Homeroom Attendance w/ Edward DeShazer

Edward DeShazer

You know that look teachers give each other in the hallway? The one that says everything without saying a word? That's what this show is. Homeroom Attendance is the podcast for educators who are done with the watered-down professional development and ready for real talk about what it actually takes to show up, lead well, and build a culture that doesn't burn people out. Every episode, host Edward DeShazer brings lived experience, practical tools, and honest conversation straight to the teacher lounge. Whether you're a classroom teacher, a school leader, a counselor, or an administrator, there is something here for you. No Pinterest PD. No corporate buzzwords. Just the kind of conversation educators actually need. Each episode delivers a clear takeaway, a mindset reframe, and one action step you can use today or tomorrow. Because the best professional development doesn't make you feel talked at. It makes you feel seen. Pull up a chair. Attendance is being taken.

  1. 2d ago

    Tired or Done? Don't Quit Teaching In October

    Sometime in the last two weeks, have you sat in your car in the school parking lot, engine off, not ready to go in? Maybe for a minute, maybe for ten, wondering how many more years you have left. Edward DeShazer has been there, even after 21 years in education. In this episode he takes on a belief a lot of teachers pick up early: good teachers don’t get tired. RAND’s 2026 national survey found that 55% of public school teachers report frequent job stress, compared with 34% of similar working adults, and women teachers carry more of it. Many of them go home and start a second shift with their own kids. Edward explains Ellen Moir’s disillusionment phase, the stretch six or seven weeks into the year when the August adrenaline runs out, and why veteran teachers feel it too. He brings in a lesson from his college football coach: sore gets better with rest, and hurt gets worse when you keep playing. Most teachers in October are sore and scared that it means they’re hurt. You’ll get two tests. The rest test asks whether anything came back the last time you truly rested. The kid test asks whether you still care what happens to the student you worry about most. If both come back empty, Edward speaks to that too: leaving a job is not leaving your purpose, and that decision deserves a clear head and people in your corner. The one rule is to never make a forever decision in October. Instead, write down “Am I tired or am I done?” with today’s honest answer, and read it again in the spring. The episode closes with the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Before God talked to him about what was next, God gave him a nap and a meal. www.homeroomattendance.com

  2. Oct 25

    How One Teacher’s Expectations Change A Life

    There’s a thought a lot of teachers have and never say in a staff meeting. You’re thinking about one student, the one in the back, and a quiet voice says, “Maybe I’m not the right person for this kid. Somebody who grew up the way he grew up could reach him better.” Edward DeShazer was that student. He started receiving special education services in third grade and was expelled in sixth grade, in eighth grade, and again a month into his freshman year. Teachers had heard about him before he walked in the door. Today he sits on an education board with the principal and superintendent who expelled him. Somewhere in that freshman year was Mrs. Davis, his Brit Lit teacher. She was a white teacher from the Milwaukee suburbs. She didn’t pretend to share his life, didn’t borrow his slang, and didn’t send him down to the special education wing when he tested her. She told him there was something special in him and held him to the standard in her room. Edward walks through research from economists Seth Gershenson and Nicholas Papageorge. When two teachers rated the same Black tenth grader, the non-Black teacher was about 30 percent less likely to expect that student to finish a four-year degree. The researchers point out that this kind of bias is part of human nature and isn’t a verdict on whether you’re a good person. Their follow-up work found that teacher expectations affect whether students actually finish college. That’s the Believe’ment Gap: the distance between what we assume from a kid’s file and what that kid can do once someone in the building believes in them. You’ll leave with two moves. Write one honest sentence about where you think a student will be in 10 years, then ask where that belief came from. And find two minutes to ask that student something their file can’t answer, then remember what they told you. There’s also a practice for grade level team meetings and a word from Edward’s faith about why that student landed in your room on purpose. www.homeroomattendance.com

  3. Oct 18

    Lend Them Your Calm: The First 10 Seconds of a Blowup

    A chair hits the floor. A student is yelling. Twenty five faces turn to look at one person, and that person is you. Last episode we talked about how students copy the adults around them. This episode is about the moment they copy hardest. Edward DeShazer slows the first 10 seconds of a student blowup all the way down: what happens in your body, why your stress response can’t be trusted to make the call on its own, and why the first person you have to de-escalate is yourself. Edward speaks from both sides of that moment. As a student, he was the kid adults braced for, and he remembers what made it worse every time: an adult who matched his energy. The adults who reached him got quieter and slower, and made it clear there was no battle to win. You’ll walk away with practical moves for a real classroom. You’ll learn the cyclic sigh from a 2023 Stanford study, how to go lower and slower, how to angle your body so you don’t square up, and why “why did you do that?” backfires in the middle of a crisis. Edward walks through Dr. Dan Siegel’s “name it to tame it,” how to offer a small choice so a kid can step back without losing face, and how to keep the rest of the room feeling safe. The episode also covers what a whole building can do: one shared calm phrase every adult uses, a clear plan for who comes and how fast, and the idea of practicing for blowups the way schools practice fire drills. It closes with the repair conversation the next day, a reminder that calm does not erase accountability, and a challenge to find your own reset ritual before you walk through your front door. Lessyns, an app built to help educators regulate before they respond, is coming soon. Listeners will hear about the beta first. www.homeroomattendance.com

