EP359 Why lesson planning takes so long and how to reduce decision-making (with Jennifer Gonzalez)

Every lesson plan can feel like an endless series of decisions: What should students do? How should I teach this? How will they practice it? How will I know whether they learned it? What needs to be differentiated? What should happen next? In this episode, I'm talking with Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy about how having a clearer decision-making framework can reduce some of the mental load of lesson planning. Rather than starting with activities and building a lesson from scratch every time, you can make a few key decisions in a more deliberate order, then choose strategies that serve those decisions. Jenn walks me through four shifts from the framework she developed while creating her new course, Mastering the Lesson Plan: Stop starting with activities, and start with the destination Ask what students need to do with the content (acquire it, process it, or apply it) Build assessment into the plan instead of adding it afterward Create a planning process you can reuse We also talk about why planning doesn't automatically get faster with experience, and in fact can take LONGER for veteran teachers. Jenn explains what to actually do with exit slips once you've collected them, and how to get from the four-page lesson plans you wrote in college to the bullet points in your planner. A framework won't fix your workload, and neither of us pretends it will. But it can make your planning more intentional and repeatable. Check out Jenn's NEW course, Mastering the Lesson Plan, and use the code ANGELA for $10 off: https://cultofpedagogy.teachable.com/p/mastering-the-lesson-plan?affcode=102837_hq3ox7wk (That's an affiliate link, so I earn a small commission if you enroll, at no extra cost to you.) Listen on or read: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/why-lesson-planning-takes-so-long-and-how-to-reduce-decision-making/  

I had an experience when I was a new teacher that shaped much of what I believe about how educators should use their time and the most effective way to reach students.  It was my very first exposure to understanding and questioning school norms, and made me realize that so much of what we assume about the ways school "should be done" is based on a very specific construct in our local area or even in our individual buildings.  Part of this story is in my book "Fewer Things, Better: The Courage to Focus on What Matters Most" but I felt like it was too lengthy to include the best details, and I really wanted to share the entire story with you. So, I hope you'll join me for this episode as I recall the very first time I went against school norms, and why the experience shaped my thinking from that day forward. Listen on or read: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/the-first-time-i-questioned-tradition-vs-whats-best-for-kids/

You've probably heard the phrase "activate prior knowledge" a million times. It shows up in every lesson plan template, every observation rubric, every methods textbook. And teachers are good at it. But the behavioral science on how priming actually works in the brain goes way deeper than asking kids what they remember from yesterday, and once you understand it, you start seeing opportunities to prime learning in places you probably weren't looking. In this episode, I walk you through six research-backed ways to prime students' brains for learning, all grounded in cognitive science, and most of them are things you can try this week without changing your curriculum, your schedule, or anything about your school's expectations. We get into what priming actually is (and I'm honest about which parts of the priming research have held up and which parts haven't), and then I share six specific strategies with classroom examples for every grade level. We cover how to use the 60-second window before class actually starts, how to treat your opening hook as instruction rather than just engagement, how to use prequestions the way the 2024 ManyClasses study suggests they actually work, how to prime the emotional state kids walk in with, how to prime the cognitive mode you want them in (scientist, historian, writer), and why the last 30 seconds of class matter more than most teachers realize. If you've ever felt like a great Monday lesson somehow evaporated by Tuesday, this episode gives you a clearer lens for evaluating what you're already doing and where you might tweak. You don't need to overhaul anything. You just need to start noticing the priming that's already happening in your classroom and making more deliberate choices about what you're priming kids for. LIsten on or read: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/6-ways-to-prime-students-brains-for-learning/  

