Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast School of Practice
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| How to Use ‘The Look’ Like an Expert Teacher | 17 Sep 2025 | 00:14:17 | |
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 and high school levels, explains why she thinks “the look” still works; how it fits in with other classroom management tools; and what she does to adapt it for students who may not pick up on non-verbal cues. Plus, we ask what’s on everyone’s mind: Can it actually work on teenagers? Related resources:
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| Introducing Edutopia’s School of Practice | 16 Sep 2025 | 00:01:13 | |
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. | |||
| How to Get Students to Ask for Help When They Need It | 14 Oct 2025 | 00:17:06 | |
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, they’ll start answering them, too. Related resources:
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| A Flexible Seating Arrangement That Teachers Love | 30 Sep 2025 | 00:18:07 | |
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 real classroom challenges. Related resources:
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| The Extraordinary Impact of Drawing to Learn | 28 Oct 2025 | 00:21:27 | |
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 and chemistry teacher Selim Tlili delves into how drawing to learn works across grade levels and subjects, as well as how he sets up and grades the practice in his classroom. Plus, he’s got special tips for engaging even the most reluctant sketch artists. Related resources: | |||
| How to Teach Authentic Writing in the Age of AI | 11 Nov 2025 | 00:21:39 | |
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 expectations about student writing—and what we’re going to allow them to do and not do.” In this episode of School of Practice, we dive into this radical pedagogical shift with Roberts, and examine the strategies she’s developed to weave AI into the writing process to deliver thoughtful, authentic student writing. Related resources:
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| Converting ‘Fast Finishers’ Into Self-Directed Learners | 25 Nov 2025 | 00:19:55 | |
“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 says. In this episode of School of Practice, Finley, a professor of English education at East Carolina University, shares flexible, low-prep strategies for keeping speed racers engaged in meaningful work that’s immersive and challenging. Plus: Logistical tips for busy classrooms, and pointers for aligning tasks to classroom objectives. Related resources:
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| How To Improve Student Note-Taking in 3 Smart Steps | 09 Dec 2025 | 00:20:39 | |
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. Maybe there was a date but no information attached. And I realized: My students can’t even use these notes.” In this episode of School of Practice, we take a look at Barbour’s three-step process for teaching better note-taking and substantially improving study skills. Just a few minutes of practice each day, Barbour says, can yield big gains for student learning. Plus, he explains the brilliant strategy he uses to incentivize better note-taking and study habits in his classroom. Related resources:
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| The Most Significant Education Research of 2025 | 17 Dec 2025 | 00:28:05 | |
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 learning, why more recess time is critical for learning, how adept problem solvers tackle thorny math word problems, and how microbreaks powerfully impact focus and attention. Plus, we’ll share practical tips for bringing these findings right into classrooms today. Related resources:
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| Handwriting Is Essential—Here’s How to Teach It | 20 Jan 2026 | 00:21:17 | |
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. Meanwhile, good handwriting instruction doesn’t require a huge time investment: Brief instructional lessons followed by frequent modeling and feedback for students can slip into all areas of the curriculum throughout the school day, says Brooke MacKenzie, a former elementary teacher and certified reading specialist. “Handwriting practice can and should be quick and dirty,” she says. “It’s not like you need a 20-minute lesson on how to hold your pencil.” In this episode of School of Practice, MacKenzie chats with us about four fundamental handwriting skills. Plus, she shares her top instructional secrets—from using cursive to help students struggling with print to why Kindergarteners should “talk to their pencils.” Related resources:
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| How to Talk About (and Normalize) Learning Accommodations | 06 Jan 2026 | 00:21:52 | |
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-tested tips for talking with individual students (and your whole class) about learning supports in age-appropriate ways, establishing classroom norms that make space for different learning needs, and managing privacy without making disability a taboo topic. Related resources:
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| How to Use Formative Assessment Like an Expert Teacher | 03 Feb 2026 | 00:21:28 | |
