School of Practice, the first podcast from the team at Edutopia, brings you ready-to-use strategies to improve your teaching today. Join us for 15-minute episodes filled with smart, pedagogy-shifting advice—backed by research and test-driven by teachers just like you.
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The podcast delves into the controversial practice of eliminating zeros from grade books, often replaced by a 50% minimum. While intended to assess learning more accurately, this policy can lead to unintended consequences like student apathy and frustration among teachers. The discussion highlights the mathematical issues with zeros, various teacher experiences, and proposes effective strategies such as standards-based grading and late work contracts to enhance student accountability and motivation. Ultimately, the episode encourages viewing grading as a tool to cultivate student hope and belief in their potential.
The end of the school year can feel like the best––and worst––of times. On the one hand, it’s a great stretch because “the routines and procedures are set,” and the kids have their sights set on summer vacation, says Kansas City-based middle school ELA teacher Jeremiah Kim. But the workload for teachers closing out the year can be intense. “We all just want to be done, but we still have these boxes to check,” he says. In this episode of School of Practice, Kim joins host Kristin Leong to explore...
It’s a mistake to assume that good differentiation always means splitting students up into small groups, says Michael McDowell, an author, coach, and former teacher. A more effective approach, he says, is to design rigorous learning routines that unite the whole class—from fast finishers to kids who need extra support—with shared strategies, structures, and thinking moves. Think: Same surface, different deep problems, much more time in the “we do” space, and a big emphasis on high-quality classr...
Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck? You just came up against the forgetting curve—and lost. Our brains are hardwired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. According to research, nearly half of new information—if not used right away—is forgotten within an hour of exposure. And if you wait a week, up to 90 percent fades into the mist. But that’s ...
Can your students spot what’s real and what’s AI-generated on TikTok and Instagram? How about when they’re researching topics for humanities classes, gathering sources in social studies, and preparing for math assessments? In this super-engaging lesson developed by science teacher Katie Coppens and researcher and former STEM teacher Andy Zucker, students become digital detectives, analyzing a set of videos and websites to determine what’s real, what’s been altered, and what’s just pure misinform...
Narrow, rigid math has “turned students off for generations,” says renowned researcher and Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler. Yet teachers often don’t have much choice when it comes to math curriculum—what’s mandated by a school or district is what they need to teach. That’s where *rich tasks* can be transformative, Boaler argues, because they invite the type of reasoning and problem-solving that get kids digging in and taking risks. In this episode of School of Practice, we’ll chat with ...
Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching 30+ students at different skill levels—is one of the toughest challenges in teaching. Done well, it looks like tactical magic: teachers seamlessly know how and when to support kids, then step back at just the right moment, building independence by removing the training wheels. In this episode of School of Practice, we get into it with Beck Alber, a former high school ELA teacher and UCLA School of Education instructor. She unpacks the ...
Maybe you’ve seen it in your classroom: Students who zip through chapters but then can’t tell you much about what they just read. To move those kids from fluency to sense-making, you’ve got to teach them the habits of good independent readers. In this episode of School of Practice, educator and literacy specialist Nina Parrish walks us through evidence-based strategies that keep kids focused as they tackle challenging texts—from pre-reading tactics that make vocabulary stick and activate prior k...
Have you ever been shocked when your students bomb a unit test after weeks of seemingly locked-in learning? Veteran educator Jay McTighe has the ultimate research-backed solution: formative assessment. In the best-case scenario, it’s frequent, quick, and highly attuned to the content and your students. “You don’t want to wait till the end to find out, ‘Gosh, I didn’t realize the kids never understood this concept or had this continued skill error,’” says McTighe, an author and assessment expert....
Did you know there’s a strong connection between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain? As students learn to write letters by hand, they also learn to recognize them more fluently . This letter recognition leads to greater letter-writing fluency, which leads to stronger overall reading development. Handwriting, the research reveals, is in fact a foundational tool for literacy. And as kids get older, the benefits continue, deepening how they process new material and encode learning. Mean...
