Educator podcasts are an effective and timely way to provide professional development and allow educators to share their stories. Through collaboration between three Utah educator podcasts, we have created an educator podcast network that helps provide opportunities and professional development to educators from Utah and beyond.

One of the most important things when implementing new technologies into a system, particularly an educational system is to try and understand the different ways it might affect different levels of the organization. I worked in restaurants for a long time in college.

If you go to ISTE23 in Philadelphia this year, make sure that you make some time for Playgrounds. They are short table presentations by experts all centered around the same topic and they help to get some personal connections to content and ask your questions to experts who can help you build your understanding.

I attended my first UCET in 2018. I had just come back from SXSWEDU week and I was on fire for more ideas and community. At the suggestion of my good friend, Quin Henderson, I headed to the University of Utah and joined the conference. I was excited to talk to a lot of the speakers as part of our podcast project at the time, Edtrex Rewind, and to just take in the conference. It was the first time that I had attended a state-level education conference and I was tickled by how much fun I had throughout the event.

A couple of months ago I was asked Katie Garrett, an associate director at UEN, to help a group of college and graduate students explore podcasting. These students were from the American Indian Resource Center and were developing a podcast to highlight the work of the AIRC. They also wanted to explore the issues facing American Indians who are in college or graduate school. We spent an hour or so together developing ideas, touring the studio, and recording their voices for the first time.

I have a distinct memory of sitting in my third-grade classroom, surrounded by bright colors and desks, learning about phonics. My teacher instructing us to sound it out and figure out the world by struggling with the sounds. It was a reading lesson, which at that point I needed more help with my spelling (still do), but other students needed it.

What I really love in podcasting is when you get a group of people with disparate backgrounds and they, without planning, synchronize their comments.

One of the consistent things that I have learned and continue learning about Utah education is that there are a lot of incredibly dedicated and hopeful individuals working within the system for teachers and students. Funnily enough, a good chunk of those individuals in the last few years have been connected to the Utah Teacher Fellows.

There are conversations that I have as a podcast interviewer that I wish could go on forever. Speaking to them for hours and hours just sounds like a delightful way to spend the day. Often it is because the interview sits in this great sweet spot of my own personal interest in the subject and the interviewees are so knowledgeable and engaged in their own work that their passion just shines. Dani and my interview with KnowledgeWorks experts Virgel and Lillian were one of these interviews.

Last year on UEN Homeroom, Dani and I were lucky enough to have an amazing conversation about how to approach teaching Native American culture in Utah classrooms and some of the best practices. The conversation was a great discussion with two wonderful educators from BYU, Heather Francis and Brenda Beyal. This year, thanks to the Utah Teacher Fellows Podcast and guest host Natalie Johnson, there is a follow-up to that conversation. Brenda Beyal returns with the director of the Native American Curriculum Initiative, Cally Flox. Come learn about the Native American Curriculum Initiative at BYU and how it is helping to transform how Utah educators are discussing Native cultures.

Working on audio and producing podcasts has been one of my favorite professional activities for the past few years. Podcasts are places where anyone can tell their stories to a larger audience and be heard. I am lucky to get to produce this podcast with Kiera and this month’s podcast provides some great insight into one of the innovative teams in Utah: Utah State Board of Education’s Digital Teaching & Learning Team. As a team, they support so many activities throughout the state, but two key activities have played a key role in many educators’ lives: the Digital Teaching and Learning Grant, which has provided funding for Utah schools to provide updated tech to teachers and students, and the Personalized, Competency-Based Learning grant, which encourages student choice and voice in our schools. Check out the podcast to learn more about this group, their work, and how it has influenced technology use and culture in Utah schools.

Earlier this month Dani and I were lucky enough to sit down with Utah’s First Lady Abby Cox and her Deputy Director of First Lady Initiatives Sarah Allred about the Show Up for Teachers Conference. If you are a Utah educator and you did not attend the summer conference, make sure to look for announcements for next Summer’s conference. As you will hear in the podcast, the goal of Show Up for Teachers was to help them feel pampered. From point one entering the conference, I felt it.

Last night, I was lucky enough to run a Twitter Space for the ISTE Community Leaders Twitter account with Erin Dowd. Erin had just finished her Expert Webinar on Creativity earlier in the day and it was so great to just sit and talk about creativity and how to share it with students in our classrooms. If you are unfamiliar with Twitter Spaces it works almost like a call-in radio show allowing a host to add speakers to talk and share their ideas with whoever is in the room. Shout out to Greg Bagby for jumping in last night with some great questions.

A few years ago I was lucky enough to be able to fund a trip to Chicago for ISTE. I was so excited to speak to new people, learn about everything I possibly could, and just explore EVERYTHING. Throughout the week I was able to meet up with a few new people including a bunch through the Global PLN. Erin, or her pen name E.E., led a lot of the excellent activities that week. Flash forward a few years and she has just released a new young adult novel and I was lucky enough to pull her into recording with Dani and me for UEN Homeroom. The episode explores how and why to write for students, exploring difficult topics with students, and how to be a global participant in your classroom.

One of my heroes, Henry Rollins, once said (paraphrasing), “Travel helps kick the ignorance out of your body.” I first heard that at 19, just a few months before I was able to wander Europe for the first time on my own meager dime. That was a transformative experience for me and one that I still reflect on every time that I travel. One thing that I have learned is that travel is weird. It helps you to see the weird little worlds that exist everywhere and interact with people, social customs, and ideas that you may have never interacted with in your geographic backyard.

My first time at UCET was in 2018. I had just gone to SXSWEDU week with my district team and had a great time meeting people and really starting to understand the bigger picture of K-12 education. Coming from the higher education world I knew that conferences and working with others were a huge part of understanding the professional landscape and being able to establish yourself as a professional. Building those connections led to other conferences and ideologies.