My Disney Class podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Crafting Disney's Stories: Lessons in Communication from Allen Babiarz-Lira

In Season 9, Episode 18 of My Disney Class Podcast, Ryan Boeckman and Howie DiBlasi welcome special guest Allen Babiarz-Lira, a college professor of communication at Saint Xavier University. With over 10 years of teaching experience, Allen brings a wealth of knowledge to the discussion. He holds a bachelor's degree in media communication and a master's degree in communication and training from Governors State University and is currently pursuing a doctorate in communication from Regent University. Allen's teaching and research interests encompass a broad spectrum, including interpersonal communication, gender communication, leadership, Disney, and social media.

During the episode, Allen shares his expertise on how Disney utilizes storytelling and narrative techniques in their theme parks, providing valuable insights into the power of communication in creating immersive guest experiences. He also discusses his Disney Communication through Animation class, offering a glimpse into how Disney's animation techniques can be studied and applied to enhance communication skills. Additionally, Allen delves into the topic of Disney's presence in his classroom and how he utilizes Disney’s strengths to his students’ advantage. Showing them how to develop and maximize their potential. 

Outside of academia, Allen enjoys spending time with his family and friends, particularly at his favorite destination, Walt Disney World. Tune in to this engaging episode as Ryan, Howie, and Allen delve into the fascinating world of communication, Disney, and storytelling, providing listeners with valuable insights and perspectives.

In Season 9, Episode 17 of My Disney Class Podcast, co-hosts Ryan Boeckman and Howie DiBlasi embark on an intriguing exploration of the top ten urban legends about Disney and education. Delving into the realm of myth and mystery, Ryan and Howie uncover fascinating stories and rumors that have circulated within the Disney and educational communities. From supposed hidden messages in Disney films to legendary tales of innovative teaching methods inspired by Disney magic, the hosts dissect each urban legend with curiosity and insight. Drawing on their collective knowledge and expertise, Ryan and Howie offer engaging commentary and analysis, separating fact from fiction and shedding light on the truths behind these captivating tales. Throughout the episode, listeners are treated to a blend of entertainment and education as Ryan and Howie unravel the myths surrounding Disney and its influence on educational practices. Join them on this captivating journey as they debunk myths, share anecdotes, and celebrate the enduring legacy of Disney and education. Tune in to discover the truth behind the top ten urban legends about Disney and education, and prepare to be enchanted by the magic of storytelling and discovery.

We hope you enjoyed our look at urban legends at Disney and in schools. We also hope you found a few nuggets that might inspire a lesson or activity that you can do with your students dealing with urban legends. If you haven’t already, remember to join the fun and supportive community we have in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney and don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better and that’s no urban legend!

Today, Howie and Ryan are diving into the enchanting world of Disney as they celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company.  Ryan and Howie spend the beginning of this episode reflecting on the journey of the Walt Disney Company over the past century. They discuss how Disney has evolved, innovated, and continued to captivate audiences worldwide. They also look at Disney’s notable moments, characters, and milestones that have defined the Disney legacy!

In the second half of this episode, Ryan and Howie shift gears, as they transport themselves back a century to explore what education and schools were like in the early 1920s. They even dive a little deeper and go back 100 more years to the 1820s, just for good measure. Looking back, Howie and Ryan, make several comparisons between the education landscape then and now, discussing changes, challenges, and progress.

We hope you enjoyed our look back over the past couple of 100 years of both Disney and the educational system!  Also, if you haven’t already, remember to join the fun and supportive community we have in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney. Don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better!

In today’s episode of My Disney Class Podcasts, Howie and Ryan welcome back a friend, a Disney expert, an author, and an all-around great guy, Mr. Jeff Dixon. Jeff is the author of the Key to the Kingdom series, which is a fictional series of four books that follows the adventures of Grayson Hawkes as he attempts to solve a complicated series of puzzles laid out by none other than the man himself, Walt Disney. If you want to know more about Jeff and hear the discussion about one of his other books not in this series called The Disney Driven Life, go back and have a listen to Episode 18 from season 2.

