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The Teacher Approved Starter Kit: Our 10 Favorite Episodes! [episode 100]

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Click below to hear a compilation of our 10 best teacher podcast episodes:

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Overview of episode 100:

Well, friends, we did it! The Teacher Approved podcast has finally made it to 100 episodes! This was always a dream of ours to do, so we wanted to think of a special way where we could celebrate with our loyal audience. We decided that whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or recently started listening, we wanted to compile a list of teacher podcast episodes. So we’re celebrating our 100th episode with a Teacher Approved starter kit!

Out of all of our episodes, we picked the 10 that we think embodies our podcast the most. These teacher podcast episodes showcase what we value as educators, offer practical takeaways for teachers, and fun episodes for us. Some of those topics include establishing a classroom community, classroom management, classroom procedures and expectations, morning work, and more!

It was so much fun going through our previous episodes to create our Teacher Approved starter kit. We’ve come a long way since the beginning and wanted to give you a gift to revisit the foundation of our podcast. We have enjoyed creating and sharing our ideas, thoughts, and providing support to you for the last 100 episodes and we can’t wait to give you more teacher podcast episodes going forward!

Highlights from the episode:

[00:48] Today’s morning message: what is the craziest thing a student has ever brought to school?

[7:29] The start of our Teacher Approved starter kit.

[17:01] The theme that connects all of our episodes together.

[17:36] Today’s teacher approved tip for checking out our past Teacher Approved episodes.

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Resources:

Read the transcript for episode 100, The Teacher Approved Starter Kit: Our 10 Favorite Episodes!:

Emily

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re celebrating our 100th episode with a Teacher Approved episode starter kit.

Heidi

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week’s morning message is what is the craziest thing a student has ever brought to school?

Emily

And we got so many responses and they have been wild. We picked only the most tame ones that want to share with you because there were some that are not safe for podcast ears. I think.

Emily

Amy said that she had a little girl who brought bees in plastic eggs. Oh my gosh. Joyce said she had a student who brought a kitten to school in her backpack. When they called mom to come pick it up mom said that they didn’t even have any kittens. Come to find out like students stolen from her neighbor’s. Kitten was fine and was returned home safely.

Heidi

Lots of kids brought animals to school but mostly they originated at their own home.

Emily

Yes. Emily said that she had a student who brought mom’s original engagement ring, which was then lost on the playground. Denise said the remote control to their TV. Dad was mad.

Emily

Gabrielle said a cow magnet that had just been pulled out of a cow, which I had. I had to do a little googling I did not know what this was. Wow. Teresa said a mole in his backpack which got loose at breakfast in the cafeteria.

Heidi

Lots of animals got loose but I think that was the only one that had gotten loose in the cafeteria. So I thought that was worth a mention.

Emily

And a mole is an interesting one. Katrina said a gallon of ice cream for her snack. Stephanie said that she had a second grader to wear her mom’s bra under her shirt. Many double-takes that day. Oh no we’ve lost Heidi.

Emily

Dawn said I had a student bring his grandpa’s used dirty stained underwear for show and tell for the letter U. Oh no, Heidi’s gone. Joy said an eight year old brought $700 and started giving it out to friends for the school book fair. It was her mom’s rent money.

Heidi

That book fair is such a trap for kids.

Emily

I know I really hope they recovered all that money before it was spent. Sharon said a diamond bracelet. She took it from Mom’s jewelry box and gave it to me as a gift. Nice boy. Micah said a whole raw spaghetti squash for class snack. Yum. Erin said we were having a canned food drive and one of my students pulled a 32 ounce bottle of beer out of their backpack.

Emily

Debbie said a container of dried up oh gosh. I don’t even want to say this. Oh no. Oh, okay. A container of dried up umbilical cord from all six children in the family. I have questions about these parents. So many. She could tell me which one belong to each child and kept saying how cute, particularly her own one. She didn’t seem to notice that I was gagging. Debbie, I’m with you.

Heidi

Had some self confidence in that kid. Dried up stump. It’s cute.

Emily

Melanie said it was crazy hat day and most kids were silly or accessorized versions of normal hats, baseball caps, cowboy hat sombreros, etc. One of my first graders wore a homemade hat with a real birdhouse glued to it with a dead bird in it. Oh no.

Emily

And honestly, there were too many replies that we can’t even go into that had snakes, mice or rats, birds alive sometimes and not so alive. But I did get a kick out of this one from Shavon.

