The Podcast

A manifestation...

Teaching People is a podcast. It is primarily for the teaching community, but it welcomes all with bonhomie and joie de vivre.

It is aware, and even hopeful, of its potential for picking up listeners and subscribers from third level education, coaching (both the sporting and general life kind), business, leadership, and media of all kinds.

There are two reasons for the ‘All are welcome here’ approach:

1.) Teaching People takes the view that teaching (with a small ‘t’) is an intrinsic part of all the occupations listed above. And, indeed, that teaching is not just a profession, or part of a profession. The act of teaching others about manners, morals, mindset or math has a profound influence on the development of humanity. In fact, in case that statement wasn’t big enough: the development of humanity depends on teaching.

2.) The work of talented and creative people in the professions listed is of unquestionable use to actual teachers! Primary and post-primary teachers across the globe can benefit from processes, routines, insights, strategies, methods and techniques from those worlds. So, this podcast hopes - in its own tiny way - to help get those communications moving back and forth; to be a conduit for that information exchange.

And yet, I am a teacher. The classroom is my bread and butter. So, Teaching People’s core audience, its principal demographic, will always be teachers. And that’s why, amongst the glamour of guests who don’t dance to the tune of school bells, there will always be plenty of opportunities for fanboying about formative assessment, geeking out about growth-mindset, and pondering prepositions and pronouns.

The Format:

Episodes of Teaching People follow what has become a traditional format; they are your classic, one-to-one podcasts. At their heart, they are long-form interviews with guests from the worlds of education, media, business and sport. It is the guests that are central to the premise of the podcast, the most regular form of output, and they define what Teaching People will become. As the series progress, regular features like questionnaires, quizzes and book reviews will act as anchors in the schedule, providing listeners with comforting familiarity.

The central premise of each interview - my number one objective - is to gain access to the guest’s wealth of experience (in whichever sphere they operate in) in order for listeners to apply those nuggets to their own teaching.

Profiles and Book Reviews:

These are audio-essays. They take the life and work of important figures and publications in education over the past few decades and celebrate their impact. They zoom in on their work, consider their impact, and apply their methods - theoretically - to our classrooms.

Teaching People English

And because I am an English teacher, there are some episodes that zoom in on English. The first PGCE assignment I had to complete on my PGCE, back in 2006, was a self-audit of Alison Johnson’s Letts’ . It’s crossed my mind that individual deep-dive episodes on each of the topics covered in that would be appreciated. Whilst I acknowledge that it sounds a bit, erm… dull, I actually think it might have legs.

Anyway, those episodes are for the future.

As are all the episodes, to be honest.

But it’s time to crack on.

So here goes…