PODCAST · education
The Broken Copier
by Teaching is community work—so let's talk about it together.
Conversations about teaching that center the voices and experiences of teachers as we discuss all things education—always with the goal of better serving the students in our classrooms. thebrokencopier.substack.com
Episodes
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Why the conversation about reading matters
There is a conversation about reading happening in our country right now, especially in the world of education—a conversation that is undeniably shifting what is happening in schools for teachers and students alike. What do we make of that “reading conversation,” particularly given the impact…
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Do we really need grades?
Perhaps in this moment more than ever, there is a lot of conversation around grades and grading policy in our schools—in all sorts of directions, too, from Harvard faculty voting to place a cap on A’s to the University of Michigan withholding letter grades for their incoming class of freshmen,...
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A word I'm thinking about going into this new school year
What is your most important word going into this new school year? Today’s reflection is one potential answer to that: signals. In particular, the way that we are in a “messy” signal-sending environment in this education moment—around AI and all other things. What can be received quite-positively…
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Teacher agency–and what we do with it
Today’s Broken Copier conversation centers around the idea of teacher agency—the trust and freedom afforded to teachers to make choices in designing and facilitating the learning that takes places in their classrooms. Joining this conversation is Dylan Kane, a National Board Certified Teacher in...
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A brief, important reminder for teachers
With a new school year on the near horizon for many teachers across the country, we’re taking a bit of a pivot with today’s Broken Copier episode: a brief reflection on the tendency in education to focus on and celebrate what is new—sometimes in a way that leads us to take for granted what is...
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The AI Conversation in Education
There are many conversations happening in education around AI, but what impact are those conversations actually having on the classroom? And is there a way to make these AI conversations better for students and teachers alike? In this conversation, teachers Mike Burns, Sam Collins, and Matt Hicks...
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What should AI Literacy actually look like?
A lot of the discussion around AI in education is around the idea of widespread adoption and integration: teachers using AI to enhance their own planning and preparation; students experiencing it as a tool to potentially support their learning; assessments integrating AI-driven scoring and…
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More supportive and inclusive classrooms
Students walk into the classroom as individual learners, and every single student deserves to not only “access the learning” but to feel included and empowered. Unfortunately, this does not happen in nearly enough in our classrooms—but there are things we can do to move in a better direction. Dr....
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What is the online education space right now?
Without question, it is immensely important to build connections and community in the physical spaces where you work. However, for many teachers and educators—including those who may have stumbled across The Broken Copier!—there is also an online education space, one to not only navigate but to...
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How should educators show up in this uncertain moment?
Yes, we can always talk more about what can be done in classrooms to better support students—but what about those doing the supporting? Those looking for not just learning but leadership? Especially in these uncertain times? This is an episode that centers that focus on the way teachers and...
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How do we help students arrive at their own meaning?
This moment education is rife with conversations around learning science, and within these conversations the vision of the classroom often consists of students who are mostly-passive recipients of the learning—told what they need to know and then asked to regurgitate it. Christian Moore-Anderson,...
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A hopeful ending to this school year
There are many exhaustions to navigate as the school year comes to a close. But amidst those exhaustions, there can still be a lot of good—and that is what this episode is: a brief reflection on a really hopeful ending to this year’s classroom, and a reminder of why we need to reject the visions…
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How do you say goodbye to a classroom?
There is nothing easy about saying goodbye to a classroom. Yet so many teachers and educators have their own experience with departing a classroom. They know that how a teacher says and shows goodbye matters. It matters a great deal. So we should talk more about what it’s like, right? Thankfully,...
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Why teaching is really good/difficult right now
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week everyone! For what is now becoming a Broken Copier tradition, Chanea Bond joins the podcast for a reflection on all things teaching. This conversation covers, well, a lot: what we appreciate and love about this work of teaching; what is difficult about this work,...
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Two good stories from the classroom
With Teacher Appreciation Week forthcoming, today’s episode is very simple in its concept: sharing one good story from the classroom that is really two good stories—along with a reflection on why these stories mattered. A core belief with this Broken Copier project continues to be the importance…
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What does "good teaching" even look like?
In the opening essay of Good Teaching: a Provocation, Zach Czaia writes that, collectively as a country, we have “reduced what it means to be a teacher, let alone a good teacher.” But what does “good teaching” even look like? In today’s conversation, Zach shares his thoughts within and beyond his...
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What if we tended the soil of our schools?
Whether you are a student, teacher or even a building leader, there is too often a shared experience of how individuals feel within our education system, no matter their role. Stressed. Drained. Overextended. Burnt out. Depleted. Ruth Poulsen believes there is a better path forward. An...
