May 26, 2025 • 33 mins
What did you think of the episode? Send us a text!
Have you ever wondered if there might be a better way to deliver professional learning than the traditional sit-and-get workshop model? The team from Whitehall Coplay School District wondered the same thing—and their solution has transformed how their teachers engage with professional development.
When Dave Stauffer, Andy Fehnel, and Tony Pangaio sat down to brainstorm new professional learning options for their teachers, they landed on a simple yet revolutionary idea: create a district podcast. Their "10 Minutes or So" podcast (originally planned to be under ten minutes, though they admit they typically run slightly longer) allows teachers to earn professional development credit while commuting, cooking dinner, or going about their daily routines.
What makes this approach particularly powerful is the authentic connection it creates throughout the district. Teachers who might never approach the technology team in person now strike up conversations in hallways and faculty rooms, referencing podcast episodes they enjoyed. These casual interactions often lead to deeper coaching relationships and classroom implementation support. As one team member shared, "Teachers that were walking through buildings... immediately just struck up a podcast conversation. I listened to you last night when I was cooking dinner and it was about X, Y, and Z."
The format is simple but effective. Topics emerge organically from classroom observations, teacher feedback, and current educational trends. The team records in a single take without restarts or heavy editing, creating an authentic experience that resonates with their audience.
Perhaps most importantly, this approach respects teachers as professional learners with different needs and preferences. Rather than mandating a one-size-fits-all model, the district offers multiple pathways for professional growth. If a podcast topic doesn't resonate with a particular teacher, they've only invested ten minutes before moving on to something more relevant to their practice.
Ready to reimagine professional learning in your own context? Consider how micro-learning through podcasting might help you meet your educators where they are while building community and sharing valuable insights. What could your version of "10 Minutes or So" look like?
Want to learn more about ChangED? Check out our website at: learn.mciu.org/changed
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You sound great.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Okay, that's great.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Andrew is just being fancy.
I could move mine over, but I'mgoing to let Andrew just be
fancy today.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Do I need to move?
Speaker 4 (00:09):
it over.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
You make it.
It's all about the appearance.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Smoking mirrors.
I told you, we're all veryaware.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
This thing's not even hooked up.
I'm just talking about my kids'toys, I took it.
My kids' toys, I took it.
Welcome back to Change Ed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Change Ed.
Oh, we said it at the same time, sorry, say it again.
Sorry, tony Changed.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Change, Ed.
That's what happens when we'revirtual.
The number one rated podcast,although I feel like our guests
today want to challenge that Inall of Pennsylvania except for
Whitehall Copley.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Except for.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Whitehall Copley, because they have a number one
rated podcast there.
Copley, I hate that name,except for Whitehall Copley,
because I feel like they have anumber one rated podcast there
as well, and they're here tochallenge us today.
Challenge accepted.
I'm Andrew Kuhn, your favoritehost on your favorite podcast,
and you know what.
Honestly, I'm just a person wholoves education and loves
(01:18):
learning.
I'm a lifelong learner, andhere with me is I'm Dave
Stauffer, once again fromWhitehall-Copley School District
.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I'm the supervisor of teaching, learning and
technology.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I'm Andy Fainel, one of the K-12 instructional
technology specialists, formersocial studies teacher here in
the district as well.
Please don't leave out yourother title, and I am the
current district ambassador ofWhitehall-Copley as well.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We're going to unpack that in a little bit, All right
that's fine.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
I'm tony pangayo and I don't have cool fancy titles
like these other guys.
I'm just a guy who lovesflorida and is a tech coach and
coming along for the ride yes,tony florida is back here's what
I don't get about this podcastand we really are going to start
.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
How do we always end up talking about florida every
podcast?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
because people are like why did you do that?
Mickey's amazing.
And then you talk about it forfour seconds and you're like oh,
okay, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
And now you're apparently attracting people who
are forced to talk aboutflorida every day as well,
because tony ties it intoeverything.
So you know it's sweet he did.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
We did a podcast with trevor muir.
Have you you all familiar withtrevor muir?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
he's learning.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, he's big on project-based learning and
storylines and you know a lot ofthings.
And an international person,down-to-earth guy, great, great
person talk to at the end of it.
These he's from florida.
They got onto the florida kickand it was like I wasn't even in
the space, right?
They're talking aboutalligators and wrestling them
and throwing marshmallows, likelike.
They were both rehashing theirchildhood in front of me uh, I'm
(02:51):
Patrice Simatek.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I'm out of the Montgomery County intermediate
unit and I'm having a hard timetaking Coon seriously with his
statement about how he's just aguy who loves whatever you said
I.
I zoned out.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
That was long but that was a lot of fluff, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
He's just a guy.
Anyone who's met Kuhn knowshe's not just a guy.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
And I'm Tony Maravito from Carbon Lehigh Intermediate
Unit, very excited to talk toWhitehall Copley School District
, today home of Saquon Barkley.
Some people say Saquon wouldnot be the man he is today
without these three gentlementhat are joining us.
So very, very excited.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Listen that, that that backwards hurdle, that I
taught him that we.
We worked on that 10 years ago.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
Dave showed him how to do it in Tecmo.
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Is there?
Is there video of thathappening?
Cause I, I personally, wouldpay solid money to see you do
that backwards thing.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
No, no, no video.
You just got to take me at myword.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Okay, okay To be fair , patrice, I would pay a lot of
money as well.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Well, as if it's not confusing enough to have a
podcast with two podcastinggroups, we also decided that we
would make the names all verysimilar, so there was a very
easy.
So if someone says Andrew,fortunately enough our guest
goes by Andy.
So that's pretty easy.
But we have a Tony and a Tony.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
They both have beards though.
Yeah, I show respect to MrPangayo, I would say, and Mr
District Administrator,ambassador, and Mr Stopper,
that's how I will, okay, okay,well, listen this is a really
I'm yep, I'm just Andrew.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yep, I'm the Andrew.
So this is a really uniquepodcast because the topic that
we're going to talk about isvery near and dear to us as
podcasters, especially atChangeEd.
This is how ChangeEd startedand was created and the reason
that we continue to podcast, andthat is micro-learning and
micro-, micro professionallearning and development and
what that looks like on allsorts of levels.
So, for us at ChangeEd, we allwork for intermediate units, so
(04:52):
our job is to support educatorsin their work, and so we take it
from that lens.
However, your podcast, whichI'd love for you to tell us more
about, is focused on a districtlevel, and I'm working in and
supporting your district level,so maybe a great starting spot
would be.
Can you tell us about yourpodcast, maybe a little bit of
background about it, and then,really, what is the focus and
(05:13):
intent of your podcast?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah.
So why don't we start with theorigin?
So at Whitehall Copley wereally pride ourselves in giving
our teachers or I should sayour staff members a lot of
choice in their professionallearning, and we offer
everything from synchronouslearning to asynchronous
learning, to in-person learningclasses.
We really try to meet themwhere they're at and provide
(05:35):
that choice.
So we sat down at the beginningof the year, andy, tony and
myself.
As we always do, we sit down inAugust we review what we're
doing and we have a conversationabout how we could do things
better and what else we couldoffer, and at that point Andy
had a great idea.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Andy, if you want to start filling in, One thing that
we had kind of knocked aroundwas the idea of a podcast.
So at the beginning of the year, when we had that conversation
about what to do, it simply waswhat about a podcast?
What would that look like?
Is that something that we couldactually pull off?
I think it kind of went aroundthe room between the three of us
for about a week or two backand forth yeah, we can do it.
No, I'm not sure if it's goingto work.
(06:11):
There were some logisticalthings that we had to work
through, especially from thestandpoint of credit and what
our teachers would get and howit would work.
But ultimately we decided thatit was worth the effort and that
we'd give it a shot.
Once we kind of started theball rolling, it just kind of
took off.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah.
So I think the credit piece isreally important to mention.
So our teachers they do haverequired professional learning
hours outside of theircontractual day.
