Backporch Education Podcast
by Steve Elliott
Education is not for "professionals only" or all that highly complex. It is not a science, but rather an art. This podcast discusses the joys and difficulties of teaching, education, and schooling well. Appropriate for beginning teachers or seasoned veterans, in traditional private, public, or home schools, the conversation is wide ranging and focused on doing education well rather than just fussing about what is wrong with it. Join us on the back porch for some conversation about education.
Episodes
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A New Season and Some Reorientation
Amazing to think about, but Backporch Education Podcast is now beginning its fourth Season! Jason and Steve take a few minutes to lean back and think about where we have been, where we might go from here. Join in the dreaming.
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The Whole and Its Parts
Moving from the image of a car engine spread out on the back lawn to the inner workings of the inquisitive mind, Jason and Steve discuss how analysis and synthesis are both necessary to every lesson. Pulling an idea apart and putting it back together keep learning from its dangerous extremes....
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Of Church, School, and Family
When we began a while back to separate our lives into various spheres, especially as we moved education in the schools away from any form of religion, a new set of questions were birthed. What role does the American church play in the education of the modern child? Is it possible to teach…
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What are School Administrators Good For?
Would a teacher’s life be better or worse if Administrators disappeared from the Earth? So begins a lively repartee between Jason and Steve, both of whom currently divide time at their respective schools between teaching and administrative duties. Why do we need such people? How are their duties...
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Teaching the Love of Literature
In this episode, an article sparks a lively discussion between Jason and Steve on what it will take to revive the love of literature in our day. Why do so many people dislike literature today? How can we change this? What kinds of literature are better suited for us to love? This and much more…
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Vacuous Art
Recently an Italian artist sold an “immaterial sculpture” for about $18,000 and the Backporch dudes let the fun begin. Join them in a far-ranging discussion about this moment in art and education history. Did he sell nothing or a “vacuum”? Is this legit? What did the buyer get? The questions just...
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Margins in the Classroom
In agriculture, every farmer knows you need margins: spaces between your fields. The carefully planted crop needs some wildness, some weeds, some room about it to flourish. So goes the classroom as well. In this episode, Jason and Steve walk out into the fields to see what can be learned about…
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What to do When a Student Does Not Get It
Every teacher knows that moment when one or many students demonstrate that the lesson was not learned, or misunderstood, or missed. What do we do when this happens? What are the common causes for such? What are strategies for our teaching that will help us in these murky waters? Jason and Steve...
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Have You Met? Lisa Bailey and Classical Conversations
Home schooling can be daunting to those considering it for their children, but it can also be one of the most rewarding adventures of you and your child’s life. Join Steve as he interviews Lisa Bailey about her own experiences educating her two daughters, and the community that helped host the...
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Honoring Teachers
Appreciation is derived from the concept of giving honor. Jason and Steve take this fact and explore how it can be used to appreciate the life of teaching. Do teachers get paid or receive an honorarium? How does honor affect the way teaching is done? What can be done to honor teachers? We hope…
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Standardized Testing and the Home School
Anxiety can radically change behavior. This is a predominant issue in education today in part due to the over emphasis placed on the standardized test. What should home schooling parents do with this assessment monster? To test or not to test, that is the question raised and discussed by the...
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Have You Seen? Man Without a Face
It is often through analogy and metaphor that we can see relationships between humans most clearly. The relationship between a tutor and his pupil is a hard thing to describe, but a wonderful thing to behold. In Mel Gibson's directorial debut, The Man Without a Face (1993), Jason and Steve find...
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When Learning is Interrupted
Given the current concerns about what happens when disease or some other factor shuts down education in the land, the Backporch boys go on safari throughout history to look at what happened in past instances of such. How does the purpose of education affect the practice of schooling? What have...
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Children of the Screen
Education is now afloat in the digital sea. How have screens improved education and are there things that are better off without the screen involved? Steve and Jason download some thoughts on the new world of the digital classroom. Plug into the conversation.
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Help Me Assess My Assessment
Talk to almost anyone in education and probably sooner than later, the discussion will turn to the hardest aspect of education: assessment. How do we know if we have taught a good lesson? How do we know if the student has caught our great lesson? Why are many forms of testing fraught with the...
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Homeschooling on a Hundred Bucks
Many today believe that success in education is determined by the budget given to it. The home schooling movement is pushing back on that adage. Jason and Steve conduct a thought experiment using the notion that a great year of home schooling can be done on a budget of just $100. Listen in as…
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The Voices of Others in Your Own Writing
How does what you read affect how you write? Is it good or bad writing to see something of other writers show up in your writing? How does this question affect the teaching of the writing art? The Backporch boys take on a listener’s question and wind up meandering all through a number of...
