a podcast about the hows and whys of what we teach
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!
Transcript available soon.
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
Just in time to help us all get through our end-of-semester piles of grading, Louis Ciccarelli stopped by to talk with us about providing feedback on student papers. We talk about how to get students to read more than just the grades, get metaphysical about what we hope students will learn when they write papers (including a quick and feisty discussion of so-called mutt genres), and have our first-ever bleeped expletive. Figures, that would make its debut in the grading episode!
December 2019
Just in time for Halloween, we huddled around a campfire (yes, that’s actually crackling of burning logs you hear!) with fellow teachers Ellen Muehlberger and Carol Tell to tell stories of teachers who haunt us—sometimes in good ways, urging us on to be better teachers; sometimes in the worst ways, reminding us of things we never want to do, ways we never want to be, in our classrooms.
October 2019
Looking for an icebreaker for the first day of class (or for active learning activities for the weeks that follow)? Behind the Scaffolding and Christine Modey have you covered! Listen for some great tips and deep thinking on breaking the ice. Here’s the concentric circles icebreaker we discussed with Christine; the poem that inspired the poem icebreaker she talks about as well a link to a page from “I Am From Project” (inspired by that poem) which provides a way to lead a group in writing their own versions of this poem; and here’s info and templates for the social identity wheel activity from the Intergroup Relations group at the U of M.
August 2019
Plagiarism: it’s a sticky wicket teachers inevitably have to deal with, if only to think through a course policy that makes sense for them. In this episode, Steve Engel provides some guiding light and enlightening perspectives on this age-old problem. Read more about the complexities of plagiarism with the help of an extensive bibliography from Steve. For more practical advice on preventing, teaching about, and dealing with plagiarism, take a look at Beyond Plagiarism, a resource created by the Sweetland Center for Writing and the University of Michigan Library. And finally, check out Steve’s work on some contemporary, public instances of plagiarism from Senator John Walsh’s master’s thesis, reported by the New York Times in 2014, to Melania Trump and others.
June 2019
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