Two Teachers Podcast Luke and Tom

In this episode, I am honored and humbled to be joined by 3 professors from the University Wisconsin Stevens Point to discuss and opportunity that is incredible important to me. Their passion and excitement is infectious. In previous episodes we have touched upon the increasing diversity and adding perspectives of those in our classroom and as the resident social studies teacher. That is my, my life goal. To be sure all people are heard. Amber, Stacy and Jackie provide incredible insight and resources to deliver just that. Check out their bios.







Where To Start?







The first step "would be to look at your social studies curriculum and see where you think you can bring in additional voices. And I would start small thinking about one unit, whether you're a third grade teacher teaching immigration and you've historically taken the perspective of the lens of European immigration and of 1800s into the 20th century or you're looking at that in a more sophisticated middle school or high school level. Start thinking about what voices are underrepresented.







Then look for a text. There's amazing texts that tell the Ellis Island story and they tell multiple voices within that experience. Even now we have a much richer alternate experiences to immigration documented through text. We have access to those people through live interviews we have that we can record for our students. We have access to video. So when we talk about text sets and creating these dimensional resources, we are really looking at text broadly, including visual images, video, multimedia poetry, songs, you name it. The more genres that you can touch, perhaps the more voices you will be able to incorporate.







You could even have students interview their parents or interview other community members, and bring that in to get more authentic voices represented in our classroom.







Diversity - Know What You Have







Get to know your students who are in your classroom. Know them inside and out. Know their backgrounds. Give them that opportunity to share their story, to bring in their experiences, and then look for how to enrich that by asking, what are my students missing? What lens haven't they been exposed to? What are the diverse voices we can bring to them?







Picture Books and Where to Find Them







I read the book The Journey about a Syrian refugees experience to my eighth graders. Even the nostalgia and the novelty of reading a picture book is effective. What are the resources? What are the approaches to infuse that, especially if you don't have those people to interview or those unique perspectives in the classroom to be the voice on others behalf?



























Illustrated texts draw the reader in and help them experience it in a different way. That ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes through someone else's narrative. Certainly a Google search is not a bad place to start when you're talking about a theme, a topic or a text.



























There's a lot of resources that teachers are sharing in this mode and we can see other people's evaluation of texts and whether it's representative, authentic voice.







Dreamers by Yuyi Morales is a favorite of my students who have used this as a research text too.























Please support TwoTeachersPodcast by purchasing these picture books now from Amazon.com. There is no additional cost to you. Thank you.







Evaluation of Diverse Texts







TeachingBooks.net has some questions that guide instructors in selecting texts...

When students write, their audience is typically just the assessor(teacher). If we want to give them meaning in their writing, we have to give them an authentic audience. On this episode we explore R.A.F.T. and specifically the use of blogging in student demonstration of their learning. We will then reintroduce the new and improved Fan.School(see Episode 33).

Lindy and I have begun a long desired journey to provide a book club to the parents of our students who struggle to navigate the complication and challenges of the adolescent journey. We have chosen to read with our parents(of our students) two books. These books are by Rosalind Wiseman.







Queen Bees and Wannabees was the basis for the movie Mean Girls and the companion book for navigating the male world is called Masterminds and Wingmen. Both are incredibly insightful for parents but have an even more incredible implications for educators world of all grade levels.







We will briefly discuss a few take ways and will often acknowledge that the real lessons is in the book. Read along or just listen for some gems.

In this episode, Lindy joins us to discuss quick adaptations to everyday practices to increase engagement. We will run through a number of strategies that will not cost more time or money to improve the attention of your students. We like many of you find ourselves leveraging the same tasks throughout the years an are always looking to change it up and grad that attention of the students.















What is engagement?







Lindy describes engagement in 3 categories: behavioral, emotional, and cognitive. Behavioral is student behave in class, they don't act up, the bring their materials to class. Its their behavior in that class. Then there is emotional engagement. They feel connected to the school community. They are happy to be there. They act positively. When you are giving your lesson they are alert and are emotionally invested in what you are saying. And finally there is cognitive engagement. This is their intellectual engagement. They want to learn and think more deeply about the subject. They ask challenging question. Together this is big picture engagement. this is a long term disposition to learn.







What happens to engagement over the years?







Over an educational career it is normal for engagement to wain. Think of the complexity and specificity of the learning. Think about the general practice of a kindergarten teacher vs. a high school teacher. Exceptions aside the amount of reading increase, the expectation of compliance raises and the length of the learning tasks widens. In 2nd grade the instruction is designed to be quick, fast paced and interactive. With each passing year those opportunities lessens. Emotionally school continues to be described as enjoyable by the younger the students.







Change your practice to engage the kids.







You can try writing on novel surfaces. Beyond the whiteboard or Smartboard try writing on the windows or floor. They excitement alone is a great a

On this episode I have identified 4 issues(my problems) I am having in my classroom right now(Classroom Management). I will share with you my plan for managing and hopefully improving my classroom with some researched and solid solutions.

This week we are joined by Brandon. He is Principal and Teaching and Learning Specialist extraordinaire. We hear from Brandon who is full of tips for managing the madness of the virtual classroom now and whenever.