The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast

As part of the continuing series on restorative practice, we continue our discussion with Dr. Paul Baker focusing on how all school staff members can learn to be a therapeutic helper for students who have experienced trauma. Specifically, Dr. Baker outlines the ways in which Neurotransactional Repair happens for students who have become disconnected. 

Guest Dr. Paul Baker discusses what is going on with students who have experienced trauma and why the approaches that some educators often fail. We also talk about what does work and a mindset that will help teachers work with students who exhibit difficult behaviors. 

For a variety of reasons, students bring white nationalist and extremist ideas into schools. For most educators this is a challenge because this is rarely a topic for professional learning and this is an unusually difficult topic to address. The Western States Center recently published the 2nd edition of their Confronting White Nationalism in Schools Toolkit and in this episode we will meet one of the co-authors Jessica Acee. In our discussion we learn about white nationalism in general and how to use the toolkit in school contexts. 

We continue our discussion with Mark Freado in our restorative practices series. In this episode we follow up our discussion about restorative culture by talking about interventions. We specifically discuss Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI) and Planning Restorative Outcomes both of which educators and youth care workers can use to enhance their professional practice.

Mark Freado discusses how to develop a restorative culture within a school or youth serving organization and why focusing solely on punishment and rewards does not foster positive change within children and adolescents.

Teachers Laura Fittz and Ellen Montgomery discuss their experiences as the implemented restorative practices and continue to strengthen their teaching by being intentionally restorative in their relationships with students. Each are high school content area teachers who understand the real nature of the student-teacher relationship and how the promote student motivation and student agency. 

Guest Joshua Sneideman discusses his award winning book (co-authored with Erin Twamley) Everyday Superheroes: Women in STEM Careers. Joshua is also an expert in education technology and we discuss how technology could change (or not change) the work of educators.

This year, many teachers have found themselves teaching remotely, whether they had planned on it or not. Hamilton County (Tennessee) Technology Coordinator Greg Bagby normally works with teachers to integrate technology for in-person schooling. As one would expect, this year his job has changed and he shares his ideas for how to navigate potential pitfalls to remote teaching. We also discuss best practices, planning and where to find additional resources to support educators who find remote learning challenging. 

Former elementary school teacher Erica Richardson tells her story of how she founded the grass-roots literacy organization Culture Books. We discuss her concerns about elementary literacy teaching and assessment that is not serving the learning interests of elementary aged students. She also describes the programs that her organization conducts to promote develop culturally sustaining literacy development.

Adam Jordan and Rebekah Cordova are among the founding members of the All Y'all Social Justice Collective. In this episode they discuss how All Y'all supports the work of teachers through providing meaningful, action-oriented professional development experiences.