The TeatimeTeaching's Podcast

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

In today’s episode, we finish our conversation with Jamie Kurowski, one of Edjacent’s designers. This is a great conversation where we look ahead to the things that we would like to change, and we talk about helping teachers to be brave.

I think I’m going to take Jamie’s advice this semester and be ok when things are not perfect, to be brave, and to reflect as much as possible.

If you want to see Jamie’s work, go to www.shemakes.art . 

We also recently persuaded Jamie to open a twitter account, so go ahead and follow her @jlskt to stay up to date with all that she does.

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative that connects teachers to their legacy. If you are looking for community, coaching, or content based around your needs, point your browser to www.edjacent.org and become a member for less than the cost of a pumpkin spice latte a week.

For me, it’s the stories of teachers, students, and school communities that matter. As such, this podcast is only possible with the help and support of its listeners. Please leave positive reviews wherever you are able. If you are an iTunes or Spotify subscriber, leaving a good review can really help our visibility.  Also, please don’t keep this podcast to yourself. Tell your friends to subscribe and listen too. 

One thing we all have in common is that we’ve been to school. Everyone has an educational story to share. So if you would like to contribute to the pod in any way, if you have a story to share, long, short, tragic, or comic, if you have comments to make about the podcast, or just want to say “hi”, you can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to me directly using [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

In this episode, Jaime reflects on what has been a challenging year for educators by sharing two of her writings.  I’ll say no more except to pay attention to all the things that are expected of teachers described in these writings, then I dare you to tell me that teaching as a profession is self-evident…

I’m pretty sure Jaime would also like to hear what you thought about her work. So, if you would like to get in touch with her, you can email her at [email protected]

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative that connects teachers to their legacy. We create, write, talk, teach and learn about the things that matter most in education. To find out more, point your browser to www.edjacent.org

One thing we all have in common is that we’ve been to school. So, if you would like to contribute to the pod in any way, if you have a story to share, long, short, tragic, or comic, if you have comments to make about the podcast, or just want to say “hi”, you can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to me directly using [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

You can contact today's guest at: [email protected]

In the last episode we wrapped up the history of education in the ancient world. We learned how fundamental the control of knowledge as a currency was to the development of ancient civilizations, so now is a good time to take a breath and shift our attention back to stories about teachers and teaching. In this episode we feature the teacher story of Jamie Kurowski, one of the designers at the Edjacent collaborative. Hers is a cautionary tale about what the stresses of standardized testing can do to our health. Jaime is really into the doing and teaching of writing, so I took the opportunity to find out her insights into how we might help reluctant writers engage in the process. As the last few episodes demonstrated, writing is a key component of a knowledge currency, and as a reluctant writer myself, I found this a fascinating conversation.

If we make writing a chore, and I will admit, I really don’t like the process myself, then we lose the ability to communicate creatively and effectively. I’m glad that educators like Jaime are trying to help kids experience some joy in themselves and the process. If you would like to get in touch with her, you can email her at [email protected].

Next time, Jaime will share some of her writings, based on her experiences of teaching during the pandemic.

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative made up of educators who exist to connect teachers to their legacy, thus creating a better world for our students and their teachers. We create, write, talk, teach and learn about the things that matter most in education. To find out more, point your browser to www.edjacent.org

If you would like to contribute to the pod in any way, if you have a story to share, long, short, tragic, or comic, if you have comments to make about the podcast, or just want to say “hi”, you can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to me directly using [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

In this episode we will complete our quick tour of education in the Ancient World by looking at what went on in Ancient Rome.  As we have seen in our brief foray into the ancient world, early civilizations relied on a knowledge currency that centered on the ability to record information – writing, and use that information to organize society and find out how the world worked. By the time we got to the Ancient Greeks, we began to see how this knowledge currency could be leveraged to encourage people to be productive citizens and future leaders, as in the Athenian systems, or to train citizens to be good soldiers and fulfil their duty to the state, as in the Ancient Spartan system. We also saw examples in both Athens and Ancient China of how encouraging young people to ask questions and think critically was sometimes thought of as dangerous and unpatriotic, as it might lead to younger generations wanting to change things. It’s amazing how this struggle between those that want to use education as a tool for progress and change, versus those that want to use education to preserve the status quo, has continued over the centuries.

