School of Practice
School of Practice, the first podcast from the team at Edutopia, brings you ready-to-use strategies to improve your teaching today. Join us for 15-minute episodes filled with smart, pedagogy-shifting advice—backed by research and test-driven by teachers just like you.
Episodes
Research: 5 Principles of Superb Classroom Design
Before there’s curriculum or calendars or lesson plans, there’s the classroom space itself, stripped of last year’s posters and anchor charts. Where should teachers begin? We’ve got the answers.
In this back-to-school episode, editors Youki Terada and Steve Merrill review over 30 high-quality studies on classroom design and boil them down to five big takeaways, from how to use wall decoration to m
3 Outstanding Community-Building Activities for Back to School
How do you lay the foundation for real community in your classroom? Teachers know (and the research supports this) that when kids feel safe and connected in school, they’re better equipped to focus on learning. The start of a new school year is a crucial time for this type of work – and it goes beyond icebreakers.
In this episode of School of Practice, we’ll hear from three educators who’ve devel
How to Jumpstart Belonging in Your Classroom From Day One
Do you want to build a vibrant classroom community this year, but you’re not sure where to start?
Research shows it’s well worth the effort—and the first week of school is the perfect time to lay that foundation. When students feel a strong sense of belonging at school, they tend to be more motivated to learn and achieve higher academic outcomes.
In this first back-to-school episode from School
11 Ways to Improve Teacher Well-Being
Teaching is hard (often draining) work, and educators’ instincts about what will bring relief are frequently wrong—just as they are for most people.
That’s because our minds deceive us, says cognitive scientist and Yale professor Laurie Santos, one of the world’s leading researchers on well-being and happiness. “One of the most annoying features of the mind is the fact that we all have these intu
Rethinking Zeros in the Grade Book
What’s your take on eliminating zeros from the grade book? Does your school have a no-zeros grading policy? Even if it doesn’t, you probably have opinions about it.
Setting 50% as the minimum grading threshold is a well-meaning effort to more accurately assess student learning, but it can also create new—and frustrating—challenges for teachers and students.
In this episode of School of Practice,
14 Excellent Ways to End the School Year
The end of the school year can feel like the best––and worst––of times.
On the one hand, it’s a great stretch because “the routines and procedures are set,” and the kids have their sights set on summer vacation, says Kansas City-based middle school ELA teacher Jeremiah Kim. But the workload for teachers closing out the year can be intense. “We all just want to be done, but we still have these box
One Task, Many Doors: A More Effective Way to Differentiate
It’s a mistake to assume that good differentiation always means splitting students up into small groups, says Michael McDowell, an author, coach, and former teacher.
A more effective approach, he says, is to design rigorous learning routines that unite the whole class—from fast finishers to kids who need extra support—with shared strategies, structures, and thinking moves.
Think: Same surface, d
Helping Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve
Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck? You just came up against the forgetting curve—and lost.
Our brains are hardwired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. According to research, nearly half of new information—if not used right away—is forgotten w
How to Teach Students to Spot What’s Real, Fake—or Deepfake
Can your students spot what’s real and what’s AI-generated on TikTok and Instagram?
How about when they’re researching topics for humanities classes, gathering sources in social studies, and preparing for math assessments?
In this super-engaging lesson developed by science teacher Katie Coppens and researcher and former STEM teacher Andy Zucker, students become digital detectives, analyzing a se
How to Teach Deep Mathematical Thinking
Narrow, rigid math has “turned students off for generations,” says renowned researcher and Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler.
Yet teachers often don’t have much choice when it comes to math curriculum—what’s mandated by a school or district is what they need to teach.
That’s where *rich tasks* can be transformative, Boaler argues, because they invite the type of reasoning and problem-solv
Smart Strategies to Improve Your Scaffolding
Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching 30+ students at different skill levels—is one of the toughest challenges in teaching.
Done well, it looks like tactical magic: teachers seamlessly know how and when to support kids, then step back at just the right moment, building independence by removing the training wheels.
In this episode of School of Practice, we get into it with
Boosting Reading Comprehension for All Students
Maybe you’ve seen it in your classroom: Students who zip through chapters but then can’t tell you much about what they just read. To move those kids from fluency to sense-making, you’ve got to teach them the habits of good independent readers.
