Episodes

Hi Everyone! Thanks for listening to season one of the Have a Life Teaching Podcast. In July 24, I'll be continuing to edit great content that I hope you will enjoy in August and beyond. The podcast will be back in August/September on a limited schedule - as I will be working overseas in September - and returning full force with season two content being published weekly in October onwards. Best, John Schembari

In this episoode of the Have a Life Teaching podcast, Adam Andre - museum participation facilitator at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool - and I discuss how and why we should not shy away from teaching students about historical slavery nor its ongoing impact on our world today. We discuss: - Liverpool's connection to the transatlantic slave trade and the impact of slavery on the city's growth - How to center the voices of those victimized by slavery - Focusing on resistance, for ...

In this episode, Anjana and Anya, two high school students from New Jersey, discuss their program 'Connected' aimed at promoting awareness of the mental health struggles that often accompany the academic pressures that high achieving secondary students sometimes feel. Anjana and Anya share their experiences and insights on creating this high school public awareness campaign and discuss how their work has inspired peer scholars to prioritize their mental health wellbeing. Anjana and Anya emphas...

In this episode, we speak with Maria Nielsen - former school principal, current education consultant, and author of the new Solution Tree book - 15 Day Challenge: Simplify and Energize Your PLC at Work. We discuss how to write 15 day curriculum units, efficaciously and efficiently, through a seven step PLC process that is strategically aligned to academic goals, anticipates student needs, assesses impact on student growth and achievement and is collaborative in nature. Learn how such...

In an earlier episode, we spoke with Alice Vigors about her work in creating cross-content thinking classrooms. In this episiode, we speak with Professor Peter Liljedahl, of Simon Fraser University, about how to create thinking classrooms in Mathematics - primarily K-6 - where students are doing the heavy cognitive lift as opposed to teachers. Join me and my guest co-host Norman Eng, student teaching supervisor at Brooklyn College/CUNY, as we chat with Peter about: - The 14 pra...

Earlier this week, we chatted with Ryan Steuer and Andrew Larson about the mechanics of embedding PBL within our teaching practice. This week, we speak with Carolyn Brown, Acting VP of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, and Rose Reiken, middle school teacher at High Tech High in San Diego, about their PBL unit collaboration. Learn more in this episode about how Carolyn and Rose partnered on a project that benefited both the museum, in improving the youth engagement factor of their p...

In this episode, join me and my guests Ryan Steuer and Andrew Larson - authors of PBL Simplified and Life's a Project - as we discuss the ins/outs of teaching through a project based learning model. In this episode, we discuss the what and why of PBL - student engagement in learning - as well as practical ways to implement PBL in the classroom. We chat about how to align PBL learning to standards, the typical length of a PBL unit, sample units, the role of community parthers and student public ...

New teachers coming into the profession often struggle in knowing what to do/learn first. Indeed, as my next guests say, for most new teachers, the goal is simply surviving day to day and to make it into their second yearof teaching. Join me and my guests, Tom Hierck and Alex Kajitani – book authors and Solution Tree education consultants – as we discuss their new book – You’rea Teacher Now! What’s Next? We discussthe importance of forming relationships with both students and colleagues, as t...

In this episode, we have the opportunity to chat with Chad Dumas - former school principal, CEO of Next Learning Solutions, and Solution Tree PLC@Work consultant - about how schools should be using data strategically in both PLCs and school leadership teams to improve student growth and achievement. Dumas discuss the four lenses through which we should collect/review data, systemically, as we set school improvement goals and develop our 3-5 year school strategic plans - achievement, perceptio...

In an earlier episode with Darlene Prott, we discussed how to help students to engage in the act of reading itself. In this episode, we speak with Lorraine Radice - K-12 director of literacy in a public school district in New York and author of the book Leading a Culture of Reading -about how to create a welcoming school community culture centered around reading. This culture can take many forms, some of which we unpack here - adult book study, parent academies centered around how to help ...

These are challenging times in the world and, as we see on university/K12 school campuses, global events are having a direct impact on the teaching and learning environment. How do we teach students about both Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia? How do we engage with those who do not share our perspectives on the Israel-Hamas conflict? I hope you will listen to this podcast conversation with Dr. Debbie Almontaser - cultural diversity specialist and founder/CEO of the Bridging Cultures Group...

As Darlene Prott - Founder and CEO of NJ Teacher 2 Teacher says, we may think students should be able to read once they pass third grade but we may want to think again especially if we are supporting multi-lingual learners. Students may be able to decode words by 3rd grade but do they truly understand and can they make meaning of and draw connections from what they are reading? In this episode, Prott and I discuss how teachers - particularly cross content teachers grades 4 and up - c...