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative made up of educators who exist to connect educators to their legacy, thus creating a better world for our students and their teachers. We create, write, talk, teach and learn about the things that matter most in education. To find out more, point your browser to www.edjacent.org.

You can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to me directly using [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

We are going to continue with our exploration into the history of education for this episode. Although we have some more teacher stories, interviews, and big ideas to share very soon, I figure that as we are on a roll, we should do what we can to do the topic justice.

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml

Part one:

Before we can discuss the history of education in Ancient Greece, we first must define where end when we are talking about. When we talk about Ancient Greece, we are referring to the civilizations, states, and people who inhabited the Greek peninsula and islands of the Aegean from around the 12th century BCE to the 6th Century AD. During this time, there were several epochs, or ages. The earliest evidence we have of civilizations in the area is from around 12th century BCE with the Minoan civilization. If you are familiar with the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey, they come from this era. The Mycenean civilization was a literate and complex one, but when it collapsed – and we are not sure how exactly, although natural disaster is likely – so was their writing. What was left behind were a scattering of smaller villages, towns, and cities, usually on the coast, and reliant on trade with other Mediterranean civilizations.

This period between the 8th century BCE, and the 6th Century BCE is sometimes referred to as the Greek Dark Ages. Over this time, the city states, evolved into their own systems, referred to themselves as Polis, and borrowed and adapted the Phoenician alphabet into what we recognize as Greek.

With a script in place, knowledge began to be written down again, and so we have our first historian Herodotus wrote between the 450s and 420s BCE, and his tradition was followed by such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato and Aristotle.

One of the things we need to be aware of when we talk about Ancient Greece is that we are not referring to one Empire or political entity. Effectively Greece was a collection of independent city states geographically cut off from one another by mountains and the sea. It is through trade that knowledge was passed, and ideas spread, but effectively we are talking about areas which evolved their own laws and traditions – for example, Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Macedonia.

I could spend hours talking about ancient Greece, but we need to focus on our main question. What was education like in classical Greece?

There were some general similarities between city states in Ancient Greece. For example, by the 5th Century BCE there was some “democratization” of education. Most free males could go to a public school, referred to as a gymnasium, while wealthy young men were educated at home by a private tutor. How you were education was a central component of your identity. For example, we know that Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle. For most Greeks, education reflected your social status and who you were as a person. We have a similar attitude today, often asking folks where they went to college, or who conferred their degree, as a sign of status and rank.

You will notice that slaves did not have access to an education (in some city-states, slaves were forbidden), and women did not get a formal education (although this varied from city state to city state).

In Athens, until about 420BCE, every free male received an elementary education. This was split into two parts – physical and intellectual. The physical aspect, “gymnastike” prepared citizens for their military service – they were taught strength, stamina, and military tactics. For Athenians, physical fitness was important for both aesthetic and practical reasons. Training was conducted in a “gymnasium” (a word still used to describe some elementary schools in this area today). The intellectual aspect, “mousike” was a combination of music, dance, lyrics, and poetry. Students learned to write with a stylus on wax tablets. When students were ready, they would read, memorize, and recite legends and Homeric stories. In this period, once a boy reached adolescence, his formal education ended.

Around 420 BCE, we begin to see Higher Education in Athens. Philosophers such as Socrates, along with the sophistic movement led to an influx of teachers from all over the Mediterranean. It became fashionable to value intellectual ability over military prowess. This causes a clash between traditionalist, who feared that intellectuals would destroy Athenian culture and lead to a military disadvantage, while sophists believed that education could be a tool to develop the whole man, including his intellect, and therefore move Athens forward. (I’m sure you can think of similar arguments between traditionalists and progressives today – some things never change).

Anyway, the demand for higher education continued and we begin to see more focused areas of study – mathematics, astronomy, harmonics, and dialectic – all with the aim of developing a philosophical insight. For these Athenians, individuals should use knowledge within a framework of logic and reason – what we call today – critical thinking.

