In 2016 the Houston Chronicle published a report claiming that the Texas Education Agency had imposed a "special education cap" on the percentage of a district's students that could be classified as special education. In 2018 the US Department of Education completed its investigation and found that Texas had indeed illegally set this cap at 8.5% and that this cap had caused qualified students to be denied services. On today's podcast we talk about how,  yep, this is totally a thing,  a thing that we have experienced in our years of education, the students that were denied services because of this cap, and where we think this misguided, illegal policy came from. We discuss why it is so vitally important that we serve our special education students, what is going on with dyslexia services in Texas, and where we go from here. If you work in special education, we'd love to hear from you! Comment on this blog, on our Facebook page, or email us at [email protected]. Listen to us here or subscribe to us on iTunes or Stitcher.

Your at-risk student is looking for your support. Your GT student is looking for a challenge. We've talked a lot about intervention for your struggling students, but what do you do when you have gifted and talented students who are struggling? The struggle may look different when you're working with advanced courses and high achieving students, but the struggle is real all the same. Today on the podcast we have veteran AP teacher, multiple Teacher of the Year winner Valerie Minor on to talk about how she intervenes and differentiates for advanced students as well as what she's learned in her transition into a special education co-teach setting this year. You can listen to the podcast here or follow us and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Give us a like on Facebook, rate or review us, and please share! We love to hear from our listeners!

All of us have been asked the question at one point or another. What made you decide to become a teacher? You've been asked it in job interviews, where the right answer seemed critical. You've been asked it by incredulous family members, where the right answer seemed impossible. You've been asked it by students, where the right answer seemed loaded. We've all got our response memorized. Whether that response reflects your deeply felt, inspirational path into the classroom, the safe-for-work, sanitized version of your winding road towards respectability, or is simply a rehearsed tale that carefully avoids saying "I don't know why I do half the things I do." I don't know about you, but I'm bored by my story. It's not particularly inspirational, and, frankly, it's not particularly interesting. You want to see into a teacher's soul? Don't ask us why we started. Ask us why we stay.  Why do we stay in a career that puts many of us below the federal poverty line? Why do we stay after school day after day, night after night, sponsoring UIL teams, supervising clubs, buying doughnuts, and falling asleep on the couches in the break rooms? Why do we stay in a job where politicians legislate seemingly every.single.thing we do, while the entire country comments on it? Why do we stay after Columbine? After Sandy Hook? After Parkland? Because we do stay. We stay for years. Many of us in the same classrooms, in the same hallways, in the same schools. Why do YOU stay? In today's podcast, we talk about Parkland. And isolation in a school culture. And violence. And inspiration. Connection. Community. Education. And why we stay. Click the link here to listen to today's podcast or find us on iTunes or Google Play and subscribe. And please leave a comment below telling us why YOU stay.

 In the midst of our wider, cultural conversation about women, and power, and leadership, and power, let us pause for a moment to consider the quite curious case of gender in education. Of course, education is an historically female driven profession - for much of the last century it was, in fact, one of the few jobs a woman could even realistically perform. That history continues to influence our profession today. 76% of classroom teachers remain women.  As women slowly take on larger and larger roles in industries all over this country, education sits as an - actually rather large - island. An experiment if you will, of sorts - an enormous, functioning machine -  a bureaucracy, a power structure - inhabited almost exclusively by women.  The lazy among us often joke how the world would be different, how much better it would be, if it could be run by women.  Well, education gives us a glimpse into what that world might actually be like.   And apparently we'd just give control over to the men? The gender inequity that exists in all other power structures in this country, continues in education. A mere 13% of superintendents are women, and surprise, they're paid demonstrably less than male superintendents, and hardly half of our administration are female.  The statistics are hardly worse than the rest of the country, true, but ... isn't it just somehow even more appalling in 2018? This World War 1 factory floor filled with female workers, while the men look down hardly seems aspirational. But what, exactly, is perpetuating this inequity?  In our podcast here we discuss societal messages to women leaders - Lean In, ask for a seat at the table, be assertive - and how those messages, and those leadership behaviors, may be keeping you from succeeding, in, not only a female-dominated workforce, but with male leaders used to a female dominated workforce. Listen to the podcast here or find us on iTunes and subscribe. If you're a teacher, a teacher-leader, or an aspiring teacher-leader, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Discussed in depth is Adam Grant's book Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. His TED talk on Givers and Takers will get you thinking. 

Well my friends and colleagues, welcome to 2018! Welcome to the second half of our year ... the LAST half of our year! Are you back at work? Are you sitting in professional development? Are you currently being trained on the latest piece of life changing #edtech that your district has bought for you? Don't you wish you could find a piece of educational technology that would ACTUALLY change your life? What are the things that you wish edtech would for you? On today's episode we talk about what we wish tech could do for us as teachers, what pieces of technology we're currently finding helpful for at-risk students, and ask the question most won't dare to ask - do our millennial students actually prefer digital learning opportunities? Give us a listen and share your experiences with educational technology here on our blog. Listen to our episode above, or find us on iTunes. If you like our show we appreciate likes and reviews on iTunes.

On today's episode, we have a special treat -we are joined by our guest, long-time teacher, first time author Brendon Lowe, who speaks with us about his new book, Know Thy Students: Differentiation Made Simple available now on Amazon right here. Differentiation made simple? We're in. Brendon comes to the tricky topic of differentiation as a secondary educator, who can speak to the particular difficulty of differentiating in the overcrowded, content-driven high school classroom. His system teaches teachers how to use data to quickly assess where students are in a learning standard based on their performance on each Bloom's Level within a standard. This method of empirically quantifying variables that may seem unquantifiable creates a snapshot of students that teachers can use to modify instruction, modify assessment, and wow their administration. To learn more, listen to the full episode here, or as always, download and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Hey teachers. We've got a subversive message today. YOU are enough for your students. Drop the professional development. Drop the instructional strategies. Drop the trainings. It's not that. It's not pedagogy. It's not curriculum. It's not co-teaching. It's not graphic organizers. It is YOU. On today's episode we talk about the empowering, amazing, humbling power that is being a teacher. Take fifteen minutes today to listen to our podcast to remind you that no matter what you do in the classroom, because YOU are doing it, you are making a difference. Listen to us here, or download us on iTunes or Stitcher.

In today's episode we discuss what a data driven classroom can ACTUALLY do for you. What does state wide, school wide, or even classroom wide data actually mean to you? Can you really use data trends to inform your teaching? Does that even make sense? Listen to our new episode here or where you listen to your podcasts. As always if you like our podcast please subscribe or rate and review us on iTunes or Stitcher.

Real Talk Intervention is back! We took a summer hiatus to refresh our hearts and souls and prepare to return to school, intervention, and podcasting. But it's August now, school is back in swing, and on today's episode we discuss how to get a great start to the new year. In our conversation we move beyond the First Day of School, policies and procedures, and dig into what you can start implementing right NOW at the beginning of the year that will seriously improve your classroom for the rest of the year. Start the year out right - subscribe to Real Talk Intervention on iTunes and Stitcher this year for inspiring content for your high school at-risk learners.

In today's episode, we take on the Texas science standards with our friend John Long, a former AP/IB/PAP biology teacher. We take on how we differentiate instruction both for at-risk students and for students who really need to be gearing up to take AP classes in a few years. And, of course, we address the ongoing controversy over those re-written evolution standards in Texas. How do those standards change our teaching?  Does the wording of the standards provide an opening for creationism in the public schools? Listen here, and don't forget to subscribe to our email list or on iTunes and Stitcher.