In this final episode of the second season, Santha and John reflect on the topics they discussed during this season about improving teaching quality, including building level-PD, incorporating student feedback, and the teacher evaluation proces...

Recorded live at the College Board’s annual Advanced Placement conference in Las Vegas, John and Santha host an engaging roundtable of teachers from around the country who represent multiple disciplines and grade-levels about they continue to i...

Throughout this season, Santha and John have been  talking about how to get better at their jobs as teachers, but have missed an invaluable resource for teacher improvement that is right in front of them…literally right in front of them...

Nationally, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were considered chronically absent last school year, up from 15 percent before the pandemic. While we know that this severely impacts students’ learning, what exactly is the role of ...

Throughout this season, Santha and John have been looking at the different tools available to help teachers to get better at their jobs, one of which is the evaluation process that most teachers are required to go through every year. Do they...

An expectation for most teachers at the beginning of each school year is to write goals for their students’ learning. Too often the goal-setting process is tedious and inauthentic for many teachers. In this episode. Santha helps John to deve...

In this bonus episode, recorded over the summer, John describes his history with and feelings about the teacher evaluation process and interviews one of his building administrators, Sean Murray.  

In this special episode, John and Santha share their thoughts on the unprecedented teacher strike in Portland, OR that lasted for more than three weeks. They recount the reasons for the strike and give first-hand descriptions of their days o...

We are seeing an unprecedented amount of labor actions in the past few years with a number of teachers unions around the country deciding to strike for higher pay, better working conditions, and stronger supports for students. There are prev...

Few classroom teachers love going to staff meetings at the end of a long teaching day, but they are usually the only times we can get together to learn from each other. John interviews Megan Harowitz, a staff development teacher in Rockville...

In this first episode of the second season, John Golden and Santha Cassell, two long-time educators, discuss the need for teachers to continue to get better at their work and the challenges they face in trying to do so. The framework they prese...

In the second season of Third Rail Classroom, longtime teacher and instructional coach Santha Cassell joins John Golden to examine the hot-button topic of teacher quality. Lots of people discuss this issue, but rarely from the teacher ...

Recorded live at the College Board’s annual Advanced Placement conference in Seattle, John hosts an engaging roundtable of teachers from around the country who represent multiple disciplines and grade-levels about the challenges of grades and g...

Recorded on the last day of their school year, John and Alex reflect on what they’ve learned through the process of focusing on their grading practices, and then they discuss their hopes for a better future with grading and with the larger educ...

With just a few weeks left in the school year, John and Alex reflect on some unanticipated consequences of their grading practices and then quickly move to the main topic of the episode: grading biases. Specifically, they discuss what causes th...

Rapidly approaching the end of the school year, Alex and John turn to a key question: how to calculate final grades for students? It might seem like there’s an obvious answer, which is to take the average of all of the points earned and divi...

At the halfway point in the school year, Alex and John take some time to reflect on how their new approaches are going and have a discussion on why it might be appropriate to assign an "Incomplete" to a student rather than a "D" or an "F." Next...

Nearing the end of the first semester, John and Alex provide an update on how their new grading practices are going with a discussion on the different ways that they approach revision. Then, some students from their classes join the podcast to ...

Now at the end of the first marking period of the year, John and Alex provide an update on how it's going so far, including very frank feedback from some of John's students. Next, Alex and John explain why, in their experience, grades rarely pr...

With the first progress report grades submitted, Alex and John give some updates on how their approaches are going so far and then dig into the very contentious issue of homework. Neither John nor Alex is assigning homework in their classes thi...

Teachers have been using roughly the same grading practices for as long as we've had public schools, but we rarely examine the potential harm of these approaches. Alex and John define what they mean by "traditional grading" practices and begin ...

Why is grading a "third rail" issue? Why do teachers and the larger education community rarely talk about it? Because it's personal and very complex. In this episode, Alex and John begin unpacking these essential questions. John also interviews...

Welcome to Season 1 of Third Rail Classroom. We are hoping that you join us on our journey this year to find more equitable ways of grading. Our first two episodes will be released before September 1. Please share with friends and coll...