"My toaster has undergone more safety and efficacy testing than any piece of ed tech that's been put in front of our kids in the past 20 years." That's according to Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist, university professor, and former classroom teacher whose book "The Digital Delusion" has become the center of a national conversation about screens in schools. He's testified before the U.S. Senate, and parents are handing out copies at school board meetings. Jared's argument is that we've spent decades and $400 billion building an ed tech industry on a promise that never materialzed, and that the tools we've handed kids are working against the way human beings actually learn. I came into this conversation agreeing with a lot of his premise and pushing back on some of it, particularly the reliance on standardized test scores as evidence of learning outcomes and the assumption that school was working well before devices showed up. Jared took the pushback seriously, and what came out of it is one of the deepest (and certainly lengthiest!) conversations I've had about whether the ed tech promise keeps failing and what teachers can actually do about it. We dig into: Why the work of learning goes against our natural human biology, and what that means for a tool designed to remove friction What "engagement" means at the level of the brain, and why gamified learning keeps kids entertained without teaching them much The only two use cases where the research shows ed tech genuinely works (and why neither are very exciting) The difference between what a tool could do and what kids will actually do with it -Whether school was actually working better before devices, and what we lost that's worth going back for Jared makes the case for reintroducing friction and eliminating tech as the default rather than banning it outright, and shares what to say to admin and parents when you want to teach differently. Most importantly, Jared makes the case for teacher autonomy and why you need to trust your own expertise about student learning.  This conversation ended in a more hopeful place than I expected, and I hope you'll carve out some blocks of time to go deep with us on this topic. It takes time to tease out the nuance, and that's where the most important takeaways are. LIsten on or read: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/the-digital-delusion/

A third of your day (apart from work and sleep) is supposed to be yours. So where does it go? In 1817, labor movement activist Robert Owen coined this rallying cry: "Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for what we will." But if you've ever tried to make that math work as a teacher, you know the catch. In those "eight hours for what you will," we have to fit commuting, cooking, cleaning, errands, caregiving, homework help, and all the invisible labor of running a life. How do we actually make space for the things that bring us joy? In this episode, I unpack the labor history most of us were never taught, and why I find it a little ironic that I now run a program called the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek. I also talk about the gendered piece of this history that rarely gets named. Women were absolutely part of the labor movement (Frances Perkins literally drafted the Fair Labor Standards Act), but they still ended up with the second shift waiting for them at home. And teachers, who are still overwhelmingly women, are living that reality every single day. I share three practical things I've learned from Katrina Onstad, author of The Weekend Effect, about how to actually reclaim some of that "what you will" time. I also talk about why I refuse to frame rest as a productivity tool, and what I think we owe the workers who fought and died for the protections we now take for granted. This Labor Day, I hope you'll listen to this one somewhere restful. And I hope it gives you permission to protect your time, not because it makes you a better teacher, but because you're a person who deserves a life outside of school. Listen in. Or read the transcription here.

If you scroll social media right now, you'll probably land on a teacher revamping their reading corner like it's a home renovation reveal, then a TikTok Shop haul of classroom must-haves you didn't know you needed nine seconds ago, then someone who built an entire year's curriculum with AI in under a minute. And somewhere underneath all of it is this creeping feeling that you're already behind, and the school year has hardly even started. In this episode, I'm telling a story about a veteran teacher I worked next door to early in my career, and why I think about my mistake in emulating her every time some new pendulum swing happens in education. And, I discuss how a lot of what shapes our thinking about teaching no longer originates from trainings or mentors or our own gut instincts and professional expertise. It's coming from whichever five seconds of video happened to outperform in an algorithm built to sell ads, not to teach well. The truth is that you don't have to teach like the teacher down the hall, and you don't have to teach like an IG influencer. You just have to keep asking the question I had to learn the hard way: is this authentic to my teaching philosophy, or am I performing someone else's idea of what a good teacher looks like? Listen in. Or read the transcription here.  

