Hallway Conversations

Episode 061: Riding a Unicycle on the Edge of a Cliff

For today’s check-in question, Matt asks us what random things we have on our desks or shelves that tell something about us. You might be surprised by what we share…or maybe not! As we are looking towards the end of another academic year, the main topic today is around summative assessment. Dave recently shared a professional development workshop for a local school about the topic, and we spend some time thinking about the purposes and practices of summative assessment. Dave shares his definition for summative assessment, and then we argue a bit about the different ways summative assessment is used (and abused) in schools today…and how our thinking about summative assessment has shifted over time. The difference between “assessment” and “judgment,” just how high-stakes assessment should be, and ideas for alternatives to traditional cumulative exams…lots of ideas we bat around in this conversation!

Episode 060: Flourishing Together - Well-Being

Are you flourishing? Are your students? Your school community? What do we mean by “flourishing” anyway? This week we wrap up our five-week series discussing Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe’s new book Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools. The book is divided into five sections, and in this episode, we discuss part five of the book, which is all about “well-being.” As we begin, we talk about work-life rhythm, and why it’s often so difficult for teachers to find this rhythm. We discuss the challenges of resting well, and other facets of well-being for teachers, administrators, and schools. As we conclude this series, we are grateful for the work Lynn and Andy put into this book, and if you have been listening along and haven’t yet read the book yourself, please take this encouragement to find a colleague or two, read the book, and discuss it together this summer. We hope our conversations spark some discourse of your own!

• We would love to hear your reactions to this book as well! Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, comments, and wonderings with us at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com. 
• If you’d like to pick up a copy of the book for yourself (which we definitely recommend!) you can purchase it here: Amazon link
• In today’s episode, Matt references the book The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath by Mark Buchanan. If you’re interested, you can find out more here: Amazon link

Episode 059: Flourishing Together - Resources

Are you flourishing? Are your students? Your school community? What do we mean by “flourishing” anyway? This is week 4 of our five-week series in which we are reading and discussing Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe’s new book Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools. The book is divided into five sections, and in this episode, we discuss part four of the book, which is all about “resources.” We begin by thinking about teacher resources we remember from our own school experience–and how technologies and tools have shifted over time. Matt shares a quote about scarcity and abundance from Walter Bruggeman, which led us to think about why so many schools think about what they don’t have rather than what they do have. We grapple with the question, “How much is ‘enough?’” and think through how we student our human resources as well as material resources really well. Lots in this section to unpack and consider!

• We would love to hear your reactions to this book as well! Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, comments, and wonderings with us at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com. 
• If you’d like to pick up a copy of the book for yourself (which we definitely recommend!) you can purchase it here: Amazon link

Episode 058: Flourishing Together - Learning

Are you flourishing? Are your students? Your school community? What do we mean by “flourishing” anyway? This is week 3 of 4our five-week series in which we are reading and discussing Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe’s new book Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools. The book is divided into five sections, and in this episode, we discuss part three of the book, which is all about learning. We obviously talk about student learning–which is the real focus of schooling!--but we also spend quite a bit of time thinking about professional learning for educators, which is also essential for flourishing schools, students, and teachers. Further, we think about ways we can be surprised and delighted by students and their creativity and learning.

• We would love to hear your reactions to this book as well! Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, comments, and wonderings with us at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com. 
• If you’d like to pick up a copy of the book for yourself (which we definitely recommend!) you can purchase it here: Amazon link

Episode 057: Flourishing Together - Relationships

Are you flourishing? Are your students? Your school community? What do we mean by “flourishing” anyway? This week we continue our five-week series in which we are reading and discussing Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe’s new book Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools. The book is divided into five sections, and In this episode, we discuss part two of the book, which is all about “relationships.” We use the Triple A protocol (What do you AGREE with? What do you ARGUE with? What do you ASPIRE to?) to guide our conversation around this section of the book, and make connections to our own practices. 

• We would love to hear your reactions to this book as well! Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, comments, and wonderings with us at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com. 
• If you’d like to pick up a copy of the book for yourself (which we definitely recommend!) you can purchase it here: Amazon link

Episode 056: Flourishing Together - Purpose

Are you flourishing? Are your students? What do we mean by “flourishing” anyway? This week we begin a five-week series in which we are reading and discussing Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe’s new book Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools. The book is divided into five sections, and In this episode, we discuss part one of the book, which is all about “purpose.” We share some of our noticings and wonderings from our reading, and make connections to our own practices. 

