Too Dope Teachers and a Mic

It is no secret that the teaching profession has become increasingly challenging, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. For those of us who taught before and through the pandemic, it was never easy. Always challenging, always demanding, always underpaid. Kevin and I have both left classroom roles (although being an administrator is also difficult), and we are both still a little, what's the word, surprised? When folx choose teaching in these times.

Filmmaker Adam Gacka, founder of Production House in Chicago, was hired to make a promotional video for the ambitious Chicago Teacher Residency and during the course of filming, got to know many of the teachers in the school. In particular, as he learned about Nkanga Nsa, a resident in the program, he felt that her story needed to be shared. So the result was Teacher, a film that would document her journey through her residency, as well as that of the community around her. As Adam boldly declares, saving our teachers will save our democracy.

Adam and Nkanga join us for an in-depth conversation on one teacher's experience, the ongoing work to ensure that our American teaching corps better reflect children in most classrooms, and the ambitious dream to become "an island beyond oneself" in Nkanga's words.

Buy the film, TEACHER on Prime Video!

Visit our sponsors!

Support TooDope Productions!

For over two months, violence has raged on the Gaza Strip. Since the world snapped to attention on October 7, just under 20,000 Palestinians and 1300 Israelis (around 400 IDF soldiers) have died in the so-called "Israel-Hamas War" a carefully curated framing of the violence. This is an awful moment, and has led a number of experts to name the actions visited upon Palestinians as genocidal.

Kevin and Gerardo join the conversation. Perhaps later than some would hope. But we wanted to learn, listen, and elevate before seizing a social media moment.

Enter Abeer Shinnawi, our friend, a Palestinian teacher in the United States. Abeer calls upon us to teach the Palestinian struggle as a social justice/civil rights movement. She shares with us the privilege she has by living in the United States, but the pain she feels, as the Palestinian experience has been largely minimized, demonized, and erased. But in the midst of it all, she still believes that teachers can make a difference, to help students see that there is a civil rights imperative at work here.

Visit our sponsors and plan for your future!

Support the podcast!

This episode was supposed to come out during AANHSAPI Heritage Month (Asian-American Native Hawaiian South Asian Pacific Islander) but for a host of reasons, it did not. Hear Gerardo break down his ambivalence about heritage months and why we actually decided to put the episode out.

John Arthur is the 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year, and a finalist for National Teacher of the Year for the same year. In the two years since being announced, John has found a new level of advocacy and activism, speaking out for the dignity and value of teachers and public education, students and families from marginalized and minoritized communities, and taking every opportunity to stand up for all kids.

In addition, John is sunshine personified. You cannot be in his presence without feeling his warmth. Enjoy this episode, it is full of joy and motivation.

Support BIPOC-created media!

Visit our sponsors Cetera! Plan the future!

www.toodopeteachers.com

Deepali Vyas is the Founder and CEO of Fearless+, an EdTech platform that is on a mission to empower the younger generation. Deepali is a serial entrepreneur, advisory board member, career strategist, and executive search consultant with a recognized eye for spotting talent, rising trends and breakout business models. Deepali has over 20 years of experience in executive recruiting, having reviewed more than 100,000 resumes and placed thousands of executives in Fortune 500 companies. She has advised companies like Disney, JP Morgan, Uber, Google, IBM and the NFL to name a few.

Visit Fearless+

Check out all our projects!

Plan for the future with Cetera Investors!

www.toodopeteachers.com

Gerardo met NYC teacher and social media phenomenon Sari Rosenberg at the NNSTOY conference in July. For a long time, we have followed Sari's Instagram where she posts Reels of her pushback against racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic ideas and policies that seem to be all too common in today's civic discourse. Sari, whose path into teaching was considerably more tentative than her life as a teacher-activist, has become an outspoken voice for equity, justice, and teaching history honestly.

We have a fun conversation, which includes Sari's early forays into popular music and innovative entertainment technology, and her how she really feels about the trolls and hate groups on social media platforms (spoiler: she honestly does not care), and we hear a terrific Top Five (ish)

Visit our sponsors, Cetera, and get a discount to plan your financial future!

Sari's Website

Sari's Work!

Sari's Top Five!

Support the podcast on Patreon!

This week's guest is a direct challenge to how many of us are living our education lives in 2023. Believing is hard. Optimism is something we can switch on with students, when we need to maintain our authority in the classroom, but we struggle to live in optimism. Look, we get it. Teachers are entering yet another school year of unrealistic pressure, political attacks, and dwindling capacity to teach our students and live joyfully.

Rebecka Peterson has an idea for all of us.

Rebecka Peterson, the 2023 National Teacher of the Year, is a math teacher who loves stories.