However, this level of education was not democratized. Wealth determined your level of education in ancient Athens. These formal programs were taught by sophists who charged for their teaching and advertised for their services, more customers meant more money could be made. So, if you were a free peasant, your access to higher education was limited (something that also resonates today), while women and slaves were excluded from this process altogether. Women were considered socially inferior in Athens and incapable of acting at a high intellectual capacity, while it was dangerous to educate slaves, and in Athens, illegal.

Part Two:

So, who were the sophists? Let’s begin with the most famous – Socrates, or as Bill and Ted call him Socrates. Now the problem with learning about Socrates is that he didn’t write anything down himself. Indeed, most of what we learn about him comes from two of his students: Plato, and Xenophon. Some of their writings about Socrates, particularly Plato’s often contradict themselves. But generally, he is considered the father of philosophy. He advocated that a good man pursues virtue over material wealth, and he mused upon the idea of wisdom. The story goes that he decided to ask every wise man about what they know, and he found that they thought themselves wise,  yet they were not, while Socrates himself knew that he was not wise at all, which paradoxically, made him wiser since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance. This stance threatened the status of the most powerful Athenians, so he was eventually tried and when asked what his punishment should be, he proposed free dinners for the rest of his life, as his position as someone who questions Athens into action and progress should be rewarded. Unfortunately, Athenians didn’t see it that way, and he was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens, and of “impiety” (not believing in the official gods of the state). As punishment he was sentenced to death by poisoning. Again – we see a similar theme in today’s educational debate, where educational stances that encourage students to question the status quo and take a critical stance are considered threatening to those in power. Some things just don’t change, do they?

Isocrates was a student of Socrates who founded a school of Rhetoric around 393BCE. He believed education’s purpose was to produce civic efficiency and political leadership, therefore the ability to speak well and be persuasive was the cornerstone of his approach. While his students didn’t have to write 5 paragraph persuasive essays, you can see this approach in modern day social studies classes as well as middle and high school English curricula.

Plato, on the other hand, travelled for ten years after Socrates’ execution, returning to establish his Academy, named after the Greek hero Akedemos, in 387 BCE. He believed that education could produce citizens who could cooperate and members of a civic society (like the aims of 19th and 20th century public educators). His curriculum focused on Civic Virtue. The idea that a good citizen would act for the common good, at the expense of their individual gains. In his work “the Republic” he outlines that everyone needs an elementary education in music, poetry, and physical training, two to three years of military training, ten years of mathematics science, five years of dialectic training, and 15 years of practical political training. Those who could attain all that knowledge would become “philosopher kings”, the leaders in his ideal society.

Aristotle was a student of Plato, learning in his academy for 19 years. When Plato died, her travelled until he was invited by Philip of Macedon to educate his 13-year-old son, Alexander (later the Great). In 352 BCE he moved back to Athens to open his school, the Lyceum. Aristotle’s approach was based around research. There was systemic approach to the collection of information, and a new focus on empirical methods, like what we see as the foundation of our modern research methods.

So, these were the developments in Athens, however, this was not the same for all of Greece. Whereas the Athenian system evolved away from a focus on preparation of male citizens for military service, Spartan society kept military superiority as the focus for its education

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe here: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

In this episode we a going to complete our brief tour of early civilizations in the Neolithic era.  We will begin with a quick discussion of the Indus River Valley civilizations, then travel to Ancient China, and finally take a look at Meso-American systems.

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative made up of educators who dream of a better world for our students and their teachers. We create, write, talk, teach and learn about the things that matter most in education. To find out more, point your browser to www.edjacent.org. 

One thing we all have in common is that we’ve been to school. So, if you would like to contribute to the pod in any way, if you have a story to share, long, short, tragic, or comic, if you have comments to make about the podcast, or just want to say “hi”, you can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to me directly using [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

Transcript: 

It is argued that the civilizations that developed in the Indus River Valley were even more advanced than those in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.  At its height, the Indus-Sarasvati, or Harappan civilization extended for more than 1 million square kilometers from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges. We know that around 7000 BCE there were permanent agricultural settlements there, and by 2500 BCE the area was populated by an estimated 5 million people.

