Here at the Arizona K12 Center, we’re big proponents of reflecting on your practice. But what does it mean to be a reflective practitioner and how do we use that reflection to not be the end goal but a tool to generate change in ourselves and our learners? Dr. Kevin Roessger, associate professor of adult and lifelong learning at the University of Arkansas, has focused his work in quantitative research methodologies and adult learning theory. In this episode, he talks with host Paula about what l...
Feb 15, 2024•30 min•Season 15Ep. 2
Efrain Casillas, the 2024 Arizona Teacher of the Year, has been teaching at Tolleson Elementary School District for 17 years. His vision isn’t to just teach music to his current students but to build a culture of music in Phoenix. 3Ps hosts Josh and Donnie talk with Efrain about the beginning of his interest in music as a child in Puerto Rico and how that led to his music education career. Efrain shares how he works to engage his students’ interests and culture into his teaching. That’s led to h...
Feb 08, 2024•26 min•Season 15Ep. 1
Explore the world of Cognitive Coaching — a transformative approach unlocking minds and elevating problem-solving skills — in this episode of 3Ps in a Pod with educators and facilitators Taryl Hansen, NBCT, and Mary Bouley. Taryl and Mary talk about the history of Cognitive Coaching and give an overview of this approach to coaching that mediates thinking and prioritizes teacher autonomy. They make it clear that Cognitive Coaching is one of multiple coaching tools to be used in particular situati...
Dec 07, 2023•34 min•Season 14Ep. 14
If you attended our 2023 Teacher Leadership Institute, you heard a bit from Dawn Quamahongnewa, her family, and her teacher leadership. Today, Dawn is expanding on what she shared in that speech and how knowing our past informs our future. Dawn begins this episode by sharing how her parents first shared about the history of her family and the Hopi people. She shares the history of her family’s clans’ complex relationships with the U.S. education system, with some embracing and others wanting to ...
Nov 16, 2023•49 min
You know how challenging teaching can be and how many teachers today encounter burnout. That’s why Julia King Pool founded the Burn-in Mindset, a coaching program for experienced educators that mitigates burnout and cultivates energy, optimism, and confidence. Julia shares with hosts Juliana and Marlys how she founded Burn-in Mindset and how it is based in the tenets of positive psychology. Positive psychology is the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to th...
Nov 09, 2023•25 min•Season 14Ep. 12
Today, we welcome back Chris Kotterman, the Director of Government Relations for the Arizona School Boards Association, to discuss the past Arizona legislative session, significant bills that did and didn’t make it into state policy, and what might be coming in the 2024 session. Kotterman notes that fewer bills than usual affecting education will take effect this year due to several vetoes by Governor Katie Hobbs but does share with hosts Donnie and Juliana about HB2460, which relates to the sus...
Nov 02, 2023•27 min•Season 14Ep. 11
This is a replay of an episode from September 2022. In recognition of National Day of Remembrance for U.S. Indian Boarding Schools on September 30, we are discussing the history of American Indian boarding schools and the continued legacy of this part of our history. Hosts Daniela and Donnie welcome Marcus Monenerkit from the Heard Museum to the podcast to speak about the history of American Indian boarding schools and the Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories exhibit at the He...
Oct 26, 2023•33 min•Season 14Ep. 10
In January of 2023, Dr. Dani Portillo became the superintendent of Roosevelt School District, the first Latina to hold this position. In today’s episode, Dr. Portillo talks with hosts Kathleen and Josh about her journey into education and her vision for Roosevelt School District, an elementary district in south Phoenix. Roosevelt, an elementary district in south Phoenix, currently serves about 7,400-some students and employs about 1,400 people. Dr. Portillo shares the importance of this mid-size...
Oct 19, 2023•30 min•Season 14Ep. 9
3Ps in a Pod is taking a break this week, but we’ll be back in your podcast feed next Thursday. We hope whether your fall break is this week or later this month, you’re able to take time to rest and rejuvenate. And thank you for all you do to support Arizona’s learners, from all of us at the Arizona K12 Center.
Oct 12, 2023•41 sec
Janet Wong left a law career and dove into writing poetry and helping others see the power of poetry. In this episode of 3Ps in a Pod, Janet talks with hosts Josh and Juliana about her approach to poetry and shares a variety of ways you can use poetry in your classroom. Janet shares how poems can be used as a way to get to know your students, as a brain break, as a way to teach revision, and to practice being creative. She reads several poems in this episode, including from this past summer’s Be...