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Finding Space for Learning
How do you find the right environment that promotes good learning? Is there just one type of such place? Does the place learning occurs matter any more or less than what is learned? The Backporch boys pursue these questions and others in an extended meditation on the poem they begin the episode...
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Christmas Carols
What does singing Christmas songs have to do with education? A lot and very little. Jason and Steve think it has more to do with good learning than the opposite. They hum their way through various favorites from the Yuletide season and discuss their own views on how the Incarnation, and singing...
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Have You Read? Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins
What does a reader do with a difficult text? Steve and Jason take on the humorous and bizarre text of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins by discussing both the text and strategies for working with a text designed to put you off kilter. “I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best,...
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Pedagogical Scaffolding vs. Handholding
Where is the line between scaffolding and handholding? Educators build steps of mastery into their curricula, but doing so well (like our awesome guest, Tim Kemper!) requires being able to perceive students' abilities. Too much scaffolding can turn into handholding, which also has its place. In...
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Top Ten Books of All Time? Really?
A listener poses the challenge and Jason and Steve almost refuse to respond. But a lot of fun ensues when they try to figure out how to get around the challenge. What books are indispensable to a sane life? Really, just ten, is that all? Or what ten would you pack for the proverbial desert…
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How Do You Teach Several Students at Once?
This question, from a listener, has elements of several issues in it. What do we do when we have multiple students learning in a given classroom with differing levels of performance and ability? And what do we do, especially in home education, when we have differing ages and levels of maturity in...
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Estimating Your Student Rightly
Expectations come from our estimate of what a student should be able to do. How do we avoid either over or under estimating our students? Jason and Steve respond to this question from a listener. Join in the discussion of how low or high the bar should be set.
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The Joy of Choice in Home Education
Some folk copy the state school curriculum and just teach at home. Some call almost any activity a part of the curriculum. One of the great joys of home educating is the freedom to choose what is right for your child. Jason and Steve tease out the happy medium in home education between a…
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What Should a Homeschool Schedule Look Like?
What role should a clock play in the life of a home school? Jason and Steve admonish those who are teaching in the home to use scheduling only so much as it helps accomplish your goals, but enjoy the flexibility built into this choice of education. The best moments in education are those timeless...
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The Role of the Parent in Home Education
When a parent decides to teach their own child in the place of a school, or to home educate, how does this affect their role as parent? Can home education enhance parenting, or burden it, or is it neutral? Jason and Steve take this question on and consider the dangers and benefits of this choice,...
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Pulling Back the Curtain
Do you remember when Toto pulled back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz? This episode resembles that scene in some regards. The cast of The Backporch Education podcast have some things to reveal, some things to remember, and general mayhem to produce. Listen at your own risk.
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How to Do College the Cambridge Way
What is the modern college experience? Are all colleges and universities working off the same basic plan? Why do colleges in Europe seem so different? In this episode, Steve interviews Josey Parker, who is a graduate of England’s Cambridge University and now pursuing her Masters there. They…
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How to Have a Great First Month of School
As soon as summer starts, the clock starts clicking loudly. What do good teachers do with their summers? How do you start a new school year off better than ever before? Jason and Steve dig into what makes the first month of school so special and important on this “Back to School Special” episode…
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What Can We Learn from the History of Education?
Steve and Jason look at the last 250 years of education in America in a brief survey format. Gleaning a few lessons only whets the appetite to dig in deeper. Join them for this quick flight through the fancies of American education and where all the past might be taking us in the future.
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The Joys of Research
Research this! The dust clouds billow up and the sneezing begins. Most students unfortunately have been taught to despise the task of research. Jason and Steve beg to differ, viewing it as inquiry into the unknown, the natural result of wonder and questing for truth. Join them for some thoughts…
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A Math Story Retold, With Craig Conticchio
There are moments in Jason and Steve’s lives when something is said and they think, “that has to go on the podcast.” This is one of those moments taking form. Craig Conticchio shows up to tell a story about his studies in math during college and then discusses some of the ideas coming from the...
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Reading Retention Re-examined
Good reading is a good work. It is not simple. Many have experienced the sinking feeling of reading something, and shortly thereafter not remembering what they read.