Rebecka has taught high school math classes ranging from intermediate algebra to Advanced Placement calculus, for 11 years at Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Amid a difficult first year of high school teaching, she found the “One Good Thing” blog. She credits daily posting there to helping her recognize the beautiful and positive experiences occurring in her classroom, which inspired her to stay in the profession. She has since contributed 1,400 posts to the blog. As Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, she has visited teachers across the state to highlight their important work through the Teachers of Oklahoma campaign. 

As National Teacher of the Year, Rebecka plans to use her platform to highlight teachers’ stories of the good that’s happening in education. Teaching is a profession that affords creativity, autonomy and purpose, and Rebecka believes that highlighting the stories of joy happening in classrooms across the country will help encourage current teachers and attract new educators to the profession. 

Rebecka is a proud immigrant of Swedish-Iranian descent and lived in several countries around the world as her parents traveled as medical missionaries. Her own experience with supportive teachers who celebrated her diversity and math abilities informs Rebecka’s efforts to create a supportive and accessible classroom for students. She values listening to students’ stories as a way to better understand them and elevate their voice. 

Before joining the faculty at Union High School, Rebecka taught for three years at the collegiate level. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Oklahoma Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of South Dakota. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her husband, Brett, and son, Jonas, and she enjoys reading, crafting and playing board games.

Visit our sponsors, Cetera Investments! Use the Code TooDope to get started! Teachers can build generational wealth, too!

Support the podcast on Patreon!

Or simply buy us a coffee!

The 2023 Summer Revolution Mixtape is here, at last! It's late, but as friend of the podcast Marylin Zuñiga told us so many years ago, we gotta decolonize time, y'all! We know you are mostly back in the teaching game, but the time for radical imagination is always RIGHT. NOW.

The mixtape series is when we bring experimental, cutting-edge and unexpected ideas to you to consider as you enter another year guiding students. We hope to challenge and inspire you with these conversations.

Generative Artificial Intelligence, best identified through apps like ChatGPT, stands to hit education like that meteor that did the dinosaurs in, and if we aren't careful, it will do the same to us in education. So argues our guest, Ben Farrell, a principal at a school that had the audacity to embrace this terrifying technology.

Is it the pedagogical equivalent of Oppenheimer's experiment, or is it like the invention of pockets? Sorta depends on who you talk to. If you talk to Ben, he will tell you some of his school's generative AI practices, and how we may all learn from them. No spoilers, tho. Y'all gotta listen.

Support the podcast on Patreon!

Check out the great work of our sponsors, Alex and Tori!

Laura Cortez was a soccer player in Texas. Her coach required that players run track and cross country in order to maintain their fitness for the season. A self-identified tejana, she grew up with community, culture, and of course, Selena.

Having relocated to Colorado, Laura, along with Victor Fallon, formed the Trailtinos, a Latiné running collective that spans generations, experience levels, and culture. I had a chance to run with the crew, a nice 7-miler that was extremely hard without water. The conversations were incredible, and it was beautiful to see so many members of our raza prioritizing fitness, wellness, and community.

Laura joins me to discuss the formation of the Trailtinos, and the importance of community wellness.

Support the podcast on Patreon!

Plan for your financial future with our sponsors, Alex and Tori at Cetera Investors!

I'm angry today. As I attend meetings, webinars, read social media posts and articles that feature people with the actual power to improve the diversity (actually ESTABLISH diversity) in the teaching profession, I also see people in the same positions continually ostracize, ignore and otherwise sanction raza educators at every level of this work. It's plain to see that the system desires our faces, our surnames and our pedigrees, but not our convictions, beliefs, and humanness. And often, the agents of this process of icing out gente who truly represent the hopes, dreams, ambitions, the social and political convictions of our communities, are people who look like us, claim to be us.

We have to stop caping for a system that asks us to commit cultural, spiritual, and political self-harm. We have to have the courage to support each other, even when we have everything to gain from shutting each other down.

It's the Chicanologues, episode 3. Please subscribe!

website: www.gerardomunoz.co

support: patreon.com/toodopeteachers

Follow Gerardo:

Twitter: @toodopeteachers & @gerardinho9

IG: @toodopeteachers

For Asian American/Native Hawaiian/South Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we are spotlighting the stories, the experiences, and the wholeness of AANHSAPI teachers, their histories, and the communities they serve. They are part of our teaching force, battling inequities on behalf of their students and themselves.

Whitney Aragaki (she/they) is an educator, parent, and learner from Hilo, Hawaiʻi.  She supports students to learn through a lens of abundance that honors place, people and cultures. Her teaching focuses around conversations, practices and systems that sustain the intimate inter-relationship of public education, community and environment. Aragaki is the 2022 Hawaiʻi State Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year Finalist. She is a National Board Certified Teacher in Adolescence and Young Adulthood Mathematics.

Check out Whitney’s writing, connect at https://www.whitneyaragaki.com/

Whitney’s socials:

Twitter: @sayuri_neko

Instagram: @mamasayuri

Check out our website www.toodopeteachers.com

Support the podcast www.patreon.com/toodopeteachers