For next year they'll have toput in 20 additional hours.
So when we talked about variedoptions in professional learning
, whether it's synchronous,asynchronous classes or
in-person classes by attendingor completing those activities
(06:46):
they do earn credit.
So when we first startedtalking about the podcast, we
weren't even necessarily talkingabout it for professional
learning and professionallearning credit.
We were just talking aboutputting out a podcast, sitting
down, having some conversationand using it as a great way to
disseminate information to ourstaff members.
And Tony Pangayo, if you wantto hop in, he really drove the
(07:08):
conversation of.
Is there a better way that wecan entice listeners?
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Yeah, to be honest, I just didn't think anybody would
listen to us.
Speaker 6 (07:18):
That's how I feel about Andrew, but go ahead.
Sorry, John.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Andy and I have been in this district for a while
I've been in the longest so wehave valuable information that
we feel teachers can learn fromand they listen to us as we walk
around.
But I still didn't think out areflection form and give us
(07:43):
their thoughts and I felt likethat piece was important for a
couple of reasons A, to givethem credit so they had some
value in it.
But B, it allows us to followup with them and it gives us a
secret into their class.
As tech coaches it's alwayshard to get into classes.
Sometimes Some teachers areresistant.
They don't know what that lookslike, the co-planning, et
(08:03):
cetera.
Dave actually goes throughtheir feedback the most and then
shares it with us and says, hey, can you check on this teacher,
can you check on that teacherabout something we talked about
in our podcast?
And it gives us that built-inconnection.
So I think those two things arereally important that drive,
that popularity of what we do.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's interesting.
So I'm interested in how areyou tracking that Like, are they
filling out a form after theywatch and that's giving them
credit for the amount of timethey listen?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, absolutely, I could talk through the nuts and
bolts of it.
We have a system calledFrontline that we use for
tracking hours, so I created aform on Frontline.
It's a very basic reflectionform.
It's used for all podcastepisodes.
It has three questions.
They're very open-endedquestions where they reflect on
the episode.
So once they fill out the form,it comes to me for approval and
(08:51):
I of course, read through everyform and once I hit approve
that okay, this form looks goodthen it automatically credits
them a half hour into theiraccount.
So having Frontline for usreally is very helpful in this
situation.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I love it, thanks.
What I like about thatcomponent is you've added in a
piece of accountability.
So if someone can't say, ohyeah, I listened to it right, or
I listened and they heard thebeginning, and they're like, oh,
it's great that you talkedabout X and they actually don't
have any content.
We feel very fortunate that wehave a number of listeners that
we talk to and they'll they'llgo into depth about it.
Actually, one of them was aguest on our show and they'll be
(09:27):
like oh man, when you said thisand they react you can tell
they're a listener.
So they say you know they canlike talk about the show and
actually what's happening.
But the piece that I wanted tojump on that you were talking
about earlier is that it's suchan amazing window and
relationship that you can createwith your listeners.
You know we feel a commitmentto them.
But also we even had scenarioswhere someone came in, for it
was a student event that we wererunning at our intermediate
(09:50):
unit and they came in.
We never met them.
They walked into the room.
They're like are you, andrewand Patrice?
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Like when I heard you guys talk.
I heard your voice.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I'm like I barely said anything, but like just you
connect right, like when youhear that a lot or you hear
someone's voice that they canconnect.
So you know, have you seen animpact in your relationship with
your educators that you workwith at the school?
Speaker 5 (10:12):
as a result of the podcast?
Oh, absolutely.
You know teachers that werewalking through buildings and
just the other day I was in youknow, like a faculty room and
somebody heard me talking,walked in and immediately just
struck up a podcast conversation.
I listened to you last nightwhen I was cooking dinner and it
was about X, y and Z and thenfor about five minutes we
(10:32):
bounced some ideas back andforth about that podcast where I
think if the podcast wasn'tthere, I'm not sure that teacher
would have the confidence toconnect in that way.
It was that avenue that allowedher to come in and feel
comfortable to strike up aconversation with me and off we
went.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yeah, I would say one of the biggest things about the
podcast has been just thefeedback that we get from people
constantly.
Yes, there's definitely peoplewe connect with on a regular
basis and there are, like Tonysaid, there are those people
that we're in a district with380 plus teachers.
You just don't connect witheverybody on a regular basis.
But to be able to get intobuildings and walk past people,
(11:09):
walk past classrooms, see peopleeven outside in the community,
and the first thing they say toyou is like hey, I just want to
thank you for the podcast.
It's so easy for me to listento it in the car, on the way in,
on the car on the way home.
One of the things that we reallycame to the conclusion early on
, as we were recording the firstfew episodes, was we needed to
keep it super authentic and itneeded to be us and in our
(11:31):
bubble.
Of the three of us, dave is theserious one.
Dave is the guy who keeps us ontrack, dave keeps us organized,
dave drives where we're headedand Tony and I are just like the
class clowns at times, and soit was really important for us
to make sure that Dave kept hisorganization and that things
went the way they did, but thatTony and I got an opportunity to
(11:51):
kind of joke around a littlebit, goof around a little bit
and show that personality thatwe have, and I think that's
really resonated with people andthat builds on what he was
talking about, that authenticityof what we're saying and how
we're saying it, and it's notcoming across as an edict or you
(12:11):
know, do this, do that.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
It really is a conversation and it's something
that they can engage in just bylistening.
When we started we were tryingto think of a title and we
wanted to keep it a shortpodcast.
We didn't want to go on and onfor a half hour or an hour, so
we settled on the title 10minutes or Less.
So the first couple episodes wecalled it the 10 Minutes or
Less podcast.
And what's really funny isafter a few episodes we realized
10 Minutes or Less wasn'tnecessarily realistic for us.
(12:34):
We were coming in around 11 or12 minutes.
So the 10 Minutes or Lesspodcast became the 10 Minutes or
so podcast, which it is nowcalled 10 minutes or so.
But it is exactly that, as asAndy said.
So I do serve as the host of thepodcast and Andy and Tony they
sit with me.
(12:55):
Occasionally We've had someguests in, but honestly it's a
very organic conversation.
So in my planning of course Ihave a topic for the day and I
have a couple of guidingquestions and we really just sit
down and we have a conversationand when people ask me when I'm
walking around the halls aboutour podcast, they can't believe
when I tell them that we'venever restarted an episode, so
(13:16):
we've never started, and said,this isn't working right.
We always sit down, we recordin one take and just let it
happen.
If we misspeak, if somethinggoes wrong, we laugh about it,
we make fun of each other andthen we just move on.
So it's sitting down and ifit's a 12 minute podcast, it
takes us 12 minutes to record.
So it is an internal podcast.
(13:37):
We don't release it on Applepodcasts or any of the major
platforms.
What I do with it is I take itand I upload to our Google Drive
and then I just protect itwithin our Whitehall Copley
domain.
So currently it's onlyavailable to our staff members.
I've created a 10 minutes or sowebsite where all those
episodes live.
(13:57):
Each episode gets its own pagewhere I have a breakdown, minute
by minute, of what we'retalking about, and I also put in
some supporting resources aswell.
So those episodes are alwaysthere for our staff members to
go and grab and listen to.
When we do a release of a newepisode, andy shoots it out, we
have a description and sends itto the entire district that, hey
(14:20):
, check out the new episode ofthe 10 minutes or so podcast.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
As we travel and go to different conferences.
People are talking aboutpodcasts because it's a great
medium to connect with others.
For all the reasons that we'veexplained and shared, and more,
I think the one that is thestrongest for me is that it
opens doors for communications.
So Tony had shared that he washaving a conversation with a
teacher where otherwise youmight have both been in that
space and that conversation justwouldn't have happened.
(14:46):
So you had thoughts on thetopic, they had thoughts on the
topic, so it creates a scenariowhere you can have that
conversation and that's alwaysour desire for this as well.
