The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

Most special education efforts have focused on giving students with disabilities better access to the curriculum — but access alone isn't enough. In this episode, I talk with Amy Tondreau and Laurie Rabinowitz, authors of the book Sustaining Cultural and Disability Identities in the Literacy Classroom, about disability-sustaining pedagogy, a framework that helps students embrace disability as a cultural identity. We explore practical ways teachers can make their classrooms more inclusive, empowering, and identity-affirming for disabled students.

Thanks to Alpaca and the School Me Podcast for sponsoring this episode.

To read a full transcript of this episode and find links to related resources, visit cultofpedagogy.com/disability-sustaining.

If you want to have the kind of classroom where students do more than just sit and listen, it's likely that your plans may include activities that require some social risk-taking. One way to help your students get more comfortable taking these small social risks is for you to be the first dork, the first one to do the thing that no one else wants to do because they're afraid of looking weird or being vulnerable.

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Thanks to Studyo for sponsoring this tip. You can find written and video versions of these at cultofpedagogy.com/edutips.

While the shift to restorative practices should be improving student behavior, that's not happening in every school. Some teachers say the discipline systems at their schools have completely broken down, creating an environment where students do whatever they want with no consequences. This has made teachers feel frustrated, angry, unsupported, and in some cases, unsafe. What has gone wrong? In this episode, I have an in-depth conversation about this issue with restorative justice educator bink jones and trauma-informed educator Alex Shevrin Venet. Both educators are well aware that restorative practices are getting a bad rap for all the wrong reasons, they unequivocally validate the frustrations teachers are experiencing, and they explain what they think is going wrong in schools that aren't seeing good results from this framework. They offer a path forward for educators who are desperate for a healthy, respectful, productive climate in their schools.

Thanks to ExploreLearning and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode.

To read a full transcript of this episode and find links to related resources, visit cultofpedagogy.com/discipline-reform.

If I give my students an exit slip to check their grasp of a particular skill, and a third of them don't do well, just moving forward with my original teaching plan is a missed opportunity. Ideally, my next steps should involve some kind of targeted response. Let's talk about what that looks like.

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Thanks to Studyo for sponsoring this tip. You can find written and video versions of these at cultofpedagogy.com/edutips.

Since ChatGPT's arrival in late 2022, the top concern I've heard from teachers is that students will stop doing their own writing and rely entirely on AI. While that worry is real, more teachers are recognizing that AI is here to stay and are looking for ways to work with it rather than against it. My guest today, Tony Frontier, offers one of the most insightful takes I've seen on this issue. In his new book AI With Intention and in our conversation, he shares clear, practical strategies for helping students use AI responsibly and maintain academic integrity.

Thanks to ExploreLearning and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode.

To read a full transcript of this episode and find links to more retrieval practice resources, visit cultofpedagogy.com/ai-integrity.

Lots of teachers give students some kind of questionnaire at the beginning of a school year to get to know them, but what do you do with that information after you get it? By putting responses into a spreadsheet, you'll have a relationship-building tool you can use all year.

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Thanks to Studyo for sponsoring this tip. You can find written and video versions of these at cultofpedagogy.com/edutips.

Retrieval practice is the act of trying to recall something you learned from memory by doing things like taking a test or using flashcards instead of just looking at, rereading, or reviewing the information. When we study with retrieval, we learn and remember things much better than we do by other review methods. So how do we add more to our classrooms? In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Pooja Agarwal, editor of the book Smart Teaching Stronger Learning, and two of the book's authors, Dr. Janell Blunt and Dr. Michelle Rivers, to learn nine simple, easy, and fun retrieval strategies that can be added to any lesson.

Thanks to Zearn and EVERFI for sponsoring this episode.

To read a full transcript of this episode and find links to more retrieval practice resources, visit cultofpedagogy.com/retrieval-in-action.

We talk a lot about differentiating instruction, measuring growth, and preparing students for the real world, but how do you actually do that in a system still driven by grades? Maybe you need a new model altogether. In this episode, we're exploring an approach to school called competency-based learning. I'm joined by three educators — Susie Bell, Heather Messer, and Beth Blankenship — who show us what this model actually looks like in classrooms. They share real teaching examples, how they assess growth over time, and how the Mastery Transcript Consortium supports this work.

Thanks to Zearn and EVERFI for sponsoring this episode.

To read a full transcript of this episode and get more resources on competency-based learning, visit cultofpedagogy.com/competency-based-learning.

Grammar has never been an especially popular area of study, and teaching it has frustrated many English teachers throughout time. It seems like no matter how hard we try, the concepts just don't stick as well as we'd like them to. In this episode, I'm talking to Matthew Johnson, author of the new book Good Grammar: Joyful and Affirming Language Lessons That Work for More Students, about some truly fresh approaches he takes to grammar instruction (I definitely never tried them!). They have worked so well that his students now say grammar is their favorite part of his class — definitely worth a listen!

Thanks to Zearn and EVERFI for sponsoring this episode.

And to learn more about Grammar Gap Fillers, go to cultofpedagogy.com/grammar.

To read Matt's article and get links to his book, visit cultofpedagogy.com/grammar-stinks/.

Research shows that adding physical or hand gestures to a learning experience, especially ones that have some meaning to them, can significantly boost how well students understand and remember the content.

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Thanks to Class Composer for sponsoring this tip. You can find written and video versions of these at cultofpedagogy.com/edutips.