The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

To become skilled readers, our students need reading instruction in all of their classes, not just English language arts. But if other subject-area teachers don't know how to support readers, how can they do this? In this episode, literacy expert Jen Serravallo walks us through the steps of a close reading lesson, one of nine re-usable lesson structures she offers in her new book, Teaching Reading Across the Day. By the time you're done with this episode, you'll be able to teach a close reading lesson yourself. Thanks to Wix Tomorrow and Brisk Teaching for sponsoring this episode. To read a transcript of this episode, links to Jen's book, and a video of Jen teaching a close reading lesson, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 242.

When student behavior starts driving you bananas, and you feel like you're going to yell, this simple notebook technique can regulate your nervous system and calm your class down fast. ------------------- Thanks to Grouper for sponsoring this EduTip! You can find full written versions of these tips at cultofpedagogy.com/edutips. -------------------

It's our annual round-up of tools for educators, and this time along with it, we're announcing the launch of the online version of our Teacher's Guide to Tech! This year we're talking about three new AI tools, a platform for creating interactive lessons, a video editor, and a tool that makes text more accessible to everyone, plus a replacement for any teacher who really misses Flip! My lead technology specialist, Marnie Diem, joins me to talk about them. Thanks to Alpaca and Brisk Teaching for sponsoring this episode. To see videos of these tools in action, visit cultofpedagogy.com/6-ed-tech-tools-2025.

It can happen to the best of us — classroom management deteriorating over time. Don't despair! By figuring out where the problems are, you can turn things back around. My guest is Claire English, who runs an incredible platform called The Unteachables, where she shows teachers how to manage their classrooms with confidence and calm. We talk about three reasons why classroom management can fall apart midway through a school year and what teachers can do to get things heading back in the right direction. Thanks to Scholastic Magazines+ and Alpaca for sponsoring this episode. For a full transcript of this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 240.  Learn more from Claire through her courses*, That'll Teach 'Em and The Low Level Behaviour Bootcamp. and her membership site, The Behaviour Club,.   *I am an affiliate of the Unteachables Academy. This means Cult of Pedagogy receives a commission on every purchase made through these links.

Multitasking isn't great for our brains, it compromises our mental health, and ultimately it doesn't even work, but that doesn't stop many of us from trying to do it all the time. What we may not realize is that it also sneaks into our classrooms and interferes with learning, and it's happening in ways you may not even notice. In today's episode, I'm talking with cognitive scientist Megan Sumeracki about the pitfalls multitasking creates in schools, and what we can do to avoid them. -------------------------------------------- Thanks to The Gilder Lehrman Institute and Alpaca for sponsoring this episode. For a full transcript of this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 239.

For many this week, the discomfort and pain of living side by side with people who see the world so differently from us has hit hard. But this is where we are right now, and we can either succumb to our current divide and let it get bigger, or keep trying to figure out how to close it. Though I didn't plan it this way, this week's podcast just happens to address one of the ways we might start to do that in our classrooms. I'm talking with Peter Johnston, author of Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning, about the prompts and phrases teachers can use to equip students not to avoid or be afraid of differences, but to approach them as opportunities to learn.  -------------------------------------------- Thanks to The Gilder Lehrman Institute and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode. For a full transcript of this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/democratic-classroom. 

Books are one of the most powerful ways to learn about others and about ourselves. But for that learning to happen, we need a wide range of stories that represent a whole spectrum of people and lives. In many schools and classrooms, however, the offerings are far too narrow. Curating the kind of library that truly reflects the diversity of human experience takes time, intention, money, and good tools. This episode will help you make that happen. Joining me are three exceptional librarians — Cicely Lewis, Julia Torres, and Julie Stivers — who share their advice for building more inclusive collections. They also recommend a handful of outstanding titles to add to your shelves. Thanks to Scholastic Magazines+ and Alpaca for sponsoring this episode. For a full transcript of this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 237. 

Any time we teach our students something, we need to check to see how well they learned it. If we only do this check at the very end, after all the teaching is done, and we find that our students haven't learned the material, it's too late to do anything about it. That's why we really need to do formative assessment — checking along the way — so if there are problems, we can fix them. In this episode, we're talking about five important things we need to do to make sure we get formative assessment right. Joining me are two people who really understand what works in education: The Marshall Memo's master curator Kim Marshall, and Jenn David-Lang, the mind behind The Main Idea. Together they have published the Best of the Marshall Memo website, a fantastic, free collection of the best ideas in education. Thanks to Scholastic Magazines+ and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode. For a full transcript of this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/effective-formative-assessment/. 

If our students are going to thrive, they all need to feel safe, accepted, and loved while under our care. This week, we're focusing on what that looks like when it comes to gender-expansive students — kids whose gender expression or identity is different from what they were assigned at birth. For these students, creating a school that feels safe and accepting isn't simply a matter of being nice to them; there are some specific do's and don'ts that can make a huge difference in how they experience school. My guest is Dave Edwards, an educator who teaches these principles through his website, Gender Inclusive Schools, and his brand-new book of the same name. As the parent of a transgender daughter who has experienced discrimination, Dave's mission is a personal one. In this episode, he shares specific things schools can do to proactively create safe learning environments for these students. Thanks to The Wired Classroom and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode. For links to Dave's book and a full transcript of our conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com/gender-inclusive-school.

