Hosted by seasoned educator Kimberly McGlonn, this episode takes a deep dive into the widening ideological and cultural divides impacting K-12 education. As schools find themselves at the epicenter of debates surrounding issues like race, gender and sexual orientation, educators must grapple with the challenges of a rapidly politicized classroom environment. We're joined by leading education historian and Penn GSE professor Jonathan Zimmerman, author of "Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Classroom." He provides valuable insights into the shifting ideological landscape since the book's first publication in 2002 and gives us some historical context for censorship, politicization and polarization. Then, professor of practice and former superintendent Andrea Kane sheds further light on the real-life implications of these culture wars for educators, students and communities, sharing some of her experiences on the front lines over the years. Tune in for a candid discussion on navigating these complex issues in today's educational setting.

FEATURING:

• Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education        
• Andrea Kane, Professor of Practice, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education

NEWSLETTER:

• Subscribe to the Educator's Playbook newsletter for ongoing resources and content

RELATED PLAYBOOKS:

• No. 69: Explaining war to children: 6 tips from a Penn GSE expert (02-25-22)
• No. 64: How to be a good parent and a good ally (06-10-21)
• No. 63: How to get even better at supporting your LGBTQ+ students (06-08-21)
• No. 58: How teachers can talk about violence at the Capitol (01-07-21)
• No. 39: Putting Black history lessons into action (02-05-20)
• No. 17: How to confront hate speech at school (11-17-16)
• No. 7: Responding to anti-Muslim rhetoric (02-04-16)
• No. 5: Treating racial competence as a skill to be learned (02-03-16)

OTHER RESOURCES:

• New books from Penn GSE professors focus on free speech on campus (02-15-23)
• School censorship is not democratic. Speaking up is the solution from the Philadelphia Inquirer (05-30-23)
• Jonathan Zimmerman: Do we really want discussion in our schools? Book censorship indicates otherwise from the Chicago Tribune (05-15-23)
• Penn GSE alumni event focuses on free speech in education (12-13-22)

This is not a video game, this is real life.

This is the Educator's Playbook from the Penn Graduate School of Education. I'm your host, Kimberly McGlonn. After finishing my PhD in curriculum and instruction, I spent 20 years in both urban and suburban schools as an English teacher. Every day, it feels like the ideological and cultural divide in America is getting wider with our schools in the center of the fight. A recent Pew research study from October 2022 finds that public views on K through 12 education have become deeply partisan and debates over how schools should cover topics like race, gender, and sexual orientation have filled our newsfeeds and legislative bodies. How do educators deal with the challenges of their classrooms and lessons becoming more and more politicized? On this episode of the Educator's Playbook podcast, we're sitting down with education experts to tackle just that.

My first guest today is leading education historian Jonathan Zimmerman, author of the book, Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Classroom. Last year, a revised second edition of the book was released to cover the ways the ideological debate has shifted since it was first published in 2002. Hi, John. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Well, thanks. It's great to be here. I'm Jonathan Zimmerman. I teach history and education at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm also a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I write about education culture in politics.

Fantastic. So there's so much there. What I'm most excited about in talking to you today is how your work has illuminated this notion of the culture war. How do you define a culture war?

Well, I think drawing on James Davison Hunter who wrote the book called Culture Wars, which really brought that term into our lingua franca. I think a culture war is a battle between two different groups of ideas. So Hunter said that some people are orthodox and some people are progressive. And by that he didn't mean what most of us mean by these terms. He said Orthodox people believe there's a singular truth, and progressive people are people who think that truths are relative.

Now, that's only one way to cut the pie, and obviously other people have cut it differently, but I still think the definition stands a cultural war is a struggle between people in different ideological camps over the premises and the realities that surround us.

And so I imagine this is something humans have struggled with essentially for forever.

Well, definitely because we're symbolizing creatures and most of all we're different creatures. We're different from each other in every way. The reason I study schools is I think schools, there's where the culture where rubber hits the road because it's in schools where we really have to define who we are. But of course, we are an irreducibly diverse and divided entity. And so schools are going to be always a site of conflict because they're the central public institution that we use to define who we are.

That makes a lot of sense. People who are setting their kids off to be in the charge and care of someone else, and that creates a sense of vulnerability. I wonder though, as an education historian, in your studies, have you seen a precedent to those culture wars making it into classrooms? We talk about it happening now, but is this something that you've seen before?