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What should reading look like in our classrooms?
There’s a lot of conversation about which books students should be reading these days and how many—but too little, perhaps, about how to make their actual experiences with books in the classroom better. Today’s guest is Kate Roberts, a former middle school ELA teacher who now works with teachers...
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A no-zeroes grading policy that...works?
Many teachers and educators have strong feelings about “no-zeroes” or minimum grading policies. Quite often of late, strong negative feelings. A few weeks ago, Matt Brady wrote a piece for his newsletter called “The 100-Point Scale Is a Design Flaw,” which outlined not just the thinking about his...
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What should homework look like in 2026?
Surveys show students increasingly turning to AI as a tool for their school work. Teachers who want to limit AI usage during instructional time still have many options on table—but what should they do about homework and other assigned out-of-class essays and projects? Given that the topic of...
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On Giving Teachers Enough Time
After a couple quieter months, we are back and rolling with The Broken Copier. Today’s Unjammed episode is built around a simple-if-implausible idea: what happens when teachers are given enough time to do their work. It’s not just about having enough time to complete all the items off the to-do...
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Two Teachers Talking About Reading
The conversation about reading across education has taken a front-and-center position in many places, so it felt like the right time to have a conversation about it—especially since Adrian Neibauer recently wrote a thoughtful reflection on the topic called “The Sanctity of Literacy.” In this...
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On The Broken Copier
Given that we are at the finish line of a very-busy 2025 with The Broken Copier, the goal of this short episode is first and foremost to express gratitude for what has been an incredible year of conversations and community-building—and also to share an update that over the next few months, we are...
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What Should "Support" Look Like?
It is a very easy word to say in education, right? Full-stop: everyone wants to be supported and everyone wants to be supportive. However, making that support a reality that is experienced and sustainable in our classrooms and schools? For students and teachers alike? Much more complicated.…
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How to Make Reading Meaningful for Students
The Broken Copier began a little over three years ago with a very simple idea: we wanted to uplift the type of conversations that happen so often between teachers in the margins of the school day: in the hallway between classes; in each other’s classrooms after the school day ends; in the faculty...
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What Has This School Year Taught Us?
Over time, school years can fold into each other, in a way, with each eventually becoming indistinguishable from the next. This is why the goal of this episode, quite simply, is to pause before the month of November comes to a close and ask a simple question: What has this school year taught us…
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Finding Meaning in Teaching
“What happened to helping them interrogate what it means to be human?” In his book Teaching without Teaching, Scott F. Parker makes a case for re-centering teaching around core human values—and away from what he calls “the whole charade” of the transactional system students and teachers alike are...
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A Better AI Conversation
There is a lot of conversation happening in education around the topic of AI—but is it the right conversation? Recently Stephen Fitzpatrick wrote a piece around this, arguing that instead of two different AI conversations in education that seem to be talking past each other, what we need “is a...
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On Empty Desks
This is the third episode of our new Unjammed series, with a topic that a lot of teachers still are struggling with in their classrooms: chronic student absences and the consequent empty desks in the classroom. In this episode, he shares how difficult it can be as a teacher to encounter so many…
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On Losing Patience
For our second episode of our new Unjammed series, the focus is on a pattern Marcus was noticing in his own responses in the classroom this school year: finding himself losing his patience a bit more quickly than in previous years. In this episode, he talks through what it is like to notice...
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On Challenging Students
After over twenty Kicking The Copier episodes that focused on specific teaching strategies and mindsets, we’re going to make a slight pivot this school year. While still designed to be shorter, single-topic episodes, this new Unjammed series instead will feature a specific stories around a…
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The Heaviness of Teaching
This is a conversation between two teachers who noticed the same thing early into this school year: it feels heavier than usual. After Adrian Neibauer wrote a piece in his newsletter around this idea, he joined The Broken Copier to reflect collaboratively with Marcus about how the school year is...
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A Better, More-Authentic Assessment
With the school year underway, the word “assessment” is front-and-center in many classrooms—so what can we do as teachers to shift our thinking and practices around assessment to be more responsive to and uplifting for students? In today’s conversation, high school math and science teacher…
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Where Learning Can Take Place
In his newly-released book Learning Environment, Jared Fox writes, “I found that incorporating my passion for the natural world into the classroom was always worthwhile.” This is fitting, as the book explores the many ways that the classroom environment itself can be reimagined—including beyond…
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The Value of a 6-Week Check-in
With a new school year just getting underway for some and about to begin for others, it is a time of hoping and imagining for what the classroom can become—but what happens when reality hits? How do you hold onto those initial hopes and imaginations as a teacher throughout the day-to-day grind of...
