Amazing to think about, but Backporch Education Podcast is now beginning its fourth Season! Jason and Steve take a few minutes to lean back and think about where we have been, where we might go from here. Join in the dreaming.
Moving from the image of a car engine spread out on the back lawn to the inner workings of the inquisitive mind, Jason and Steve discuss how analysis and synthesis are both necessary to every lesson. Pulling an idea apart and putting it back together keep learning from its dangerous extremes. Listen as the Backporch breaks it down and puts it all back together again.
When we began a while back to separate our lives into various spheres, especially as we moved education in the schools away from any form of religion, a new set of questions were birthed. What role does the American church play in the education of the modern child? Is it possible to teach children in a manner free of any religious instruction? If it is, is this good? Join in this long and important conversation with us.
Would a teacher’s life be better or worse if Administrators disappeared from the Earth? So begins a lively repartee between Jason and Steve, both of whom currently divide time at their respective schools between teaching and administrative duties. Why do we need such people? How are their duties best attended to? If an administrator holds a faculty meeting in the woods, will teachers still have to come? Join us for these and many more compelling questions.
In this episode, an article sparks a lively discussion between Jason and Steve on what it will take to revive the love of literature in our day. Why do so many people dislike literature today? How can we change this? What kinds of literature are better suited for us to love? This and much more fly around the rocking chairs on the Backporch Education podcast.
Recently an Italian artist sold an “immaterial sculpture” for about $18,000 and the Backporch dudes let the fun begin. Join them in a far-ranging discussion about this moment in art and education history. Did he sell nothing or a “vacuum”? Is this legit? What did the buyer get? The questions just keep coming, and perhaps the beginnings of some answers as well. Pull up a chair and have fun with us.
In agriculture, every farmer knows you need margins: spaces between your fields. The carefully planted crop needs some wildness, some weeds, some room about it to flourish. So goes the classroom as well. In this episode, Jason and Steve walk out into the fields to see what can be learned about the margins of the classroom. Put your boots on and come with us.
Every teacher knows that moment when one or many students demonstrate that the lesson was not learned, or misunderstood, or missed. What do we do when this happens? What are the common causes for such? What are strategies for our teaching that will help us in these murky waters? Jason and Steve discuss such things in this episode.
Home schooling can be daunting to those considering it for their children, but it can also be one of the most rewarding adventures of you and your child’s life. Join Steve as he interviews Lisa Bailey about her own experiences educating her two daughters, and the community that helped host the adventure: Classical Conversations. Enjoy the stories and practical direction with a nice big glass of iced tea!
Appreciation is derived from the concept of giving honor. Jason and Steve take this fact and explore how it can be used to appreciate the life of teaching. Do teachers get paid or receive an honorarium? How does honor affect the way teaching is done? What can be done to honor teachers? We hope you gain more appreciation for teachers through this discussion.
Anxiety can radically change behavior. This is a predominant issue in education today in part due to the over emphasis placed on the standardized test. What should home schooling parents do with this assessment monster? To test or not to test, that is the question raised and discussed by the Backporch crew on this podcast episode. Listen carefully; it will all be on the test.
It is often through analogy and metaphor that we can see relationships between humans most clearly. The relationship between a tutor and his pupil is a hard thing to describe, but a wonderful thing to behold. In Mel Gibson's directorial debut, The Man Without a Face (1993), Jason and Steve find much to discuss about the teacher/student relationship. Watch the movie; join the conversation.
Given the current concerns about what happens when disease or some other factor shuts down education in the land, the Backporch boys go on safari throughout history to look at what happened in past instances of such. How does the purpose of education affect the practice of schooling? What have other groups done during times of pandemic? Join in the education.
Education is now afloat in the digital sea. How have screens improved education and are there things that are better off without the screen involved? Steve and Jason download some thoughts on the new world of the digital classroom. Plug into the conversation.
Talk to almost anyone in education and probably sooner than later, the discussion will turn to the hardest aspect of education: assessment. How do we know if we have taught a good lesson? How do we know if the student has caught our great lesson? Why are many forms of testing fraught with the language of suffering, hardship, and even death? The Backporch dives into this deep pool and swims about with broad strokes. Come on in, the water is warm!
Many today believe that success in education is determined by the budget given to it. The home schooling movement is pushing back on that adage. Jason and Steve conduct a thought experiment using the notion that a great year of home schooling can be done on a budget of just $100. Listen in as they describe ideas that may humor you, may shock you, but hopefully will convince you that education does not have to be an expensive endeavor.
How does what you read affect how you write? Is it good or bad writing to see something of other writers show up in your writing? How does this question affect the teaching of the writing art? The Backporch boys take on a listener’s question and wind up meandering all through a number of sub-questions regarding the reading life, the writing life, and how the two are intertwined. Learn, laugh, and listen in as they consider this question.
How do you find the right environment that promotes good learning? Is there just one type of such place? Does the place learning occurs matter any more or less than what is learned? The Backporch boys pursue these questions and others in an extended meditation on the poem they begin the episode with. As Berry put it, “Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.”
What does singing Christmas songs have to do with education? A lot and very little. Jason and Steve think it has more to do with good learning than the opposite. They hum their way through various favorites from the Yuletide season and discuss their own views on how the Incarnation, and singing about such, is an important aspect of meditating on education. At the end you will wish to bring them some figgy pudding.
What does a reader do with a difficult text? Steve and Jason take on the humorous and bizarre text of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins by discussing both the text and strategies for working with a text designed to put you off kilter. “I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all.” Join in the conversation.