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The Role of Seminar in Education, with John Donohue
Talking. Conversation. Dialectic. Can words that pass between us really change the world? In this podcast, Steve brings in a guest, John Donohue, to chat about the use of Seminar in education. What are the benefits and possible pitfalls of just having a conversation be the central method of a...
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Whatcha Got in the Steam Pot? How Do Teachers Relax?
This is our second annual National Teacher Appreciation Day Show. To celebrate, Jason and Steve have fun discussing what “down time” looks like for a teacher. What does one who loves to teach all day do to take it easy? Because they both find cooking relaxing, that is what is in the pot for this...
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Have You Read? The Abolition of Man
Is all truth relative, or are there some things that all men can agree upon? The implications of this issue on education cannot be overstated. If all truth is relative to the individual, or to culture, or anything, then education cannot cultivate wisdom and virtue, because it cannot assert any…
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What Do You Do When Truth Sneaks into the Classroom?
Many times, it is the unexpected appearance of a moment of truth that makes everything change in the classroom. We had it planned to go this way, and then up pops the head of truth and now we are going in another direction. The boys of Backporch Ed discuss ways to deal with this mystery, and...
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How Do You Write Good?
Any art can be taught, but it is not taught in the same way that information is imparted. Jason and Steve share various experiences and teaching ideas about the mystical art of teaching writing. Join in the conversation and red-line their ideas.
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Special Episode: Coronavirus Contagion
Our world is in a state of quarantine with the Coronavirus, and the boys on the podcast want to share a few ideas for those having to figure out educational questions during this unique time. Join Jason and Steve as they discuss sane advice for this unusual time in our history. Take a deep…
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Have You Met: Buck Holler?
One of the more important aspects of a great education is forming a mind that can handle language, and that can interact with the primary sources of our educational heritage. In this interview, Steve talks with Latin teacher Buck Holler about his journey into teaching the Latin language, why it…
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Can the Internet Replace School?
Even as internet technologies provide more and more “educational” opportunities, schools are seeking to remain relevant to the educational process. Are there things only a brick and mortar school can do? Why have all the trouble and expense of schools if we can simply Google our way to an...
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Should Teaching Be Fun?
Fun is a fun word to define. It is even funner to try and inculcate into today’s educational world. Jason and Steve play around with the word for a while in this episode on how enjoyable learning can be and what the expectations for today’s classroom imply about good learning and teaching. Come...
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Adjusting the Climate of the Classroom
Every classroom has its own unique temperature or climate. What determines how that classroom feels? Given that each student is unique, is it even possible to form a specific climate in the room, or will everyone perceive it differently? What kinds of things go into classroom climate formation?...
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Is a School a Prison?
Comparison is a valuable and powerful form of education. In this episode Jason and Steve take on a common student comparison: school is too much like a prison. Is this true? To what extent? Should we do anything to change the comparison? Why are questions a bad thing to ask in prison? Join them…
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Why Teach Fiction?
It seems we live in a utilitarian or practical time when education wants to cut straight to the “facts.” So why spend so much time in school learning about things that are just made up? Jason and Steve defend the use of fiction in the classroom as one of the great moral tools in the cultivation…
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The Education of Ebenezer Scrooge
From the transformation of the Grinch who stole Christmas, to the moral found at Charlie Brown’s Christmas Dinner, to the rescue of George Bailey by a timid angel, Christmas stories love to tell about changed hearts. In this special Christmas episode of the podcast, Jason and Steve reflect on the...
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Have You Met: David Kern?
Steve invites a guest onto the podcast to talk about various podcasts on education. David Kern oversees several podcasts for the Circe Institute and is an avid listener to others as well. He and Steve discuss what is out there, what he is doing, and how podcasting is growing and changing. And…
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A Defense of Poetry
Poetry has become the turf of the professional poet in our day. Jason and Steve challenge teachers to bring poetry back into the front of every classroom, not just the English class. Only by wrapping Truth in goodness and beauty will it find root in the souls of our students. Just the right words...
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Build Soil
We just let a nice long poem speak for itself. Jason and Steve split duties reading this Robert Frost poem without a whole lot else to say. It has nothing and everything to do with education. Enjoy the good time, and build soil!
About this show
Education is not for "professionals only" or all that highly complex. It is not a science, but rather an art. This podcast discusses the joys and difficulties of teaching, education, and schooling well. Appropriate for beginning teachers or seasoned veterans, in traditional private, public, or home schools, the conversation is wide ranging and focused on doing education well rather than just fussing about what is wrong with it. Join us on the back porch for some conversation about education.
Hosted by
Steve Elliott