a podcast about the hows and whys of what we teach
Reading is taking a beating in our culture lately, but it’s a skill our students need in order to thrive in their classes and beyond. Lizzie Hutton, former University of Michigan lecturer and also MFA and PhD alum, now Associate Professor and Director of the Howe Writing Center at Miami University of Ohio, joins us to talk about teaching reading in the writing classroom.
August 2025
Many of our listeners are graduate student teachers themselves; other listeners teach alongside them or mentor them. In this episode, University of Michigan graduate student teacher Lauren Rudewicz shares her thoughts on what teachers like her bring to the classroom and how faculty can best support graduate student teachers—plus she shares a really impressive lesson plan.
August 2024
Having difficult conversations with students is an inevitable part of teaching. Kathy Overhulse Smith sheds light on how to make these moments a little easier and do right by your students and yourself when you have to have them.
September 2023
If you’re feeling any kind of way about teaching and generative AI, and we’re pretty sure you are, you’ll love this episode! Phill Cameron helps hosts Angie and Gina see the light about this amazing new technology and how it can help us teach writing. Here are links to the Time magazine editorial Phill mentions and UM’s gen AI site. Enjoy!
September 2023
We’re back with another Halloween episode of Behind the Scaffolding featuring stories of teachers who haunt us–in both good and bad ways, and sometimes both simultaneously! Tune in to hear April Conway, Jeremy Chamberlain, Scott Beal, and Kathy Smith share their stories of teachers they just can’t forget, for better or worse!
October 2022
Just in time for your late summer syllabus planning, we talk to April Conway about the nuts and bolts, and benefits and drawbacks, of alternative forms of assessment like contract grading and its various permutations. Tune in to hear how April has implemented–and adjusted, over the years–her methods of assessment to better align with student needs. April mentions Asao B. Inoue’s groundbreaking book on contract grading, which you can find online here, and also Sherri Craig’s insightful critique of contract grading, available here. And if you’d like a look at April’s own system of assessment, here it is!
Transcript for this episode available here.
July 2022
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we checked in with some teachers we love–Laura Clapper, Dana Nichols, Scott Beal, and Naomi Silver–to talk with them about favorite prompts they assign. Have a listen! We think you just might be swept off your feet by some of these prompts! You can read all the prompts here. The reading “Curious” that Scott mentions is here, and “Choreographies of Protest,” which Naomi talks about, is here.
Transcript for this episode available here.
February 2022
For many teachers, this has been the first semester back in the in-person classroom since the pandemic started, and on top of that, it’s the end of the term, a stressful time for everyone! That means it’s prime time to talk about the intersection of feelings and teaching. Scott Beal joins us for this episode and talks candidly about this sticky topic, gives us a hard time about the preparatory questions we sent him, and comes up with a pretty cool idea for a new video game avatar.
November 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed so much about life. But in our classrooms–our virtual classrooms, at least–it hasn’t all been bad. We talk to five writing teachers about what silver linings they have discovered about teaching online.
January 2021
Students whose first language isn’t English often face different challenges than other students. How can we best support them? Multilingual expert Shuwen Li shares useful insights and practical advice, and talks about what pedagogical dispositions are most effective for teaching multilingual learners. Shuwen mentions a video, The History of English in 10 Minutes, which you can find here.
January 2021
Behind the Scaffolding