Well, I've seen enormous conflict over schools before because like I said, I think that's just endemic to the enterprise. We've always fought over what schools should do and we always will. But it's interesting, Kimberly, you mentioned in the classroom and that I haven't seen nearly as much. I think most of these cultural wars to this date have been around the school, not in the school. There are exceptions to that, but not many. So while we fight vociferously over what schools should do, often we don't want to let kids in on that little secret that we're fighting. So it's less likely that those struggles are going to manifest themselves in classrooms.

So it isn't a matter of that we're facing the same issues is that we haven't before placed kids so openly, not necessarily at the center, but in audience of the tensions and the way that we are doing now.

Right. And I think it's open question, the degree to which we're doing that now, how often, where, and obviously those answers are going to vary. But I do think we're an interesting inflection point that is different. So it isn't new that we're fighting, but here's what I think is new. That fight is more centrally about the narrative of America than it's ever been before. Most of our other battles, if we're talking about history and what to teach about history, have been about what today is called inclusion, who should be in the narrative rather than what the narrative should be.

Inclusion is really important, and anyone who thinks otherwise should look at a history textbook published, for say 1960. They're really only about white men. Now they're not. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't looked at one. I think most of the energy has been oriented towards whom to include in this great story rather than what the story should be and what happens to the story once we start including different peoples.

I think that latter battle is relatively new and I think that's where we are right now, but we may not have the language really the vocabulary for conducting that debate. And we may not have enough consensus that it even belongs in our schools.

Does that shift, do you date it to 2020 as the shifting moment?

Well, that's obviously an important moment, but I actually date the beginning of, let's just call it the battle over their narrative to the election of Barack Obama. Right after that, you see the formation of the Tea Party. It's not a coincidence that right after Obama is elected, you find, say Glenn Beck on TV saying What we need to do is celebrate the original Tea Party or Sam Adams.

He even creates an oak lined little red schoolhouse in his studio. And the reason this connected to Obama is you find a lot of tea party are saying we, however they're defining we, "We're losing the America that we grew up in." And Kimberly, they weren't entirely wrong about that. Obviously, we had never elected an African-American president. But more than that, I think that the election of Obama made a lot of people start to question what America is and what America was. And so that's really where I date the beginning of it. And then you see in the schools battles over ethnic studies in Arizona and California and other places.

Then ultimately the battle over the revised AP US history curriculum in 2014, 2015. Now none of these are, let's just say hugely controversial or publicity generating as what happened in 2020 because obviously the George Floyd murder was so awful and dramatic. But I do think they're important precursors to that battle over the narrative.

For sure. You talked about the differing positions on what America was and what America is, and I think that the other thing that this conversation setting up is anxiety about what America will be, particularly those of us who are in the classroom or studying the classroom, we can't deny that part of this is a conversation of what are the visions of America.

Definitely. And you mentioned emotions earlier. We're emotionally invested in those visions in a very big way. And when our own visions are countered or contradicted, it hurts. So to take a very relevant contemporary example, when Republicans, and they are mostly Republicans say that The 1619 Project, for example, represents a fundamental challenge to the way that a lot or most Americans have learned history, I think they're right. I think they're a hundred percent right. I just think it's a good challenge or it could be a good challenge if we use it properly, but they're not wrong about the premise.

I think a lot of us are seeing the ideological battle being waged via conversations about censorship via book bands or curriculum restrictions. What is the history of classroom censorship? And then I'm curious as to what your advice is to teachers as to how to deal with that call for censorship.

Right. I mean, look, just like we've always had cultural wars, we've always had censorship. We've always had people trying to remove materials that they think are harmful or destructive in some way. But I also want to emphasize that the word censorship itself has a politics and it's obviously a very loaded term. Even censors don't say they're censors because nobody likes them. And when you poll Americans about censorship, they don't like it either, but they also engage in censorship. And look, sometimes depending on how you're defining censorship, it's entirely warranted.

So one example from my own book that I talk about is I referred earlier to the all white textbooks. It wasn't just they were all white, it was that many of them, especially those sold in the South, described the enslavement of Africans as a benefits act performed by white people to civilized savvied Africans.

Now, why did that change? The answer is not because good and right thinking historians like me started telling other stories. No. You know why it changed? The Urban League and the NAACP organized parent committees and textbook committees and they presented themselves at school boards and they said, "You are not going to adopt a textbook that praises the Ku Klux Klan for saving white womanhood. And you're not going to use little black Sambo to teach reading."

