Education Bookcast

This podcast has been an eye opening roller coaster of a journey. I am now on episode 95 and determined to go through. It has given me invaluable insights for my six-grader’s education and in understanding education as a whole. Material reviewed is top notch, including some bestselling books, and commentary is high quality, to the point that I listen even to those episodes where I have already read the book, and still find it valuable. I wish our educators and education policy-makers had at least a fraction of this knowledge. I hope Stash manages to distill this into a comprehensive practical guidelines for education reform. We in Georgia are certainly in need of this.

Incredibly clear thinking process presented the same way makes it an amazing and insightful listening experience. Looking forward to more!

I am a professional piano teacher and I have listened to many podcasts across a wide range of fields, including education. I found Education Bookcast because I wanted to learn more about Direct Instruction and Siegfried Engelmann, and this was one of the few resources that covered this topic. The two episodes on DI and Engelmann were fabulous, and then I dug in more with his episodes on John Wooden, Marva Collins, and Jaime Escalante. These episodes have given me so much food for thought as a teacher and has hugely broadened my perspective. I think that Stas’s comments along the way are incredibly insightful, because he interacts with the material in a way that actually anticipates thoughts and responses I myself would have as well. For example, he compares Marva Collins’ generous usage of praise with research on mindset by Carol Dweck for instance, and gives a fascinating discussion of how those two contrasting ideas fit together. Alternately, he often emphasizes things that are completely outside of what I typically think about, like the necessity of exercising and projecting authority and power as a teacher, and this gives me a lot to consider. Thanks for your work Stas, I am grateful to have your very rich reflections on teaching and education and I feel that I have benefited a lot as a piano teacher from them.

I thought this was going to be a very good podcast. I really liked the concept of discussing theory of education vs other education podcasts that just invite a different “expert” on every show (it’s always a teacher that quit teaching and decided to write a book or a blog on how to be a better teacher). The host just rambles on and on and goes on tangent after tangent never really getting to any point. He repeats the same sentences in different ways one sentence after another like he is making a point but when you really listen there is no point. It’s usually just something that really annoys him. He talks about he hates certain theories because they go on and on when then can be more concise and use simpler terms but then he does the same thing with his podcast. Most of the shows are him just mentioning an educational term and then reading the definition and then paraphrasing what he thinks it means but again this is all with no real point at the end. He is just telling you there is something out there called this or that.