The Teacher As...

Melissa chats with Janea Dahl, the creator of Drama Notebook, a resource for drama teachers with over 1,500 lesson plans, royalty-free scripts, and tutorial videos. Janea founded Drama Notebook to provide high-quality, flexible resources for drama teachers, who often work in isolation. The site aims to make drama accessible and affordable for educators. Janea emphasizes the importance of creativity, cooperation, and confidence-building in drama education.

01-11

31:35

Melissa chats with Cori Myka. Cori runs Calm Within Adult Swim, a swim school focused on helping adults overcome water fears. Corey emphasizes the 80% mental, 20% physical approach to learning to swim, using a program called Foundations of Change. She shares her journey from teaching kids to focusing on adults, driven by the need to address the emotional aspects of swimming. Cori discusses the importance of mindfulness, creating a sense of safety, and understanding the brain's responses. ...

12-14

30:58

Melissa chats with Jon Ryan, founder of the acapella group Ball in the House. Ryan discusses the group's origins, evolution, and educational outreach. Ball in the House teaches K-12, emphasizing performance, songwriting, and music history.

11-16

46:16

Melissa talks with Megan Daly, the author of My Teacher Doesn't Like Me. Megan shares the inspiration for her first book and her writing and publishing process.

11-02

29:01

In this episode, Melissa speaks with Janet Singer Applefield, author of Becoming Janet. She is a child survivor of the Holocaust, author, notable speaker, and change agent. Janet spoke about her years of hiding in plain sight, how she helped get the MA Genocide Bill passed, the story of her book getting written, and her resilience through it all.

10-19

25:06

In this episode, Melissa speaks with Hayes Greenfield, the founder of Creative Sound Play, an interconnected, play-based, generative learning system for Pre-K educators. Hayes shares about his book, Creative Sound Play for Young Learners: A Teacher’s Guide to Enhancing Transition Times, Classroom Communities, SEL, and Executive Function Skill. The concepts discussed can be applied to elementary and middle school as well.

10-05

41:44

Is your classroom filled with self-driven, collaborative learners? Do you wish your students were more confident and independent? In this episode, Melissa talks again with Paul Solarz who has created am amazing book, Optimized Learning, that helps teachers reach these ideals. Have a classroom where students have purpose and a clear sense of direction.

09-21

37:24

In this minisode season finale, Melissa continues to share one of her favorite articles about voice and choice by Alfie Kohn. Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide. In addition, she talks about a time management concept that can be applied to the classroom and she looks back at the episodes of the fifth season.

05-27

16:11

Candace Fleming is an author of many fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults. Among other things, Melissa and Candace talk about the research process, the power of nonfiction and how teachers can help students get more specific in their research.

05-18

41:40

In this minisode, Melissa shares from one of her favorite articles about voice and choice. Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide by Alfie Kohn lays out the rationale for voice and choice as well as what it looks like in practice. In this minisode, Melissa highlights the rationale and she will highlight what it looks like in practice in her next minisode.

05-11

07:23

Jane Reynolds, sister of author/illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, chats about her work in helping teachers tap into their creativity so they can model it for their students. Her teacher education work with her brothers, Peter and Paul, is revolutionary including their soon to be Teacher Learning and Creativity Center in Dedham, MA.

05-04

36:00

In this minisode, Melissa talks about the importance of read alouds and silent reading time. She shares some reading successes in her classroom and encourages teachers to reflect on how far their students have come.

04-27

06:39

Evan Whitehead, M.Ed. is an author, speaker, Mental Health Advocate, and the creator of Balance Boundaries and Breaks.™️ Evan shares his struggles with finding balance that brought him to his new focus of helping all educators find a healthy work/life balance.

04-20

40:21

In this very short minisode, Melissa, with laryngitis, shares that listeners should go to the Episode 112 page on theteacheras.com to see her students' reflections about logic puzzles. The students share how the puzzles got easier with continued practice and how they created their own logic puzzles.