But the part that I love somuch about this is that you're
doing it at a district level,because whenever we go somewhere
, they're talking about doing itteachers doing it with students
and they're doing it in aclassroom level, which is hugely
important.
I mean, the impacts are all thesame.
(15:08):
They're creating an environmentfor that conversation.
It happens at whatever levelyou're focusing on, but the
strength in this and I thinkother district leaders are going
to be very interested insomething like this and even
replicating and modeling this isbecause, again, you can reach
your intended audiencedifferently, so you can connect
with your district, no matterthe size, how big or how small.
(15:31):
It's all math.
If it's smaller, you have lessstaff to support.
If it's larger, you have morestaff.
And in all ways, communicationis king in what we're doing.
And the other thing I reallyappreciate is how you talked
about that authenticity, becauseI know my kids want to be
something famous, whether it'sYouTube or any of the talks or
the ticks or the, you know,whatever it might be and they're
(15:51):
like what can I do?
And actually what I challengethem don't try to go for
something that's already outthere and look for the next
thing.
Like, be you and look for thenext thing.
Don't try to duplicate andreplicate what someone's already
doing.
Try to be you know, whateverthat next thing is.
And interestingly enough, I cansee a lot of similarities in
the podcast and the dynamics andhow it works, and yet there are
significant differences.
(16:12):
But we're all being authenticand I think that's what relates
to other people that we're justactually being who we are, not
trying to be someone different.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And Andrew, just to chime in here.
I'm glad you brought upauthenticity and I'll let the
guys chime in as well.
There's definitely an evolutionif you would listen to our
episodes.
So we're 20 episodes.
In the first couple episodes weare, I would say, a lot more
serious than we are.
We realized pretty quickly waswe have to be ourselves right,
(16:46):
we have to have fun doing it.
That's what we want, that'swhat our listeners want, and
there is definitely more andmore fun.
That goes on as the episodes goon.
What we started doing, I wantto say, around episode four or
five, we open up every singleconversation with an icebreaker,
and that icebreaker generallyhas nothing to do with education
(17:09):
.
Well, tony, andy, what's acouple of examples of an
icebreaker?
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Favorite restaurant Favorite, or what super super
powered would you want?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Oh yeah, favorite superpower, yeah yeah, that was
a good one.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
What was your favorite cartoon growing up?
What was your favoritetelevision show?
I've found that that's such agreat way to kick off the
podcast Minute icebreaker,minute, minute and a half of
laughing and talking a littlebit of nonsense.
From that icebreaker we go intoa tip of the day, so one of the
three of us will share a tip ofthe day.
(17:40):
So it'll be just a one minutequick hitter tip of something
that we think our listener willfind really helpful and then
from there we go into our maintopic of conversation.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I really like how you guys are also having
conversations around givingteachers some autonomy in their
choices of professional learning.
So the fact that Mirabito andKuhn and I are all in
professional learning the thingthat we do all day is
professional learning but wewere finding that the more
people can choose to come tosomething, the more engaged
they're going to be.
(18:12):
Naturally, and a lot ofdistricts that we work with have
very scripted days Like we'retalking about this this day and
this this day and this this day.
We have no time for anythingelse, especially with the
diminishing of time that peoplehave in terms of professional
learning in most of theteachers' contracts.
So how did you guys as adistrict and I don't know if any
of you were involved in thatpart, but how did you guys as a
district make the decision togive them 20 hours of their own
(18:35):
learning time and then managingwhat does that look like and
expectations for that?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I think a lot of people should be hearing that.
Yeah, so that's been acontractual evolution over the
years.
Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah, so certainly.
For quite some time they had afive-hour requirement.
It was five hours outside oftheir normal contract, and what
we instituted a few years agowere trade days.
(19:01):
So they had five hours ofrequired time and then they had
three days that they could tradeout of.
So you can choose to come towork and we would have
professional learning on thatday, or you can earn five hours,
and those five hours would thenget you out of that trade day,
right?
So that's how we evolved fromthat five hours that was here
(19:22):
from the time that I arrivedhere at the district 12 or so
years ago, and that five hoursthen evolved into that 20
through that process.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
So Tony and I have been in our roles for about four
years now.
Previously it was Dave byhimself.
Once we went from a departmentof one to a department of three,
one of our first conversationstogether was how do we expand
the professional developmentoptions that are available to
our staff?
And it tied in kind of nicelywith the end of COVID and all of
(19:53):
this asynchronous options thatwe had to present and we had to
create through that time period.
So obviously the first thoughtwas well, we can present
asynchronous classes for ourstaff.
And from there it just keptrolling.
Dave said earlier every yearit's a conversation.
What can we do?
How are we meeting them?
Are things working?
Are they not working?
(20:14):
How can we evolve?
How can we change?
As a district, over the lastfour years really made a
concerted effort to go to achoice PD model to give our
staff an opportunity even onthose days where we're in person
for professional development,taking a half a day and having
two sessions in the morning ortwo sessions in the afternoon,
where staff have multipleopportunities to go to different
(20:35):
sessions and learn based onwhat is appropriate for them and
what they feel is going tobenefit them the most.
And so it's really given us, ascreators, an opportunity to
allow others to create, allowother voices to be raised, and
allowed that authenticity levelof everything we do professional
development wise within thedistrict.
It's increased it, you know,and it's given everybody a buy
(20:58):
in and some sharedresponsibility for what we're
trying to do.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah, and I think there's a human element to it as
well, when you're talking aboutdoing hours outside of your
normal workday.
We certainly realize thateverybody has a life outside of
here.
We have staff members withyoung kids and other
responsibilities, and if we wereonly offering courses that
occurred in person after school,that could be a significant
burden to many of our staffmembers.
(21:24):
Now we have a lot of staffmembers that prefer learning in
that method, others that that isnot necessarily an option for
them, and to provide them withoptions, yes, we have
asynchronous courses where, ifthey like to go home and sit in
front of a computer and watch avideo, that's available.
But the podcast is just anenhancement of that you can be
on your commute to work in themorning.
(21:44):
You could earn professionallearning credit by listening to
our podcast.
You know, I would say that'swhat our staff members have
loved the most and we hear thatover and over.
You know, hey, I was listeningto you on the way to work today.
It's so convenient.
This is so great.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
I have a creative process question for you.
So how do you choose yourtopics?
Are you getting some teacherinput?
Is that something that you'redoing month by month?
You want to cover certain ideas, and then, how often are you
releasing your pod?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, it's a little bit of everything.
So we do take input from ourstaff members, from our
administrative team, and part ofit is just us sitting down and
brainstorming.
What conversations have weheard over the past week or two
or month?
What's a hot button topping ineducation?
We've done a bunch of episodeson AI, which, of course, is
pretty much in everyconversation of the past two or
(22:32):
three years.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I'll add to that too, kind of ties into everybody's
points here.
I've been in the district.
I started my teaching careerhere 26 some years ago and he's
been in a dozen years.
So it adds to that authenticity, that realness that we lived
kind of both sides of the fence.
So we've been through the PDthat we just sit there and we
(22:54):
wanted to change that when wecame into this role.
Andy and I are in and out ofclassrooms.
So the topics, tony, for you,we see what's going on.
We know those teachers frombeing colleagues with them years
ago and now in our rolescurrently.
So we have a not the best pulse, but a pretty good pulse of
what's going on.
So we know what they want tohear, we know what they want us
(23:15):
to talk about and we know andunderstand their struggles with
certain things.
We understand their strengths.
So that helps us kind of pieceall of that together and
hopefully deliver somethingthat's worth it to them.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
Yeah, I love that.
I would be interested intoseeing some of the data, like
what are your most downloadedtopics, like what are teachers
most interested in and kind ofgrow from there.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
One of the other benefits of this media or any
media thinking outside the box,as you all are doing when it
comes to professional learningis that access is always an
issue.
So if something comes up on theday of an in-person training
and I can't be there, I justdon't get that training.
