Education on the Rocks

EP 46 - The “Where’s everyone going” Edition

On past episodes, George and I have talked about how happy most people are with their schools on the local level. Students and parents love their teachers and feel like their schools are headed in the right direction, but that love shifts when they talk about the state of the public school system on regional or national scales. Today, we’re going to talk about the people at the center of that discussion, the classroom teacher. In August, PBS reported that upwards of 20% of all teaching vacanc...

EP 45 - The “It’s more than just the facts” Edition

Off air, George and I have often reminisced about the countless high school teachers who told us in no uncertain terms This will be the most important class of your lives. While we’re sure…if we could remember anything from any of those classes…that we would have ended up in vans down by the river if not for those teachers’ wisdom and, often, strict discipline, for this episode we’re interested in what really prepares students for success as college students. After spending four or more years...

S4E1 - The "Dude, 'are your tots soggy?!'' Edition

While George and I remember tasting the paste as we muddled our way through arts and crafts in kindergarten, most people’s school culinary memories are of sitting on benches in crowded cafeterias, trading PB&Js for chocolate pudding, partaking in real or imagined food fights, and, of course, doing battle with the proverbial lunch lady. As the vast majority of American students are headed back to in-person school this fall, we want to open our fourth season talking beyond the classroom as we e...

EP 44 - The "Dude, 'are your tots soggy?!'' Edition

While George and I remember tasting the paste as we muddled our way through arts and crafts in kindergarten, most people’s school culinary memories are of sitting on benches in crowded cafeterias, trading PB&Js for chocolate pudding, partaking in real or imagined food fights, and, of course, doing battle with the proverbial lunch lady. As the vast majority of American students are headed back to in-person school this fall, we want to open our fourth season talking beyond the classroom as we e...

S3E35 – The “School’s Out For Summer,” or is it? Edition (Season 3 Finale)

With Memorial Day behind us and mid-June upon us, students across the country at various levels of education are donning their gowns, decorating their caps, and heading to the biggest arenas on their campuses to graduate. So, for those of you who just graduated or are about to graduate, George and I want to congratulate you and wish you the best of luck on your next steps, whatever they may be. Today, however, we’re talking about what goes on after the ceremonies and after the final bells rin...

Season 3, Episode 35 – The “School’s Out For Summer,” or is it? Edition (Season 3 Finale)

With Memorial Day behind us and mid-June upon us, students across the country at various levels of education are donning their gowns, decorating their caps, and heading to the biggest arenas on their campuses to graduate. So, for those of you who just graduated or are about to graduate, George and I want to congratulate you and wish you the best of luck on your next steps, whatever they may be. Today, however, we’re talking about what goes on after the ceremonies and after the final bells rin...

EP 43 – The “School’s Out For Summer,” or is it? Edition (Season 3 Finale)

With Memorial Day behind us and mid-June upon us, students across the country at various levels of education are donning their gowns, decorating their caps, and heading to the biggest arenas on their campuses to graduate. So, for those of you who just graduated or are about to graduate, George and I want to congratulate you and wish you the best of luck on your next steps, whatever they may be. Today, however, we’re talking about what goes on after the ceremonies and after the final bells rin...

S3E34 - The “do we really need a G.A.T.E.” edition

If, like George and I, you are a product of the American public school system, at one point or another you’ve probably heard of GATE or TAG. While these programs are administered in different ways in different places, they all have one thing in common: they’re tasked with identifying and serving students in our system who are deemed “gifted and talented.” Today, we’re going to talk about these programs and try to understand how they fit into the fabric of our education system as we ask: do we...

EP 42 - The “do we really need a G.A.T.E.” edition

If, like George and I, you are a product of the American public school system, at one point or another you’ve probably heard of GATE or TAG. While these programs are administered in different ways in different places, they all have one thing in common: they’re tasked with identifying and serving students in our system who are deemed “gifted and talented.” Today, we’re going to talk about these programs and try to understand how they fit into the fabric of our education system as we ask: do we...

The “No More Math Class” Edition

As we’re coming out of spring break and into the home stretch of academic years across the country for students, teachers, administrators and parents from pre-K to BA, we thought it would be a good time for a thought experiment. Since the enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century, knowledge has become increasingly compartmentalized. In fact, in big high schools across the country, many faculty members may not know teachers outside their departments let alone what those teachers in other sub...

