Dr. Nicki Newton and Ann Elise Record are back! They each have their own lists of the best ways for students to practice problem solving and they collaborate to create one essential top ten list.

In this episode, Melissa chats with Libo Valencia, a high school/college math educator who incorporates math play into his instruction. K-12 teachers will be inspired by Libo's creativity and enthusiasm.

In this episode, Melissa chats with Eric Gibbs, President of Ouriginal, a plagiarism software for K-12 and higher education. Eric shares how teachers can use the software as part of the writing process to help students learn how to create original work.

In Part Three of my anti-mlm series, Melissa shares clips from her chats with Dave Vaughan and Sarah Haider. Have you tried using literature to facilitate discussions with students about high control groups? Do you feel MLMs are way too normalized in our society and you want to know how to have hard conversations with friends, family, or colleagues? These two educators have a lot to say!

In Part Two of her Anti-MLM series, Melissa shares her personal MLM story, explains why she just recently became obsessed with this topic, and matches her experiences directly to Steven Hassan's BITE Model of Authoritarian Control.

In this episode, Melissa chats with garden photographer and podcaster, Elizabeth Wilson. Elizabeth shares her thoughts with educators about helping students capture memories and important moments.

In this episode, Melissa interviews educator Ashleigh Reade, assistant professor of theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Ashleigh teaches voice and speech for both the musical theater and contemporary theater programs, as well as the Actor's Toolkit for first-year students. She shares her focus on expressivity, intention, and context when helping anyone with vocals or speech. Teachers can learn a lot from Ashleigh about helping their students become more confident public speakers.

In this episode, Michael McLaughlin and Leeann Blais, educators at Austin Prep in Reading, MA collaborate to create a top ten list of tech tools for student collaboration. Michael is the head of middle school and Leeann is a 6th and 7th grade English teacher.

In this episode, I chat with Eva, a 15 year old high school sophomore who loves to write. Eva provides great insight for teachers about what students really hope for when learning how to be better writers. Eva shares what inspires her, as well as her writing process. She is able to publish her work, collaborate with other young authors, and get feedback with a site called Wattpad.

In this episode, I zoom in on research and the writing process with author and Washington Post writer, Geoff Edgers. Geoff stresses the importance of in depth research and plenty of time to write and revise.

What are the best content choices for podcasting with students? In this first episode in the Podcasting with Students series, I share clips from The Birch Meadow Way Podcast which my fourth grade colleagues and I started with our students this past Spring 2021. I reflect on the content choices for our first season of The Birch Meadow Way and what I believe our next steps should be.

In this second edition of Top Ten, Dr. Nicki Newton and Ann Elise Record return with their own lists of top ten math manipulatives and collaborate to create one essential top ten list. Dr. Nicki and Ann Elise are so knowledgeable and share their favorite manipulatives and how they like to use them with students.

In this episode, Melissa interviews educator Michael McLaughlin, Head of Middle School at Austin Prep in Reading, MA. Michael shares how he strives to raise the engagement of his middle school learners and how he is inspired by sharing ideas with other educators.

In this episode, Melissa chats with Pamela Malkoff Hayes. Pamela is a licensed marriage/family therapist and a board certified art therapist. Pamela shares the thoughtful questions that she poses to her clients about their artwork and how teachers and school counselors can use art therapy techniques in their work with students.

In this episode of Adventures in Coteaching, Melissa and Tricia chat with their fourth grade teammates, Patti Beckman and Arielle Mucha. They look back at the past school year and talk about supporting each other, collaborating, and taking on a big project together.

Melissa’s guest this week is her sister-in-law Dr. Bethany Milner. They talk about supporting students for success.

Danielle North, co news anchor for WPRI in Rhode Island chats with Melissa about the parallels of being a news anchor to being a teacher.

Melissa talks about teachers being strategic about their school year and shares about Queen’s Gambit, PBL, UbD, and Student-Led classrooms.

Melissa and Tricia discuss the coteaching model with their colleagues Heather Sullivan and Olivia Morris.

Personalized learning and creating an educational system that is more equitable.