The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast Jennifer Gonzalez

When teachers and students feel heard, the climate of a school just gets better, and semantic pulse surveys can make that happen. In this episode, we'll learn what about this fresh approach to surveying and how teachers and administrators can create their own to gain better insights about the students and teachers they serve. 
This episode is sponsored by Alpaca. School leaders can get 15% off a year of Alpaca's pulse surveys — visit alpacapacks.com/pedagogy to learn more.
To read the post, visit cultofpedagogy.com/semantic-pulse-surveys 

You can never have too many ideas for helping struggling students, right? In this episode, you'll get a few more that you may not have tried. My guests are two teachers — learning specialist Sarah Riggs Johnson and math teacher Nate Wolkenhauer — who share their system of strategies that help all students learn better, a kind of pyramid where the ones at the bottom apply to all students, the middle layers are used with a smaller group, and at the top are strategies that are only needed for a few students. If you teach math or special ed, this one is a must, but even if you don't, you're going to come away with some new ideas for how to help students who struggle — even if they don't have an identified learning disability.
Thanks to Scholastic Magazines+ and Studyo for sponsoring this episode.
To read Nate and Sarah's post, visit cultofpedagogy.com/tiered-learning-supports 

The rights of parents to choose the best school for their children — also known as school choice — may seem simple on the surface, but it's anything but, and it has the potential to impact teachers and students all over the country. In this episode, I talk with Cara Fitzpatrick, author of The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America. We discuss why school choice is actually pretty complicated, we dig into some of the key groups that have historically pushed for it, and we explore some things concerned citizens can do to ensure that families can still get their children the best education possible.
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Thanks to WeVideo and The Modern Classrooms Project for sponsoring this episode. 
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To read a transcript and get a link to Cara's book, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 228.

Annotation can be a powerful way to improve comprehension and increase engagement, but its effectiveness can vary depending on how it's taught. In this episode, two teachers share their classroom-tested approaches to teaching students how to effectively annotate texts: 3rd grade teacher Andrea Castellano and high school English teacher Irene Yannascoli. 
Thanks to Listenwise and Studyo for sponsoring this episode.
To read a full transcript of this conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com/art-of-annotation/.
 

If your school is lucky enough to have a full-time certified librarian, it's likely they are not being utilized to their full capacity. In fact, yours may be one of a growing number of schools that are eliminating librarians altogether, and that is a terrible idea. In this episode, I sit down with four accomplished librarians — K.C. Boyd, Barbara Paciotti, Lauren Mobley, and Karina Quilantan-Garza — to explore all the ways a certified school librarian can make teachers' work easier, more efficient, and more effective, and to make a strong case for why every school needs one.
Thanks to WeVideo and The Modern Classrooms Project for sponsoring this episode.
To read a full transcript of this conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 226.

Many states are seeing record high numbers of teacher turnovers and vacancies. While the problems that caused this shortage have not gone away, there are groups of people who are coming up with some creative ways to address this situation, new and surprisingly affordable pathways for training good, enthusiastic teachers. Two of these programs are Oxford Teachers College at Reach University and Educators Rising. In this episode, educator Kimberly Eckert talks with me about how and why both of these outstanding programs work.
Thanks to Edge•U Badges and EVERFI for sponsoring this episode.
To read a full transcript of our conversation and find links to all the resources mentioned in this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/teacher-shortage.