The Continuing Educator

What a great crowd for our first live show! After discussing their Georgia roots, Jacob and Kailey chat with their guests about choosing the best summer professional learning opportunities and what gets them motivated at a conference. Next, they turn to the new school year and discuss the biggest challenges ahead, including how to scale success across schools and districts.  Kailey also asks a few of her signature lightning-round, light-hearted questions.  Finally, stay tuned for the audience Q&A at the end of the show for your daily dose of teacher inspiration. There may have been some tears of joy in the room… 

Thanks to our guests, Lindsay Deacon (NWEA) and Marelenise Phillips-Roberts (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Director at Dallas Independent School District).

This was a fun one... because we got to talk to you, our listeners! In this episode: We see how Mr. Potato head can motivate students, one additional limb at a time. We open a big box of costumes in the middle of class. We learn about a teacher who calls students' parents to share good news, and how one student wanted to return the favor.  And finally, we get to hear some incredibly touching stories of students and families letting their teachers know how awesome they are. (Jacob and Kailey get a little misty-eyed.)

Special shoutout to all the teachers who called in! If you want to get in on the discussion, we'll be asking for new voicemails soon. Follow NWEA on your favorite social media platforms so you don't miss the opportunity to participate, and if you're headed to Fusion this summer, you can find us there as well. Thanks for listening! 

As a teacher, Misty Hodge wondered: Who makes these assessments I give my students? Are these companies listening to the teachers who use them, or are they just throwing darts in the dark? So she came to NWEA to make sure that teachers like her had a seat at the table. Misty shares her work leading NWEA’s partner advisory board and building something teachers can actually use. Then, Kailey and Misty nerd out about MAP Accelerator and how much it helps math teachers.  Misty also shares stories from her time as an educator, including a creative use of a ropes course and a challenging first day as a substitute teacher.  Thanks for listening — don’t forget to share, subscribe, and rate us five stars! 

Melissa Lim is a Technology Integration Specialist at Portland Public Schools, but she sees herself first and foremost as a teacher, not an IT professional. In this episode, Melissa chats with Kailey and Jacob about showing kids and teachers what’s possible with technology ,and how she makes them more comfortable using it. They cover ChatGPT and its uses in the classroom (like writing better quizzes!) as well as Melissa’s work to bridge the digital divide and give all kids at PPS equal access to tech. She shares her rule for deciding when you shouldn’t use technology, along with her number one tip for teachers: Don’t be afraid to push a new button! You won’t break anything (probably).

The science of reading is both a body of research and movement in literacy education. How do we keep those two things connected when they’re not always aligned? What are most common myths about literacy instruction, how do we fight them? A roundtable of educators and specialists from NWEA join Jacob & Kailey to talk about how the science of reading works best in classrooms and where both the movement and the research are going.

John Luke Bell is Senior Content Designer in Literacy with NWEA. Prior to joining us in 2022, he was a Curriculum Coordinator and English Teacher. He is passionate about solving the problems facing young readers and the people who teach them.

Dr. Tiffany Peltier is Lead Learning and Delivery Specialist for literacy at NWEA. She brings over 12 years of experience in the education field, acting as an instructional coach to elementary teachers, and teaching undergraduate pre-service teachers within special education, learning, sciences, and literacy coursework. 

Dr. Lisa LeBouef is Content Designer in Literacy at NWEA. She has more than a 15 years education as a classroom teacher and literacy coach, as well as a few years at the state agency level as the Supervisor of Literacy Professional Development for the Louisiana Department of Education. 

The elusive practice of classroom differentiation has historically had lots of “shouldas” and “couldas” from experts, but it's always been difficult to do well at scale. Disruptions in formal schooling for all students and educators have only increased the need for good differentiation in the classroom, but there’s no easy button. We discuss how differentiation works today — is it getting easier or harder? Are we making it too complicated, or not complicated enough? Our guests share successful practices they’ve learned from teachers around the country—teachers who walk that thin line between dull routine and total chaos to give kids the right level of voice and choice in their learning. 

We talk to Tatiana Ciccarelli, a math educator and model teacher from New York City, currently supporting educators around the country through professional learning, and Dr. Chase Nordengren, principal research scientist for effective instruction at NWEA.

What’s it like in classrooms right now? The only way to know is to ask a teacher, so we sat down with a first-grade elementary teacher and a sixth-grade social studies & science teacher and listened. Topics include: Modeling respect, making everyone feel included, and being your authentic self in the classroom. We hear stories about how kids (and parents!) can hit you right in the feels and the instructional value of kicking your students’ butts in soccer. Plus: Post-its, Post-its, Post-its! (Including both appropriate and inappropriate uses.) 

We're back for Season 4! Yes, *we* — on this episode, Jacob Bruno interviews our new co-host, Kailey Rhodes, about how to establish a real rapport with your students and build a classroom culture where they can trust and thrive. The first step? Ask your kids how they want the class to work for them, and be honest about what you expect in return. Kids can smell inauthenticity. Plus: Tips for when to step in to kids' conflicts with each other, the utility of unicorns and mermaids, and a google-form for hair-adjacent encouragement.

We're so excited to have you back with us this season as we talk about putting big ideas to work in the classroom.  Each episode will have experts form the classroom and pros from NWEA's learning and improvement services team sharing what's working for teachers and schools around the country right now. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Thanks for listening! Please rate & review The Continuing Educator on your favorite podcast platform. Season 4 is coming in 2023.

In this bonus episode from Season 3, we talk to a working educator about the importance of family literacy and strategies for increasing it. Our guest Martin Silverman is the principal at Salinas Elementary School in Universal City, TX, and has worked as a teacher in both urban and rural schools. From his own experiences growing up, he saw the importance of literacy as a focus in families, and has sought to revitalize that practice in the families of his students.

If you enjoy the conversation with Martin, check out his podcast The Second Question.

The ALA defines digital literacy as "the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills."  We discuss the many other definitions of the term and get into what responsibilities educators have to cover this topic.

Disciplinary literacy aims to apprentice students into the specialized literacy practices of each of the disciplines—practices usually only developed by those immersed in the creation of knowledge in the disciplines. We discuss why this skill is so important and how it differs from content area reading.

Our guest, Laura B. Hansen, is director of Teaching and Learning Connections at NWEA where she focuses on understanding and fostering the relationships between teaching, learning, and assessment to promote literacy for all students.

Thank you for joining us on this season of The Continuing Educator!  Please be sure to share the podcast and leave us five star reviews so more educators can hear these conversations. We'll be back with more episodes in Spring 2023.