Someone can share their slideswith me, but if I didn't create
the slides, I might have a hardtime interpreting them.
(23:57):
Certainly, with the way that wedo slides, they're mainly
pictures.
So you know, although a pictureis worth a thousand words, I
might not be able to get all thewords that you were intending
for me to pick up from thatslide.
And what's great about thismedium is, as you were saying,
dave, that you could be in anypart of your life and just say
hey, you know what I'm going tothink about this.
It allows you to reflect as ahuman and as a professional and
(24:19):
make the connections you want toversus with all day trainings.
You're drinking from a firehose and there's probably a lot
of good nuggets, but you have topick out what nugget you want
to latch onto and what's the onething you think of when you
leave after a four hour sessionon something versus 10 minutes
or so, to reference what youtalked about, tony where then
(24:41):
the reflection had happened anda teacher wanted to engage in
further dialogue.
And then you're stretching eachother, you're learning as you
do it, which I think is thebiggest benefit for us.
We'd love to sit down and talkto people and ask them the
questions that I want to askthem when I hear them presenting
or sharing or talking.
Let me really ask you morein-depth questions.
I really want to understandthis topic, so that love for
(25:01):
learning, I think, is important.
I'm going to offer you all agift, and Tony can say that this
is a special.
For what?
Hall Copley, copley.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Copley.
No, you can do it, copley.
You got all excited about yourpronunciation.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Copley.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Copley yeah, that is the worst, worst trick you all.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Anyway, the place that you work, it's a special
tree for the place that you work.
We're going to give you the ohman, the second, the third and
the fourth final thought.
Give you each an opportunity tokind of give a final thought
when it comes to professionallearning, the podcast, what
you've been experiencing, whatyou've learned, what you're
getting from other people.
For our hundreds of millions oflisteners that you know, this
(25:42):
is the takeaway that they wouldwant.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I'll go first For listeners that you know this is
the takeaway that they wouldwant.
I'll go first For me.
When I took this job, it wasmeeting teachers and meeting
their needs and remembering whatit was like or what it is like
to be in the classroom.
I like the short bits.
I like the fact that they canget a taste of something and, if
they like it, they can followup with us.
And now a 10 minutes or soprofessional development could
turn into an hour or so, with meor Andy working with them.
(26:07):
Or if they take what we aretalking about and it's not
applicable to them, they canthrow it to the side and say,
hey, that was 10 minutes andthey can go off and do something
important to them.
So that's what I love the most.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I'll jump in next.
My biggest takeaway is it's thechallenge of trying something
new.
I think back to when I firstgot into education and I first
took on that challenge ofpresenting in front of my
colleagues or presenting infront of other people and
getting over that fear of peopleare going to look at you and
think like, why are you tellingme this?
You've only been teaching for ayear, two years, three years,
whatever it is.
And I think when we took thison, I know Tony and I both had
(26:41):
that hesitancy to go like arepeople really going to listen to
us?
Do we have enough understanding, information, value to what
we're trying to do here forother people to listen, take
something from it and thenhopefully utilize it or pass it
along.
And I'll give Dave credit forthis.
He stalwart through the entirecreation process was, like you
(27:02):
guys know, understand and havemore value than you give
yourselves credit for.
And the more we talk aboutthese things, the more we get it
out there, the more people aregoing to listen and the more
people are going to really takeaway things from it.
And I think it was hispositivity and if you know Dave,
dave is one of the mostpositive people you will ever
meet in your life.
So I think that positivity ontop of the fact that Tony and I
(27:23):
realized we do have a lot ofvalue, we have a lot of
knowledge, we have a lot we canshare with people, and it's not
that difficult for Dave tosimply say here's what we're
talking about.
Okay, here we go For us to sitthere and find enough
information and enough things tosay to make it worthwhile for
our listeners.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, for me, my biggest takeaway is the power
and popularity of the podcastingmedium.
Honestly, when Andy firstbrought it up, I was a bit of a
naysayer as well Me and Tony.
I wasn't so sure that anybodywas going to listen and I hadn't
considered how popular podcastsare and how many people in our
district listen to podcasts on adaily basis.
You know, sometimes you justget stuck in your ways.
(28:02):
Yes, we try to innovateconstantly, but you think about
the old ways of sending outinformation, you know, sending
emails or putting newsletterstogether and, honestly, I had
thought about podcasting overthe years but hadn't truly
considered it as something thatwould be successful within our
district, and I'm astoundedevery single day on the
popularity and the traction ofthe 10 minutes or so podcast.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
When it comes to voice and choice.
That's something that ourstudents all students have
figured out by the way that theylive their lives and the
options that they have available.
For instance, when they watchYouTube and they have shorts now
they can keep on moving ifthey're not interested, or they
can watch that second play andbe like that was really good.
I want to learn more, but theshorts are limited to how long
they are and it's only so muchtime and you got to get your
(28:48):
point across and it removes alot of the fluff.
It takes a lot out and you'relike let's get to the heart of
the conversation.
Let's really.
What is our, what is ourlistener looking for?
What do they want?
Which leads me to the fact thatthis is a community.
Podcasting is a broadercommunity, but then your
audience becomes more than anaudience of listeners.
It really becomes.
You know, when we sit down andwe plan and we think about what
(29:11):
we're going to do, or even whenwe edit, we have that in mind.
What do they want to actuallyhear?
Because we can't put ineverything.
We've had a 40 minuteconversation at this point and
we have to narrow things down,so what do they want to hear
from us that will add value tothem and the work that they're
doing.
Well, I have.
I have two other things.
Number one I just got to throwthis out.
Andy, I could tell you were anidea guy from the beginning.
(29:33):
I think it's in the name.
That's what I think it is.
It's all in the name.
Our parents knew we were goingto be idea people and they just
gave us these really strongnames.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
There's a reason.
There's a reason the kinglinesscomes from that Andrew name.
Oh no.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I'm so glad somebody else said it, not me.
Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I mean, I swear, if your Andrew is anything like our
Andrew, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
But the last thing, and actually the most important
thing that I want to talk aboutis something that's so important
to us in education, yet wedon't always know how to capture
that.
And when you're talking interms of professional learning,
how do we gather data?
How do we know if someone'sinterested in what we're talking
about?
You know when we're done at theend of a full day, you know
we'll put out surveys and we'llget them back, and you know it
(30:30):
depends on how it works and whatinformation they'll give us.
But we actually have our ownbarometers that we figured out
that are more qualitative, notquantitative, but when you're a
podcaster, you can gather somuch data and it's like I'm so
excited about data.
We've recently moved into thisrealm where we can tell when
people are binge listening toour podcast.
You just see all the numbers go.
We get so excited about that.
But there's so many things tocelebrate when you're doing this
(30:51):
work.
Again, because we said, we'relifelong learners, we get
excited about guests that wehave.
We also get excited about whenan episode explodes or when,
like we said, someone's beenlistening to us or we get these
opportunities to start work withpeople who we might never have
had the opportunity to do that.
So it does open doors, like wesaid before, not just for
communication, but for learningand for gathering information
(31:14):
and saying is this working, isit not working?
Here's how we know that it isor isn't, or it's growing or
it's not growing.
What do we need?
We can analyze and we can talkabout things and we can make
shifts.
So I applaud your work and Iapplaud what you're doing.
It sounds like you've got theright formula to be the second
best podcast in Pennsylvania.
We appreciate you coming on andagain doing that work within
(31:36):
your district.
I think these conversations areneeded and authenticity is
something that we need all thetime across the board.
So, with that in mind, we'regoing to say thank you,
whitehall Copley.
Yeah, just took an hour forcoming on the time across the
board.
So, with that in mind, we'regoing to say thank you,
whitehall Copley.
Yeah, just took an hour forcoming on the show.
We challenge Whitehall, whereveryou are in Pittsburgh, to come
on the show and talk to us aboutsomething, so we can be an
(31:56):
equal representation for all theWhitehalls in Pennsylvania, for
all of our listeners.
