Hallway Conversations

Episode 127: Parent-Teacher Conferences (or, “we really learned this stuff through the school of hard knocks!”)

Abby and Dave start off this conversation reconnecting after a week of not seeing each other, because we were both presenting at different Christian education conferences. After a little catching up and reconnecting, we shift to our main topic: parent teacher conferences. (‘Tis the season!) We share stories of our own experiences as young teachers, learning how to lead a parent-teacher conference, partly through the school of hard knocks. We describe lessons we learned, and things we found that worked well for getting on the same page with parents, because we all care about the kids. We also share a bit from our perspective of parents about what we hope for in a conference with teachers. We hope that this conversation encourages you, educators, when you meet up with parents to collaborate with them for the good of the kids.

• We always love hearing from you, dear listeners. You can drop us a line at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com. 
• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Episode 126: Re-energizing in the Middle of the Semester (or, “the honeymoon is over, and it’s time to mix things up!”)

We are in a season of transition! It’s been a wonderful journey as a trio, but with changing demands, Matt is going to step away from the podcast. We are grateful for the time and conversations we’ve had over the past four and a half years(!) and we wish him well as he moves into other adventures. Abby and Dave have decided to continue to record new episodes, and we hope you’ll continue to join us in the metaphorical hallway.

In today’s episode, we are thinking about what it looks like to be in the middle of the semester when things feel a little stale…or maybe “the honeymoon is over!” We share some ideas and strategies we use to mix things up to look for ways to increase students’ engagement, making the curriculum accessible and meaningful for our students. We hope you’ll be encouraged to talk about your own strategies for mixing things up with colleagues in your hallways as well!

• We always love hearing from you, dear listeners. You can drop us a line at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com. 
• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/ 

Episode 125: Welcome Back! (or…”It’s been a hot minute, and we need to catch up…”)

After a summer away, it sure felt good to get back together in front of our microphones. This first episode for season 10 is really just catching up on all the things we’ve been doing since we last recorded in May, and sharing about all the cool stuff we have coming up in the next couple of months as well. We’re excited to be back with you, friends, and we hope and pray that our hallway conversations here on the podcast will be an encouragement for you all to have hallway conversations of your own. Looking forward to connecting with you–here on the pod, or in person when we have the opportunity to see you!

• Dave mentioned his forthcoming book about AI for Christian educators. If you’re interested, you can subscribe to his newsletter (https://drdave.substack.com) for updates about when it is coming out!

• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/ 

Episode 124: Winding Down (or, Abby is an award-winning teacher, and we’re all here to reflect on our learning)

We are at the end of another semester, and at the end of another season of this podcast adventure. In this episode, we reflect together on our practices, on the things we are taking away from this year, the nature of teaching as “planting seeds,” and the importance of Sabbath for educators. We hope that this conversation encourages you all to wrap up your own academic years well, friends. With this episode, we are going on hiatus for the summer, but we plan to be back with you with new episodes in the fall. We hope you’ll have time to rest, recreate, and re-create this summer!

• In this episode, Abby refers to a blog post by David Smith that gave her great ideas for end-of-term reflections for her students. You can read this post yourself here: https://christianscholars.com/reflections-on-how-to-end-a-semester/ 
• Matt used the Romero Prayer as a closing blessing for this episode. If you aren’t familiar with this one, you can read it–and the backstory for this prayer–here: http://www.romerotrust.org.uk/romero-prayer
• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Bonus: More Great Ideas with Erik Ringsby

After recording our last episode, we left the microphones running as we sometimes do, and had another amazing interaction full of wisdom from our pal, Erik Ringsby. We are including it here as a shorty bonus episode, and we hope it spurs more thinking about how to care well for your students!

• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Episode 123: Supporting ALL Our Students (a conversation with Erik Ringsby)

This week’s episode is a conversation with our good friend and colleague in the Education department, Professor Erik Ringsby. Erik joined our team last year and teaches a variety of courses in special education and learner diversity, and draws on a long career as a special ed teacher and instructional coach. He is a talented, thoughtful educator, and one of our favorite things about Erik is his deep passion for supporting ALL students to make learning come to life. We are confident that this episode will be a blessing and an encouragement to you to think deeply about ways your school can support all the kids you get to serve! 

• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Episode 122: Finding Joy Amidst Frustration (or, Dave adopted a dog and is navigating this!)

This episode was prompted by an email Dave sent to the rest of the crew–we’ll let you listen to hear the details–but it has to do with finding lots of joy amidst some frustration. This got us thinking about the nature of joy, and we share some of the joyful memories we have from our growing up years as we begin. Then we shift to talking about finding joy in the work of teaching, even when it is challenging, demanding, and downright frustrating. How can we look for joy, and help our students learn to see joy as well? We hope this will be an encouragement for you too to choose joy, even when things are frustrating!

• In this episode we reference Dave’s newsletter: Positivity. Passion. Purpose. You can read the post we discuss here: https://drdave.substack.com/p/joy-amidst-the-hard-stuff You can subscribe for free and it will come to your inbox every other Wednesday.
• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/ 

Episode 121: Deepening Our Understanding of Christian Education (a conversation with Shaun Brooker)

In this episode we have the opportunity to interview our new friend, Shaun Brooker, who serves as Head of School at Hamilton Christian School in Hamilton, New Zealand. It was a pleasure to meet Shaun in person at the recent Converge conference in Orlando, and we were delighted that Shaun was able to join us for the show, despite the time difference between the Waikato region in New Zealand and Northwest Iowa–he is 18 hours ahead of us! Shaun is a thoughtful, passionate leader, as you will find as you listen. In this wide-ranging conversation about Christian education, Shaun shares his vision for the Kingdom work we get to engage in as Christian educators. We hope you’ll be blessed by this conversation, and we suspect this is not the last time we’ll have Shaun on the show.

• At the end of the episode Dave asks Shaun about an important piece he has written entitled “The Letter,” which we hope everyone will read. You can find this piece here: The Letter.
• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/ 

Bonus Episode: It's Good to Be Smart!

Friends, we know it’s been a bit since we’ve had a new episode. Never fear! We have more fun ideas still to come this spring, including some great interviews. In the meantime, we’d like to share Dave’s side project: another podcast! This one is a STEM-oriented podcast supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation called It’s Good to Be Smart! The idea is that science teachers (grades 5-10) could use the episodes in this podcast to support their teaching. Season 1 is all about matter–the building blocks of the universe. This episode is all about the Periodic Table of the Elements. We hope you enjoy it–and maybe consider sharing this podcast with a science teacher you know!

• It’s Good to Be Smart! is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and more. You can also find on the web at https://goodtobesmart.podbean.com/
• Dave has created instructional resources to support using It’s Good to Be Smart! with students. You can access these materials at https://goodtobesmart.com/

Episode 120: Accountability and Trust (a conversation with Darryl De Boer)

Matt noticed that it was four years ago last week that we started this podcast adventure–and what a wonderful time it’s been for us! We’re so grateful to you all, dear listeners, for joining us on this journey. We hope it will continue to be a blessing for you. In honor of that milestone, we start things off with some reflections on what we have learned and what we love about this project.

This week we are joined in the studio (aka, Abby’s office with the creaky table) by our good friend, Darryl De Boer. Darryl brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from his roles as Director of Education at Surrey Christian Schools, and Director of Teaching for Transformation at CACE. Our discussion this week is coming in response to our recent (successful!) accreditation process in the Education program at Dordt University. We wonder together about accountability and trust in Christian education. We hope that the discussion will be an encouragement for you to think about the right role of accountability in your own school context, and the important role of trust in those accountability processes.

• Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/