In this episode of School of Practice, educator and literacy specialist Nina Parrish walks us through evidence-based strategies that keep kids focused as th
How to Use Formative Assessment Like an Expert Teacher
Have you ever been shocked when your students bomb a unit test after weeks of seemingly locked-in learning?
Veteran educator Jay McTighe has the ultimate research-backed solution: formative assessment. In the best-case scenario, it’s frequent, quick, and highly attuned to the content and your students.
“You don’t want to wait till the end to find out, ‘Gosh, I didn’t realize the kids
Handwriting Is Essential—Here’s How to Teach It
Did you know there’s a strong connection between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain?
As students learn to write letters by hand, they also learn to recognize them more fluently. This letter recognition leads to greater letter-writing fluency, which leads to stronger overall reading development. Handwriting, the research reveals, is in fact a foundational tool for literacy. And as kids
How to Talk About (and Normalize) Learning Accommodations
It’s a tricky (but very common) classroom dilemma: How do you talk about—and normalize—learning accommodations in class without singling anyone out in front of peers?
Unfortunately, many teachers aren’t trained to have these sensitive conversations, so they’re figuring it out on the fly.
But we’re here to help! In this episode of School of Practice, we chat with Daniel Vollrath, a veteran high sc
The Most Significant Education Research of 2025
Are you curious what the latest research reveals about everything from brain breaks to groundbreaking research on AI, cell phones, and handwriting in the classroom? Then you won’t want to miss this special year-end bonus episode based on one of our most popular feature articles of the year.
In the latest episode of School of Practice, Edutopia’s research editor Youki Terada and editor-in-chief St
How To Improve Student Note-Taking in 3 Smart Steps
When students take notes during a lesson, research shows they get just about 30 to 45 percent of the important information right on the first try.
High school teacher Benjamin Barbour discovered this disturbing problem after taking a quick peek at his students’ notes midway through whole-group instruction. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
“While some students had terrific notes, others had
Converting ‘Fast Finishers’ Into Self-Directed Learners
“I’m done, what’s next?” In every classroom, a handful of students will finish the work at warp speed. While the rest of the class is still mid-task, teachers must quickly pivot to keep the fast finishers busy, without missing an instructional beat.
Former K-12 teacher Todd Finley argues this challenge presents a golden opportunity. “Instead of asking the question: ‘How do I keep fast finishers bu
How to Teach Authentic Writing in the Age of AI
The idea that you’re not a writer unless you stare down a blank page and produce text—that’s about to change, says high school teacher Jen Roberts.
In her classroom, AI is not the enemy. It’s a tool she uses to help students become better writers. And yes, she sets guardrails. “You can be a real writer who started with an AI-generated outline,” she says. “You can have an AI thought partner who hel
The Extraordinary Impact of Drawing to Learn
Did you know that drawing can be a learning superpower—even for students who claim they’re not good at it?
When kids attentively sketch something they’re learning about, they tap into the visual, kinesthetic, and linguistic parts of the brain, research shows. This generates abundant connections across the brain’s neural network and encodes learning even more deeply than more passive learning task
How to Get Students to Ask for Help When They Need It
Humans are social creatures, hardwired to take cues from others. If students don’t see classmates asking for help, they assume they should avoid it too. But when help-seeking becomes visible in the classroom, it starts to feel natural.
In this episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard explains how she rewrote the script with her students to make asking for help not jus
A Flexible Seating Arrangement That Teachers Love
After trying numerous seating arrangements—including rows, blocks, and U shapes—educator Jay Schauer stumbled on a desk layout that outperformed them all. Edutopia’s community took notice.
In this episode of School of Practice, Schauer walks listeners through the many benefits of arranging desks in L-shaped groups, including better communication, greater flexibility, and improved learning outcomes
How to Use ‘The Look’ Like an Expert Teacher
It’s a powerful, non-verbal classroom management tool designed to curb off-task behavior without breaking the flow of learning. Here’s how to use it across grade levels.
Crystal Frommert has been using “the look” in her classroom for 20 years. She says the tactic—a skeptical glance and an arched eyebrow directed at a chronic whisperer, for example—is almost universal among teachers, despite recent
Introducing Edutopia’s School of Practice
School of Practice, the first podcast from the team at Edutopia, brings you ready-to-use strategies to improve your teaching today. Join us for 15-minute episodes filled with smart, pedagogy-shifting advice—backed by research and test-driven by teachers just like you.
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