Thank you for tuning in, asalways, for sharing your input.
Please keep sending thatfeedback.
We want to hear from you aswell.
We want to make sure that thisshow continues to be relevant
and meaningful to you and makesure that you like and follow
the number one rated podcast inall of Pennsylvania.
Change it and tell me again.
(32:19):
It's Whitehall.
I want to say the name, right?
Speaker 2 (32:21):
It's Whitehall Copley Copley.
Yeah, c-o-p-l-a-y spelled likeCopley, but it's Copley Copley.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I am so glad you said that.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, that's okay, it's Dutch, it's Pennsylvania
Dutch pronunciations it'sbackwards, it's fine.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I love that being in Pennsylvania, especially when
phonics is an issue.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
It's like oh, I didn't know that it's uh south
of pittsburgh they don't.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
They don't even listen to us, so we won't even
mention them I mean, maybe if wetag them they might.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
There you go.
You sound great.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Okay, that's great.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Andrew is just being fancy.
I could move mine over, but I'mgoing to let Andrew just be
fancy today.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Do I need to move?
Speaker 4 (00:09):
it over.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
You make it.
It's all about the appearance.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Smoking mirrors.
I told you, we're all veryaware.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
This thing's not even hooked up.
I'm just talking about my kids'toys, I took it.
My kids' toys, I took it.
Welcome back to Change Ed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Change Ed.
Oh, we said it at the same time, sorry, say it again.
Sorry, tony Changed.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Change, Ed.
That's what happens when we'revirtual.
The number one rated podcast,although I feel like our guests
today want to challenge that Inall of Pennsylvania except for
Whitehall Copley.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Except for.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Whitehall Copley, because they have a number one
rated podcast there.
Copley, I hate that name,except for Whitehall Copley,
because I feel like they have anumber one rated podcast there
as well, and they're here tochallenge us today.
Challenge accepted.
I'm Andrew Kuhn, your favoritehost on your favorite podcast,
and you know what.
Honestly, I'm just a person wholoves education and loves
(01:18):
learning.
I'm a lifelong learner, andhere with me is I'm Dave
Stauffer, once again fromWhitehall-Copley School District
.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I'm the supervisor of teaching, learning and
technology.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I'm Andy Fainel, one of the K-12 instructional
technology specialists, formersocial studies teacher here in
the district as well.
Please don't leave out yourother title, and I am the
current district ambassador ofWhitehall-Copley as well.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We're going to unpack that in a little bit, All right
that's fine.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
I'm tony pangayo and I don't have cool fancy titles
like these other guys.
I'm just a guy who lovesflorida and is a tech coach and
coming along for the ride yes,tony florida is back here's what
I don't get about this podcastand we really are going to start
.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
How do we always end up talking about florida every
podcast?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
because people are like why did you do that?
Mickey's amazing.
And then you talk about it forfour seconds and you're like oh,
okay, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
And now you're apparently attracting people who
are forced to talk aboutflorida every day as well,
because tony ties it intoeverything.
So you know it's sweet he did.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
We did a podcast with trevor muir.
Have you you all familiar withtrevor muir?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
he's learning.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, he's big on project-based learning and
storylines and you know a lot ofthings.
And an international person,down-to-earth guy, great, great
person talk to at the end of it.
These he's from florida.
They got onto the florida kickand it was like I wasn't even in
the space, right?
They're talking aboutalligators and wrestling them
and throwing marshmallows, likelike.
They were both rehashing theirchildhood in front of me uh, I'm
(02:51):
Patrice Simatek.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I'm out of the Montgomery County intermediate
unit and I'm having a hard timetaking Coon seriously with his
statement about how he's just aguy who loves whatever you said
I.
I zoned out.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
That was long but that was a lot of fluff, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
He's just a guy.
Anyone who's met Kuhn knowshe's not just a guy.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
And I'm Tony Maravito from Carbon Lehigh Intermediate
Unit, very excited to talk toWhitehall Copley School District
, today home of Saquon Barkley.
Some people say Saquon wouldnot be the man he is today
without these three gentlementhat are joining us.
So very, very excited.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Listen that, that that backwards hurdle, that I
taught him that we.
We worked on that 10 years ago.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
Dave showed him how to do it in Tecmo.
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Is there?
Is there video of thathappening?
Cause I, I personally, wouldpay solid money to see you do
that backwards thing.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
No, no, no video.
You just got to take me at myword.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Okay, okay To be fair , patrice, I would pay a lot of
money as well.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Well, as if it's not confusing enough to have a
podcast with two podcastinggroups, we also decided that we
would make the names all verysimilar, so there was a very
easy.
So if someone says Andrew,fortunately enough our guest
goes by Andy.
So that's pretty easy.
But we have a Tony and a Tony.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
They both have beards though.
Yeah, I show respect to MrPangayo, I would say, and Mr
District Administrator,ambassador, and Mr Stopper,
that's how I will, okay, okay,well, listen this is a really
I'm yep, I'm just Andrew.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yep, I'm the Andrew.
So this is a really uniquepodcast because the topic that
we're going to talk about isvery near and dear to us as
podcasters, especially atChangeEd.
This is how ChangeEd startedand was created and the reason
that we continue to podcast, andthat is micro-learning and
micro-, micro professionallearning and development and
what that looks like on allsorts of levels.
So, for us at ChangeEd, we allwork for intermediate units, so
(04:52):
our job is to support educatorsin their work, and so we take it
from that lens.
However, your podcast, whichI'd love for you to tell us more
about, is focused on a districtlevel, and I'm working in and
supporting your district level,so maybe a great starting spot
would be.
Can you tell us about yourpodcast, maybe a little bit of
background about it, and then,really, what is the focus and
(05:13):
intent of your podcast?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah.
So why don't we start with theorigin?
So at Whitehall Copley wereally pride ourselves in giving
our teachers or I should sayour staff members a lot of
choice in their professionallearning, and we offer
everything from synchronouslearning to asynchronous
learning, to in-person learningclasses.
We really try to meet themwhere they're at and provide
(05:35):
that choice.
So we sat down at the beginningof the year, andy, tony and
myself.
As we always do, we sit down inAugust we review what we're
doing and we have a conversationabout how we could do things
better and what else we couldoffer, and at that point Andy
had a great idea.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Andy, if you want to start filling in, One thing that
we had kind of knocked aroundwas the idea of a podcast.
So at the beginning of the year, when we had that conversation
about what to do, it simply waswhat about a podcast?
What would that look like?
Is that something that we couldactually pull off?
I think it kind of went aroundthe room between the three of us
for about a week or two backand forth yeah, we can do it.
No, I'm not sure if it's goingto work.
(06:11):
There were some logisticalthings that we had to work
through, especially from thestandpoint of credit and what
our teachers would get and howit would work.
But ultimately we decided thatit was worth the effort and that
we'd give it a shot.
Once we kind of started theball rolling, it just kind of
took off.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah.
So I think the credit piece isreally important to mention.
So our teachers they do haverequired professional learning
hours outside of theircontractual day.
For next year they'll have toput in 20 additional hours.
So when we talked about variedoptions in professional learning
, whether it's synchronous,asynchronous classes or
in-person classes by attendingor completing those activities
(06:46):
they do earn credit.
So when we first startedtalking about the podcast, we
weren't even necessarily talkingabout it for professional
learning and professionallearning credit.
We were just talking aboutputting out a podcast, sitting
down, having some conversationand using it as a great way to
disseminate information to ourstaff members.
And Tony Pangayo, if you wantto hop in, he really drove the
(07:08):
conversation of.
Is there a better way that wecan entice listeners?
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Yeah, to be honest, I just didn't think anybody would
listen to us.
Speaker 6 (07:18):
That's how I feel about Andrew, but go ahead.
Sorry, John.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Andy and I have been in this district for a while
I've been in the longest so wehave valuable information that
we feel teachers can learn fromand they listen to us as we walk
around.
