: https://www.sejongculturalsociety.org/events/sijo/online.php 

Sijo poems are going to the moon in The Polaris Trilogy. Learn more in this YouTube interview.

We’d love to hear your thoughts & ideas that help you make grading efficient, fair, and do its most essential job–provide meaningful, actionable feedback for students to improve. You can leave us an audio message for the next episode:

podinbox.com/brokencopier

Thanks to: 

Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

We’ve finally made time in between walking the dogs, cooking, parenting, attempting to work out every once in a while, and our wildly easy teaching jobs with tons of flexible time built in. Seriously though, folks, there’s more to say about grading. In this episode, we took a deeper dive into some of our thinking around grading policies like late work, extra credit, and the no-zero discourse, and have returned to a familiar place: sometimes, it’s just not that simple. 

We’d love to hear your thoughts & ideas that help you make grading efficient, fair, and do its most essential job–provide meaningful, actionable feedback for students to improve. You can leave us an audio message for the next episode:

podinbox.com/brokencopier

Thanks to: 

Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

What’s the best way to grade student work? This is one of those questions that seems like it should have an obvious answer, but once you do a little digging, it turns out the answer is far from easy. Not only are schools entirely misaligned when it comes to grading practices and norms, but the more we ask why, the more it seems like nothing really makes sense at all. Marcus & Jim are starting a longer conversation on the podcast about grading, and all of the complications that follow: what to grade, whether to accept late work, if grades are even useful for learning at all, and more.

Article: “The End of Grading,” by KC Cole. Wired, February 9, 2023. https://www.wired.com/story/the-end-of-grading/

Want to be featured on the next episode? You can leave us an audio message:

podinbox.com/brokencopier

Thanks to: Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

We’re getting into the swing of things now, as most of us have started a new semester. Marcus and Jim check back with each other about writing instruction in general, and continue the conversation around what AI might start to mean for classrooms. They talk about culture through content, and what authentic learning might start to look like in the next era of the internet. How are schools responding, and how should they respond? If ChatGPT represents a new era of learning tools, how do we go adjust in order to keep things fair, and most importantly focused on learning and curiosity?

Want to be featured on the next episode? You can leave us an audio message:

podinbox.com/brokencopier

Thanks to Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music. Thanks to Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden. Thanks to Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

Gwen Jorgensen became the first American to win a gold medal in the triathlon at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. Her mother, Nancy, and sister, Liz, wrote about her inspiring journey in their book, Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete. The book targets an important gap for middle grade nonfiction books–especially the importance of telling heroic stories about women and mothers achieving great big dreams. Jim was excited to sit down with Liz and Nancy, both veteran educators themselves, to talk about the book and why it’s such a great story for classrooms and sports teams. If you’re looking for your next fantastic nonfiction unit, this episode is for you!

Buy the book on Amazon: Gwen Jorgensen: USA's First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete 

Link to purchased signed copies: https://www.booksco.com/signed-copy-gwen-jorgensen

Free educator guide: 

https://download.m-m-sports.com/extras/GwenJorgensen/Teacher_Guide.pdf

For author visits, email [email protected] or [email protected]

Want to be featured on the next episode? You can leave us an audio message:

podinbox.com/brokencopier

Thanks to Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music. Thanks to Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden. Thanks to Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email thoughts to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!