On the banks of the Indus, the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro grew. Streets were planned in a grid system with wide roads. Houses were built from mud bricks and were often raised. These cities also had a sewer system, and a water supply. It is often assumed that even the poorest citizens had a better standard of living than in Mesopotamia, but we cannot know for sure.

What we do know is that throughout the second millennium BCE, the area was populated by Aryan groups who settled from the steppes (an area that stretched from modern day Eastern Europe – the Ukraine, through to the south of Russia in to today’s Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan). Don’t get these Aryans mistaken for the cos-play supremacists who claim that white folks are Aryans. That is something completely different, and dangerous, whose connections are rooted in 19th century Colonial and Fascist ideologies).

These Aryans are important, though, as they wrote down a collection of stories from the area, known as the Vedas. These are the oldest known stories told, from as long ago as 7000 BCE.  Their writing formed the basis for the literate society that traded with the other civilization to it’s East and West. With this literacy, and no doubt it’s advanced societal needs, came a need for learning. While we don’t have any evidence of formal places of education, as we do in Egypt or Mesopotamia, we can assume that there were complex institutions that served as places of learning. We know that as a culture, they mastered astronomy, time, elementary mathematics, and medicine, plus their religious lore and writes needed to be learned and shared, and as always in a complex society, there needed to me an administration, so we can assume that there was some formal education based around learning the Indus script. However, we have little evidence of an education process.

Climate change caused the monsoons and floods to lessen and change in predictability, and the way of life in this region began to change over a period around 600BCE. Larger cities were abandoned for smaller villages, and so we are left with more questions about this fascinating period of human history.

Part Two:

At the same time as civilizations were beginning along River Valleys in Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, so life began to change in Ancient China too. As early civilizations grew along river valleys here, so did writing, and a subsequent need to spread, and control who gets access to that knowledge. Early hieroglyph writings emerged in China around 2000 BCE, and professional institutions were created to teach knowledge and writing, akin to what we have seen in other early civilizations.

We know the first schools in Ancient china were establishes during the Xia dynasty (2070 BCE – 1600 BCE) – please excuse any poor pronunciations on my part. To the East of the Capital of the Zhou dynasty (1046 – 221 BCE) stood buildings where the children of the nobility were educated. To the west were buildings where ordinary children could be educated. Throughout the region, a state and local school system soon developed. State schools were for children of the nobility. There were elementary schools and colleges. Village schools, also known as local schools, were divided into four levels. It was possible that a poorer student could pass through all four levels and get into college. This implies that education may have provided a pathway for upward mobility.

We don’t know how or who paid for education and schooling, but we can assume that it was privately funded. These schools taught writing, mathematics, and rooted instruction in Confucian Philosophy. Now when Emperor Qin Si Huang, the first emperor of a unified state, took over. He abolished the private schools, wanting a more centralized control of education, and forbade people to read Confucian classic texts. Indeed, he gave orders that Confucian books were to be burned and scholars of Confucianism were to be burned alive. He wanted to establish an education system based on legalist principles. Without going into too much detail legalism was a philosophy which sought to organize society, using reward and punishment. Akin to modern-day autocracies, it was felt important to educate people on how to be compliant citizens in society, as opposed to how to be participatory citizens who look to improve societies.

State bureaucracies grew in this period, and rulers increasingly needed educated, thoughtful, and scholarly administrators to run the empire.  Thus, the education system was reformed to make people compliant, and to provide a number or competent administrators to make sure things run efficiently. It would be another 1000 years until the development of the civil service examination, but the beginnings of a bureaucracy supported by an education system can be seen growing at this time. Indeed, over the next 800 years, there would be a swing from private schools, which could follow their own philosophy and education method, to state schools which were more centralized and controlling. This struggle between the compliance of legalism, and the more humanistic philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and much later, Buddhism, would continue until the last emperor and the introduction of communism in the 20th century.