Oct 05, 2023•39 min•Season 14Ep. 8
In this final episode of our series with The Learning Scientists, Dr. Megan Sumeracki dives into more detail about the three teaching and learning strategies of elaboration, concrete examples, and dual coding. The Learning Scientists, a group of cognitive psychologists, have developed six main strategies to support your teaching and your students’ learning. In the previous episode, Dr. Sumeracki and Dr. Althea Need Kaminske talked about the strategies of spaced practice, interleaving, and retrie...
Sep 28, 2023•47 min•Season 14Ep. 7
In the last three episodes, we’ve explored some different aspects of the cognitive psychology behind how we learn. Today, we’re taking that context and applying it to six strategies to support your teaching and your students’ learning. In this episode, Dr. Althea Need Kaminske and Dr. Megan Sumeracki, two of The Learning Scientists, begin talking about these six strategies: Spaced practice, repetition spaced out over time Interleaving, interspersing different topics in a lesson Retrieval practic...
Sep 21, 2023•34 min•Season 14Ep. 6
We continue our series with The Learning Scientists on this episode of 3Ps in a Pod. Today, hosts Josh and Paula talk with Dr. Althea Need Kaminske and Dr. Megan Sumeracki about working memory and perception. Dr. Sumeracki and Dr. Kaminske give multiple examples demonstrating how background knowledge shapes your perception and what that means for how we communicate or give instructions to students or anyone else in our lives. The Learning Scientists also discuss the processes of moving from lear...
Sep 14, 2023•51 min•Season 14Ep. 5
We’re back with part two of our series with The Learning Scientists! Today, cognitive psychologists Dr. Megan Sumeracki and Dr. Cindy Nebel pick up where we left off in the first part of this series. They jump into a demonstration with hosts Josh and Paula that illustrates some aspects of how our brains work. That leads into a discussion about why it’s cognitively so important to understand your students’ contexts in learning. Paula also asks Dr. Sumeracki and Dr. Nebel to discuss what it means ...
Sep 07, 2023•40 min•Season 14Ep. 4
We’re starting off a five-part series with The Learning Scientists, a group of cognitive psychological scientists focused on how we learn. Today, hosts Josh and Paula talk with Dr. Megan Sumeracki and Dr. Cindy Nebel about the science of learning. As cognitive psychological scientists, The Learning Scientists are a group interested in research on education, specifically on the science of learning. They aim to motivate students to study by increasing the use of effective study and teaching strate...
Aug 31, 2023•27 min•Season 14Ep. 3
STEM education can look very different across Arizona, which is why the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project came to be to help advance STEM in schools across the state. In this episode, hosts Donnie and Daniela talk with Mike Vargas and Amanda Whitehurst share how the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project (ASAP) works to transform how educators deliver STEM education. The Arizona STEM Acceleration Project has three components for the program’s teacher fellows: overseeing a student- or community-facing...
Aug 24, 2023•30 min•Season 14Ep. 2
The school year is back in session, so 3Ps is back too! Today, hosts Kathleen and Donnie chat with Jason Catanese, a middle school math teacher in the Isaac School District, about how he extended his support of his students far outside his classroom and began a comprehensive college prep program. Jason, also known as “Mr. Cat,” teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math at Pueblo Del Sol Middle School in the Isaac School District, located in the Maryvale neighborhood of Phoenix. He is also the found...
Aug 17, 2023•17 min•Season 14Ep. 1
On this fourth and final episode of our series on Humanizing Pedagogy, Oscar Corrigan joins us to talk about classroom management. He shares how his own experiences as a teacher and working with other teachers caused him to realize the importance of classroom management and what works best to support students in being successful. Oscar explores routines, procedures, and expectations to help students better learn and engage and recommends educators considering if any rule is there for students or...
May 11, 2023•28 min•Season 13Ep. 11
In this third installment in our series on Humanizing Pedagogy, we welcome Johnathon Walker to 3Ps in a Pod to talk about his approach to character education and how educators can better get to know their students. Jonathon begins the episode by sharing how working with students in athletics led him to become a classroom teacher before talking about the importance of educators to teach the whole child. He defines social-emotional learning as how we prepare students to navigate social structures ...
May 04, 2023•29 min•Season 13Ep. 10
We are back with part of our series on Humanizing Pedagogy. Today, we’ll be talking with Kristin Speck about how to create a classroom environment that fosters deeper engagement and concrete strategies to get us there. Kristin shares about how her degree in nutrition and dietetics and teaching at a San Diego cycling studio led to her career as a high school biology teacher. Noting that teachers need to “build slow to go fast” when it comes to classroom engagement, Kristin lists several concrete ...
