The Teaching Toolbox Podcast turns 1! It has been an amazing ride for this first year, and we are so excited to start year two that we can’t wait to share some memories with you, look ahead a bit, and then announce all our wonderful winners who helped us make our one-year celebration more wonderful.

Topics Discussed

• Reflecting on the Past Year
• Looking Ahead to Year Two
• Announcing Giveaway Winners

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Brittany 0:00

Hi there. I'm Brittany, and I'm here with Ellie.

Ellie 0:04

Hello.

Brittany 0:05

We are The Teaching Toolbox Podcast. We are so happy to have you join us today for what is essentially our year one anniversary. It has been an amazing ride for this first year, and we are so excited to start year two that we can't wait to share some memories with you, look ahead a bit, and then announce all our wonderful winners who helped us make our year one celebration more wonderful. Let's look into that memory mirror.

Brittany 0:38

I would say the beginning was kind of rough. Our website took a little longer than we expected, which delayed things. But it was all good, because we ended up being behind in producing our podcast, and then when release day came, we only had one episode ready to go, instead of the typical three that people say to have

Ellie 1:04

that's okay,

Brittany 1:05

which was totally all my fault, because I was editing them so and then it took another week before two and three were released. And so that was that was heavy. It was a lot.

Ellie 1:20

Yeah, I feel like recording got kind of off to a rocky start for me. I mean, like, there was some stuff in personal life that was going on at that time too, which made it a little even more challenging to get things going. And so I did feel like I wasn't quite ready. I was definitely nervous, but we had ordered the microphones and the headphones, and so we figured, let's just dive in. But even though I was nervous after a few episodes, I really started enjoying having our conversations and sharing things that I learned and experienced over the course of 25 years in the classroom. And I have to say, just having the conversations has jogged so many memories, like things that I had forgotten about. And I'm like, Oh yeah, I do remember when they did that 25 years ago, or whatever it was. It's nice to be able to remember some of those things

Brittany 2:05

Exactly so many things have flooded back for me. I just love having talks with you.

Ellie 2:12

Yeah,

Brittany 2:13

we should have called it talks with Ellie.

Ellie 2:18

A few other things I remember as we got started, was asking people for their opinions about what our title should be, and trying to figure out which one to choose, and creating the social media accounts, trying to figure out all the graphics which Brittany did so much of, because I'm not not a good graphics person.

Brittany 2:36

Oh stop it.

Ellie 2:37

Along with setting up the website,

Brittany 2:39

We brainstormed tons of topics, and we had them all listed in airtable first, and then moved them one by one by one, and then asking people to share stories about their first year of teaching, and not getting any responses.

Ellie 2:59

Yeah, we'd still love to hear some teaching stories. If anybody wants to share,

Brittany 3:03

yes, we'll share how you can do that in a little bit.

Ellie 3:08

I really remember getting frustrated trying to edit the audio and do all of the things to get the recordings ready and out and everything before we found our wonderful Janice.

Brittany 3:22

Yes, Janice has been absolutely a treasure.

Ellie 3:27

Absolutely. And then I remember where, you know, sometimes we have to work around power outages and our schedules and our recording times because we're in different time zones and that kind of thing, so just those little challenges that we had to work out. But I think we've done a good job.

Brittany 3:41

I think we've done great. I remember so many great shows, though, Episode Four on behavior in the classroom, it felt so good doing that episode that was the first one that really like, felt like it rolled, and it's continued to have many listeners. Yeah, it's very popular. And then episodes 11 and 12 were great, back to back shows we had Brigid here one of our guests to talk all about color in the classroom. And then episode 12 was classroom economy systems. And so her color in the classroom was so fascinating and then classroom economies is one of my favorites. And so it was just two very pleasurable episodes right after another.

Ellie 4:33

Yeah, those are good ones. Personally, I also love our study skills episode. I don't know if it's just that I love study skills, but I really enjoyed that episode that was a pretty early one, that was episode nine, and I really enjoyed tackling transitions, which is episode 10. I felt like we hit on so many good ideas in there. I love both of those. I've also loved learning about what classrooms are like in other parts of the country, and learning from the guests that we've had.

Brittany 5:00

So looking ahead to year two, I am looking forward to more guests on the podcast and learning from just a wider audience, having more input.

Ellie 5:12

I'm looking forward to finding more guests that can share their expertise and their experiences with our listeners and bring in, you know, people from other realms of the middle school,

Brittany 5:23

yes,

Ellie 5:23

and I really want to hear from our listeners about what they would like to hear about.

Brittany 5:28

Yes, I would love to get more input from our listeners. If you have other ideas you want to hear about or feedback you want to give, send them to us. You can go to our website, teachingtoolboxpodcast.com, and there's both a contact us page, if you want to type it out, or you can go to the contribute tab and you can just hit record, and you can just talk to us.

Ellie 5:55

Yes, we would love, love, love to hear from you. One other thing I'm really excited about as we look into the next year, is creating and sharing more episode playlists, because as we are gathering more episodes and producing more episodes, we have the ability to put those into playlists and share those with our listeners so they can easily find some themed content. So I'm really excited about creating and sharing more of those.

Brittany 6:19

I love those playlists. I had never heard of them before, and to do themed content so people can just listen to what they're interested in is really neat.

Ellie 6:28

Yeah, exciting stuff.

Brittany 6:30

So lastly, we've been running a giveaway to thank our listeners for the past 10 weeks, and it's time to announce our winners. Please forgive us if we mispronounce any names, but listed in no particular order, we have Beth B, Andrea B, Stephanie D, Julie L, Jennifer W, Alicia Y,

Ellie 7:06

Heather J, Lisa D, Jenna B, Sarah R, Lakisha P, Janine K, Rachel P and Leah S. We hope you enjoy the prize that will be emailed to you shortly, and most of all, thank you for listening.

Brittany 7:32

It's been a great year together. We hope we've added a lot of tools to your teaching toolbox. I know I've had a lot of enjoyment being here and talking with you, Ellie.

Ellie 7:42

Yes, me too. Please share the podcast with your teacher besties, and we will talk to you next time

Brittany 7:49

Bye.