So were they at some level censoring those books? I suppose so. But I would applaud them for doing that. There are some things that we should remove from our schools. And when I say remove, let me just be clear, I'm a First Amendment guy. I don't think those book could be burned in some fire, but I don't think they should be used as the adopted textbook to teach reading or history. They may be used as a primary document to study the way that we've talked about race, but that's very different from what we're talking about here.

But how do teachers today, given all this anxiety around what you're teaching and how you're covering, how do they make themselves feel safe and still align with what they think is responsible as an educator?

It's incredibly difficult. I think, Kimberly, you were asking the most important question of the day. And let me just say before I answer it that I'm speaking from a place of enormous security and enormous privilege. I mean, I'm a full professor at a major research university. So what I'm not going to say to a grade school teacher in this country is, "Oh, just let it rip. Don't worry about it." That would be absurdly precious. I get to let it rip, and I do let it rip.

As you should.

And I feel incredibly fortunate to do that. But most teachers in this country don't have the protections that I have. So what would I do if I were them? The first things correspond with and join hands with as many people that want to protect freedom as possible. So we hear a lot about Moms for Liberty. We don't hear quite as much about Red Wine and Blue. But Red Wine and Blue is apparent organization devoted to trying to protect the rights of teachers. It's not nearly as large as Moms for Liberty, but it arose to counter Moms for Liberty.

I think we're starting to see more of that. The right answer to these censors is not, "Why don't you butt out you dumb right wing evangelical Christian?" That's a losing proposition. The right answer is for other people to butt in.

I think that that's great advice. In referencing the strategies of those who are working in the civil rights era, what you're describing is the same sense of civic engagement and community response that's rooted in civil discourse. That's thoughtful and it is agenda focused. And I think that that's a really sound approach for teachers who are trying to navigate the space now to not forget those tactics.

And it works. Right? And the alternative doesn't. There are many reasons that Glenn Youngkin is the governor of Virginia, but I think the major one is that Terry McCall said that he didn't think parents should be influencing what the kids read. I think he was wrong about that. I think by definition they do. I shared his outrage that there were parents saying, "We shouldn't teach Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye. But again, the right answer to that is not, "Oh, parents have nothing to do with this." The right answer is let's bring other parents who actually want their kids exposed to that into the discussion. And I think some of that is happening and I hope more of it happens.

I also think about the stresses teachers are under to keep their communities as safe spaces and how we can really support them in figuring out how to engage with student pushback, how to respond to student pushback, how to facilitate rigorous, courageous conversations in ways that don't marginalize kids who maybe perhaps don't share the majority view.

Right. I've been asked versions of this question for the past couple of years, really since 2016. I mean since Trump, if you believe in the dialogue, you have to be willing to lose or don't have the dialogue. So if I were King, and Kimberly, we don't have enough time this morning to enumerate all the reasons that won't happen, but every high school teacher would present The 1619 Project next to the state approved textbook and say, "Okay, kids, let's start with Columbus.

Let's examine it. Full story.

What does the textbook say? Let's do the American Revolution. What does 1619 say? What does the textbook say? And so on. But one of the things I emphasize to teachers is if you're going to go down that road like I want you to, you have to be willing to let the students disagree with you. So if you're all hot about The 1619 Project, you have to let them favor the textbook. And if you favor the textbook, you have to let them favor 1619. And if you don't, don't do the exercise. Because if you do do the exercise and you cook the books in that way, you're saying that you want to dialogue, but really what you want is for the kids to agree with you. And that's a version of what my students have learned to call Zimmerman's fallacy.

Tell me.

If everyone had a true dialogue, a real discussion, unencumbered by propaganda, fully informed by facts, they'd agree with me.

Of course they would. [inaudible 00:14:05]

And that is cynical. It's cynical and it's bipartisan. It's all around us. If you really believe in democracy and you really believe in dialogue, you have to believe that equally informed and equally decent human beings can and do reason from the same set of facts to different conclusions.

Well, I want to thank you Jonathan Zimmerman for taking some time to join us on the Educator's Playbook. So thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed this.

Oh, and thank you. It was a great conversation.