For most of this episode, Ryan and Howie are discussing Jeff’s latest book in the Kingdom series titled, Kingdom Chaos.  Jeff describes the characters and the plot of the story where a controversial President Tyler Pride and his family board a monorail at the Transportation and Ticket Center for a trip to the Epcot Resort. When the monorail arrives at Epcot, the president and his family are gone. A national crisis instantly explodes across the Disney resort. The president has been kidnapped. And if the president is missing at Walt Disney World, who better to find him than the man who knows Walt Disney World better than anyone who has ever lived, Grayson Hawkes?

Kingdom Chaos is definitely a political and ideological thriller, an action-adventure, mystery, and, also, a story of how faith and politics sometimes clash. Like Dixon's past novels, Kingdom Chaos can best be described as "faction," a weaving of fact and fiction set in the Walt Disney World Resort in Central Florida. The places and locations are real, and the novel builds on events from the life of Walt Disney and the history of the Walt Disney World Resort. The sights, the sounds, and the secrets of the themed resort all become a part of solving the mystery and trying to save the president of the United States.

Howie and Ryan end the episode discussing one of Jeff’s many other projects which happens to be something all three of us are passionate about and that’s improving and advancing education. Jeff gives us the details on a brand new Charter school that he helped to visualize and develop and he now sits on the board of as board president. The school is called “Creative Inspiration Journey”,  School and you are going to want to hear what Jeff says about their mission and vision for the future of education!

As always, we hope you enjoy this episode and we encourage you to drop us an email if you have any comments or questions. Also, please head over to iTunes/ Apple Music and gives us a rating and review. Your reviews help us improve the show and help get the message out that our show exists. Thank you.

Destination D Announcements

Today, Howie and Ryan discuss the recent announcements made by the Walt Disney Company at their Destination D event in Orlando. Ryan and Howie look to the future as some of these events that have been announced are currently happening, and some won’t happen for a few months to years. 

While looking at these announcements, Howie and Ryan ask themselves how these changes may enhance the opportunities for enriching our classrooms that Disney already provides. They talk about things that you can bring into your classroom directly from these changes and also find inspiration in them to branch off into other contents and activities that would make for great lessons and activities in school.

We hope you enjoyed our conversation about the latest Destination D event and the exciting changes that hopefully will come true in the near future!  Also, if you haven’t already, remember to join the fun and supportive community we have in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney. Don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better!

Today, we have a very special guest who's making a difference in the world of education, Heidi von Marbod. She's a dedicated special education teacher in the CCPT program in the Cheney School District in Cheney, WA. Heidi works with students who have met all high school graduation requirements and are 18-21 years of age. Her students have or are working toward independence in transportation skills and may require independent living skills. Her students participate in vocational opportunities to further develop skills and independence in community work sites.

Hedi talks a little bit about her background and her path in the educational profession. She also shares her heartwarming personal story that led her to be a voice for students with special needs. Hedi shares her unique challenges and opportunities that are part of her very rewarding work and of course, she shares how she brings the magic of Disney, specifically Walt Disney, into her classroom.

 Hedi rounds out the episode by talking about her mission to work with Disney and companies on a national level to help them understand what they should be providing in terms of accommodations for people with special needs. She shares how she developed this mission during her four-day experience with P.D. Magic and how her interactions with cast members and her fellow educators on the trip helped her develop and grow her mission into something even bigger!

We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Heidi as much as we enjoyed talking with her. Also, if you haven’t already, remember to join the fun and supportive community we have in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney, and don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better!

In today’s episode of My Disney Class Podcast, Ryan and Howie continue where they left off looking back at all eight seasons of My Disney Class Podcast and picking some of their favorite episodes that they think would be a good listen at the start of the new school year. 

 Listen as they share which episodes they picked and why listening to them may help you in the wonderful new school year you are approaching or maybe even already started!  This episode we definitely also work in our excitement for the upcoming P.D. Magic professional development experience coming June 17-20 at Walt Disney World. If you don’t know what that is, listen to this episode and then head over to our new webpage, Edmagineering.com to find out more details and to sign up. You definitely don’t want to miss this opportunity. 

