The Balance, by Dr. Catlin Tucker

This show is great, I listened to just one podcast. Innovation Inside the Box With George Couros, and it was amazing. It touched on a lot of different topics but the one that stuck out was how tech isn’t the end all be all in terms of the best teaching/learning strategy, sometimes that will always be human aided.

I agree that standards are more focused on quantity instead of quality because my experience in my high school geometry teacher confirms it. We constantly worry about getting behind just so we would at least be able to see the content before the end of the year. The Balance podcast by Caitlin Tucker “designing learning” is about how to handle your workload. She starts the interview and goes to talk about how we can help students learn quality content by overthrowing a bunch of content for them to learn. Her guest Jay McTighe has had a lot of experience trying to develop programs to support higher process thinking. The first program to help this was the “Thinking Improvement Program”, this program was developed to have higher order thinking to all kids instead of just the gifted education kids. By spreading it to more than just the three percent it will improve all students’ performances. McTighe was also apart when the standards were first formed in 1990, in Maryland. All of these tests or assessments were going to be performance based, no multiple-choice questions. He saw an improvement in both of his children’s assessments. They did not stop there, they continued ways to make people think harder. The Maryland Consortium was summer workshops where teachers of the state would get together in the summer and learn of performance assessment and design tasks that are made available to that state. When looking at the state standards Bob Marzano and John Kendall both decided if there was too much content it would cause superficial disconnected learning. It makes the teachers not able to slow down if there is a student who struggles. The focus is more on finishing all the standards and content rather than help the students be successful. I would rate the podcast at 3 stars. While it was informative and thoughtful, I was dozing off listening to the conversation.I feel the questions that were asked repeated themselves and only focused on the specificity of the one question “how can we make kids learn quality over quantity. It had good content if you are interested in the subject at hand.

Life as we know can be pretty hectic and the wide array of responsibilities, expectations, and skills of multitasking necessary to being a teacher can be pretty daunting for an individual pursuing this vocation. Which is why I was allured to listen to this podcast station in specific because I always like the idea of balances. The Podcast I decided to tune into is called “The Balance” and is hosted by Dr. Catlin Tucker. The episode I listened to from the podcast was called [Reclaiming Personalized Learning with Paul France]. I genuinely enjoyed listening to this episode, I found it to be very insightful, thought provoking, and rich in practical wisdom for current teachers and soon to be teachers. A memorable takeaway was a quote from Paul France about the quest for making “personalized learning a pedagogy for restoring equity and promoting humanity in the classroom.” Ultimately, I believe this sentence entails the following; how can we as educators make learning more engaging, sustainable, meaningful, and effective? With a focus on not learning for the sake of obtaining knowledge but actually deeply understanding concepts and content, all the while creating a pedagogy where classrooms aren’t solely “intellectually” centered but rather more “human” centered. I definitely agree with France’s pedagogy towards learning. I believe teaching should include a holistic approach as France described in this podcast, where learning is of course a main priority but so is the quality of learning and the relationships between students and their peers, and teachers and their students. As France said “a pedagogy for...promoting humanity in the classroom”. I’d definitely give this podcast a 5 star rating. I don’t have anything negative to say about it. It is a podcast I wouldn't mind listening to again and sharing it with others out in the teaching field.

I appreciate this professional-quality podcast with blended learning guru, Catlin Tucker. Her guests are inspiring and their messages are thoughtful. I also appreciate how Catlin will insert her reflections as she is editing the podcast. It’s so meta and reflective. Keep it up, Catlin.