Meanwhile, in Mesoamerica, there were similar evolutions of civilizations.  For example, by 1000 BCE the Olmec were established and had developed their own writing system, as had The Maya. We know more about the Mayan civilization in this ancient period. We know they developed an accurate calendar, counting 365 days in a year, as well as maintained a 260 day calendar and a 360 day calendar for use in agriculture, religious holidays, and “understanding the present so that we might know the past, and predict the future”.

This civilization also recorded a better understanding of medicine and anatomy than even the Greeks in Europe – all this knowledge needed to be learned by those who needed to know it. In the case of Mayan civilization, this was the nobility and leadership. It is a common theme in these societies that as soon as we get a social structure, those in charge realize that knowledge and literacy is an important commodity, and therefore only their own children need to have access to it.

This would be different to the later Aztecs and the Incas further south, but as they come later, there is more that we need to know before we return to this area of the world.

So, with the Neolithic revolution, we see the emergence of writing and what we would consider modern civilization, with knowledge and literacy as a key commodity, leading to issues of power and control of society, in five key areas at about the same time. In Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, we have clear evidence of schools and schooling. In the Indus River Valley, we know that there were complex cities which needed organizing, we know that there was a need for scribes and scholars, and we know that this all had to be learned. This is similar to Olmec and Mayan civilizations where we know that writing emerged, and complex societies developed, and we know they developed some important knowledge that needed learning and preserving – but we don’t have evidence of an education system as we know it. Then we have China, where formal education developed along with writing and philosophy. In China, we see the emergence of a centralized education system used to control and promote social classes, as well as private schools and colleges which followed their own philosophies and curricula.

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

In today’s episode we take our first periodical dive into the history of education. In one of the courses I teach, we do a unit about the history of public education in the US, and I get asked lots of questions by my students about education in other places, and at other times. As a result, it is only fitting to use this podcast as an excuse to find out more. So today, we are going back in time. Way back to the dawn of civilization, to find out if there was any formal education in the ancient world?

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative made up of educators who dream of a better world for our students and their teachers. We create, write, talk, teach and learn about the things that matter most in education. To find out more, point your browser to www.edjacent.org.

For me, it’s the stories of teachers, students, and school communities that matter. As such, this podcast is only possible with the help and support of its listeners. Please leave positive reviews wherever you are able. If you are an iTunes or Spotify subscriber, leaving a good review can really help our visibility.  Also, please don’t keep this podcast to yourself. Tell your friends to subscribe and listen too. 

If you would like to contribute to the pod in any way, if you have a story to share, long, short, tragic, or comic, if you have comments to make about the podcast, or just want to say “hi”, you can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to me directly using [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

In this episode Mark takes a dive in to the issue of "learning loss" and asks - is learning loss a thing? 

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other pod catchers. Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative made up of educators who dream of a better world for our students and their teachers. We create, write, talk, teach and learn about the things that matter most in education. To find out more, point your browser to www.edjacent.org. 

For me, it’s the stories of teachers, students, and school communities that matter. As such, this podcast is only possible with the help and support of its listeners. Please leave positive reviews wherever you are able. If you are an iTunes or Spotify subscriber, leaving a good review can really help our visibility.  Also, please don’t keep this podcast to yourself. Tell your friends to subscribe and listen too. 

One thing we all have in common is that we’ve been to school. So, if you would like to contribute to the pod in any way, if you have a story to share, long, short, tragic, or comic, if you have comments to make about the podcast, or just want to say “hi”, you can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to me directly using [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

This podcast is available in iTunes, Google, Spotify, and many other podcatchers.

Subscribe with this URL: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml 

In today’s episode I welcome back previous guest, and now friend of the podcast, Meghan Raftery. Meghan is the Chief Design Officer of the Edjacent collaborative. Edjacent’s emphasis on placing value in teacher’s stories and improving education on a personal and community level aligned with mine in such a strong way that it was a no-brainer that the Teacher’s Teatime Podcast would feature Edjacent content, and Edjacent would showcase our little podcast. As such, and to celebrate our ongoing alignment with the values of the Edjacent collaborative, I asked Meghan back onto the show to tell us exactly what Edjacent is all about.