Emily

One morning in my first year of teaching, a second grader walked in and his coat was moving. When I asked him to open his coat there were dozens of baby possums clinging to his shirt. Apparently his pet possum had given birth. So he was bringing them in for show and tell. Oh my god.

Heidi

There were just ate too many animals on this list many and parts of animals, and there were also way too many treasures from mommy’s bathroom cabinet. We can’t share most of them. It’s not very family friendly, but this one was my favorite on the list.

Heidi

So a second grade boy brought a tampon, and insisted that it was his EpiPen. I asked if he ever carried one he said No, his mom did. But she had a whole box of them at home. Quickly thinking I explained kids can’t have medicine at school, but I would make sure the nurse had it.

Emily

Good save. What crazy things have your students brought to school? We would love to have you join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi

Can you believe it? This is our 100th episode. Some of you have been here since we started. And we thank you so much for that.

Emily

For some of you though, this might be your first Teacher Approved episode.

Heidi

And if that’s the case, welcome. We are excited to have you join us.

Emily

Most of you found us somewhere along the way. And we’re so delighted that you’ve come along for the ride.

Heidi

As Emily and I have debated about how to celebrate this 100th episode milestone, we decided on compiling a Teacher Approved starter kit. These are the top 10 episodes that we think give you a taste of what teacher approved is all about.

Emily

100 episodes is a lot. I’m legit proud of us, too. And even if you’ve listened to them all, and thank you if you have you may need a refresher of which ones might be worth listening to again.

Heidi

I know I need a refresher and I have written and recorded and listen to all of our episodes. And I still forget what we’ve talked about.

Emily

It’s true. So if you’re in the same boat, the starter pack is here for you. We pick 10 episodes that give the foundation of how we roll here at the Teacher Approved podcast. Our criteria was to choose episodes that gave a clear idea of what we value as educators, offer practical takeaways for teachers, and were the most fun to record.

Heidi

So let’s dive into the Teacher Approved starter kit. We’re going through these in chronological order.

Emily

And don’t worry about keeping track of each episode. They are all listed in the show notes so you can reference them later. And we’ve compiled them into a playlist to make it easy to revisit them.

Heidi

Our first episode is episode 28, how to launch morning meeting. Emily, can you explain why we chose this as one of our starter kit episodes?

Emily

Well, we are loud and proud advocates of morning meeting because it’s such a powerful routine for any classroom. Morning meeting was my favorite routine of the day because it was such a connective time with my students to start the day. I really think our classroom community each year was born at morning meeting.

Heidi

Oh, definitely the same for me. Morning meeting was a non negotiable part of our day. We did it every single day of school, even if it meant having to bump it to the afternoon, or maybe just doing a speedy three minute version. I’m very task oriented. So I needed the daily reminder that came with morning meeting that I don’t teach math and reading and writing, I teach students.

Emily

Yes. If you’ve never done morning meeting, it can be daunting to start because of all the different elements. In this episode, we break it down so you can launch your morning meeting in a slow way that isn’t too overwhelming.

Heidi

And I think this episode is a good reminder that there’s no wrong way to do morning meeting. What’s important is being intentional about connecting with your students every day.

Emily

Next up is episode 32, five classroom management questions to help banish bad class habits.

Heidi

That’s a tongue twister. This is one of those episodes I wish had existed back when I was teaching second grade.

Emily

Yeah, because there is nothing worse than looking around your class mid year and realizing that things have gotten so sloppy. It happens to the best of us.

Emily

I love this episode because we dive into five questions you can ask yourself to figure out why things have gone wrong, and what you can do to get things back on track.

Heidi

And I might be a little biased, but I think the structure of this episode is really helpful. We start with the big picture and then zoom in to help teachers really identify what isn’t working in their classrooms and what they can do about it.

Emily

Yes, it can really help you pinpoint the root of problems you’re having and give you a plan for fixing them.

Emily

So our third starter kit episode is one of my very favorites. Tell us about that. Heidi.

Heidi

This is episode 35, five ways to increase student engagement, our secret weapon for teachers.

Emily

And spoiler alert the secret weapon is surprise and delight. So if you don’t remember or you haven’t listened surprise and delight is the idea that completely out of the blue, you surprise students by adding a little novelty to your day. They don’t have to earn it, it is a gift to them because you like them.

Heidi

Surprise and delight may sound frivolous, but it actually boosts learning and strengthens relationships. Plus, giving your class a reason to smile makes it fun to be a teacher, and we don’t have enough fun stuff as teachers. Yep.

Heidi

So we don’t have time right now to list all of our surprise and delight suggestions. But go back to Episode 35 to hear lots of ideas for easy ways to sprinkle surprise and delight into your day.