Students learn better when movement is included in a lesson. In this episode, theater educator Jocelyn Greene teaches us four fun improv games that can work in most classrooms to get students actively engaged and make the learning really stick. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks to EVERFI and The Wired Classroom for sponsoring this episode. To watch videos of all four games, visit cultofpedagogy.com/theater-games.

Teaching is intense, vulnerable work that brings up a range of emotions all day, every day. If we really want to help teachers thrive, we need to go beyond the technical parts of the job and look at how our core human needs show up in this work. In this episode, author and instructional coach Elena Aguilar joins me to explore what it looks like when a teacher's needs for belonging, autonomy, competence, self-esteem, trust, and purpose are not being met, and what can be done to address that. Thanks to EVERFI and Listenwise for sponsoring this episode. For links to Elena's book, Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 233.

The act of thinking about our own thinking, or metacognition, plays a huge role in how well our brain holds on to information. If we can get a better understanding of how metacognition works, we can tap into it to improve our learning and teach our students to do the same. In this episode, cognitive scientist Megan Sumeracki explains how we can make that happen. Thanks to EVERFI and The Wired Classroom for sponsoring this episode. For links to Megan's book, Ace That Test, visit cultofpedagogy.com/metacognition.

All students can benefit from learning and practicing executive functions, the skills we use to control our attention, keep ourselves organized, initiate tasks, and manage time. But where do we find the time to teach them? In this episode, educator and author Mitch Weathers shares his proven 5-step system for integrating executive functions into regular class time without taking away from the regular lesson. Thanks to EVERFI and The Wired Classroom for sponsoring this episode. For links to Mitch's book, visit cultofpedagogy.com/executive-functions 

The podcast is on a break this summer because I'm working on a big project. I thought I'd take a few minutes and tell you a little bit about it.  More on the project here. Be back soon!!    

When teachers and students feel heard, the climate of a school just gets better, and semantic pulse surveys can make that happen. In this episode, we'll learn what about this fresh approach to surveying and how teachers and administrators can create their own to gain better insights about the students and teachers they serve.  This episode is sponsored by Alpaca. School leaders can get 15% off a year of Alpaca's pulse surveys — visit alpacapacks.com/pedagogy to learn more. To read the post, visit cultofpedagogy.com/semantic-pulse-surveys 

You can never have too many ideas for helping struggling students, right? In this episode, you'll get a few more that you may not have tried. My guests are two teachers — learning specialist Sarah Riggs Johnson and math teacher Nate Wolkenhauer — who share their system of strategies that help all students learn better, a kind of pyramid where the ones at the bottom apply to all students, the middle layers are used with a smaller group, and at the top are strategies that are only needed for a few students. If you teach math or special ed, this one is a must, but even if you don't, you're going to come away with some new ideas for how to help students who struggle — even if they don't have an identified learning disability. Thanks to Scholastic Magazines+ and Studyo for sponsoring this episode. To read Nate and Sarah's post, visit cultofpedagogy.com/tiered-learning-supports 

The rights of parents to choose the best school for their children — also known as school choice — may seem simple on the surface, but it's anything but, and it has the potential to impact teachers and students all over the country. In this episode, I talk with Cara Fitzpatrick, author of The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America. We discuss why school choice is actually pretty complicated, we dig into some of the key groups that have historically pushed for it, and we explore some things concerned citizens can do to ensure that families can still get their children the best education possible. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to WeVideo and The Modern Classrooms Project for sponsoring this episode.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To read a transcript and get a link to Cara's book, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 228.

Annotation can be a powerful way to improve comprehension and increase engagement, but its effectiveness can vary depending on how it's taught. In this episode, two teachers share their classroom-tested approaches to teaching students how to effectively annotate texts: 3rd grade teacher Andrea Castellano and high school English teacher Irene Yannascoli.  Thanks to Listenwise and Studyo for sponsoring this episode. To read a full transcript of this conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com/art-of-annotation/.  

If your school is lucky enough to have a full-time certified librarian, it's likely they are not being utilized to their full capacity. In fact, yours may be one of a growing number of schools that are eliminating librarians altogether, and that is a terrible idea. In this episode, I sit down with four accomplished librarians — K.C. Boyd, Barbara Paciotti, Lauren Mobley, and Karina Quilantan-Garza — to explore all the ways a certified school librarian can make teachers' work easier, more efficient, and more effective, and to make a strong case for why every school needs one. Thanks to WeVideo and The Modern Classrooms Project for sponsoring this episode. To read a full transcript of this conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 226.

Many states are seeing record high numbers of teacher turnovers and vacancies. While the problems that caused this shortage have not gone away, there are groups of people who are coming up with some creative ways to address this situation, new and surprisingly affordable pathways for training good, enthusiastic teachers. Two of these programs are Oxford Teachers College at Reach University and Educators Rising. In this episode, educator Kimberly Eckert talks with me about how and why both of these outstanding programs work. Thanks to Edge•U Badges and EVERFI for sponsoring this episode. To read a full transcript of our conversation and find links to all the resources mentioned in this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com/teacher-shortage.