Season 3

Making Social Studies Come Alive Through Inquiry In this week’s Podcast episode, I sit down with Charisse Smith Ph.D. —CEO of Sankofa Educational Consulting and former K–6 Social Studies Supervisor in Trenton Public Schools ,...

Cutting Through the Noise with Priority Standards Teachers are asked to do everything — personalization, differentiation, voice and choice, standards-based instruction… but rarely is anything taken off the plate. In this epis...

In this Have a Life Teaching Podcast episode, we speak with Maureen Chapman and James Simons of Core Creative Partners about their new book, Leaders of the Class . We explore how motivation, perseverance, communication, and c...

In this episode of the Have a Life Teaching Podcast. we welcome Dr. Carmen Bell Ross—founder and CEO of SP Grace—and her daughter, Sierra Ross, a Harvard University student, for a powerful mother-daughter conversation on help...

John talks with Mickey Evans and Erin Sanchez about place-based learning , a pedagogy of connectedness that roots instruction in students’ local communities, cultures, and environments. They share design principles for creati...

In this episode, Dr. John Schembari speaks with Nicholas Bradford - Founder at National Center for Restorative Justice - about how restorative justice can transform school culture by balancing accountability, relationship bui...

Guest: Dr. Tim Shanahan , literacy researcher, author of Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives , and founder of the UIC Center for Literacy. Episode Summary: Dr. Shanahan joins John to discuss why students must engage with grade-lev...

“If students can’t read to learn, they can’t learn through reading.” In this episode of the podcast, I talk with Gwen Pauloski, author of Making Deep Sense of Informational Text: A Framework for Strengthening Comprehension in...

In this episode of The Have a Life Teaching Podcast , host Dr. John Schembari talks with Illinois educators Paige Timmerman and Courtney Hake , co-authors of Their Stories, Their Voices . Together, they explore how teachers c...

Poetry isn’t just “beautiful prose” — it’s a doorway into critical thinking, voice, and perspective. In this episode, I sit down with Jewellyn Forrest, national writing consultant and co-founder of Autonomy Learning, to explo...

When Teachers Believe—in Themselves and Each Other—Students Thrive This week on the podcast, we sit down with Jenni Donohoo and Glenn Forbes to discuss their new book, Collective Impact: Overcoming the Twelve Enemies of Teach...

In this episode, we are joined by Shannon McLeod from Thrive with Outdoor Learning for an inspiring and insightful conversation about the power of taking learning outside the classroom. We cover the how, why, when, and what o...