If you want to know more you can check out the Edjacent website on www.Edjacent.org, or email Meghan directly, her address is [email protected].  She’s also active on Twitter @Meg5han. 

I’m really excited about what Edjacent can offer educators at all levels in their careers, from pre-service through to retirees. It’s a tough time to be in education, and the work of everyone in school communities is so important, so groups like Edjacent, which aim to provide a bespoke experience centered on the needs of the educator, are going to play an important role moving forward.

I’m so happy that the Teacher’s Teatime Podcast will be a part of this process. Expect to hear more educator’s stories in future episodes.

This podcast is a proud member of Edjacent, a design collaborative made up of educators who dream of a better world for our students and their teachers. We create, write, talk, teach and learn about the things that matter most in education. To find out more, point your browser to www.edjacent.org. That’s w w w dot e d j a c e n t dot o r g.

For me, it’s the stories of teachers, students, and school communities that matter. As such, this podcast is only possible with the help and support of its listeners. Please leave positive reviews wherever you are able. If you are an ITunes or Spotify subscriber, leaving a good review can really help our visibility.  Also, please don’t keep this podcast to yourself. Tell your friends to subscribe and listen too. 

One thing we all have in common is that we’ve been to school. So, if you would like to contribute to the pod in any way, if you have a story to share, long, short, tragic, or comic, if you have comments to make about the podcast, or just want to say “hi”, you can send an email to [email protected] or alternatively you can send emails to [email protected] I love to read what you have to say.

If social media is your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @markdiacop.

You can find our contact information, copies of the show notes, and you can download previous episodes of the podcast at www.teachersteatimepod.com

The podcast artwork was created by Phaedra.

Opening and closing music is by Bryan Boyko.

This podcast is available in iTunes. Subscribe with this URL: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-teatimeteachings-podcast/id1497468044

For other podcatchers, subscribe with this one: https://feed.podbean.com/teatimeteaching/feed.xml

Well this is a celebratory episode. It was a year ago that the Teacher’s Teatime Podcast was launched, and this is our 20th episode. We have had short stories, teacher’s stories, news about the latest goings on in education, while all the time we maintained a focus on schools as communities, whether they meet in person or virtually.

We’ve been download just under 400 times. Our most downloaded episode was Episode 3 when we asked for student’s perspectives on the abrupt switch to remote learning when Covid first struck. Episode 14, our first pub talk was the next most popular episode, with episode 15, Doug Wren’s teacher story, a career in education, our third most popular.

The podcast has been listened to in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, India, Japan, Russia, Brazil, and Spain. Here in the US we have a footprint in Virginia, Kansas, Texas, Michigan, California, Washington State, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Oregon.  Wherever you are listening, thank you for supporting the podcast by taking an interest. It is much appreciated.  Don’t forget to subscribe using the links in the show notes on the website and tell your friends.  

This year we have more stories from the classroom, more interviews with educators, more pub talks, and more about schools as communities. We will also have a periodical feature focusing on the history of education – how did we develop the education system that we have? I’m looking forward to putting that one together.

As always, I love to hear your stories from school, as teachers, parents, and students. Feel free to share your stories with me at [email protected].  

Anyway, as we are celebrating, here are a couple of school stories:

Renaissance Man:

The first one is one that came out of a chat with a friend of mine. We both used to teach World History to high school freshmen and sophomores here in the states, so that would be the equivalent of years 9 and 10 back in England. I don’t know about you, but most of the stories I hear about come from classrooms frequented by 14 and 15 year olds. When I think back to my own school days, my best stories come from being that age too.

Anyway, here is the story– and I quote - it was early in the school year and we were just beginning a unit on the renaissance. The tenth grade course began with the renaissance and went all the way up to the modern world. The 9th grade course ended with the renaissance so most of what we were covering was already familiar to the kids. For my introductory lesson, I thought I would hook the student’s interests by focusing on just how groundbreaking the renaissance was. I created a slide show of all the cool architecture, art, and inventions of the era, editing it into a movie trailer. This was before cool apps like Imovie so it took some doing. I thought it was a cool thing to do.