Heidi

Okay, Emily, tell us about our fourth starter kit episode.

Emily

Well, that is one of our most popular episodes, it’s episode 46, 20 best inside recess ideas that your students will love.

Heidi

This is such a fun episode because it’s full of great tips from our Teacher Approved community. One of my favorite takeaways was from Michelle who had a different plan for each recess.

Heidi

So morning, inside recess was a video, lunch inside recess was a free choice of activities, and afternoon inside recess was computer time. And I thought that was so smart to mix it up for each recess, so the kids aren’t bored. If you know it’s the middle of the winter, and you’re going to be inside for several days.

Emily

I know I love that idea. It’s always great when we get to hear suggestions from lots of different teachers, it helps me consider ways of managing a classroom that I’ve never thought of before. Okay Heidi, what’s next?

Heidi

So starter kit, episode number five is episode 48. How to make classroom transitions simple, with clear beginnings and endings.

Emily

I love this episode, it’s actually the first episode in a three part series we did about classroom transitions. All three of those episodes have lots of practical takeaways for how to tame transitions.

Heidi

I really like this whole series on transitions. And this episode in particular, because I think it highlights something that we do well here at Teacher Approved, which is really considering all of the nitty gritty details that go into running an effective classroom.

Emily

Yeah, we are very good at details, that’s for sure. And we think through all of it so that you don’t have to. And good transitions can really make a huge impact on how smoothly your classroom runs. So it’s worth getting into the weeds a bit to talk about them.

Emily

All right now we’re up to our sixth starter kit episode, which is episode 51, four reliable ways to hit reset on a rough day of school. This is another episode full of insightful suggestions from teachers in our Facebook community.

Heidi

It’s also another one of our most listened to episodes. There are so many rough days as a teacher, I love this episode, because it’s a great reminder that you are not alone. Every single teacher in every single classroom has tough days. And I’m so grateful to our community members who were willing to share such great tips for how to get through those difficult days.

Heidi

And that brings us to our seventh starter kit episode. Tell us about that one, Emily.

Emily

That is episode 54, what is the science of reading busting the six biggest myths of SOR. And we were kind of scared to take this one on a little bit because so many people have very big very loud opinions about SOR and we did not want to draw any fire.

Heidi

That’s why it took us ages to write this episode like months, we wanted to be certain that we were giving the best information out there.

Emily

And after the episode came out, we realized that a lot of other teachers had been in the same boat as we were. There’s so much noise around the science of reading that it makes people nervous to venture into those waters, or it makes them unsure if they even know what it means.

Heidi

So our goal with this episode was to provide a way for teachers to cut through the arguing and get some clear answers about SOR. And I think we did a pretty good job of that. Yeah, we did.

Heidi

And that brings us to our eighth episode, Episode 75 classroom procedures and expectations, how they differ and how to teach them.

Emily

When we started this podcast, we hadn’t anticipated focusing so much on classroom procedures and management. But it turns out, we have a lot to say about those things.

Heidi

A lot. Which is funny because I’m guessing most teachers don’t love talking about classroom management, but we can’t seem to get enough. I think it’s because the I’ve learned the hard way that while classroom management is not the fun part of teaching. If you don’t have your management solidly in place, it’s impossible to get to the fun part of teaching.

Emily

Right. We have several episodes about classroom management and even more episodes coming up shortly. Get excited. But I like episode 75 because it covers two of our favorite topics, procedures and expectations.

Heidi

And as we’ve said we love getting into the nitty gritty details. And nothing is more nitty gritty than explaining the key differences between procedures and expectations and why those differences matter. And they really do matter.

Emily

They do and you need to approach them and teach them differently and we get into all of that in the episode. Maybe this should be the first episode in the starter kit. There’s no better way to get to understand when we do at Teacher Approved than a deep dive into procedures and expectations.

Heidi

It’s all of us right in one episode. But that brings us to episode 9. Tell us about that one Emily.

Emily

The ninth episode in our starter kit is episode 81, 20 Teacher Approved back to school tips from listeners. I love getting to hear how other teachers approach back to school and this episode had so many good takeaways and was a very popular episode with our audience.

Heidi

One thing I really appreciated was all of the tips for helping teachers take care of themselves at the start of the year. I know when I started teaching, we weren’t really having conversations about self care. And I’m so glad we’re moving to a place where the teachers needs are considered along with the student’s needs.