  4. Oct 11

    What Students Learn From Watching You

    Your students will forget the vocabulary words. They will forget the anchor chart steps. What they will remember is how you looked at them when they walked in after getting in trouble somewhere else in the building. Edward opens with the Bobo doll experiment from 1961 — preschoolers watched an adult go after an inflatable clown, then repeated it word for word without being asked or rewarded. Nobody taught them. They just watched. And 60 years later, most school buildings still operate as if kids learn from what adults say rather than what they do. This episode covers what students absorb from every adult in the building, not just classroom teachers, what happens when you mess up in front of kids and actually own it, and two building norms you can set this week that cost nothing and change everything. If your students copied exactly how you handled this past week, what would they have learned? ⭐ Rate and subscribe. New episodes every Sunday. www.homeroomattendance.com

  5. Oct 4

    Educators Aren't Fine

    Count how many times someone asked how you were doing this week. Now count how many times you actually meant it when you said fine. RAND's 2026 survey found that 55% of teachers deal with frequent job-related stress, compared to 34% of similar adults outside education. Forty-six percent said teaching left them too tired for a personal life. The teacher who said fine in September is often the one whose resignation letter surprises everyone in March. It shouldn't be a surprise. We just never got the real answer when we asked. In this episode, Edward breaks down why educators are so good at performing okay, what it costs the people around them, and what one honest minute from a leader at the front of a room can actually do to a building's culture. He also gives you a better question to ask than "how are you?" — because how are you stopped being a real question a long time ago. If the people in your building told you the truth tomorrow, what do you think you'd hear? ⭐ Rate and subscribe. New episodes every Sunday. www.homeroomattendance.com

  6. Sep 27

    What Student Behavior Is Actually Telling You

    Before the relationship recession shows up in grades or attendance, it shows up in behavior. The kid who stops asking for help. The one testing you a little further each day to see if you'll still show up for them. The student who goes completely quiet and never gets written up but has fully checked out. The class clown whose jokes are getting sharper because something underneath is getting heavier. Edward knows these four patterns from the inside. He was that student — the one with the long referral file that described everything he did and nothing about what he needed. Acting out was the only language he had. In this episode he connects the relationship recession to what you're actually seeing in your classroom right now, introduces the 2x10 rule for rebuilding connection with your hardest student, and walks through a whole-building relationship mapping exercise that makes the invisible kids visible. Because when a student's connection to school depends on one great teacher, they're one schedule change away from losing it entirely. ⭐ Rate and subscribe. New episodes every Sunday. www.homeroomattendance.com

  7. Sep 20

    Home Alone As A Lesson In Teacher Boundaries

    Kevin McAllister didn't get left behind because his family didn't love him. He got left behind because everyone was moving too fast to notice he was still standing there. That happens in schools too. The reliable teacher who handles the five hardest students every year because they can. The support staff member who's been there fifteen years and never gets thanked. The person who covers every shortage and never gets covered. Nobody decided to overlook them. The building was just moving fast. But here's the part of Home Alone that most people miss: Kevin doesn't spend the movie waiting to be remembered. He decides the house is his to protect and starts preparing like it's going to be tested — because he knows nobody else is coming to help him build it. This is the second episode in Edward's movie series, where he pulls real lessons for educators out of films that have nothing to do with school on the surface. This one is about boundaries, preparation, and what it actually means to defend something worth keeping. What is your version of that house? And when the pressure shows up at the door, will you hold the line? ⭐ Rate and subscribe. New episodes every Sunday. www.homeroomattendance.com

  8. Sep 13

    You Either Die a Hero

    Before anything bad happens to Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, he says the truest thing about himself out loud. And then the story never gives him a way back to it. Educators make a version of that same statement when they start this work. I will never become that teacher. I will always believe in this kid. I will never stop caring the way I care right now. And the slide away from that person is not dramatic. It's a parent who never showed up, an initiative that got scrapped the year after you put everything into it, a kid who lied to your face after you fought hard for them. None of those moments turn you into someone different on their own. Enough of them stacked together quietly? That's a different story. This is the first episode in a new series pulling real lessons from movies that have nothing to do with school on the surface. It starts with the most educational movie Edward has ever seen. The question he's leaving you with: what did you swear you'd never become when you started? And if you're honest today, are you becoming that? ⭐ Rate and subscribe. New episodes every Sunday. www.homeroomattendance.com

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About

You know that look teachers give each other in the hallway? The one that says everything without saying a word? That's what this show is. Homeroom Attendance is the podcast for educators who are done with the watered-down professional development and ready for real talk about what it actually takes to show up, lead well, and build a culture that doesn't burn people out. Every episode, host Edward DeShazer brings lived experience, practical tools, and honest conversation straight to the teacher lounge. Whether you're a classroom teacher, a school leader, a counselor, or an administrator, there is something here for you. No Pinterest PD. No corporate buzzwords. Just the kind of conversation educators actually need. Each episode delivers a clear takeaway, a mindset reframe, and one action step you can use today or tomorrow. Because the best professional development doesn't make you feel talked at. It makes you feel seen. Pull up a chair. Attendance is being taken.

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