But I still didn't think out areflection form and give us
(07:43):
their thoughts and I felt likethat piece was important for a
couple of reasons A, to givethem credit so they had some
value in it.
But B, it allows us to followup with them and it gives us a
secret into their class.
As tech coaches it's alwayshard to get into classes.
Sometimes Some teachers areresistant.
They don't know what that lookslike, the co-planning, et
(08:03):
cetera.
Dave actually goes throughtheir feedback the most and then
shares it with us and says, hey, can you check on this teacher,
can you check on that teacherabout something we talked about
in our podcast?
And it gives us that built-inconnection.
So I think those two things arereally important that drive,
that popularity of what we do.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's interesting.
So I'm interested in how areyou tracking that Like, are they
filling out a form after theywatch and that's giving them
credit for the amount of timethey listen?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, absolutely, I could talk through the nuts and
bolts of it.
We have a system calledFrontline that we use for
tracking hours, so I created aform on Frontline.
It's a very basic reflectionform.
It's used for all podcastepisodes.
It has three questions.
They're very open-endedquestions where they reflect on
the episode.
So once they fill out the form,it comes to me for approval and
(08:51):
I of course, read through everyform and once I hit approve
that okay, this form looks goodthen it automatically credits
them a half hour into theiraccount.
So having Frontline for usreally is very helpful in this
situation.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I love it, thanks.
What I like about thatcomponent is you've added in a
piece of accountability.
So if someone can't say, ohyeah, I listened to it right, or
I listened and they heard thebeginning, and they're like, oh,
it's great that you talkedabout X and they actually don't
have any content.
We feel very fortunate that wehave a number of listeners that
we talk to and they'll they'llgo into depth about it.
Actually, one of them was aguest on our show and they'll be
(09:27):
like oh man, when you said thisand they react you can tell
they're a listener.
So they say you know they canlike talk about the show and
actually what's happening.
But the piece that I wanted tojump on that you were talking
about earlier is that it's suchan amazing window and
relationship that you can createwith your listeners.
You know we feel a commitmentto them.
But also we even had scenarioswhere someone came in, for it
was a student event that we wererunning at our intermediate
(09:50):
unit and they came in.
We never met them.
They walked into the room.
They're like are you, andrewand Patrice?
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Like when I heard you guys talk.
I heard your voice.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I'm like I barely said anything, but like just you
connect right, like when youhear that a lot or you hear
someone's voice that they canconnect.
So you know, have you seen animpact in your relationship with
your educators that you workwith at the school?
Speaker 5 (10:12):
as a result of the podcast?
Oh, absolutely.
You know teachers that werewalking through buildings and
just the other day I was in youknow, like a faculty room and
somebody heard me talking,walked in and immediately just
struck up a podcast conversation.
I listened to you last nightwhen I was cooking dinner and it
was about X, y and Z and thenfor about five minutes we
(10:32):
bounced some ideas back andforth about that podcast where I
think if the podcast wasn'tthere, I'm not sure that teacher
would have the confidence toconnect in that way.
It was that avenue that allowedher to come in and feel
comfortable to strike up aconversation with me and off we
went.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yeah, I would say one of the biggest things about the
podcast has been just thefeedback that we get from people
constantly.
Yes, there's definitely peoplewe connect with on a regular
basis and there are, like Tonysaid, there are those people
that we're in a district with380 plus teachers.
You just don't connect witheverybody on a regular basis.
But to be able to get intobuildings and walk past people,
(11:09):
walk past classrooms, see peopleeven outside in the community,
and the first thing they say toyou is like hey, I just want to
thank you for the podcast.
It's so easy for me to listento it in the car, on the way in,
on the car on the way home.
One of the things that we reallycame to the conclusion early on
, as we were recording the firstfew episodes, was we needed to
keep it super authentic and itneeded to be us and in our
(11:31):
bubble.
Of the three of us, dave is theserious one.
Dave is the guy who keeps us ontrack, dave keeps us organized,
dave drives where we're headedand Tony and I are just like the
class clowns at times, and soit was really important for us
to make sure that Dave kept hisorganization and that things
went the way they did, but thatTony and I got an opportunity to
(11:51):
kind of joke around a littlebit, goof around a little bit
and show that personality thatwe have, and I think that's
really resonated with people andthat builds on what he was
talking about, that authenticityof what we're saying and how
we're saying it, and it's notcoming across as an edict or you
(12:11):
know, do this, do that.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
It really is a conversation and it's something
that they can engage in just bylistening.
When we started we were tryingto think of a title and we
wanted to keep it a shortpodcast.
We didn't want to go on and onfor a half hour or an hour, so
we settled on the title 10minutes or Less.
So the first couple episodes wecalled it the 10 Minutes or
Less podcast.
And what's really funny isafter a few episodes we realized
10 Minutes or Less wasn'tnecessarily realistic for us.
(12:34):
We were coming in around 11 or12 minutes.
So the 10 Minutes or Lesspodcast became the 10 Minutes or
so podcast, which it is nowcalled 10 minutes or so.
But it is exactly that, as asAndy said.
So I do serve as the host of thepodcast and Andy and Tony they
sit with me.
(12:55):
Occasionally We've had someguests in, but honestly it's a
very organic conversation.
So in my planning of course Ihave a topic for the day and I
have a couple of guidingquestions and we really just sit
down and we have a conversationand when people ask me when I'm
walking around the halls aboutour podcast, they can't believe
when I tell them that we'venever restarted an episode, so
(13:16):
we've never started, and said,this isn't working right.
We always sit down, we recordin one take and just let it
happen.
If we misspeak, if somethinggoes wrong, we laugh about it,
we make fun of each other andthen we just move on.
So it's sitting down and ifit's a 12 minute podcast, it
takes us 12 minutes to record.
So it is an internal podcast.
(13:37):
We don't release it on Applepodcasts or any of the major
platforms.
What I do with it is I take itand I upload to our Google Drive
and then I just protect itwithin our Whitehall Copley
domain.
So currently it's onlyavailable to our staff members.
I've created a 10 minutes or sowebsite where all those
episodes live.
(13:57):
Each episode gets its own pagewhere I have a breakdown, minute
by minute, of what we'retalking about, and I also put in
some supporting resources aswell.
So those episodes are alwaysthere for our staff members to
go and grab and listen to.
When we do a release of a newepisode, andy shoots it out, we
have a description and sends itto the entire district that, hey
(14:20):
, check out the new episode ofthe 10 minutes or so podcast.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
As we travel and go to different conferences.
People are talking aboutpodcasts because it's a great
medium to connect with others.
For all the reasons that we'veexplained and shared, and more,
I think the one that is thestrongest for me is that it
opens doors for communications.
So Tony had shared that he washaving a conversation with a
teacher where otherwise youmight have both been in that
space and that conversation justwouldn't have happened.
(14:46):
So you had thoughts on thetopic, they had thoughts on the
topic, so it creates a scenariowhere you can have that
conversation and that's alwaysour desire for this as well.
But the part that I love somuch about this is that you're
doing it at a district level,because whenever we go somewhere
, they're talking about doing itteachers doing it with students
and they're doing it in aclassroom level, which is hugely
important.
I mean, the impacts are all thesame.
(15:08):
They're creating an environmentfor that conversation.
It happens at whatever levelyou're focusing on, but the
strength in this and I thinkother district leaders are going
to be very interested insomething like this and even
replicating and modeling this isbecause, again, you can reach
your intended audiencedifferently, so you can connect
with your district, no matterthe size, how big or how small.
(15:31):
It's all math.
If it's smaller, you have lessstaff to support.
If it's larger, you have morestaff.
And in all ways, communicationis king in what we're doing.
And the other thing I reallyappreciate is how you talked
about that authenticity, becauseI know my kids want to be
something famous, whether it'sYouTube or any of the talks or
the ticks or the, you know,whatever it might be and they're
(15:51):
like what can I do?