Emily

And that brings us to our tenth starter kit episode. This is from just a few weeks ago, it’s 91, start your day strong top tips for maximizing your morning work.

Heidi

When we started our business, we didn’t know that morning work was going to be such a pivotal part of our lives. But here we are 20 years later still tell you morning work.

Heidi

I guess on some level, it makes sense that morning work is still an important part of our everyday since morning work was such a vital component in the day to day running of our classrooms.

Emily

Yeah, morning work was such a transformative practice in my classroom. I was so lucky that Heidi had already started doing it. And she had a very early iteration of morning work for me to use when I started teaching.

Emily

I love this episode because we share why morning work is so powerful in the classroom, and also how you can really maximize that routine, so you’re enjoying every benefit you can get out of it.

Heidi

And that is the teacher approved starter kit. We’ve touched on everything from morning meeting to inside recess to the science of reading.

Heidi

But I think there’s one thing that connects all of those topics. And it’s that small, intentional tweaks to what you’re already doing can have huge benefits for your students and for you. So don’t forget to check out the show notes for the playlist of our 10 starter kit episodes.

Emily

Whether today was your first Teacher Approved episode or you’ve tuned into all 100, thank you so much for listening and for celebrating this milestone with us.

Emily

We’d love to hear what you’ve enjoyed about this podcast. Come join the conversation in our Teacher Approved Facebook group.

Emily

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher approved tip is check out our past Teacher Approved episodes.

Heidi

So we just listed 10 of our favorite Teacher Approved episodes. So hopefully there’s something there that piqued your interest. But if not, we have 90 more episodes with lots of nitty gritty details, helpful tips and meaningful takeaways for you to revisit. Plus, we are a delight to listen to.

Emily

I know right the witty banter.

Heidi

So really, you can’t go wrong with any of our back episodes.

Emily

If you really want a trip down memory lane go to our very first episode, and you can see how far we’ve come as podcasters and maybe don’ts.

Heidi

To wrap up the show where you’re sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what are you giving extra credit to?

Emily

I’m giving extra credit to a micro stitch tagging kit I got recently. So if you’ve ever used a price tag gun that attaches tags with a plastic fastener, this is like that, except instead of like a two inch long plastic fastener, this one uses teeny tiny ones.

Emily

So I had a new dress that hung open a little too wide at the neckline. So I use this tool to add a few more stitches to keep it closed. It works perfectly. It’s such a cool little tool for adding a stitch wherever you might need one,

Emily

I had no idea such a thing existed, right. And I used to use the price tag sort of gun when I worked at a dry cleaner. That’s how you attach the tags to the orders. And so I’m very familiar with this. It’s just a much smaller version. What are you giving extra credit to Heidi?

Heidi

So my extra credit goes to the Book Buddy app. I was tired of buying duplicate books, which happened more than I care to admit. So a few years ago, I bought this app and it has been so helpful.

Heidi

It lets me create custom categories so I can see you know, like all my Halloween books, all my Groundhog Day books, I can search by author or by publisher, I can see what’s been loaned out. The app has a barcode scanner that quickly uploads most books, so it’s just really easy to get books where you need them.

Heidi

And I have 1000s of books and that’s not an exaggeration. So this has been a huge help and it has saved me quite often from buying duplicates. And plus I really liked this app is not subscription based. I think if this app came out now, it would definitely require a monthly fee.

Heidi

Yeah, but it’s a few years old. So I did upgrade to the paid version of the app. But that’s been the only cost. And I’m sorry, I don’t know if it’s available for Android. But if you have an iPhone and a lot of books, Book Buddy is a lifesaver.

Emily

I use this too. And I love it. I keep thinking that this would have been like a dream come true for me as a kid, because I was totally into cataloging my books. And I use like masking tape around it to like, make little library labels, I would have been over the moon at having an app like this.

Emily

But I will say one problem with it is if you don’t keep up with scanning your new books when you get them, it makes the system fall apart. So now I almost need to start over fresh with my catalog.

Heidi

I make myself as soon as the book arrives, I have to scan it right away.

Heidi

I have dropped the ball there. So but it is a very good app.

Heidi

That’s it for today’s episode. Thanks for celebrating with us. And make sure to check out the Teacher Approved starter kit.

More About Teacher Approved:

Do you ever feel like there’s just not enough time in the day to be the kind of teacher you really want to be? The Teacher Approved podcast is here to help you learn how to elevate what matters and simplify the rest. Join co-hosts Emily and Heidi of Second Story Window each week as they share research-based and teacher-approved strategies you can count on to make your teaching more efficient and effective than ever before.

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