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Helping teachers who value high-quality curriculum but are tired of sacrificing self-care, family time, and time with students to create it. If you’re looking for ways to help feel better about your career, your impact in the classroom, and the amount of your own time you’re devoting to work, you’ve come to the right place! Sign up for our newsletter to get access to our free MLA Grammar Guide and browse our store. When you’re done, let us know your thoughts! We look forward to connecting with you through our podcast, YouTube channel, and social media.
Episodes
43 episodes
Reflections on Leaving the Classroom: One Year Later
We left the classroom a little more than a year ago and are reflecting on what we've learned and new perspectives we have gained as a result of our mental, physi...
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Season 2
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Episode 42
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21:59
Plays to Teach in Your High School English Classroom
As a teacher, deciding which plays to teach is a rite of passage all its own. Will you stick to the classics or branch out and try something new? Will you transform your classroom into a mini-theater and have students perform scenes? Will you h...
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Season 2
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Episode 41
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19:50
Is English Class Still Relevant? ELA Skills Students Need
In this episode of the podcast, we're discussing whether traditional ELA instruction provides our students with the skills they most need outside of high school, or if we're long overdue for an update. We don't think we're out of step with most...
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Season 2
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Episode 40
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26:37
Class Discussion Strategies to Get Everyone Participating
Ideally, we'd like to have all of our students participating in class discussion. When too many students aren't participating, we start wondering if the discussion is a waste of time or if anyone is learning anything. In this episode, we'...
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Season 2
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Episode 39
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20:03
What We've Learned from Our Most Challenging Students
The difficulties posed by challenging students and classes can really wear a teacher down. Our misery will often make us desperate and open us to all kinds of classroom management ideas and suggestions in the hope we will find the magical "cure...
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Season 2
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Episode 38
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22:56
Five(ish) Simple Strategies for Building Reading Stamina
Do you dread those days when you're expecting your students to read in class? If your students don't like to read: not independently, not collectively, not at all, it's likely they lack reading stamina. They can't stay focused on a text for any...
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Season 2
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Episode 37
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16:03
Improving Parent-Teacher Communication
How do you feel about your level of parent-teacher communication? Is it something you've got down? Is it your teacher superpower? Or, are you like this week's listener, who feels overwhelmed by the level of communication parents (and probably a...
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Season 2
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Episode 36
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18:03
Long Time, No Break
March is, arguably, the worst month for teachers, though October certainly puts up a good fight for itself. We’ve been teaching the same students for eight months, high-stakes exams may be approaching, everyone is tired, and somehow we have a 3...
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Season 2
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Episode 35
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17:31
Writing a Research Paper? Try Career Research
Many students are overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable task of writing a research paper and emerging writers often shut down because there's just too much to think about. As secondary teachers with nearly 40 students in each class, we, t...
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Season 2
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Episode 34
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25:28
Teaching Writing Can Be a Struggle
Do you feel like you’re trying strategy after strategy to improve your students’ writing . . . and none of them is really working? You’re not alone.Teaching writing is one of the most challenging (yet most important) things we do as Eng...
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Season 2
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Episode 33
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18:44
How to Introduce a New Book Into Your Curriculum
Have you found a NEW text that you want to add to your curriculum? First of all, congrats! Introducing students to books (they will hopefully love) is one of the most exciting things about being an English teacher! But if this is the firs...
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Season 2
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Episode 32
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19:21
Novels We Love and Hate to Teach
This week's dilemma will be a familiar one for any teacher who has been teaching the same prep for a few years: “I want to change the novels I’m teaching second semester: I need a break from the ones I’ve taught the last few years. Any suggesti...
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Season 2
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Episode 31
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18:53
School Grading Systems: Trying to Make Sense of Grades
Traditional grading, standards-based grading, grade floors, it’s all enough to make any teacher’s head spin. What does a student's grade represent? What does it measure? How do we find a balance between student mastery and effort when we’...
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Season 2
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Episode 30
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24:48
How to Reset for a New Semester
We've all been there before. At some point during the fall semester, the wheels started coming off the bus, the train went off the tracks . . . fill in your favorite metaphor to describe the feeling of losing control of one (or more) of your cl...
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Season 2
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Episode 29
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24:20
Teachers Under Pressure: Semester Grades
Grades. Pressure. Anxiety. For us, these three words were inextricably linked with December (and May) for years. We started to feel the nasty pangs in late November (or late April) and by mid-December (or mid-May), we were complete wrecks! In t...
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Season 2
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Episode 28
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27:13
Academic Dishonesty: How to Deal With Cheating in Your Classroom
Cheating in the classroom is as much a part of the school experience as bad cafeteria lunches and popular cliques you're not a part of. It doesn't make your life any easier or more enjoyable. While most schools have policies for c...
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Season 2
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Episode 27
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21:11
Whole Class Discussions: Finding What Works for You
A lively and engaging whole class discussion. We imagine ourselves sitting perched on a stool, steaming cup of coffee in hand, listening to our students share thoughtful, relevant insights about challenging works of literature. And then reality...
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Season 2
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Episode 26
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13:57
Teacher Tips: Responding to Criticism (Because It's Inevitable)
Whether it comes from parents, students, counselors, or administrators, as a teacher, you will inevitably hear criticism about the decisions you make in your classroom. Depending on who is doing the criticizing and how that criticism is d...
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Season 2
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Episode 25
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30:10
Grading Papers: Help Managing Your Grading Load
Managing the grading load is one of the worst parts of teaching, especially in the ELA classroom where the stacks of essays seem only to grow the longer you procrastinate grading them. After years of trial and error, some failures and some succ...
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Season 2
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Episode 24
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28:19
Learning More About the Flipped Classroom
The flipped classroom model has a lot to offer teachers and can be a great benefit to students, but many are reluctant to give it a try. We get it; we were, too! While we didn't do a full flip, we did find a happy medium that we believed ...
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Season 2
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Episode 23
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30:50
Navigating Assessments in the ELA Classroom
We may not always like it, but assessments are an important part of what we do as classroom teachers. But in an ELA classroom, it’s sometimes hard to come up with ideas for what a meaningful assessment looks like, especially in middle school an...
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Season 2
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Episode 22
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25:21
Classroom Management Tips for Secondary Teachers
An often ignored topic for middle school and high school teachers is classroom management. If we get any training, the strategies and ideas are geared toward much younger students. On this episode, we’re tackling the topic of classroom manageme...
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Season 2
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Episode 21
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33:30
How to Improve What You Find on the Internet
Teachers cannot do it all, nor is it reasonable to expect them to! Let's normalize purchasing lesson plans, unit plans, and resources because, newsflash, teachers still have to put in some effort to make sure what they purchase fulfill...
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Season 2
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Episode 20
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14:11
How to Be an Effective Contributor in Your PLC
Joining a PLC is like joining a family. Sometimes you fit right in and it feels like you were born into it. Other times there are growing pains and dynamics need to shift. Joining a PLC that has been working together for several years can be ch...
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Season 2
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Episode 19
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29:32
Being Real About What You Can (and Cannot) Expect to Accomplish as a Teacher
Part of teacher self-care is knowing what you realistically can and cannot be responsible for, and blurring those categories is one of the quickest paths toward burnout. In this week’s episode, we’re sharing what we’ve learned over the years ab...
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Season 2
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Episode 18
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20:44