EP 41 - The “No More Math Class” Edition

As we’re coming out of spring break and into the home stretch of academic years across the country for students, teachers, administrators and parents from pre-K to BA, we thought it would be a good time for a thought experiment. Since the enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century, knowledge has become increasingly compartmentalized. In fact, in big high schools across the country, many faculty members may not know teachers outside their departments let alone what those teachers in other sub...

EP 40 - The “Is it the cool sub?” Edition

Three seasons into Education on the Rocks, we realized that we haven’t spent a moment talking about what happens when teachers aren’t in the classroom. Regardless of our educational experiences, we’ve all spent periods of entire days with substitute teachers. Often these teachers were nameless, their sole titles being any descriptor plus sub. The tired sub, the coffee-drinking sub, the newspaper-reading sub. We’re sure that you’re picturing someone from your educational past who came in to tu...

S3E32 - The “Is it the cool sub?” Edition

Three seasons into Education on the Rocks, we realized that we haven’t spent a moment talking about what happens when teachers aren’t in the classroom. Regardless of our educational experiences, we’ve all spent periods of entire days with substitute teachers. Often these teachers were nameless, their sole titles being any descriptor plus sub. The tired sub, the coffee-drinking sub, the newspaper-reading sub. We’re sure that you’re picturing someone from your educational past who came in to tu...

Season 3, Episode 31 – The Crickets Edition

EP 39 – The Crickets Edition

EP 30 - The Holdin’ Out For A Hero Edition

Today, George and I are sitting down to record our 30th episode, and we wanted to thank all of you who listen in as we muse on the nuances of education, education policy, and what it means to be part of the American school system. As we rang in yet another new year in the shadow of Covid, the Omicron variant, which a couple of months ago we probably would have thought was one of the minor evil superheroes in a Marvel movie, is changing the face of public education. Some schools are wide ope...

EP 38 - The Holdin’ Out For A Hero Edition

Today, George and I are sitting down to record our 30th episode, and we wanted to thank all of you who listen in as we muse on the nuances of education, education policy, and what it means to be part of the American school system. As we rang in yet another new year in the shadow of Covid, the Omicron variant, which a couple of months ago we probably would have thought was one of the minor evil superheroes in a Marvel movie, is changing the face of public education. Some schools are wide ope...

EP 37 - The “Give Me A Break” Edition

Back in the day, George and I spent many nights in our acid-washed jeans with our bleached bangs dancing in our rooms…by ourselves…and one of the songs we loved was “Vacation” by The Go-Go’s. In fact, vacations were “all we ever wanted,” we dreamed about having that “time to get away.” I know, you’re probably thinking what does your John Hughes film teenage fantasy have to do with education? While you’d be right to think that we often reminisce about our times as students in the 80’s on the...

EP 36 – The “Words, Words, Words” Edition

Whether in digital or paper form, books have always been a major part of what drives education in the United States. Whether those books are novels or entire curriculums marketed to state assemblies for adoption, books and education are often commingled with politics. Historically, we’ve seen districts and states ban books from classrooms in ways that bring politics and faith into our students’ classrooms. We’re going to take up the knotty issue of reading in schools and how it’s about a lot ...

EOTR - Season 3, Episode 28 – The “Words, Words, Words” Edition

Whether in digital or paper form, books have always been a major part of what drives education in the United States. Whether those books are novels or entire curriculums marketed to state assemblies for adoption, books and education are often commingled with politics. Historically, we’ve seen districts and states ban books from classrooms in ways that bring politics and faith into our students’ classrooms. We’re going to take up the knotty issue of reading in schools and how it’s about a lot ...

EP 35 - The “One Stop Shop” Edition

As children of the ‘80’s, George and I were barraged with images of the shopping mall in movies and on the 5 TV channels we got - the mall was the place to go to see and be seen, and to find everything you needed, all under one massive roof. So, the mall offered a place to socialize, to find the durable goods one needed from corduroys to bestsellers to the latest releases from U2 and Run-DMC, and to eat something deep fried in the food court. Getting in our hot tub time machines, we’re going ...