 We hope you enjoyed our look back at some of the past episodes we so thoroughly enjoyed recording. We hope you found a few that you may have missed and when you go back and listen we hope that you find some value in the episode and we really hope that you find the same joy we did making it. 

 If you haven’t already, remember to join the fun and supportive community we have in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney and don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better!

In this heartwarming episode of My Disney Class, Ryan and Howie dive into the world of special education and autism programs. Our guest, Taylor Norton, is a dedicated special education teacher at South Mesa Elementary School in Pueblo, CO. With her expertise and passion, she leads the autism program for students from kindergarten to 5th grade. Join us as we explore how Taylor incorporates the magic of Disney into her teaching methods and creates an inclusive and nurturing environment for her students.

The podcast starts off with a great story by Talyor introducing herself and talking about her journey to becoming a special education teacher at South Mesa Elementary School. Taylor truly has an inspirational story for becoming a special education teacher and staying in the education profession. She also provides us with an overview of her role in running the autism program for students in kindergarten through 5th grade as well as the other students with special needs that she takes care of.  To end our show Talyor helps us understand the importance of creating an inclusive and supportive environment for students with special needs, especially those with Autism. We also discuss what can be learned from Disney when it comes to inclusion and creating environments that work for all guests/students. Taylor also has her own Youtube page that she started during the pandemic to help capture the magic she was missing while Disneyland was closed. She expresses how this helped her during that time and how she now helps others with her videos of the parks and the atmosphere and magic they capture. 

We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Taylor as much as we did and if you are looking to bring some magic into your classroom or home, check out Talyor’s Youtube videos. They are great for playing in the background to bring you to your happy place when you really need a visit but can’t get to Disneyland or Disney World.  Also, if you haven’t already, remember to join the fun and supportive community we have in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney and don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better!

In today’s episode of My Disney Class Podcast, Howie and Ryan start to prepare for the new school year. They went back and looked at all the My Disney Class Podcast episodes over the past eight seasons and thought, “Which of these episodes would best prepare teachers as they head back to school?”  Listen as they share which episodes they picked and why listening to them may help you in the wonderful new school year you are approaching or maybe even already started! Ryan and Howie also look forward to the new season of My Disney Class Podcast, Season 9. So many good memories and more to come for sure!  

As we start year 9 of the My Disney Class Podcast, we want to thank all of you who are part of our listener community. Whether you started today with this episode or have been here since Season 1, Episode 1, we appreciate you joining in and helping strengthen this wonderful and supportive group. 

Also, if you haven’t already, remember to join the fun and supportive community we have in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney, and don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better!

Get Me Coding With Fred Aebli

  In today’s My Disney Class Podcast episode, Ryan and Howie are excited to welcome Mr. Fred Aebli! Fred is an instructor and program co-coordinator of internships at Penn State University and is also the creator and owner of GetMeCoding.com. Fred also served as a Major in the United States Marine Corps for 11 years. 

Fred has taught in the higher education world for almost two decades where he has applied a lifetime of experiences as a software and database developer, website designer, project manager, and entrepreneur. He is a huge Star Wars fan as well as Disney, Lord of the Rings, and anything that can awaken his imagination and help him become more creative. 

On the show today, Fred shares with us his journey from his early years as a software developer to an exceptional and inspiring educator. He also describes how his passion for innovation, creativity, and Disney has helped influence his decisions and path choices along his journey. Which has also led him to create GetMeCoding.com. GetMeCoding.com was Fred’s solution to witnessing a growing demand for information technology professionals, in particular software developers, and a decline in the number of young people considering this to be a career possibility. He created GetMeCoding.com to remove the mystery of exploring and learning how to code so that people become better thinkers and develop skills for jobs requiring solutions with software.

We hope you enjoyed our episode today with Mr. Fred Aebli as much as we enjoyed talking with him. Fred is obviously a strong light of good in our educational field, and we know that his passion and energy are going a long way to help instill confidence and creativity into his students! 

Don’t forget, if you haven’t already, to join our fun and supportive community in our Facebook group, Educators who love Disney. Don’t forget to rate and review our podcast on Apple Music. Your support and feedback will only make us better!