The Center of Things

For the first time we have a former student in the hut to talk to Seth and Kyle. Tyler was on Seth's debate team for four years and holds a special place for him. We talk candidly about Tyler's perceptions of the rest of the debate team when he was in high school and how Seth and the rest of the team perceived Tyler. We also discuss Tyler's plans now that he is a college graduate to teach in a yet to be known foreign location. 

Kyle's daughter introduced him to Mike DeMaio, an elementary teacher in New Jersey with a popular YouTube channel full of fun pop-song parodies and videos that teach about everything from multiplication tables to earthquakes. Seth and Kyle chat with Mr. DeMaio about his career in education, how he got started creating his videos and what it feels like to be a YouTube star teaching in an elementary school.  

Music: Mike Demaio "Days of the Week"

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwyVRKfytvjSF6q5s7noKZQ

The Finer Art of Teaching is back for our second season. Kyle and Seth catch up with each other and discuss their projections for the coming school year. 

This year we will be featuring music from K-12 performance groups as our opening and closing music. If you would like to hear your group on the podcast send us a link or an audio file to [email protected]. Include your school and district name and the name of the performing group.

Music in this episode from the Baytown, Texas, Sterling High School Marching Band from 1992. 

Our first and most frequent guest on the podcast, Lily Auker, returns to discuss the trials and tribulations of her first year teaching high school English. We also revisit the gun debate for a bit, as this episode was recorded the day after the school shooting in Sante Fe, Texas.

This is our final episode of the school year and will take a break for the summer. We will return for the 2018-2019 school year in August. 

Thank you for listening and spread the word!

Seth Rutledge returns to the podcast to discuss the RISE program, an effort that he started in his school district to help teachers initiate innovative curriculum for the class room. Seth first told us about this program on our 4th episode back in October. We knew we had to have him on again to tell us how the inaugural year of the program went. 

J.P. Fulger has won so many teaching awards he can't count them all. J.P. talks us through the process of how he came to discover the myriad of awards available to teachers, many of them coming with a monetary prize, why teachers should be applying for these awards and the benefits of the process. 

We also discuss the nature of difficult topics and why we should be engaging in conversations with people with whom we disagree. 

This episode of The Finer Art of Teaching begins with the age old question: "What can teachers do to help their students stay focused as we inch closer to summer?"

Seth and Kyle get a little help from veteran 2nd grader teacher Amanda Martin (who also happens to be Kyle's better half.)

Kyle and Seth also share their student teaching stories, both good, bad and non-existent. 

Kyle and Seth managed to convince one of their own principals to discuss the much maligned and misunderstood job of school administrator. The ink barely dry on a new doctorate in education, Kyle Wiskow is an assistant principal at the campus where Kyle and Seth teach and shares some of his insights into what makes a school successful and the impact that school leadership can have on a campus and the growth of a school. 

Taylor Mali is a poet, teacher, performer and apparently the former voice for Burger King, according to his website. In this conversation with this 4-time National Poetry Slam Champion, Taylor talks to Kyle and Seth about his years as a teacher, the inspiration his father gave him to enter poetry and he shares some new, as well as some impromptu poetry. 

https://taylormali.com/

Teachers all over the United States have been reviewing active shooter procedures in the weeks since the tragic shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. We are, once again, confronting the possibility that our schools may some day have to face a shooter on campus. Seth and Kyle discuss the shooting, the various ideas on how to end the violence, as well as the uniqueness of the most recent tragedy.