Teacher talk, jokes intact.
Unprofessional Development turns education talk into a messy, funny, deeply familiar staff-room conversation. Guests bring classroom stories about co-teaching, ungrading, parent calls, homeschooling, ethics, trust, and the daily work of helping students grow.
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Unprofessional Development treats education as something teachers survive, shape, question, and laugh about together. It sounds less like a formal pedagogy seminar than a conversation that started in the workroom and somehow kept recording. The tone is loose. The questions are real. Episodes often begin with jokes, tangents, sponsor reads, name riffs, or deliberately chaotic introductions before settling into the thing educators came to hear: what classroom life actually feels like from the inside. A math coach talks through trust, admin support, no-pencil thinking, and ungrading. Co-teachers describe planning together, modifying lessons, working across the hall, and finding the kind of professional chemistry that feels rare without being impossible. Crystal Fromert brings parent communication, student behavior, and the value of beginning with a kid’s basic needs before moving to consequences. Elle Cole widens the lens on homeschooling, self-directed learning, family choice, and the stereotypes attached to learning outside school buildings. Allyson Apsey helps turn optimism into a more complicated conversation about denial, therapy, systemic problems, and adversarial teacher-admin relationships. Jay Wamsted’s episode pushes against test-score obsession and points back toward middle school students as developing humans, not just data points. Pauline Shanks-Corin brings military ethics into school dilemmas, including whistleblowing, risk, consequences, and the tempting absurdity of passive-aggressive fixes. The show’s comedy can be blunt, but its center is care. It respects teachers by letting them be tired, funny, imperfect, and serious in the same hour. Later episodes also reveal the strain of sustaining a podcast alongside teaching, family, and the end of a school year. That self-awareness gives the archive extra texture: it is not just a show about educator stories, but a record of educators trying to keep enough energy to keep telling them.
Made for: For teachers, school leaders, education students, homeschool-curious families, and listeners who like classroom stories with less polish and more honesty. It especially suits people who want practical education talk without losing the humor of the job.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its refusal to separate pedagogy from personality. Serious discussions of grading, ethics, co-teaching, discipline, and trust arrive through rambling jokes, candid fatigue, and the kind of educator shorthand that feels lived-in.
The stories teachers tell in the workroom, the barroom, and the coffee house. Special guests from the world of education share their wisdom, insights, and experiences. Real teachers, real stories, real funny.
A cardboard stand-in enters an ethics debate; you get to judge the proposed fix.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Brian Hain ties no-pencil math and ungrading to the confidence teachers gain from real administrative support.
Brian Hain brings a math coach's feel for classrooms to a conversation about methods that depend on trust as much as technique. His point about the no-pencil piece gives the episode its strongest center, moving from students who say they cannot remember what was said toward a…
A warm, grounded look at co-teaching shaped by shared planning, flexible lessons, and trust across the hall.
Unprofessional Development follows Jamie Davis and Revs through a co-teaching partnership that made lesson planning feel genuinely shared. They talk through building a math lesson together, adapting algebra and geometry work for students in Davis's class, and then comparing what…
A candid school-discipline conversation where relationship-building gives consequences somewhere useful to land.
Unprofessional Development looks at school discipline through the patient, messy work of helping students grow while they are still figuring themselves out.
Elle Cole frames homeschooling as flexible, self-directed learning shaped by children, family interests, and changing needs.
This homeschooled edition of Unprofessional Development uses Elle Cole to broaden the frame around homeschooling, moving beyond the familiar image of odd, isolated families.
A grounded review of optimism, emotional honesty, and workplace friction in education.
This single-episode review is most useful when it treats positivity as something to question, not simply endorse. The conversation follows a guest describing how therapy helped her make room for difficult feelings rather than insisting every situation is lovable, while the host…
Mentorship for the real work of teaching.
Teacher talk with research, books, and bite.
Classroom craft and educator stories from West Virginia.
One teacher's classroom, family and conscience, out loud.
History lessons for today's school board fights.
["Unprofessional Development talks with Brian Hain, a middle-school math coach, about replacing point-chasing with feedback that happens while students are learning.", "Brian traces the shift to Jaime Escalante, his own Korean tiger mom upbringing, and Peter Liljedahl\u2019s line from Building Thinking Classrooms: 'Are we teachers gathering points or are we gathering data?'", "He describes a classroom test where students talk without pencils, then retake it with notes, which turns grading into a conversation about what they know and what they still miss.", "The hosts push on edge cases like blank papers, student self-assessment, and how supportive principals and math teams let the approach spread beyond one classroom."]
["Unprofessional Development brings Shane Lawrence and Millie into a co-teaching conversation with Jamie Davis and Revs, who describe a classroom where the two adults are supposed to look seamless.", "Davis says she wanted to teach at age five and still remembers a freshman teacher asking, \"How stupid are you?\" after she froze at the board, while Revs says he has taught high school math for 14 years across algebra, AP calculus, statistics, and computer science.", "They say North Carolina inclusion classes can run 30 to 32 students with about 10 to 12 receiving services, and the goal is for a visitor not to tell which adult is the special educator.", "Their advice stays practical: co-plan, share the stage, use a question like \"Are you done or stuck?\", and treat math as teaching students \"how to think.\""]
Crystal Frommert says grades are "harmful," biased, and arbitrary, and she treats math as a rough draft process instead of a number chase.
["Elle Cole says homeschooling started only after a pediatrician suggested it at her daughter's second appointment, long before she planned to do it.", "Her family was dealing with one child who has sickle cell disease and type 1 diabetes, so keeping infections down and allowing rest became the priority.", "Cole says education means lifelong learning, and she argues that homeschooling builds self-directed learners instead of just classroom compliance.", "The episode also covers Maryland homeschool law, hybrid private-school classes, yearly TCD ultrasounds for sickle cell, and why her children later scored in the 99th percentile."]
Alison Apsey reframes serendipity as a mindset for finding lessons inside “happy accidents,” not just luck.
Unprofessional Development talks with Jay Wamsted, a Georgia math teacher who spent 14 years at one Atlanta high school before moving to middle school in February 2020, about state testing, classroom culture, and what teaching is for.
Unprofessional Development Ep.
["Jacob Johnson says grades are a social construct and nobody is literally a 78 or a 74.", "He explains how he runs an English classroom with complete/incomplete work, open retakes, and student conferences instead of points.", "Johnson starts the first six weeks with a placeholder A for everyone, then uses a contract-style conversation to settle final marks while still filing grades in Canvas and the SIS.", "The conversation also gets into credit recovery, Brainly, Photomath, Delta Math, and why he thinks compliance is a weak proxy for learning."]
Teachers share real stories and insights from their experiences in education, blending humor and wisdom.
Teachers share humorous and insightful stories from their professional and personal lives, featuring a guest educator.
Teachers share funny and heartfelt stories from their professional and personal lives.