Today, principals are coming to the job younger and with less experience. While they come with curiosity and enthusiasm for the job, many still struggle in the role because they do not have a grounding in the basic pillars of leadership in school settings. In this episide, my guest David Franklin - CEO and founder of The Principal's Desk - and I discuss the five pillars of leadership as discussed in his new book - Advice from The Principal's Desk. We highlight the importance of impro...

In this episode, Jose Bowen - DEI education consultant and former President of Goucher College - and I discuss his new book Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning. Indeed, in his book and in our chat, Professor Bowen asserts that AI will not replace jobs but rather require students today to use AI to develop both their metacognition and creativity if they are to be marketable for the jobs that AI will actually create. We also discuss practical ways through...

April 7th will be the thirtieth anniversary of the start of the Rwandan Genocide in which 800,000 men, women, and children - mostly from the Tutsi minority group - were deliberately and systematically murdered because of who they were - not because of anything they did. In this episode, my guest Jacqueline Murekatete - human rights lawyer and founder of the Genocide Survivors Foundation - and I not only discuss her work in supporting survivors of global genocide but also her experiences as a ...

Educators can't do well by their students if they are not whole themselves. Sometimes, the best course of action is to know when enough is enough and change course to new jobs in the education field or outside of it. In this episode, Casey Jakubowski - co-author of Crush It From the Start: 50 Tips for New Teachers and school principal - and I discuss the signs to look for to determine if moving on is the right decision. In his book, see Tip #50 - Knowing When to Retreat. We als...

In this episode, Megan Conklin - founder of Conklin Educational Perspectives and Trainer at the Washington Education Association - discusses her work in designing and facilitating substitute teacher team training programs and how her model could and should be replicated across the country. Data suggests that K12 students in the USA can spend up to a year in classes managed by substitutes who are often unsupported and unprepared to meet student needs. Yet, programs like Megan's are providing s...

In this episode of the Have a Life Teaching Podcast, Jo Boaler, Stanford Math education professor and author of ther new book "Math- ish", and I discuss how to make Math instruction more accessible to students in K12 schools. Math learning can cause unnecessary anxiety if it is taught only abstractly rather than in a way that connects it to the world in which we live and helps to explain it. We chat about the value that comes from K12 students discussing what they think Math represented pi...

In this episode of the Have a Life Teaching Podcast, Roxie Patton, Founder of RJ Consulting and Coaching, and I continue our conversation on the importance of having educators who understand the students and families they serve. Since many educators no longer live in the communites where they teach, this becomes a particularly important consideration within teaching. Roxie and I discuss ways through which educators might combat the internal biases they may have of others/their students as ...

When we teach students how to write, we often do so by teaching certain writing "moves" - introducing a topic, expanding on it, and summation, etc. We also should be teaching the communication moves that go along with public speaking and presentation. So says my guest Robyn Brinks Lockwood, speech professor at Stanford University, on this episode. So that students can meet the rigor of college teaching and learning, Professor Brinks-Lockwood and I discuss what K12 educators, particularly h...

Over 27 percent of all students in America have immigrant parents. In this episode, Ari Gerzon-Kessler and I discuss strategies for better engaging this traditionally underserved population of families. Gerzon-Kessler, a former principal, currently serves as a coordinator of family partnerships and is the author of the new book "On the Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together". He and I discuss the power of newcomer parent-teacher teams as well as home visits in bo...

In this episode, my guest Allison Rodman, author of the new book Still Learning and the founder/CEO of The Learning Loop, and I discuss what is required to embed effective teacher professional development in schools. We discuss what administrators must do to ensure that all training is systemic and has established success criteria as well as how to improve the effectiveness of teacher professional learning communities and overall teacher collaboration in schools. Allison Rodman LinkedIn St...

In this episode, the authors of the Formative Assessment Handbook, Marine Freiburn and Sandy Brunet, and I discuss how to craft learning intentions that then allow teachers to align assessment and student engagement to those learning goals. In our chat, we discuss how to unpack standards into child friendly learning intentions, how to embed success criteria in learning, and strategies for engaging students in understanding and measuring their own growth towards mastery of learning intentions. ...

Maker spaces are anywhere and everywhere where students are taking knowledge and creating something physical that adds on to that knowledge in new ways. Students' cognitive skills are developed in the process. Yes, schools can create labs with 3D printers but teachers can also turn a closet into a maker space. Join my next guest Matt Zigler, maker space cordinator at the Bullis School and professional artist, and I as we discuss ways through which he helps classroom teachers design a maker space...