That was Penn GSE professor, Jonathan Zimmerman giving us the broader cultural and historical view of polarization in our classrooms. Our next guest is here to share her own experiences from the front lines of the culture wars. Her career has been in both K through 12 teaching and administration, most recently in the greater Baltimore and Washington DC area.

Andrea Kane, thank you so much for sitting down to share your story. I'm really excited for our listening audience to get a sense of who you are. So can you introduce yourself to them?

Absolutely. I am Andrea Kane. I currently serve as a professor of practice and educational leadership. I have about 30 years of experience in K-12 public education. I've done everything from substitute teacher to classroom teacher and elementary school assistant principal, principal, senior manager for school improvement for 77 elementary schools. Title I, specialist, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, associate superintendent, superintendent.

You know the ecosystem.

I get it. I get public ed, I get instructional leadership.

Do you get these culture wars that are a part of this conversation right now in this country?

I am not pleased about it, but I do have awareness and have experienced some of that.

Can you let us into that world how you have been a witness to or have been forced to participate in this current state of division around cultural values?

My experience for 22 years in Maryland and Anne Arundel County, Annapolis area was we focused on equity and equitable practices, and it was a district-wide effort. There was not a lot of pushback. And this was starting right around 2005-ish, right on through. At least 2014 was when I left, but they were still continuing the practices. I mean, significant research and significant work went on from the top superintendent right through to the classroom level to bus drivers.

I mean, everybody was involved and that was a very suburban district. We had pockets of poverty, which mirrored urban like communities, and we had pockets of rural communities. So it was all three, but largely suburban. Then I moved to Richmond City, Virginia. So most of the students there, African-American children of color, Latinx. And so the work there, people say, "Well, how do you do equity work in a place where almost all of the children are BIPOC or children of color?"

Equity work is not just about ethnicity and race. Equity work has to do with ability, it has to do with gender. It has to do with meeting children where they are. There's also the whole issue of socioeconomics, which was very, very prevalent in that community. And then I moved back to Maryland and Queen Annes County, which was very small, probably the county had 50,000 people there. Our school system was just under 8,000 students, but a very white community. About 85% of the families there are white. About 6% black. We only had about a percent, a percent and a half Asian families and just about seven or 8% Latinx families.

So the equity work there because of the culture there was very different from both of the previous experiences that I'd had. Equity work there went on just fine until 2020. The community knew that largely that there was a need for the work. The superintendent before me, he had started the work with no pushback, but somehow when I got there and 2020 rolled around, and it was a time around George Floyd being murdered and Black Lives Matter, and I had written a letter to my community as I always did every single month, and somebody decided that I was indoctrinating children.

Wow. That word came up.

That word came up-

That word came up.

... for me for the first time, and I was taken aback a bit because I had three years of excellent, excellent work in that community. Children achieving. We had our first blue ribbon school ever in that district.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah. So that's academic achievement. That's closing achievement gaps. All of our schools were green schools, so we were doing our environmental work. Just lots and lots of firsts. We set our goals around equity.

And you were executing.

We were doing it.

And then that charge of indoctrination, that word becomes an indictment of what your intention is. What did that feel like?

It felt exactly like you just said. It was an indictment, and I really felt that it was undeserved because to me, families were present during the previous three years. There was no harm done to their children. And so just somebody screaming this word indoctrination would change the minds of some people. It took me aback.

When people use that word indoctrination, when they level that charge at a teacher or a department or district, how have you come to define what they're really trying to assert?

They are inciting. They are inciting divisiveness. In my case, I was going along our merry business of ensuring that all of our children were meeting their potential. So when this accusation of indoctrination came about, first, it just seemed ridiculous like, "Okay, I'm going to ignore that because then parents will know that I'm not trying to do that because of the last three years of work with this community."

That they would think. But it's so insidious.

It is absolutely insidious.

It's so insidious.

And in my case, what it turned out was this person was trying to create a platform for herself because she was going to be running for lieutenant governor. And when I realized that, I then said, "Oh, I get it.|

How did you navigate that?

It was quite difficult because I did not have the support of my board. My board were afraid.

A lot of people are really, really afraid. I think so much of the work of running a school is about taking care of these families, and you want to make sure that they feel heard and they feel seen. They feel welcome. They feel safe. And holding that balance of sometimes competing agendas can be really, really challenging.

And not only that, boards are elected.

That's true. Absolutely right.