Apr 27, 2023•23 min
What does it mean to humanize pedagogy? Why is it crucial to our work as educators? And how do beginning teachers do that in the midst of other demands and expectations? That’s what we are diving into in our next four episodes of 3Ps in a Pod, starting today by hearing from Dr. Dominique Smith about how the language we use shapes how we view and interact with learners and others. Dr. Smith begins the episode by sharing about his passion for education and how teaching needs to begin at the unders...
Apr 20, 2023•33 min
Meet the Arizona K12 Center’s new executive director, Daniela Robles, in today’s episode of 3Ps in a Pod. Daniela has been in education for more than 27 years, including working as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, and a variety of administrative roles at the school and district level. In today’s episode, hosts Marlys and Kathleen talk with Daniela about what first brought her into teaching and about her continued passion for Arizona education. She shares about the highlights of her care...
Apr 13, 2023•19 min•Season 13Ep. 7
In this final episode of our series on Leading with Inquiry, Jessica Vance and host Paula Watkins continue their learning and discussions from past episodes, this time focused on the power of using questions in learning. Jessica and Paula discuss the need to be flexible when prioritizing questions in learning and how to stay in that flexible mindset. They dive into how to get comfortable responding to learners with questions, the importance of tone and understanding in questioning, and how to be...
Apr 06, 2023•48 min•Season 13Ep. 6
We’re taking the learning we’ve done with Jessica Vance in the last two episodes on Leading with Inquiry in a new direction. In this and our next episode, you’ll hear a vulnerable coaching conversation between Jessica and 3Ps in a Pod host and teacher leadership program director Paula Watkins. Jessica and Paula take what they’ve talked about in the first two episodes of this series and apply it to Paula’s work, as an example of how others can use a lens of inquiry in their coaching and leading. ...
Mar 30, 2023•37 min•Season 13Ep. 5
We’re continuing our series with Jessica Vance on leading with inquiry, this time focused on provocations. In the last episode of 3Ps in a Pod, Jessica set the stage for what inquiry in leadership is. Today, Jessica and host Paula Watkins dive into a discussion about provocations, what they are, how to use them, and why they’re important. Jessica and Paula also touch on some of the misconceptions about provocations. They discuss how provocations are not the same as anticipatory sets, how teacher...
Mar 23, 2023•18 min•Season 13Ep. 4
What does it mean to lead with inquiry? And what does that actually look like in a classroom or when working with other adults? Today, we begin a four-part series exploring those questions and more about leading with inquiry. 3Ps host Paula Watkins and Jessica Vance, the author of Leading With a Lens of Inquiry, will lead us through this exploration, setting the stage in our first episodes about what inquiry is and how to integrate it into leadership. In the final two episodes, you’ll hear Jessi...
Mar 16, 2023•32 min•Season 13Ep. 3
Today we welcome Danielle Brown, NBCT, a former host of 3Ps in a Pod, and now the senior manager of candidate experience at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She and host Donnie Dicus discuss the changing landscape of education and how the National Board is approaching some of that change. Brown first shares how her role at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards combines her passion for National Board Certification with what her work had been at the Arizona ...
Mar 09, 2023•20 min•Season 13Ep. 2
3Ps in a Pod is back, and we’re kicking off our 13th season by exploring the Arizona Education Progress Meter. Connected with that progress meter is the Achieve 60 AZ Action Plan, which sets the goal of having 60 percent educational attainment in Arizona by 2030. That means 60% of the state’s population of working adults will have a certificate, license, or degree. Host Paula Watkins welcomes Rich Nickel, president of Education Forward Arizona, and Donna Davis, CEO of Education Forward Arizona. ...
Mar 02, 2023•45 min•Season 13Ep. 1
Today, we welcome author and Minnesota’s 2014 Teacher of the Year Tom Rademacher to the podcast. Hosts Donnie and Kathleen talk with Rademacher about his two loves of teaching and writing. His books, It Won’t Be Easy, An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching and Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed (Nearly) Everything I Know , combine both those aspects of Rademacher’s work. Rademacher shares his reflections about the teacher shortage and what h...
Dec 01, 2022•36 min
This week of Veterans Day, we’re revisiting an episode from November 11, 2020, when hosts Angelia and Danielle welcomed Dr. Nancy Pratt to 3Ps in a Pod to share about her military experience and how that has carried into her education career. Then the Director of Instruction and Innovation at Cave Creek Unified School District, Pratt is now the Director of Instruction at Buckeye Elementary School District. But before realizing her interest in teaching, Pratt was a young woman in a Reserve Office...
Nov 10, 2022•28 min
