The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

Students are coming to school with more needs than ever, and a lot of those needs aren't strictly academic: anxiety, withdrawal, behavior issues, and learning differences that don't always have quick or obvious solutions. These are problems that often send us to the internet in search of answers, but the nuances of each individual situation can make it hard to find exactly what we need. Ideally, we'd have a colleague with a lot of knowledge and experience who would listen carefully to our problem, ask us questions to make sure they understood it, and offer solutions. Now there's a new platform called Ellis that may be the next best thing. This free, chat-based tool created by the Children's Health Council is designed to give educators practical guidance in those moments when something isn't working and you're not sure what to try next. In this episode, I talk to Cindy Lopez from the CHC about how Ellis works. All educators are invited to give Ellis a try now at askellis.org and see how it works for you!

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This episode was sponsored by Ellis. To read a full transcript of this interview or watch a video of how Ellis works, visit cultofpedagogy.com/ellis.

There's been no shortage of conversation about the science of reading over the past several years. But writing barely comes up, even though the two are deeply connected. That's what drew Melanie Meehan and Maggie Roberts to write their new book, Foundational Skills for Writing. The book breaks the larger task of writing into smaller skill categories, including transcription skills, oral language, and executive functioning. In this episode, they share eight of the strategies from the book. Each is from a collection they call "minute moves," quick lessons and exercises that can be done in just a few minutes to build different kinds of writing muscles. They're fun and engaging and if you're someone who teaches writing, I think you're going to love them.

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Thanks to Renaissance and Erikson Institute for sponsoring the episode. To read a full transcript or find links to Meehan and Roberts' book, visit cultofpedagogy.com/quick-writing-lessons.

To learn more about Grammar Gap Fillers, visit cultofpedagogy.com/grammar.

Have you ever watched students sit completely silent in math class, only to come alive the moment they're asked to share an opinion? That's what inspired my guest Chris Luzniak to start bringing debate into his math teaching — and the results have been remarkable. In this episode, Chris walks us through how he turns ordinary math questions into debatable ones, how he gets students making and defending arguments, and why he thinks this approach matters now more than ever. It's a conversation that will make you rethink what math class can look like.

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Thanks to Listenwise and Erikson Institute for sponsoring the episode. To read Luzniak's article about math debates, visit cultofpedagogy.com/debate-math.

To find Chris online, visit DebateMath.com.

To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

When our students face challenges in the classroom, some teachers double down on control and rigor: tighter rules, firmer consequences, higher demands. Others lean toward grace and flexibility: easing up, giving extensions, and softening expectations because they know our students are carrying a lot. But what if the answer isn't either/or? Warm Demander pedagogy is an approach that pairs genuine care and deep relationship-building with unwavering high expectations. It's the belief that students need to feel seen, respected, and valued — and that we honor them most by refusing to lower the bar. In today's episode, I'm joined by educators Marcee Harris and Dr. Wendy Amato. They explain what Warm Demander pedagogy looks like in action, how it supports student agency and productive struggle, and why it's especially relevant for teachers right now.

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Thanks to Renaissance and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read Amato and Harris' article about Warm Demander pedagogy, visit cultofpedagogy.com/warm-demanders.

To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

Teaching students to write well has always been challenging, and newer developments have made it even more difficult: The internet offers unlimited text to plagiarize, standardized testing has pushed us to teach more formulaic writing, and AI constantly offers to do our writing for us. Frustrated with her students' lack of confidence and the robotic style of their writing, language arts teacher Nashwa Elkoshairi tried adding freewriting before and after her inquiry-based units. The results, she says, were dramatic: Students became more confident as writers and their writing developed far more depth and complexity than she'd ever seen before. In this episode, she joins me to talk about how she weaves freewriting into her classroom practice.

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Thanks to Renaissance and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read Dr. Elkoshairi's article about how she uses inquiry-based freewriting, visit cultofpedagogy.com/inquiry-based-freewriting.

To learn more about Grammar Gap Fillers, visit cultofpedagogy.com/grammar.

We're kicking off the year like we always do, with a round-up of six educational tech tools we think are worth a look. On the list this year: a site that offers fantastic STEM interactives, an AI-powered collaborative writing platform, a free, web-based sound editor, a tool that can turn any text into an infographic, a library of beautifully produced documentaries on current events, and an incredible project that connects makers with people who need assistive devices. My lead technology specialist, Marnie Diem, joins me to talk about them.

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Thanks to foundry10 and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. For links to all six tools and videos showing each one in action, visit cultofpedagogy.com/6-ed-tech-tools-2026.

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To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

We're living in a time when having a difference of opinion is a potential minefield of hurt feelings, emotional outbursts, and severed relationships. If this has caused you to avoid certain topics in your classroom, the growth discourse framework used by the School of Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL) may offer a way to re-engage in these conversations. In this episode, I talk with SEGL founder Noah Bopp about how the growth discourse model works and how teachers can get started using it.

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Thanks to foundry10 and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read a full transcript of this conversation and find links to the growth discourse guidelines and the sample lesson plan we talked about in the episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/growth-discourse.

To learn more about Grammar Gap Fillers, visit cultofpedagogy.com/grammar.

Neurodivergent educators, like those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other forms of cognitive diversity, are essential voices in our schools. They bring innovation, empathy, and authenticity. Yet they often work within systems that weren't built with them in mind, and this can make the job of teaching especially challenging. In this episode, we'll learn about the strengths neurodivergent teachers bring to the classroom and strategies that help them thrive from Emily Kircher-Morris, who is a mental health professional, neurodiversity advocate, and host of The Neurodiversity Podcast.

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Thanks to foundry10 and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read Kircher-Morris's article and a full transcript of our conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com/neurodivergent-teachers.

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To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

If we're doing our jobs right as educators, students will gradually become independent, self-directed learners capable of monitoring, directing, and actively participating in building their own learning. But what if that's not happening? What if students continue to lean heavily on their teachers for step-by-step instructions on every task, never really taking the learning process into their own hands, and as a result, limiting their growth to only what their teachers happen to spoon feed them? In this episode, author Zaretta Hammond offers five "learn-to-learn" strategies we can coach in our students, moves that build their learning power and boost their cognitive capacity.

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Thanks to foundry10 and SchoolAI for sponsoring the episode. To read Hammond's article and get links to the book Rebuilding Students' Learning Power, visit cultofpedagogy.com/learn-to-learn.

To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

If your teaching requires students to read or work with texts, and things have gotten a little stale in the engagement department, this episode will give you some great new strategies to try. High school English teachers Susan Barber and Brian Sztabnik once felt the same way, so they curated tons of fun, interactive, interesting text-based activities in their new book, 100% Engagement: 33 Lessons to Promote Participation, Beat Boredom, and Deepen Learning in the ELA Classroom. In this episode, they'll share three of their favorites.

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Thanks to Solution Tree and Listenwise for sponsoring the episode. For links to the book 100% Engagement and a full transcript of our conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com/text-engagement-strategies.

To learn more about Grammar Gap Fillers, visit cultofpedagogy.com/grammar.