So if your constituents don't believe that you are supporting what they are interested in, then you will not be reelected. And so either you're going to clam up or even if you don't really believe it and you know it not to be true, you are going to go along with the general outcry.

Was it an email? Was it a phone call?

It was emails. It was Facebook accounts. There was a whole fire Dr. Kane movement. So it was every social media possible until this parent got banned from social media. And then of course that doesn't stop it. So other people will write on your behalf. And because she was trying to run for public office, she had an opportunity to get in front of the public, even the public who was not our county, and spread these lies on the news in the newspapers, social media, all of the platforms.

On a macro level, and hearing you recall this experience of being charged with indoctrination post the murder of George Floyd, I can see how this would've been divisive for the community at large for the adults. Right? Did you at all see how that was playing out on a micro level with the experience of children in the district?

Well, that's interesting because that's what my letter was about. So I value relationships just as most educators do. So I approached this entire situation from the perspective of being a parent because I am a parent. I'm the mother of two black males, and I admitted to my community that I worry about my boys on a level that many people who don't have black sons in the United States of America can't necessarily relate to. And I referenced Tyrone Howard's work from USC and gave them some ideas, some things to think about as they talk to their children about the images that they were seeing on television, things that they hear on the news, things that they see in social media.

I am an advocate for children, and I absolutely was not going to let that go without addressing how it impacts children. I was a superintendent of schools. Not only was that my job, I felt, but it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be sure that our children are okay. And so I gave them some ideas, talked to them as a parent, not telling them what to do, but here are some suggestions. This is research-based, cited them and everything because we have to talk to our children about what they're seeing. They saw a man murdered on television over and over. This is not a video game. This is real life, and these things are playing out in our communities.

Our children, some of my high school students were having marches, and I marched right alongside them. Very peaceful, black, white together. It was amazing. All organized by students, and that was something that I was really proud of them for. Very peaceful and well organized and just thoughtful, and I wanted to support them. That's

Beautiful. At the same time, this 2020, I'm still in the classroom and students in my suburban high school decide to organize a peaceful protest. And not a single member of administration came. Everyone knew it was publicly advertised that this was something that the students thought was appropriate and they didn't come and it's interesting.

And children see that.

Right.

And children wonder, "Well, where is our support? Who is here for me?" And when all of the talk that we do about hearing children's voices and allowing their voices to be heard, where are we when it really comes down to the wire. We have to be there for our children.

How did you see the community and the dynamics of the community shifting as this became a part of the public discourse?

It was very divisive. And as a leader, your job is to collaborate. Your job is to bring people together for the benefit of children. And when I saw that that was not the case, then I knew once my contract was over to step away because there are children all over the world, literally.

That need to be served.

That need to be served. And if not here, then someplace else.

We think about outcomes and how you are navigating remaining as a steadfast leader in the moment in the storm, and then navigating what would be your next best move, what is the best advice that we can give educators who are standing in that storm trying to figure out, not necessarily the exit strategy, but the survival strategy?

Absolutely. Because that's what it is. And for me, I did have to take some time away because I mean, there were death threats and it got to that point, and I had to think about, number one, my safety and number two, my wellbeing. Self-care is a real thing. When I talk about self-care, I don't talk about manicures and bubble baths. I'm talking about those things which preserve who you are as a person. I'm talking about being seriously reflective and thinking about which direction you want to take.

So when I talk to educators that are in these situations, first I want to make sure that they're attending to themselves because they can't be there to support children, to advocate for children, marginalized children, or anybody else if they are not 100%. Sometimes that means you have to take a step back and do not be afraid to do that.

Don't be embarrassed to do it. It is not an indictment. If you have to do that, you are taking care of yourself so that you can continue to support children. That's the first thing. The second thing that I suggest is that they think about where their support lies because there are people who believe what you believe who recognize what's right for all children, not just mainstream, but all children.

I'm talking regardless of ability, regardless of socioeconomic, regardless of sexual identity, gender, any of those factors of our identity. That is absolutely critical. Think about yourself so that you can take care of your children.

What's your advice for school leaders about navigating this contemporary warring of cultural values?

First, you have to know where you are. You have to know your community. That's number one. If you are going to put yourself in harm's way by speaking out, this better be something that you feel personally as well as professionally committed to, because you likely are going to put yourself in harm's way. You have to make that decision for yourself. This is not a game. This is serious. And people who oppose what we are doing are serious, and we have to know our audience, and we have to know what's going to be acceptable in our community and what is not, and think about what they are willing to stand on. This comes down to who we are. I believe as people.

