Trust, talk and agency, one classroom question at a time.
Each conversation takes a single classroom question, like when to give a student the answer or how far students can run their own assessment, and stays with it. Several guests talk through their own books, and every episode closes on one aim: instruction that is grade level, engaging, affirming and meaningful.
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UnboundEd Podcast is the name on the feed, but inside the episodes it goes by the LP, Literature in Practice. The shape holds across this run. Each episode starts with a line from the conversation and a question put to the listener, such as how often a teacher's power as a researcher is overlooked, and then Brandon White takes the conversation from there. Several guests come to talk through a book of their own. Starr Sackstein discusses 'Student-Led Assessment, Promoting Agency and Achievement Through Portfolios and Conferences', Jennifer Felton discusses 'Teaching in the Now', and Jill Harrison Berg discusses 'Uprooting Instructional Inequity'. Literacy is the home base, but not the boundary. The Tricia Zucker conversation begins from the old idea that reading and writing float on a sea of talk, then asks what to do when classroom discussion gets hard to steer. Its answers are about trust: keep the exchange moving, and stay with a child who answers wrong in front of peers instead of turning away. It also questions the rule of never giving the answer, which draws a frank admission of second-guessing that choice during a read-aloud. The Angela Stockman episode treats documentation as a way of making students the teachers. It traces that practice back to recording the resistance of reluctant writers in a writing workshop. Other episodes move outward. Jennifer Felton's conversation is about classroom rhythm: if the teacher does not set the beat, students will. It also takes seriously the depleted stretch it calls the wilderness, along with the idea of going out to live and bringing that energy back to students. Jill Harrison Berg's episode frames professional development as an equity issue and holds that teaching is a profession rather than a solo career. Kristopher Childs and John Staley take the conversation into math, warning against fitting a social justice issue onto a lesson without relationships or grade-level content. That episode also defends procedural skill, noting it has sometimes been shamed, and asks how one classroom can serve students with different strengths. Across these conversations the teacher keeps turning up as a learner: someone who learns from students, works among them instead of from a desk at the front, and checks whether class time matches stated values. The Sackstein episode describes a fully project-based classroom built on pairs and small groups. Every episode ends on the same aim, instruction that is grade level, engaging, affirming and meaningful, and the same sign-off, peace and progress. What a listener takes away is a set of sharper questions to bring to the next lesson.
Made for: Suits a listener who teaches, coaches teachers or shapes professional learning and wants ideas about classroom talk, assessment and culture worked through in conversation, often with a guest who has written a book on the subject.
What sets it apart: Each episode hangs on one classroom question and, often, a guest's book, and every one signs off on the same four-part aim of instruction that is grade level, engaging, affirming and meaningful. That test goes beyond writing workshops and into math class.
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A read-aloud is not a deposition; your teaching questions get room to breathe here.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded episode on trust, classroom talk, and when a helpful answer can keep comprehension moving.
Classroom talk is the center of this single-episode review, with Tricia Zucker's Strive for Five Conversations framework presented as a practical way to support language comprehension and literacy.
A grounded look at student ownership, classroom culture, and assessment shaped by agency.
Student ownership comes through as a practical classroom commitment, connected to assessment, belonging, and the teacher's role in shaping the room.
A thoughtful conversation about listening to classroom rhythms before asking students to follow a new one.
Classroom teaching is framed here as a matter of rhythm: who sets the tone, how teachers regain their own energy, and how instruction can meet the different tempos students carry into the room.
A thoughtful case for professional learning that improves classrooms by improving the conditions around teachers.
Professional development is framed as an equity issue: when teachers are asked to change practice, the conditions around them need to support that change.
A practical conversation about equitable math instruction that stays grade level while honoring different ways students learn.
Math class becomes a way to look at student experience in this conversation with Christopher Childs and John Staley. The discussion opens with a practical caution: do not start with a social justice issue and then search for whatever math might fit.
CTE professional development with real classroom grip.
Brandon White interviews Angela Stockman about The Writing Teacher’s Guide to Pedagogical Documentation and its use of photos, audio, video, and notes to make learning processes visible.
["LP, Literature in Practice, centers on Tricia Zucker's Strive for Five Conversations and how it changes classroom talk for literacy.", "Brandon White hosts the episode, and Tricia Zucker is introduced as the co-author of Strive for Five Conversations, a former early childhood teacher, and a professor of pediatrics and co-director of the Children's Learning Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.", "The episode asks what teachers should unlearn about the question-answer-praise cycle and what Strive for Five is meant to do instead.", "White and Zucker discuss the book's 86% figure on concrete read-aloud questions, the turn-three decision to scaffold up or down, and why teachers can give the answer when the goal is conversation rather than testing."]
Brandon White talks with Starr Saxton about student-led assessment in portfolios and conferences.
Jennifer Felton tells Brandon White that teachers must set the tone, beat, and rhythm of a classroom or students will do it for them.
LP, Literature in Practice interviews Jill Harrison-Berg about Uprooting Instructional Inequity and her case for inquiry-based professional learning.
Brandon White interviews Christopher Childs and John Staley on LP, Literature in Practice about their book Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice, and both guests frame math as a tool for life, family, and community.
Anne-Marie Baines discusses Amplify Student Voices, a book for teachers, parents, students, administrators, and others who want student perspectives centered in education.
Melissa Loftus and Lori Sappington explain how The Literacy 50 turns science-of-reading questions into practical classroom decisions about phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
On Literature in Practice, Brandon White interviews Carlos Moreno about Finding Your Leadership Soul and the role of love, care, and vulnerability in education.
A discussion with Professor Rita Coley about her book on teachers of color resisting racism and reclaiming education.
Host Brandon White interviews author Lorena Escoto-Herman about her book Textured Teaching, a framework for culturally sustaining practices in the classroom.
An ELA specialist interviews an ESOL supervisor about her path to teaching and improving outcomes for English language learners.