We Teach Inspired!!

Nick Mann is the creator of the online health and wellness programs TeacherFit and StudentFit and we are lucky to call him a friend and mentor. We are sharing this bonus episode with you in the hopes that you can incorporate StudentFit into your school this year. In this episode Nick discusses why he created StudentFit, what the student programming looks like and why this year health and wellness for students is so important.

When you reach out to Nick to learn more please let him know that you heard about it on Value Adds Value!

Learn more about StudentFit and TeacherFit on the links below or connect with Nick on Instagram and Twitter: @teacherfir_ 

https://www.teacherfit.com/

https://studentfit.teacherfit.com/info

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuAIUUaoNr4&t=3s

If you listened to the podcast last week we started a conversation with our friend Ben Scoggan that we thought would be about how to set standards for yourself and have the discipline to follow through on them. It turned into a conversation on how we are preparing our teachers for the classroom. 

Here are a few questions we tackled:

Should teacher prep programs be specific to where you're going to get a job? Meaning do more to prepare teachers for rural and urban schools?

Should aspiring teachers learn pedagogy before content or vice versa?

Should content area classes be specific for teachers? Rather than taking history classes with history majors should teachers taking history classes designed to demonstrate how to teach the content. 

We hope you enjoy this episode of Value Adds Value and we'd love to continue these conversations with you on social media!

Find us on Facebook and Youtube as Value Adds Value!

Instagram: @valueaddsvalue @itskylekrueger @its.wil.law.iii

Twitter: @itskylekrueger @its_wil_law_iii

It seems the theme of this of Season 3 of Value Adds Value is each episode has left of us with more questions than answer, but isn't that the point of discussion. We continue our deep dive into standards which starter last week on this episode with someone who can give us an outside perspective. We asked our good friend Ben Scoggan to come back on the show to share his insights on what it means to have standards and share his experiences in the Marine Reserves. 

We feel it is increasingly important to get out of our echo chamber to provide you with a variety of opinions and outlooks. On this episode we talk about:

-What qualifies as a standard

-What teacher preparedness programs should look like

-How we can learn from military structure

-Functioning together as a unit

We hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast and tune in next week to listen to the second half of our conversation with Ben!!

As always you can find us at theledproject.com!

Twitter: @itskylekrueger @its_wil_law_iii

Instagram and Tik Tok: @itskylekrueger @its.wil.law.iii

Attention all ELA teachers!! The ELA Success Summit is an online PD coming up this August focused on providing you with the digital tools you need to tackle the 2020-21 school year. We had the chance to talk with one of the cofounders of the event Kim Crouch on this bonus episode of Value Adds Value. 

Kim is a teacher on Long Island with an incredible story. We had the chance to talk to her about what is was like to be a novice teacher on Long Island on September 11, 2001, the power of journaling, how to create advocacy and agency with your students, and what teachers can expect from the ELA Success Summit! 

We hope you'll check it out!

https://www.elasuccesssummit.com/

https://www.instagram.com/english_oh_my/?hl=en

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/English-Oh-My

How do you define the word standard?

When talking about standards in education how are they most commonly referenced?

What are high standards? 

These are the questions we tackle on this episode of Value Adds Value!

This conversation started as the two of us catching up about Wilkie's dissertation. We started talking about the correlation between Hip Hop and education. This conversation was born from that! We hope you enjoy it!

Find us online at theledproject.com!

Twitter: @itskylekrueger @its_wil_law_iii

Instagram: @itskylekrueger @its.wil.law.iii @valueaddsvalue

What is up fam?! This episode is continuation on our conversation from last week on why relationships require discourse. On this episode we talk about things like bringing nuance back to conversations and how as teachers we can't trade on authority any more. The real question is how to do we make discourse more than just a one off we use it difficult times? How do we make discourse a day to day part of our classroom culture?

Here's a couple ideas we discuss in the podcast:

1. What questions do we need to be asking? Generally to create discourse and specifically in our lessons?

2. How to we change our position from judge of conversation to participant?

3. How can we overcome our prejudice and increase our curiosity?

4. How do we focus the raw energy of our students?

We hope you'll take the time to listen to this episode and while you're at we'd love for you to like and subscribe!! 

To learn more about us head over to theledproject.com!

Find us on social media:

Twitter: @itskylekrueger @its_wil_law_iii

Instagram: @valueaddsvalue @its.wil.law.iii @itskylekrueger

Facebook.com/valueaddsvalue

Welcome to Season 3 of Value Adds Value! We are thrilled to introduce the newest season of the podcast in which we will be focusing exclusively on relationships. In this episode we discuss why discourse is required for relationships and how it seems to be more challenging than ever.  Lets define it. 

Discourse- a formal discussion of a topic in speech or writing

We focused on the word formal for our discussion and how formalities are lacking in the current political and social climate in our country. We hear a lot on TV and in social media that the "other side" isn't willing to listen or change their perspective." Or we hear in within our social circles that you just don't talk about race, politics, religion or finances. These are just excuses people use because they don't want to have their point of view challenged or feel uncomfortable. 

This can't be us as teachers. We can not be people who shun discourse. We can't be afraid to be called out for our shortcomings or be unwilling to listen to the perspectives of others because the discourse we are running from is the one with our kids. If we don't teach our kids what discourse looks like who will?? If we don't model discourse who will?? If we don't get out of our bubbles and get uncomfortable our generation will miss the opportunity to change education in America!! 

LET'S GO FAM!!

To connect with us online visit theledproject.com of find us as Value Adds Value on Youtube!

Connect with us on Instagram @valueaddsvalue @itskylekrueger @its.wil.law.iii

This is a candid conversation in which Wilkie talks about George Floyd and being a black man.

We have learned a lot about distance learning and digital technology over the last few months. We had made incorrect assumptions about the crossover our digital native students would make when it comes to digital learning. We thought it would be seamless, but it wasn't. Then we looked back on our students struggles with digital learning in the classroom. We knew we had a lot to learn, so we asked our friend Jessica Reed to come on the podcast to talk about how to match the right digital learning platforms to our students needs and our curriculum needs. 

Jess is familiar with a variety of platforms and has a lot of experience in using digital resources with our students who receive special education services. We hope  you find value in this episode and if you do please share it with the teachers in your life!

Instagram and Twitter: @valueaddsvalue @itskylekrueger @its.wil.law.iii

Visit our website!

https://sites.google.com/view/spedtechteacher/home

We know there are challenges in the Co-Teaching setting.  Creating continuity across different areas of expertise and levels of experience can be a real challenge. It can often cause confusion on the role of the content teacher and the inclusion teacher for students and teachers alike. Our friend Jessica Reed has created a really cool document called the COLLABORATIVE PRE-NUP that is aimed to make the co-teaching setting more effective as teachers and more productive for kids. She explains it on this episode of VALUE ADDS VALUE!!

And tune in next week to her Jess talk about how to more effectively use digital learning tools for our students that receive SPED services!!

Click here to learn more about Jessica's work!

Click here to learn more about Lighthouse Educator Development!