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.

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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.

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Thanks to WeVideo and The Modern Classrooms Project for sponsoring this episode.

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To read a transcript and get a link to Cara's book, visit cultofpedagogy.com/pod and choose episode 228.