EP 34 - The “Am I a Freshman or Not?” Edition

Sometime between elementary and high school in the United States, all of us went to middle school. Or did we? Some of you are probably thinking that you went to junior high or that you moved from a lower to an upper school. Or, like my co-host, you found the years so trying that you’ve erased them from your memory. Today, we tackle the middle years in the American public school system, and we’re particularly interested in thinking about what it means to be in 9th grade. For many of us, our 9t...

EP 33 - The Attendance Bells Ring Again Edition

With Labor Day behind us, schools around the country are welcoming students back to their campuses. Over the past two seasons, we’ve spent a lot of time talking through what it means to be a part of the American public education system during a pandemic, but today we’re going to share the in’s and out’s of starting an academic year. In no other industry that we know of is there a new start every year, and these new beginnings offer their gifts and challenges. Today, we talk about what it’s re...

EP 32 - Teaching Teachers to Teach

Over the past year-plus, we’ve talked a lot about the challenges our school systems face and how our students are learning and will continue to learn in classrooms both remote and in person. At the heart of all these discussions are the professionals who work with young people across the country. Today, as we approach Memorial Day Weekend, the “finish line” of the academic calendar, we want to talk about those people, our teachers. So, we hope that you join us in conversation, as we ask: who ...

EP 31 - The “Always Innovate” Episode

As spring rushes quickly towards summer, students across the country are trying to figure out what to do with summer months that are likely to be a bit freer than last year, but far from normal. To meet students’ needs, schools are in the process of designing summer opportunities to enrich student learning and to, if we’re being honest, fill in potholes that COVID school has left in their education. This is leaving a lot of people involved in K12 education wondering how they’re going to pull ...

EP 30 - The “We’ve Got to See Our Way through this” Episode

Over the past year, George and I have spent a lot of time discussing how schools and students’ learning have been affected by the pandemic. Today we’re going to think about our schools not so much as places where students learn academic skills and earn grades, but as places that will be vital to helping our students navigate worlds that have been turned upside down for the last 13 months. With so much local and national attention on getting schools open, we want to pause to think about the ev...

EP 29 - Want a Diploma - First, We’ve Got to Get You Vaccinated

With the relatively widespread availability of the COVID vaccine in the United States, more and more colleges and universities are making plans to open up in the fall. After having shuttered in-person education for the entirety of the 2020-2021 academic year, college administrators are trying to figure out how to safely bring back tens of thousands of students to campuses across the country. Late last week, Duke University announced that it’s planning to require all students to show proof of ...

EP 28 - College Apps and Admissions in the Post-COVID Landscape

Almost exactly a year ago, George and I launched this podcast in hopes of talking through, as much for ourselves as for our audience, the myriad factors that shape what public education looks like in the United States. At the time, we were just getting used to platforms like Zoom, platforms that have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. As we’ve passed the one year mark of the COVID pandemic, and while there have been countless educational interruptions and pivots, and business has been anyt...

EP 27 - Remember when THAT happened

Believe it or not, George and I haven’t always been educational professionals. In fact, we’re both products of the American public school system. While I grew up in the Oregon system and George in California, we both started and ended our K-12 experiences in public schools. Today, we’re going to test our memories as we jump in our mental Deloreans and head back, way back into the 1980s to think about the highs and lows of our lives in public schools. And then, we’ll take those memories and s...

EP 26 - Don't Know Much Biology

When we hear people talking about schools, it’s often in the vein of what “kids these days DON’T know” rather than what they do. And it feels like we don’t hear about schools succeeding - we only hear about failure, and that failure is talked about in what teachers aren’t teaching and what students aren’t learning. Today, we want to dig into questions around knowledge and what students should be learning in school. We’re asking the question: What do our students need to “know” to be successful?

EP 25 - Can We Please get out of our Silos

English. Math. History. Science. A second language. PE. And an elective. For many of us, this is what our middle and high school schedules looked like year in and year out. And we never asked any questions about it. If you’re like us, many of our teachers taught and thought about their courses in isolation. Their subject was the most important subject and it was confined to that classroom and that 50 minutes. Today, we’re going to push back against siloed learning and think about what would h...

EP 23 - The “First” Day Of School

In his inaugural address, President Biden talked about “teach[ing] our students in safe schools,” and while making schools safer places for children to learn and grow has been a priority in the United States for decades, the new president’s words loom very large at a time when many public schools across the country have been shuttered for nearly a year. This week, the CDC published an article that says that evidence suggests that opening many schools safely for in-person instruction is possib...

