Jake Halpern has written about fame junkies, freegans, and die-hards who won’t leave their home under any circumstances. Also ice fortresses, enchanted forests, and twins switched at birth. One through-line for this award-winning journalist and author is storytelling; another is just plain learning.

Mom taught me how to braid bread, play fiddle, and disagree with others respectfully--and so much else. We discuss the value of praise in teaching and child-rearing, my grandmother Miriam George Meister, and a method of talent education that aims for world peace.  

Recorded at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a conversation about poems and poetry with two rising stars who are also talented teachers. Featuring Aja’s “What I’ve Learned” (excerpt) and Meghann’s “In Which I Name My Abuser Publicly.”

Oskar Eustis founded his first theatre company at the age of 16. From Tony Kushner's Angels in America to Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, Eustis has been intimately involved in the creation and development of many of the greatest works of American theatre of the past 30 years. Oskar and I sat down in his office at the Public Theater in February to talk about important teachers, Shakespeare, drama, democracy, Hamilton, the state of civil discourse ... and a few new ideas on the horizon.

Named for the year of its founding, Project '79 has been supporting and reclaiming high school students as learners for four decades. The oldest continuously running alternative education program I know about, it's also--for my money--just about the best way to do school. This month's episode let me sit down with coordinators Alan Lantis and Jackie Spring to talk about what matters most in designing and sustaining a program that keeps kids at the center of its work, addressing social and emotional needs as well as academic development.

Today I’m talking with Thomas Halpin, a master violinist and teacher. Halpin has concertized throughout the U.S. and abroad—yet for more than four decades he has focused on teaching. 

A dramatic reading recorded live at First Baptist Church (Westfield, NJ) on 12/16/17. With music by Michael Rosin and the Westfield HS Concert Choir.

These guys taught me everything from how to drive to how to recognize a I-IV-V chord progression in a song. The weekend before Thanksgiving, I sat down with my older brothers, John, a trial attorney (right), and Gregory, a firefighter (center), to talk about learning and music. 

My conversation with Maureen Mazzarese, an expert in social and emotional development. A therapist and counselor with four decades of experience, Maureen has worked with kids and parents of all ages, but this conversation focuses on adolescence--and the particular challenges it can present. We discuss "givens" of adolescent development, those normal tendencies that adults often forget, which leads to some basics of how to connect with teens (and a couple things to avoid). Parents, educators, employers, and friends of teens, this one's for you!

A quick trip through some ideas about writing that I personally would like to live forever—a companion to last month’s crowdsourced theme “The Idea about Writing You Most Want to Die” that I discussed with that brilliant panel of educators at Bread Loaf (004).

Five-paragraph essays. Writing for the teacher only. That careful writing is for English compositions but not lab reports. That there's a formula for "good" writing. What is the idea about writing (or the teaching of writing) you'd most like to die? For this episode, a panel of current Master's students at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English consider a range of answers to this question. 

Paula Roy is the teaching supervisor who hired me to work at Westfield High School in New Jersey in 1997. In our conversation, we talk about the possibilities and the challenge of supervising teachers; how to establish a safe, yet challenging space for classroom discussion; why sarcasm doesn't work in groups; feminism as an f-word anybody can embrace; and poetry as a way to see how everything is connected. 

The current state of political discussion shows that somebody's got to provide a place for people to learn to listen and challenge each other respectfully. Veteran principal Dr. Robert G. Petix shares some ideas about this, as well as the difference between really leading a school and merely managing it.

My pilot episode showcases a conversation with Kevin Johnson, sound engineer, director, television teacher--and a former student of mine. We open with Quentin Tarantino's definition of the frame as the basis for cinema. From there we discuss the technical (but useful) distinction between learning and acquiring skills, characters' names on Cheers, the many demands facing teachers today, and a different take on designing a school's master schedule.