• We would love to hear your reactions to this book as well! Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, comments, and wonderings with us at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com. 
• If you’d like to pick up a copy of the book for yourself (which we definitely recommend!) you can purchase it here: Amazon link

Episode 055: What’s the Value in Project-Based Learning?

We start off today’s show with a check-in question, wondering about who we would like to interview if we each had our own talk show. Our responses probably say quite a bit about each of our own unique personalities! Our main topic today is a question from a listener; Loretta asks, “In the past few years, our school has embraced Project Based Learning as a preferred teaching method. What are your thoughts on PBL? And what do you think are some of the best things about PBL and maybe what are some of the downfalls of teaching in a PBL style?” This was a timely question, as Matt and Abby had visited a PBL school just the week before we recorded this episode! We think together about the similarities and differences between having students “do projects” and implementing “project-based learning.” We further explore some of the habits of mind that seem to be important for implementing PBL at a classroom level and at a school level. Expanding audiences, exhibitions of student work, student empowerment–we talk about it all!

• Friends, we are preparing for our first book discussion! We are going to be reading and discussing Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools by Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe. We would love it if you would read along, and even submit questions you might have! The book has five sections, and we will be discussing one section each week beginning with next week’s episode, dropping on March 30, 2022. We would love it if you would read along with us, and even submit your questions, comments, wonderings. Drop us a note at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com You can order your copy of the book here: Amazon link

Spring Break 2022 Bonus - Awards

Many thanks to you, our dedicated listeners! We are on Spring Break this week, and so we are pulling one of Dave's favorite episodes out of the archive. In this episode, we discuss a question from a listener about end-of-the-year awards ceremonies--maybe this will be good food for thought for you at this point in the spring as you might be thinking ahead to the end of this school year? We hope you'll be challenged and encouraged by listening.

• Friends, we are preparing for our first book discussion! We are going to be reading and discussing Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools by Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe. We would love it if you would read along, and even submit questions you might have! The book has five sections, and we will be discussing one section each week beginning on March 30, 2022. We would love it if you would read along with us, and even submit your questions, comments, wonderings. Drop us a note at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com You can order your copy of the book here: Amazon link

Episode 054: Not Just the Icing on the Cake

We jump in with a check-in question this week, things we are currently learning. A diverse set of answers to this question among the three of us: a new computer programming language, running a caulk gun, and getting out of our comfort zones to meet new people. (Care to guess who said which one of these?)

In this episode, we have a question from a listener! Susan asks, “Many teachers struggle with integrating faith and learning well–doing it more than a devotional activity or an add-on to a lesson. How can we do this in a God-honoring and natural way?” In response, Matt shares a bit from an article by one of our colleagues, Dr. Leah Zuidema, entitled “Integral, Not Integrated” and we think through some different ideas of what faith-informed teaching might look like in practice. In particular, we discuss ways of moving beyond “sprinkling on a little Jesus,” to teaching in a way that makes faith more than just icing on the cake.

• Friends, we are preparing for our first book discussion! We are going to be reading and discussing Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools by Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe. We would love it if you would read along, and even submit questions you might have! The book has five sections, and we will be discussing one section each week beginning on March 30, 2022. We would love it if you would read along with us, and even submit your questions, comments, wonderings. Drop us a note at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com You can order your copy of the book here: Amazon link

Episode 053: Righteous Non-Compliance?

Today we started with a check-in about our favorite books or series that we would love to go back and read again for the first time. One of us said The Chronicles of Narnia, one said Henry Huggins, and one said The Hunger Games. Care to guess who claimed each one? We’d love to hear about your favorite books as well; you can share yours with us at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com.

The question we tackle for our discussion today came from our dear friend and colleague, Ed, who asked us to think through this question: “While compliance is not the goal of schooling, what do we and our students miss if we don’t ever emphasize compliance? Should we prepare students for aspects of life that expect our compliance whether or not we agree?” Together, we think through the nature of why we have expectations for students’ behavior, and when they definitely should comply…and when a healthy (or even a righteous) non-compliance is a good thing? We’ll be very curious to hear what you think!

• We are going to start a short series in a few weeks in which we will be reading and discussing the new book, Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools by Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe. We would love it if you would read along, and even submit questions you might have! More information about this coming next week, but if you are interested, you can order your copy of the book now. - Amazon link