Practical teacher support from inside the classroom.
Teachers Need Teachers offers candid guidance from the classroom floor, led by Kim LaPree’s experience as a band director and middle school English teacher. The show balances survival tactics with reflective questions about grading, planning, student behavior, burnout, and the shifting realities of teaching.
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Teachers Need Teachers is classroom mentorship with little patience for vague encouragement. Kim LaPree speaks from experience as a teacher, including work as a band director and as a middle school English teacher. The show focuses on the daily mechanics and emotional load of the profession. Lesson plans are treated as more than paperwork. They become a way to anticipate scaffolding, accommodations, formative checks, summative goals, and reteaching decisions. Planning episodes get concrete fast, especially when calendars, testing windows, spring break, field trips, assemblies, and shortened weeks start shrinking instructional time. The grading episodes take a wider view. They look at grading for learning, grading for equity, no-zero policies, bias resistance, motivation, compliance, and the uncomfortable gap between ideals and classroom reality. Student behavior is handled with similar care. The show frames students as responding to conditions, then moves quickly into routines, predictable lesson formats, explicitly taught focus, and short resets that keep the room steady. It also talks about the adult side of schools. School politics, collegial relationships, showers, lunchroom presence, professionalism, and data-driven requests all appear as part of the work, not as optional side quests. End-of-year episodes are practical and a little weary in the right way. They acknowledge stress, personal days, student celebrations, loose final days, and the odd rituals that appear before summer. Candidly Kim episodes loosen the format further. Those episodes cover master schedules, possible non-renewal, changing grade levels, multiple preps, teacher preparation programs, and the difference between knowing how to write a plan and being taught why it matters. Personal context appears too, including ADHD, a concussion after a car accident, and a shift away from perfectionism. The result is direct, classroom-shaped guidance for teachers who need someone to name the stress without turning it into a performance. It is not glossy professional development. It is a working teacher thinking aloud, sorting priorities, and trying to keep good teaching possible.
Made for: The show suits new teachers, teacher candidates, and experienced educators who feel stretched by planning, behavior, grading, school politics, or schedule uncertainty. It is especially relevant for listeners who want practical classroom judgment rather than abstract inspiration.
What sets it apart: Teachers Need Teachers stands out for combining classroom perspective with frank discussion of the systems around teaching. It moves between tactical planning help and candid reflection on burnout, neurodivergence, perfectionism, and professional survival.
Teachers Need Teachers is the podcast for struggling teachers, whether you're new or a seasoned veteran. It's inspired by the questions and frustrations that teachers are expressing around the web, plus the questions that you didn’t know you should ask! I'll help you clear the confusion and figure out what to focus on so that you’ll have the most positive impact in your classrooms without losing your freaking mind. I want to help you navigate through the craziness of teaching while maintaining your sanity AND personal life!
The school calendar ate your lesson plan; Kim LaPree counts the class days you actually have.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Kim LaPree considers whether grading reforms can address inequity without blurring what grades are supposed to measure.
Teachers Need Teachers looks at a familiar schoolhouse promise from a harder angle: grades are meant to measure learning, but they often sit on top of inequities that shape how students show up, participate, and keep going.
A grounded, calendar-first approach to matching teaching priorities with the class days left.
Kim LaPree turns second-half planning into a practical calendar exercise, starting with the weeks or class days teachers truly have left. The episode is strongest when it slows down the hidden math of the school year: long weekends, holidays, spring break, field trips,…
A plainspoken look at the relationships and practical judgment that shape a teacher's daily life at school.
School politics lands as workplace reality, not abstract maneuvering. Kim LaPree ties influence at school to ordinary choices: showing up for a colleague's shower, sharing lunch, offering help, and building relationships that may later support a teacher's needs and students'…
A practical, calming reset for teachers navigating the school year's final stretch.
Teachers Need Teachers treats the final stretch of the school year as a period teachers can plan for before pressure takes over. Kim LaPree shapes the episode around ten ways to prepare for the finish line, stay steady, and manage the intensity of late-year classrooms.
A practical look at building absent-student catch-up work into the course structure itself.
The Modern Classroom Project frames a familiar teacher problem around course design: how can students keep moving when absences and assessments interrupt the usual class rhythm?
Permission, relief, and workable teaching days.
Teacher well-being through soul care, faith and honest classroom stories.
Kim LaPree, host of Teachers Need Teachers, says she has taught for 24 years, first as a band director and then as a middle school English teacher, and uses that experience to ask what grades are actually communicating anymore.
Kim LaPree uses Teachers Need Teachers to show how teachers can plan the next five to six months after winter break, with April standardized testing leaving her a little under three months to finish core instruction.
["Kim LaPree uses Teachers Need Teachers to explain why school politics matter for new teachers, tying them to classroom assignments, resources, and mental well-being.", "She maps the power players in a school district, from district leadership and principals to counselors, secretaries, PTA members, custodians, and parents, and says each group has different priorities like ADA money, fiscal responsibility, and parent complaints.", "The episode argues that favoritism, unwritten rules, and school culture shape who gets good classrooms, preferred grades, and better opportunities, especially when a principal functions like a district manager or when counselors steer assignments.", "LaPree recommends building relationships, attending lunches and showers, making data-driven requests, and staying neutral during conflicts so newer teachers can protect their jobs and improve their odds."]
["Teachers Need Teachers episode 141, \"End-of-the-year hacks for less stress,\" is Kim LaPree's April guide for getting through the final stretch before summer break.", "She gives 10 battle-tested tips, including reviewing core concepts instead of teaching new material, skipping long end-of-year projects, and using Kahoot or group work when students are checked out.", "LaPree also covers practical cleanup steps like packing classrooms, filing summer repair requests, and spacing out the return of student work.", "The episode closes on teacher survival advice: take personal days, protect sleep and food, vent with colleagues, and keep control over what actually can be controlled."]
["Teachers Need Teachers episode 140 argues that a Modern Classroom Project setup can keep learning moving while reducing the stress of repeating the same lesson five times.", "The host says she built the model after weeks of rethinking pacing, mastery checks, and unit design in response to absent students and failed assessments.", "Her workflow uses Google Classroom, Edpuzzle, unlisted YouTube videos, and a tracker that tells students exactly which lesson, worksheet, and app to open next.", "She compares last year's writing and test scores against the new model and says they stayed flat, while missing assignments dropped and the lack of Sunday scaries made the system feel worthwhile."]
Teachers Need Teachers host discusses five ways teachers can make assignments harder to complete through undisclosed AI assistance, including baseline writing samples and precise formatting requirements.
An interview with Kareem Farah about the modern classrooms project model for differentiation and reaching all learners.
The host discusses how teaching accelerates aging and offers strategies to slow it down, drawing parallels to the presidency.
The host celebrates episode 100 and expresses gratitude to listeners while promoting a sponsor.