And actually what I challengethem don't try to go for
something that's already outthere and look for the next
thing.
Like, be you and look for thenext thing.
Don't try to duplicate andreplicate what someone's already
doing.
Try to be you know, whateverthat next thing is.
And interestingly enough, I cansee a lot of similarities in
the podcast and the dynamics andhow it works, and yet there are
significant differences.
(16:12):
But we're all being authenticand I think that's what relates
to other people that we're justactually being who we are, not
trying to be someone different.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And Andrew, just to chime in here.
I'm glad you brought upauthenticity and I'll let the
guys chime in as well.
There's definitely an evolutionif you would listen to our
episodes.
So we're 20 episodes.
In the first couple episodes weare, I would say, a lot more
serious than we are.
We realized pretty quickly waswe have to be ourselves right,
(16:46):
we have to have fun doing it.
That's what we want, that'swhat our listeners want, and
there is definitely more andmore fun.
That goes on as the episodes goon.
What we started doing, I wantto say, around episode four or
five, we open up every singleconversation with an icebreaker,
and that icebreaker generallyhas nothing to do with education
(17:09):
.
Well, tony, andy, what's acouple of examples of an
icebreaker?
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Favorite restaurant Favorite, or what super super
powered would you want?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Oh yeah, favorite superpower, yeah yeah, that was
a good one.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
What was your favorite cartoon growing up?
What was your favoritetelevision show?
I've found that that's such agreat way to kick off the
podcast Minute icebreaker,minute, minute and a half of
laughing and talking a littlebit of nonsense.
From that icebreaker we go intoa tip of the day, so one of the
three of us will share a tip ofthe day.
(17:40):
So it'll be just a one minutequick hitter tip of something
that we think our listener willfind really helpful and then
from there we go into our maintopic of conversation.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I really like how you guys are also having
conversations around givingteachers some autonomy in their
choices of professional learning.
So the fact that Mirabito andKuhn and I are all in
professional learning the thingthat we do all day is
professional learning but wewere finding that the more
people can choose to come tosomething, the more engaged
they're going to be.
(18:12):
Naturally, and a lot ofdistricts that we work with have
very scripted days Like we'retalking about this this day and
this this day and this this day.
We have no time for anythingelse, especially with the
diminishing of time that peoplehave in terms of professional
learning in most of theteachers' contracts.
So how did you guys as adistrict and I don't know if any
of you were involved in thatpart, but how did you guys as a
district make the decision togive them 20 hours of their own
(18:35):
learning time and then managingwhat does that look like and
expectations for that?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I think a lot of people should be hearing that.
Yeah, so that's been acontractual evolution over the
years.
Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah, so certainly.
For quite some time they had afive-hour requirement.
It was five hours outside oftheir normal contract, and what
we instituted a few years agowere trade days.
(19:01):
So they had five hours ofrequired time and then they had
three days that they could tradeout of.
So you can choose to come towork and we would have
professional learning on thatday, or you can earn five hours,
and those five hours would thenget you out of that trade day,
right?
So that's how we evolved fromthat five hours that was here
(19:22):
from the time that I arrivedhere at the district 12 or so
years ago, and that five hoursthen evolved into that 20
through that process.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
So Tony and I have been in our roles for about four
years now.
Previously it was Dave byhimself.
Once we went from a departmentof one to a department of three,
one of our first conversationstogether was how do we expand
the professional developmentoptions that are available to
our staff?
And it tied in kind of nicelywith the end of COVID and all of
(19:53):
this asynchronous options thatwe had to present and we had to
create through that time period.
So obviously the first thoughtwas well, we can present
asynchronous classes for ourstaff.
And from there it just keptrolling.
Dave said earlier every yearit's a conversation.
What can we do?
How are we meeting them?
Are things working?
Are they not working?
(20:14):
How can we evolve?
How can we change?
As a district, over the lastfour years really made a
concerted effort to go to achoice PD model to give our
staff an opportunity even onthose days where we're in person
for professional development,taking a half a day and having
two sessions in the morning ortwo sessions in the afternoon,
where staff have multipleopportunities to go to different
(20:35):
sessions and learn based onwhat is appropriate for them and
what they feel is going tobenefit them the most.
And so it's really given us, ascreators, an opportunity to
allow others to create, allowother voices to be raised, and
allowed that authenticity levelof everything we do professional
development wise within thedistrict.
It's increased it, you know,and it's given everybody a buy
(20:58):
in and some sharedresponsibility for what we're
trying to do.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah, and I think there's a human element to it as
well, when you're talking aboutdoing hours outside of your
normal workday.
We certainly realize thateverybody has a life outside of
here.
We have staff members withyoung kids and other
responsibilities, and if we wereonly offering courses that
occurred in person after school,that could be a significant
burden to many of our staffmembers.
(21:24):
Now we have a lot of staffmembers that prefer learning in
that method, others that that isnot necessarily an option for
them, and to provide them withoptions, yes, we have
asynchronous courses where, ifthey like to go home and sit in
front of a computer and watch avideo, that's available.
But the podcast is just anenhancement of that you can be
on your commute to work in themorning.
(21:44):
You could earn professionallearning credit by listening to
our podcast.
You know, I would say that'swhat our staff members have
loved the most and we hear thatover and over.
You know, hey, I was listeningto you on the way to work today.
It's so convenient.
This is so great.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
I have a creative process question for you.
So how do you choose yourtopics?
Are you getting some teacherinput?
Is that something that you'redoing month by month?
You want to cover certain ideas, and then, how often are you
releasing your pod?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, it's a little bit of everything.
So we do take input from ourstaff members, from our
administrative team, and part ofit is just us sitting down and
brainstorming.
What conversations have weheard over the past week or two
or month?
What's a hot button topping ineducation?
We've done a bunch of episodeson AI, which, of course, is
pretty much in everyconversation of the past two or
(22:32):
three years.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I'll add to that too, kind of ties into everybody's
points here.
I've been in the district.
I started my teaching careerhere 26 some years ago and he's
been in a dozen years.
So it adds to that authenticity, that realness that we lived
kind of both sides of the fence.
So we've been through the PDthat we just sit there and we
(22:54):
wanted to change that when wecame into this role.
Andy and I are in and out ofclassrooms.
So the topics, tony, for you,we see what's going on.
We know those teachers frombeing colleagues with them years
ago and now in our rolescurrently.
So we have a not the best pulse, but a pretty good pulse of
what's going on.
So we know what they want tohear, we know what they want us
(23:15):
to talk about and we know andunderstand their struggles with
certain things.
We understand their strengths.
So that helps us kind of pieceall of that together and
hopefully deliver somethingthat's worth it to them.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
Yeah, I love that.
I would be interested intoseeing some of the data, like
what are your most downloadedtopics, like what are teachers
most interested in and kind ofgrow from there.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
One of the other benefits of this media or any
media thinking outside the box,as you all are doing when it
comes to professional learningis that access is always an
issue.
So if something comes up on theday of an in-person training
and I can't be there, I justdon't get that training.
Someone can share their slideswith me, but if I didn't create
the slides, I might have a hardtime interpreting them.
(23:57):
Certainly, with the way that wedo slides, they're mainly
pictures.
So you know, although a pictureis worth a thousand words, I
might not be able to get all thewords that you were intending
for me to pick up from thatslide.
And what's great about thismedium is, as you were saying,
dave, that you could be in anypart of your life and just say
hey, you know what I'm going tothink about this.
It allows you to reflect as ahuman and as a professional and
(24:19):
make the connections you want toversus with all day trainings.
You're drinking from a firehose and there's probably a lot
of good nuggets, but you have topick out what nugget you want
to latch onto and what's the onething you think of when you
leave after a four hour sessionon something versus 10 minutes
or so, to reference what youtalked about, tony where then
(24:41):
the reflection had happened anda teacher wanted to engage in
further dialogue.
And then you're stretching eachother, you're learning as you
do it, which I think is thebiggest benefit for us.