Then my lesson focused on the main man of the renaissance – Leonardo Da Vinci. With the class we played a game called “Leonardo, or Leonardon’t” where we would see pictures of modern day inventions, like the tank, the helicopter, and stuff like that, and we would decide if it was an idea that he had – Leonardo, or didn’t have, Leonardon’t.  Then we would do some investigation into his life. It made for a fun lesson and the students were usually engaged.

In the second lesson, the plan was for the students to create inventions of their own that could help improve the modern world, and wrote them up into a codex similar to Leonardo, with sketches, and backwards writing just like he did. But first, we would review the content of the previous lesson. I asked for someone to explain what the renaissance was, several students were able to explain successfully. I then asked for some examples of art, architecture, and artefacts from the era, and many were able to give us some examples that they saw on the video in the lesson before. Then the big question, the one that shows they were paying attention….

So, can anyone name the Man who pretty much embodied the Renaissance? Our Renaissance Man.

To which Madison raised her hand. Now Madison (which for the purpose of this story isn’t her real name) never raised her hand. She was an excellent student, but was always quiet and shy. Noticing her hand up I jumped at the chance for this softly spoken, shy student, to contribute.  Surely she would feel so much better and gain confidence in speaking out with this opportunity. I had visions of this being a life-changing moment for this student, happening right now, in my classroom.

“Madison”, I said confidently. “Go ahead and tell us who we reckon is the man who defines the Renaissance”.

With a smile, and a loud, confident voice, Madison piped up: “Leonardo…….DiCaprio”. 

Part Two:

Welcome back. So another story from the annals, and it carries the title “Mashed Potatoes”, but it’s not really a story about mashed potatoes, but it has had an impact on my own family, so I think it’s a really important one to share on this 20th Episode, and One Year anniversary of the podcast.  

Now, if you were to come into my classroom before a class starts, you would usually hear music playing from my phone. I tend to put it on shuffle play and any one of 5000+ tracks might come on. It makes for interesting conversations with students asking what is playing, and “how old is that again?”  It’s important to education our young folks about real music.

Well, back in the nineties, this second-year teacher was about to have his challenging, but when he reflects on the personalities, his all-time favorite, class of year 9s.  It’s always ninth grade!! Anyway, it was after lunch when the students were about to come to class, and as this was in the days before WIFI, internet, smartphones, and stuff like that, we had old fashioned media in our classrooms: Televisions, Video Cassette Recorders, and Radio-Cassette Players.

It was not unusual for us to have the radio on as our kids came in at the beginning of class, and as this was the end of the lunch hour, it was playing as they straggled in. I used to have it tuned into a commercial station that played the latest music, remember this was the mid-nineties, grunge had just happened, and Brit Pop was just beginning. It was a great time for music, and I would probably argue that music has never been as good as it was then. Or maybe that’s just me looking at things through my prism of age.

Anyway, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit was playing on the radio, as the students were coming in. Some of them asked if I could turn it up, and as I was a bit of a Nirvana fan, I duly obliged. Then Gemma bounded in. Gemma (as we shall call her in this story) was gregarious bordering on boisterous and liked to make an entrance. She particularly enjoyed making an entrance if she was fashionably late for the beginning of class, as she was in this instance. So, as she came though the door, she heard what was playing, and her face lit up!

“Oh, it’s the mashed potato song – I love the mashed potato song”

“What?” Said I and about twenty of the class at the same time.

“It’s the mashed potato song. Listen to the chorus”

And as the chorus began, she started screaming along with the late, great, Kurt Cobain –

“Here they are now, Mashed Potatoes, I like eating, Mashed Potatoes, with some gravy, mashed potatoes, I like eating mashed potatoes… yeah”.

“You see” she said, “It’s the mashed potato song.”

And you know what? – I think she was convinced that these were the genuine lyrics.

So ever since then, Smells like Teen Spirit is forever the Mashed Potato Song. And we can thank Gemma for planting that earworm for ever more.

So that was Episode 20 of the Teachers Teatime Podcast.

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