EP 22 - The SAT is changing...again

This past week, the College Board, the company that owns the SAT, announced major changes to the test that they say have been accelerated due to the coronavirus pandemic. While many of us think of the SAT and the ACT as impacting students in their final two years of high school, testing culture in our entire K-12 system is to some extent shaped by these capstone events. Today, we will discuss these changes and ask: how will the re-tooled SAT affect students in our public schools?

EP 21 - College and the Life After In The Time of Covid

After a short hiatus, The Education On The Rocks starts off with an interview with a college student fresh out of the university. Jon’s guest today is Katie Bullock, his daughter and BFA Theater graduate. What was it like studying in college while the Covid pandemic raged all over the world and how life looks like after graduation? What kind of skills were students able to develop and how these can be applied later? Let’s dig in.

EP 20 - Putting the Brakes on During Winter Break

Up here in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the snow is starting to fall and schools across the country are getting ready to shut their virtual doors for winter break. Whether students, teachers, and administrators are wrapping up final exams or coming back in January to prepare to wrap up the first semester, this is the time of year when people are tired and anxious. This year, as many of us in education exist in the universe of comprehensive distance learning, all of those typical st...

Ep 19 - Where Are You Applying

This is the time of year when seniors across the country are filling out college applications and applying for scholarships, and teachers and counselors are writing recommendations. However, just like everything else over the past 9 months, this year is anything but business as usual. The coronavirus pandemic has reshaped every facet of American life, and it may very well be reshaping our society’s relationship with higher education. Today, we explore the impact of the coronavirus on this yea...

EP 18 - So you’re done with school - now what?

As schools head into the Thanksgiving holiday, we are seeing coronavirus numbers spike across the country. While there are a lot of questions to be answered about how the holiday season will affect schools’ abilities to open up in 2021, today we’re going to focus on a trend that we’re seeing at every level of public education in the United States. From kindergarten through college, students aren’t enrolling in school at the same rate as before the pandemic. Today, we’re going to take a look i...

EP 17 - Is Learning Fun? Should it be Fun?

Those of us who are products of the 1980’s or 80’s pop culture have fond...or not so fond recollections of the teachers in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Fast Times at Ridgemont High who make learning a gauntlet of boredom and fear. For many of us and our students, those satires, while intended to highlight the absolutely un-fun nature of the high school classroom, are all too reminiscent of our learning experiences in school. Today, we’re going to talk about learning and how learning and practi...

EP 16 - Teaching in COVID

Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve discussed the difficulties that our students and their families are facing, and while those challenges have implications that can affect not only this academic year but also stretch far into the future, we have yet to focus on what it’s like to teach students during this time of extreme hardship. So, today, we’ll venture back into the classroom, but instead of sitting in one of the student’s desks, we’re going to explore what it means to be a teacher, to...

EP 15 - It wasn’t me! Who funds and who decides what’s best for our schools

It’s Election Day in the United States and regardless of the outcomes of national races for the presidency and Congress, public education in our country needs more support than ever. To address the pandemic’s effect on our nation’s children, teachers, and schools, our leaders need to think both in the immediate present and look to the future of public education. But, like many things in public life, the questions of who’s going to pay and who makes the decisions often preclude any meaningful ...

EP 14 - The Ins And OUTs Of Being A Student During The Pandemic

EP 13 - The Importance of Mentorship in our Academic Lives

EP 12 - Zoom Fatigue Inside Higher Education

EP 11 - How Did the Pandemic Change & Affect Teachers and the Teaching Process with Matt Killpack

EP 10 - Parenting Students through COVID

EP 9 - School's in, Who's Left Out?

EP 8 - Reflections on a Career in Teaching and Preparing for a PhD during COVID-19

EP 7 - To Test or Not to Test

EP 6 - The American School System Post-Pandemic - A New World Order

EP 5 - The Myth of Rigor in the American Public School System

Since the start of the pandemic, kids have been studying home and we are afraid that they are falling behind. But is it like that? Let’s talk about rigor. It’s not just a myth. It does exist. Our kids aren’t given a free pass and they do learn outside the classroom. Are the skills they learn now, more useful than the material we teach in class? Let’s talk about it!