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. “Whatever you’re teaching, you should always be doing very quick checks to see how it’s working.” Frequent pulse checks midstream are “potentially one of a classroom educator’s most powerful tools to enhance student learning,” according to David Marzano, a leading researcher. They’re also important tools for students to gauge their own progress. The key to getting the best outcomes is *how* you deploy them. In this episode of School of Practice, we chat with McTighe about how to get the most out of formative assessments, how to choose the right technique for your content and students, how to insert them seamlessly into the flow of instruction, and whether or not they should be graded. Plus, Jay shares his “Vagoo Rule,” a mysterious yet very important tip that you won’t want to miss. Related resources:
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| Boosting Reading Comprehension for All Students | 17 Feb 2026 | 00:19:26 | |
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 knowledge, to active reading protocols that turn kids into engaged, metacognitive readers who are always asking themselves, “Did I really understand that?” Related resources:
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| Smart Strategies to Improve Your Scaffolding | 03 Mar 2026 | 00:21:49 | |
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 evidence-based essentials of smart, timely scaffolding—both for new teachers, as well as classroom veterans (have you changed up your routines lately? No? Alber’s got suggestions for that). We’ll chat about how to determine if your scaffolds are working, what to do if they’re not, and what a strong scaffolding toolbox looks like. Related resources:
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| How to Teach Deep Mathematical Thinking | 17 Mar 2026 | 00:20:40 | |
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 Boaler—who’s spent decades studying math teaching—about how to choose, adapt, and improve math tasks; the power of reasoning and visualizing math questions; and the impact of tiny tweaks, like asking students: “Can you prove it to me visually?” Related resources:
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| How to Teach Students to Spot What’s Real, Fake—or Deepfake | 31 Mar 2026 | 00:22:34 | |
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 misinformation. The catch? They can’t just guess. They have to be able to defend their conclusions with evidence. Join us for this unmissable episode of School of Practice, we’ll walk through detailed lesson instructions, explore the best strategies for zeroing in on digital misinformation, and share all the resources you’ll need to teach this 60-minute lesson in your own classroom. Related resources:
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| Helping Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve | 16 Apr 2026 | 00:22:05 | |
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 not inevitable. In this critical episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard shares her top three strategies to help students remember what she’s just taught them. We’ll ask her how she weaves these strategies directly into the learning process as she works to “flatten the forgetting curve.” Related resources:
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| One Task, Many Doors: A More Effective Way to Differentiate | 28 Apr 2026 | 00:21:26 | |
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 classroom discussion. In this episode of School of Practice, McDowell breaks down three low-prep differentiation strategies, explains how and when small groups fit into the picture, and makes the case for basketball over ping-pong question protocols. Related resources:
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| 14 Excellent Ways to End the School Year | 12 May 2026 | 00:19:42 | |
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 a toolkit of low-lift, delightful, teacher-tested activities that inject celebration, meaningful reflection, and even some review into the last few weeks of class. Hang in there, teachers, summer break is just around the corner! Related resources:
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| Rethinking Zeros in the Grade Book | 26 May 2026 | 00:23:37 | |
What’s your take on eliminating zeros from the grade book? Does your school have a no-zeros grading policy? Even if it doesn’t, you probably have opinions about it. Setting 50% as the minimum grading threshold is a well-meaning effort to more accurately assess student learning, but it can also create new—and frustrating—challenges for teachers and students. In this episode of School of Practice, teacher and instructional coach Tyler Rablin explores the tradeoffs of eliminating zeros from the grade book. We’ll hear from teachers in our community with firsthand experience navigating the policy, and discuss exceptional strategies for building motivation and accountability without relying on numerical penalties. Related resources:
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| 11 Ways to Improve Teacher Well-Being | 09 Jun 2026 | 00:24:01 | |
Teaching is hard (often draining) work, and educators’ instincts about what will bring relief are frequently wrong—just as they are for most people. That’s because our minds deceive us, says cognitive scientist and Yale professor Laurie Santos, one of the world’s leading researchers on well-being and happiness. “One of the most annoying features of the mind is the fact that we all have these intuitions about the kinds of things we should be doing to feel better. But the research shows that many of those intuitions are just incorrect.” In this episode of School of Practice, Dr. Santos joins host Kristin Leong to debunk some of the most popular and persistent myths about happiness—more money *mostly* doesn’t buy more happiness, for example, and a values mismatch at work may be more consequential for burnout than you think—and shares a set of evidence-based tools teachers can begin to apply right away to reclaim a sense of balance. Related resources:
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