We'd love to sit down and talkto people and ask them the
questions that I want to askthem when I hear them presenting
or sharing or talking.
Let me really ask you morein-depth questions.
I really want to understandthis topic, so that love for
(25:01):
learning, I think, is important.
I'm going to offer you all agift, and Tony can say that this
is a special.
For what?
Hall Copley, copley.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Copley.
No, you can do it, copley.
You got all excited about yourpronunciation.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Copley.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Copley yeah, that is the worst, worst trick you all.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Anyway, the place that you work, it's a special
tree for the place that you work.
We're going to give you the ohman, the second, the third and
the fourth final thought.
Give you each an opportunity tokind of give a final thought
when it comes to professionallearning, the podcast, what
you've been experiencing, whatyou've learned, what you're
getting from other people.
For our hundreds of millions oflisteners that you know, this
(25:42):
is the takeaway that they wouldwant.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I'll go first For listeners that you know this is
the takeaway that they wouldwant.
I'll go first For me.
When I took this job, it wasmeeting teachers and meeting
their needs and remembering whatit was like or what it is like
to be in the classroom.
I like the short bits.
I like the fact that they canget a taste of something and, if
they like it, they can followup with us.
And now a 10 minutes or soprofessional development could
turn into an hour or so, with meor Andy working with them.
(26:07):
Or if they take what we aretalking about and it's not
applicable to them, they canthrow it to the side and say,
hey, that was 10 minutes andthey can go off and do something
important to them.
So that's what I love the most.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I'll jump in next.
My biggest takeaway is it's thechallenge of trying something
new.
I think back to when I firstgot into education and I first
took on that challenge ofpresenting in front of my
colleagues or presenting infront of other people and
getting over that fear of peopleare going to look at you and
think like, why are you tellingme this?
You've only been teaching for ayear, two years, three years,
whatever it is.
And I think when we took thison, I know Tony and I both had
(26:41):
that hesitancy to go like arepeople really going to listen to
us?
Do we have enough understanding, information, value to what
we're trying to do here forother people to listen, take
something from it and thenhopefully utilize it or pass it
along.
And I'll give Dave credit forthis.
He stalwart through the entirecreation process was, like you
(27:02):
guys know, understand and havemore value than you give
yourselves credit for.
And the more we talk aboutthese things, the more we get it
out there, the more people aregoing to listen and the more
people are going to really takeaway things from it.
And I think it was hispositivity and if you know Dave,
dave is one of the mostpositive people you will ever
meet in your life.
So I think that positivity ontop of the fact that Tony and I
(27:23):
realized we do have a lot ofvalue, we have a lot of
knowledge, we have a lot we canshare with people, and it's not
that difficult for Dave tosimply say here's what we're
talking about.
Okay, here we go For us to sitthere and find enough
information and enough things tosay to make it worthwhile for
our listeners.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, for me, my biggest takeaway is the power
and popularity of the podcastingmedium.
Honestly, when Andy firstbrought it up, I was a bit of a
naysayer as well Me and Tony.
I wasn't so sure that anybodywas going to listen and I hadn't
considered how popular podcastsare and how many people in our
district listen to podcasts on adaily basis.
You know, sometimes you justget stuck in your ways.
(28:02):
Yes, we try to innovateconstantly, but you think about
the old ways of sending outinformation, you know, sending
emails or putting newsletterstogether and, honestly, I had
thought about podcasting overthe years but hadn't truly
considered it as something thatwould be successful within our
district, and I'm astoundedevery single day on the
popularity and the traction ofthe 10 minutes or so podcast.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
When it comes to voice and choice.
That's something that ourstudents all students have
figured out by the way that theylive their lives and the
options that they have available.
For instance, when they watchYouTube and they have shorts now
they can keep on moving ifthey're not interested, or they
can watch that second play andbe like that was really good.
I want to learn more, but theshorts are limited to how long
they are and it's only so muchtime and you got to get your
(28:48):
point across and it removes alot of the fluff.
It takes a lot out and you'relike let's get to the heart of
the conversation.
Let's really.
What is our, what is ourlistener looking for?
What do they want?
Which leads me to the fact thatthis is a community.
Podcasting is a broadercommunity, but then your
audience becomes more than anaudience of listeners.
It really becomes.
You know, when we sit down andwe plan and we think about what
(29:11):
we're going to do, or even whenwe edit, we have that in mind.
What do they want to actuallyhear?
Because we can't put ineverything.
We've had a 40 minuteconversation at this point and
we have to narrow things down,so what do they want to hear
from us that will add value tothem and the work that they're
doing.
Well, I have.
I have two other things.
Number one I just got to throwthis out.
Andy, I could tell you were anidea guy from the beginning.
(29:33):
I think it's in the name.
That's what I think it is.
It's all in the name.
Our parents knew we were goingto be idea people and they just
gave us these really strongnames.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
There's a reason.
There's a reason the kinglinesscomes from that Andrew name.
Oh no.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I'm so glad somebody else said it, not me.
Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I mean, I swear, if your Andrew is anything like our
Andrew, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
But the last thing, and actually the most important
thing that I want to talk aboutis something that's so important
to us in education, yet wedon't always know how to capture
that.
And when you're talking interms of professional learning,
how do we gather data?
How do we know if someone'sinterested in what we're talking
about?
You know when we're done at theend of a full day, you know
we'll put out surveys and we'llget them back, and you know it
(30:30):
depends on how it works and whatinformation they'll give us.
But we actually have our ownbarometers that we figured out
that are more qualitative, notquantitative, but when you're a
podcaster, you can gather somuch data and it's like I'm so
excited about data.
We've recently moved into thisrealm where we can tell when
people are binge listening toour podcast.
You just see all the numbers go.
We get so excited about that.
But there's so many things tocelebrate when you're doing this
(30:51):
work.
Again, because we said, we'relifelong learners, we get
excited about guests that wehave.
We also get excited about whenan episode explodes or when,
like we said, someone's beenlistening to us or we get these
opportunities to start work withpeople who we might never have
had the opportunity to do that.
So it does open doors, like wesaid before, not just for
communication, but for learningand for gathering information
(31:14):
and saying is this working, isit not working?
Here's how we know that it isor isn't, or it's growing or
it's not growing.
What do we need?
We can analyze and we can talkabout things and we can make
shifts.
So I applaud your work and Iapplaud what you're doing.
It sounds like you've got theright formula to be the second
best podcast in Pennsylvania.
We appreciate you coming on andagain doing that work within
(31:36):
your district.
I think these conversations areneeded and authenticity is
something that we need all thetime across the board.
So, with that in mind, we'regoing to say thank you,
whitehall Copley.
Yeah, just took an hour forcoming on the time across the
board.
So, with that in mind, we'regoing to say thank you,
whitehall Copley.
Yeah, just took an hour forcoming on the show.
We challenge Whitehall, whereveryou are in Pittsburgh, to come
on the show and talk to us aboutsomething, so we can be an
(31:56):
equal representation for all theWhitehalls in Pennsylvania, for
all of our listeners.
Thank you for tuning in, asalways, for sharing your input.
Please keep sending thatfeedback.
We want to hear from you aswell.
We want to make sure that thisshow continues to be relevant
and meaningful to you and makesure that you like and follow
the number one rated podcast inall of Pennsylvania.
Change it and tell me again.
(32:19):
It's Whitehall.
I want to say the name, right?
Speaker 2 (32:21):
It's Whitehall Copley Copley.
Yeah, c-o-p-l-a-y spelled likeCopley, but it's Copley Copley.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I am so glad you said that.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, that's okay, it's Dutch, it's Pennsylvania
Dutch pronunciations it'sbackwards, it's fine.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I love that being in Pennsylvania, especially when
phonics is an issue.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
It's like oh, I didn't know that it's uh south
of pittsburgh they don't.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
They don't even listen to us, so we won't even
mention them I mean, maybe if wetag them they might.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
There you go.
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.