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The Art of Classroom Conversation
In this current moment, there are perhaps few things more valuable for students than the ability to confidently and skillfully navigate conversations. So how do we make those conversations a reality in our classrooms? Today’s guest has some ideas. Not only is Joe Ferraro in his third decade of...
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What I'm Doing With AI (I Think)
In this Kicking The Copier episode, Marcus shares his current thinking and plans for AI as a teacher heading into this new school year with six things he either is or is not going to do—at least for now. The goal of this reflection is not to suggest what the “right answer” is for any other...
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Better Discussions in the Classroom
Almost every teacher wants their classroom to be a place where discussion amongst students thrives. Yet the reality is, unfortunately, that classrooms do not always live up to that vision of what they can be in terms of academic, purposeful discussion on a regular basis. Today’s conversation is...
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Taught For America, Pt. 2
In the previous episode, Jim and Marcus shared about their own experiences with Teach For America—both their motivation for entering into teaching through this program and then their experiences as corps members over their first two years of teaching in rural Arkansas. That led to this second…
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Taught For America, Pt. 1
Jim’s back! And he wasted no time in recording a two-part episode that has been on the docket for some time: a conversation about Jim and Marcus’s experiences coming into teaching through Teach For America and then, in follow-up episode that will come out later this week, about how they feel…
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What a School Can Be
What can a school be? This is a question that today’s guest Carla Meyrink has had to consider constantly since co-founding The Community For Learning in 1998, a school Carla and two others started in Santo Domingo to live out the values of education they believed were best for students. In this...
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Let's Talk About Grading
Last month Tyler Rablin wrote a blog post with a quite-lengthy title: “The Bandaids and Backflips of Surface-level Equitable Grading Practices That Avoid Meaningfully Equitable Grading Reform” That thought-provoking and important post on grading led to this conversation: a discussion that ranges...
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Adrian and Marcus: Talking Teaching
With the help of several really thoughtful questions from listener and readers—including some from those about to go into the classroom for the first time this upcoming school year!—Adrian Neibauer and Marcus had a chance to reflect on their own perspective as teachers and offer advice on several...
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What Middle School Can Be
A lot of education conversations focus on what is happening in elementary schools and high schools, along with whatever is driving discourse in higher education at the given moment. What gets left out of the conversation too often? Middle school. Fortunately, today’s conversation is with...
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The Classroom As It Is
Larry Ferlazzo has been a leading voice in education for quite some time. With a weekly advice column for Education Week, 13 different books on education (and a 14th in the works!) as well as his own blog on teaching, Larry has again and again offered guidance and shared his perspective with...
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AI in the Classroom
There is a ton of conversation out there about AI in education right now—but too often, very little of that conversation centers the exploration and learnings of actual teachers from their own classrooms. That is why this conversation is built entirely around the work of Brett Vogelsinger, a...
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KTC #20: Trust Me—Choose Transparency
For our 20th (!!!) Kicking The Copier episode, the focus is very much singular: the importance of being transparent as a teacher, particularly in your classroom with your students. Not only because of the consequences of failing to be transparent, but more importantly because of the rewards that...
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Being a Teacher
Teacher Appreciation Week 2025 is here! With that in mind, we wanted to have a conversation around what exactly it means to be a teacher in this moment. Joining that conversation? Chanea Bond, a teacher who has for some time now been an influential, important voice amongst teachers all...
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Let's Talk About Testing
Recently, Adrian Neibauer wrote a reflective piece about his experience with standardized testing that began with these words: I’m a hypocrite. In today’s episode of The Broken Copier, he shares more about the conversation with his own children that resulted in these words—along with the myriad,...
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KTC #19: Pause and Take a Classroom Pulse Check
After opening with a note of gratitude for our listeners and readers, today’s Kicking The Copier shares a simple, powerful strategy you can use at any time as a teacher: a classroom pulse check. Five minutes of classroom space, way more than five minutes of impact. As always, thanks to: Alberto...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Conversations about teaching that center the voices and experiences of teachers as we discuss all things education—always with the goal of better serving the students in our classrooms.
thebrokencopier.substack.com
HOSTED BY
Teaching is community work—so let's talk about it together.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Broken Copier have?
The Broken Copier currently has 130 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Broken Copier about?
Conversations about teaching that center the voices and experiences of teachers as we discuss all things education—always with the goal of better serving the students in our classrooms. thebrokencopier.substack.com
How often does The Broken Copier release new episodes?
The Broken Copier publishes regularly with 130 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Broken Copier?
You can listen to The Broken Copier on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Broken Copier?
The Broken Copier is created and hosted by Teaching is community work—so let's talk about it together..
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