It’s a tricky (but very common) classroom dilemma: How do you talk about—and normalize—learning accommodations in class without singling anyone out in front of peers? Unfortunately, many teachers aren’t trained to have these sensitive conversations, so they’re figuring it out on the fly. But we’re here to help! In this episode of School of Practice, we chat with Daniel Vollrath, a veteran high school special education teacher, and elementary teacher Jeremiah Kim. They’ll share excellent, teacher...
Are you curious what the latest research reveals about everything from brain breaks to groundbreaking research on AI, cell phones, and handwriting in the classroom? Then you won’t want to miss this special year-end bonus episode based on one of our most popular feature articles of the year. In the latest episode of School of Practice, Edutopia’s research editor Youki Terada and editor-in-chief Stephen Merrill walk us through the latest research on the impact of cell phone bans on classroom learn...
When students take notes during a lesson, research shows they get just about 30 to 45 percent of the important information right on the first try. High school teacher Benjamin Barbour discovered this disturbing problem after taking a quick peek at his students’ notes midway through whole-group instruction. What he saw stopped him in his tracks. “While some students had terrific notes, others had a big list of facts from the lecture or from the book,” Barbour says. “There was no rhyme or reason. ...
“I’m done, what’s next?” In every classroom, a handful of students will finish the work at warp speed. While the rest of the class is still mid-task, teachers must quickly pivot to keep the fast finishers busy, without missing an instructional beat. Former K-12 teacher Todd Finley argues this challenge presents a golden opportunity. “Instead of asking the question: ‘How do I keep fast finishers busy?’ the question should be: ‘Am I providing them with activities that are really meaningful?’” he s...
The idea that you’re not a writer unless you stare down a blank page and produce text—that’s about to change, says high school teacher Jen Roberts. In her classroom, AI is not the enemy. It’s a tool she uses to help students become better writers. And yes, she sets guardrails. “You can be a real writer who started with an AI-generated outline,” she says. “You can have an AI thought partner who helps you plot out your story.” Yet for this to work in classrooms, “we need to readjust our expectatio...
Did you know that drawing can be a learning superpower—even for students who claim they’re not good at it? When kids attentively sketch something they’re learning about, they tap into the visual, kinesthetic, and linguistic parts of the brain, research shows. This generates abundant connections across the brain’s neural network and encodes learning even more deeply than more passive learning tasks, like reading or listening to a lecture. In this episode of School of Practice, high school biology...
Humans are social creatures, hardwired to take cues from others. If students don’t see classmates asking for help, they assume they should avoid it too. But when help-seeking becomes visible in the classroom, it starts to feel natural. In this episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard explains how she rewrote the script with her students to make asking for help not just acceptable but expected. Bonus: Once this shift happens, students won’t just ask more questions, t...
After trying numerous seating arrangements—including rows, blocks, and U shapes—educator Jay Schauer stumbled on a desk layout that outperformed them all. Edutopia’s community took notice. In this episode of School of Practice, Schauer walks listeners through the many benefits of arranging desks in L-shaped groups, including better communication, greater flexibility, and improved learning outcomes for students. Plus, we ask him how to adapt the setup for testing, tiny rooms, and a range of other...
It’s a powerful, non-verbal classroom management tool designed to curb off-task behavior without breaking the flow of learning. Here’s how to use it across grade levels. Crystal Frommert has been using “the look” in her classroom for 20 years. She says the tactic—a skeptical glance and an arched eyebrow directed at a chronic whisperer, for example—is almost universal among teachers, despite recent debates about whether the practice has run its course. Frommert, who has taught math at the middle ...
School of Practice, the first podcast from the team at Edutopia, brings you ready-to-use strategies to improve your teaching today. Join us for 15-minute episodes filled with smart, pedagogy-shifting advice—backed by research and test-driven by teachers just like you.
Sep 16, 2025•1 min
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