Episode 013 -- Beth Konkoski on Teaching, Changing Students, and More

Episode 013 of the ClassCast Podcast features host Ryan Tibbens and teacher, author, and innovator Beth Konkoski discussing the value of school, challenges in the modern classroom, student stress and pressures, innovative instruction, administrative initiatives, how cultural changes have undermined classroom education, and more.  The episode is now available to stream/download on Spotify, iTunes, iHEARTradio, Google Podcasts, YouTube, this websites, and other common streaming services.  Beth will likely return as a guest on a future episode, so please leave your questions and suggestions in the comments! 

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Corrections/References 

• The Yuval Noah Harari book referenced is actually Homo Deus.  Here's what Harari has to say about grading: "The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s 
  day left Oxford with one of only two possible results - with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88."
• Grading, as we think of it, wasn't even conceived of until the late 1700s, didn't begin to take on modern forms and labels until the late 1800s, and didn't come into widespread use until the first half of the 1900s. Check out a history of grading in US Education.
• High school valedictorians (whose unweighted GPAs usually hover at or near 4.0) actually have an average GPA of 3.4-3.6 in college, slightly higher than the 3.2 claimed in this episode. Here is a reference to one study on the subject. 
• Millionaires/CEOs of major businesses tend to be C+/B- students in college. Check it out. 
• Click this link to learn more about (or purchase) Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath.