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Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers

The podcast designed to speak encouragement and truth into the minds and hearts of educators, and get you informed and energized for the week ahead.
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Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
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Now displaying: September, 2024
Sep 29, 2024

Starting the school day doesn’t have to be chaotic or rushed. In this episode, I’ll explore how soft starts are transforming classrooms by offering a calm, low-pressure beginning that allows students to ease into their day.


Soft starts accomplish more than just setting a calm tone—they’re a powerful tool for promoting social-emotional learning and giving kids the autonomy they need to feel in control of their learning, fostering self-regulation, self-direction, and self-management.


I’ll break down why this approach is beneficial (and super simple to implement!) for all age groups, from elementary to secondary students, and share practical ways to implement it in your classroom.


Soft starts don’t require a monumental shift in your daily routine, but provide a powerful opportunity to create a foundation of calm, focus, and connection that will ripple through every lesson. 


If you want your students to learn how to gauge their own needs and choose activities at the beginning of class that help meet those needs so they’re prepared to learn, soft starts might be the perfect option.

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

 

Sep 15, 2024

Ever feel like you're spinning your wheels trying to improve your teaching, but not seeing the results you want?


In this episode, we delve into the transformative power of sequential lesson design with Gretchen Bridgers of Always a Lesson.

Gretchen is a teacher coach and trainer who has spent more than 2 decades mentoring and coaching educators, and leading professional development. has a fantastic podcast called Always a Lesson's Empowering Educators podcast which I often recommend to Truth for Teachers listeners, as there's a lot of overlap between Gretchen's mindset and areas of interest and my own. Her advice is really practical and spot-on. And, she recently published her third book, called, Always a Lesson: Teacher Essentials for Classroom and Career Success.

In our conversation you'll hear today, Gretchen breaks down some key ideas from that book. She counters the common narrative that classroom management is the first and most important thing to nail down, and reveals why lesson design is actually the secret sauce to transforming your classroom. 

Join us as we explore:

The pitfalls of improving instructional skills in isolation
The "Teacher Success Pathway" and its four foundational bricks: lesson design, classroom management, student engagement, and student choice
Why a well-thought-out lesson plan can prevent classroom disruptions before they start
The importance of creating strong habits to free up cognitive load for both teachers and students

Learn how to identify and fill gaps in your current instructional strategies, avoid common pitfalls that even veteran teachers fall into, and use simple ideas like video self-reflection to revolutionize your teaching. Gretchen's fresh take on reusing what works (instead of constantly reinventing the wheel) is a total game-changer for busy teachers.

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

Sep 1, 2024

Even young students can learn how to understand and combat misinformation, and it's a key information literacy skill in 2024.


In this episode, I'm talking to Melanie Trecek-King of Thinking is Power, because I love how her approach to the topic of misinformation is characterized by compassion and empathy. 


Melanie emphasizes that everyone is susceptible to misinformation, and falling for it doesn't indicate a lack of intelligence. This perspective humanizes those who believe in conspiracy theories or disinformation, so we can view them as people who--like ourselves--have unknowingly accepted false information.

Melanie and I discuss 3 primary reasons we fall for misinformation:

Confirmation Bias: Our tendency to interpret information in ways that confirm our existing beliefs. Once we believe something, we see evidence for it everywhere, reinforcing that belief. Skepticism is crucial for protecting oneself from misinformation, but it's most challenging when information confirms our biases.

Appeals to Emotion: Emotions, particularly anger, outrage, and fear, can trigger the part of our brain that hinders critical thinking. Many forms of misinformation specifically appeal to our emotions to convince us without evidence. When we feel emotionally triggered, it's a good time to slow down and practice emotional skepticism.

Reiteration Effect: Also known as the illusory truth effect, the reiteration effect means that the more we hear something repeated, the more likely we are to think it's true, even if it isn't. Our brain equates ease of processing with truth, so repeated exposure to false information can lead us to believe it.

We also discuss the problem with "doing your own research," and why Melanie sees 2024 as a the post-trust era, not the post-truth era, and how we can respond.

The remainder of our conversation is centered on how to teach information literacy to students. Melanie provides actionable tips and ready-to-use resources to help you:
1. Demonstrate to students that they can be fooled (e.g., through personality reading exercises).
2. Discuss how beliefs are formed using non-triggering examples (e.g., historical witch trials).
3. Include misinformation in lessons to help students recognize its characteristics.
4. Use tools like the FLOATER toolkit to help students evaluate claims systematically.
5. Have students create misinformation to understand its techniques better.

While these concepts are typically taught at the college level, they can be introduced as early as middle school. Even elementary students can begin to understand concepts like author's purpose and recognizing persuasive techniques.

Understanding misinformation is crucial in our daily lives, yet it's often absent from educational standards. Check out Melanie's site for lots of free resources to teach about misinformation using humor and non-triggering approaches to help students recognize it in the real world.

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

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