I'm standing on principle and what I believe to be right for all children, particularly as I said before, marginalized children. So I'm there to speak on it. I'm there to advocate for them, and this is just who I am, and I know that. So if educators know who they are, and that's why I said they have got to be seriously reflective about this work and where they stand in this work. And once they do that, they'll have some understanding as to the direction that they need to take. But first, take a really close look at your community, what's going to be acceptable and what's not? And if this isn't your battle, opt out. If it is, go ahead and speak up for children.

How do we give teachers concrete support in terms of what they need to study, what they need to do differently to prepare for this work? What are some takeaways that are like you think this is a resource for you?

A solid support for me has been the African-American Policy Forum. This is a group who actively goes across the country speaking out, whether we're talking about culture wars, book bans, equitable practices, all of these kinds of things, resources. You can look it up on the internet, and you will see story after story of examples of educators, not just leaders, but educators, classroom teachers who are in this fight and who are advocating for children.

Yeah, many of them have been persecuted for telling the truth, but that's why we have to know across the country, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion leaders and coordinators have been under attack to the point where some superintendents are changing their titles. Some superintendents are doing away with the position altogether. Some superintendents are being quite creative with how they use that personnel. And linking them to content areas so that we can work for children in a way that doesn't put an employee in harm's way. That is a wonderful thing. But there are supports out there for educators who are doing this type of work.

What would be one or two of your biggest concerns about how these wars are going to affect public education?

It is exhausting work, number one, we lose people from this fight, if you will, simply because they are sometimes the only in their district or in their school, and everybody comes to them when there's an issue that has something to do with conflicts, with culture, conflicts with race, and it is exhausting work. So one, they have to take care of themselves. That's why I always say self-care, be reflective, number one. Another thing is that so many people are afraid. So many people have lost their jobs with laws being enacted and put into practice that say, "You can talk about this, and you can't talk about that." So teachers don't know what they can say and what they can't say.

That's exhausting.

That is exhausting, but that's why it's important for leaders to be clear about their support, their expectations for this type of work. This cannot be ignored. One of my biggest hopes is that we can actually stop paying lip service to this and to really come together, allow those ideas to manifest that allow children, black, brown, white, it doesn't matter, to be them full selves, to really engage their potential. I believe that we have the capability to do that. We have to engage other facets of the community that are not educators into this conversation because everybody is invested like it or not, in the growth of our children.

Yes, and in the fabric of our country.

That's right. Our democracy.

Of our democracy. Thank you so, so much for being with us today on the Educator's Playbook. It's been so beautiful to be in conversation with you.

It has been my pleasure, and I have really, really enjoyed it. I thank you so much for having me.

You're absolutely welcome. Thanks again, Andrea, for speaking with me. It's so wonderful to hear your insights as someone who has spent so many years dedicated to the service of young people. And I think it's also important that as we walk away from our conversation today, to acknowledge the incredible stress of being not only just in the classroom, but that of also being an administrator. And I want to also thank you in the last final thought for inspiring all of us to stay in conversation with John Lewis who told us that we had to keep on making good trouble.

Thank you all for listening to the Educator's Playbook. We hope you find it useful. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. Leave a five star review and share with your colleagues. You can also sign up for our newsletter and browse useful resources at educatorsplaybook.com. Some of the most useful advice I ever received came from fellow teachers. Here's a helpful tip that you too can implement in your classroom.

Hi, my name is Beth. I'm a retired elementary music teacher. My tip is to have some fun. We would have game day every other week and play a five to 10-minute game at the end of a regular class. We might toss a stuffed animal around the room going, "Wee." Now, I knew the students were practicing their light high head voice. The students just thought of it as a fun break from the ordinary. It was a delightful way to sneak in some content and engage all learners.

What works best for you? Give us a call at 267-225-4413 or share your own advice on social media and tag us with the hashtag #PennGSEPlaybook. Educator's Playbook is produced in Philadelphia by the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education in partnership with RADIOKISMET. This podcast is produced by Amy Carson. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger. Christopher Plant is RADIOKISMET's head of operations. Ben Geise is our project manager. Matthew Vlahos is our executive producer. And I'm your host, Kimberly McGlonn. Thanks so much for listening. This has been Educator's Playbook.