You make dozens of invisible decisions every class period. Should I squeeze in one more activity or leave time for questions? Do I spend more time on this concept or move on? Is this the best use of our remaining five minutes? You weigh options, estimate time, and reprioritize on the fly, and you do it so automatically that you barely notice anymore.  But here's the problem: your students have no idea any of this is happening. They just see you move seamlessly from one thing to the next. If kids never see how you plan, prioritize, and adjust, how are they supposed to learn to do it themselves? In this episode, I'm talking about how to make your thinking processes visible to students, and why it matters so much. We'll cover how to talk through your weekly overview so kids learn to anticipate where their time and energy should go, how to involve students in prioritizing decisions (like "We have five minutes left, should we do X or Y?"), how to model breaking down projects into manageable steps, why most people are bad at estimating time and what to do about it, and what to say when things go off track and plans need to change. These are teachable skills, but kids won't pick them up through osmosis. They need to see it modeled, and even better, they need to be invited into the process. Listen or read the episode here: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/think-out-loud-teaching-the-hidden-skills-of-planning-and-prioritizing/

Do your students seem less and less able to sit with anything uncomfortable, whether that's boredom, confusion, frustration, or the feeling of not immediately knowing the answer? The research backs up your anecdotal evidence: distress tolerance in young people is measurably declining. In this episode, I dig into why this is happening and what teachers can actually do about it.  We'll talk about the biology behind why comfort reduces resilience (and why that's not anyone's fault), why our students are more stressed than ever but building less capacity from it, and practical strategies for building distress tolerance in the classroom without being dismissive of real struggles. I also get into how this applies to us as adults, because we're dealing with their own version of this. Listen in to hear: Why distress tolerance is declining in young people, and why it's a predictable biological outcome rather than a character flaw The difference between chronic, overwhelming stress (which breaks people down) and acute, manageable stress (which builds capacity), and why modern life has gotten this equation backwards How stress inoculation works in the classroom, including specific strategies for gradually building students' ability to sit with discomfort The tension teachers feel between "tough it out" and "honor every feeling," and why both extremes fail How to help students distinguish between "I can't" and "I don't want to" Why normalizing the feeling of not knowing might be one of the most powerful things you can do Where teachers can apply this same thinking to their own lives Listen in. Or read the transcription here.

Everyone has an opinion about AI in classrooms right now, but very few of those opinions are grounded in what we actually know about how kids learn. In this episode, I sit down with Erin Mote, CEO and founder of InnovateEDU and co-founder of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, to cut through the noise and talk about what the evidence actually shows about AI as a learning tool. This isn't a conversation about ChatGPT, cheating, whether to ban devices, or what kids are doing with AI at home on their own time (which are separate topics worthy of their own discussion). We're talking specifically about AI-powered tools designed for classroom use that are being pitched to your district and showing up in your school, and whether they hold up when measured against what we know about how kids learn. In this episode you'll hear Erin share her thoughts on: Why "good enough" consumer tech is not good enough for students, and what to look for in tools that are actually built around learning The difference between sycophantic AI and Socratic AI, and why it matters for student outcomes What the early research is showing about AI as a learning tool, including what's promising and what we still don't know What to ask for and advocate for at the school and district level so these decisions aren't made without you If you've been feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change and unsure what to actually do, this episode will leave you with more clarity, and more confidence in what you already know about how kids learn. Listen in. Or read the transcription here.  

Teaching gives you a lot of opportunities to look back and wish you'd done it differently, and most of us carry those regrets way longer than we need to. In this episode, I'm sharing what I learned from Daniel Pink's book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, and how his research applies to the unique kind of regret that teachers carry.  I'll walk you through the four categories of regret most people have, the difference between "if only" and "at least" thinking, and a three-step process for actually processing a regret instead of just ruminating on it at 2 a.m. I'll also share the line from Pink's book that hit me hardest, the one that completely changed how I think about looking back: If you know what you truly regret, you know what you truly value.  Your regrets aren't proof you've failed this year. They're a map of what you care about. If you've been carrying something from this school year and you're not sure what to do with it, this episode is for you. Listen in. Or read the transcription here.