OEA Grow

How can a school become a community school? Hosts Angela Vargas and Lauren McCartney talk with Christine Schuch and Karen Alford of United Community Schools, who work with interested schools in New York City and offer suggestions for schools everywhere.

United Community Schools is a teacher-inspired nonprofit that seeks to expand the traditional sense of a school as merely a place for students to learn reading, writing, and arithme...

Does your school focus on the whole child, emphasizing not only academic learning, but also wellness and community engagement? Tune into Season 15 of our OEA Grow podcast to learn about Community Schools in Oregon, public schools that provide integrated services and support to meet the needs of students, families, and communities.

Our hosts for the season are Angela Vargas and Lauren MCartney, both educators in the Beaverton Schoo...

How exactly does art fit into the classroom, and how can educators make this happen? Host Colleen Arriola wraps up this season’s podcast with ideas and suggestions for expanding the classroom curriculum through art. Summing up Season 14 guests’ observations, Colleen reminds us that art provides students ways to communicate thoughts, feelings, and personal experiences that might otherwise be difficult to articulate. Art can compleme...

Art education can create a space for excitement and joy in learning according to Colleen’s guest, Shannon Johnson, Arts Education Specialist at the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). Colleen, a visual artist herself, explains the crucial role that art plays in Transformational Social-Emotional Learning (TSEL) by playing to individual strengths, building confidence, and encouraging students to express themselves in their own uniq...

Makerspaces offer support and encouragement for educators who want to incorporate art into the curriculum. Colleen’s guest is Dr. Erin Beard, the Programs Director for Talent Maker City, who describes a makerspace as a community learning lab that furnishes materials and equipment in arts and technology to make learning a hands-on experience. Imagine a place with a 3D printer, a wood-working shop, a ceramics studio, and people to he...

Art can complement any academic subject. That’s the message from Collen’s guest, Jeanne Lauck, a Visual Arts teacher at Alice Ott Middle School in the David Douglas School District. Speaking from twenty-seven years of experience as an educator, Jeanne discusses how art can appeal to several of the different learning styles, with, for instance, students making posters or flip books to illustrate their learning. Jeanne tells of a mat...

Not an artist yourself? No budget for art supplies? Students who aren’t aspiring artists of any kind? This week’s episode explains how and why to integrate art into the classroom under any circumstance. Colleen’s guest is Abigail Steichen of the Corbett Program with Spanish (CAPS), housed in the historic Springdale School in Corbett. CAPS is not an art academy, but the school encourages the infusion of art into the regular curricul...

Art in the classroom helps to keep learning active - that’s the subject of this week’s conversation between Colleen and her guest, Ben Minnis, Arts Education Program Coordinator with the Lane Arts Council in Eugene. With fifteen years as an early childhood educator, a BFA in Theatre Performance, and ongoing work in ceramic sculpture, acting, and playwriting, Ben speaks from experience when he explains that art in all forms allows s...

How important is Art in a school curriculum? Colleen Arriola, host for OEA Grow’s fourteenth season, feels that art plays an essential role in education at all levels. A fifth-grade teacher at Guy Lee Elementary in Springfield, Colleen brings her experience as both an artist and an educator to discuss how art can enhance the traditional courses of study, provide alternative ways of learning, and celebrate the individuality and uniq...

Blaine ends this season with veteran educator Brad Rogers, who shares what he has learned from his years of teaching, first in Alaska and for the last seventeen years at Stanfield Secondary School. Summing up the wisdom of all of this season’s guests, Brad offers three key suggestions for educators at all stages of their careers:

• Maintain a healthy work-life balance. As a new educator, Brad spent l...

Who better to discuss the importance of separating home from work than Blaine’s guest this week, Lucas Tynkila, whose home life actually overlaps his school life - three children who have all been his students at Stanfield Secondary School and his wife who teaches at the same school. It makes for an easy carpool, says Lucas. And he has enjoyed having his children as students; he gets to spend more time with them as individuals. Hav...

Two different views on careers in education? Blaine welcomes Michelle and Travis Reeser from the Stanfield School District for this especially delightful episode about differing approaches to lives in education. These two guests, while married, are at opposite ends of the education spectrum with Michelle early in her career of teaching kindergarten and Travis nearing retirement as a high school PE teacher.

Travis began coaching at...

Blaine discusses educator experiences from a mid-career perspective this week with his guest Sarah Burke, a middle-school science teacher at Stanfied Secondary School. In her tenth year of teaching, Sarah is still in awe of the impact educators have on students and their lives. She admits that the work can be frustrating, especially when students don’t seem to appreciate the demands of the job, but she encourages educators to take ...

This episode offers the wisdom of a seasoned educator as Blaine welcomes Anna Halsey from Stanfield Secondary School as his guest. Anna brings a wealth of experience to this conversation, having begun her career as an elementary teacher and now, twenty-four years later, thoroughly enjoying her role as a math teacher for sixth, seventh, and eighth grades (she admits to loving her days with quirky middle-schoolers).

Anna discusses fr...

Season 13 of OEA Grow examines the life of educators at every point in their careers, from aspiring educators to veterans nearing retirement. Our host this season is Blaine Ganvoa who earned his Master of Education degree from Eastern Oregon University and is currently a social studies teacher at Stanfield Secondary School with nineteen years of experience in that position. Blaine brings a depth of perspective as host for this seas...

This episode originally aired October 26, 2022 in Season 5: Behavior.

To kick-off the Behavior season, member host Alexis Hennessey talks with educator Mary Michael about co-regulation, social emotional learning, and trauma informed behavior approaches. Mary has been an educator for over 30 years, has taught every grade level from Kindergarten to ninth grade, and is currently a certified trauma-informed mental health and beha...

Our final episode of Season 12 focuses on a statewide program for teaching about Oregon agriculture, the environment, and natural resources. Toni’s guest is Jessica Jansen of the Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation, dedicated to helping K-12 educators use agriculture to add to their existing curriculum in science, math, history, and nutrition. This nonprofit organization, housed at Oregon State University and funded by O...

This week Toni discusses the community college experience in rural areas with her guest Jessica Breidinger, a Social Science instructor at Treasure Valley Community College (TVCC) in Ontario, Oregon. Rural community colleges offer the interpersonal benefits of most community colleges with their small class sizes (usually 13-25 students at TVCC) and instructors with advanced degrees leading courses.

TVCC’s location in a small town o...

How does an educator find support in a school so small that there might be few colleagues or administrators available to form a sense of community? This episode offers suggestions to overcome this challenge, common to many rural Oregon educators, with a conversation between our host Toni Myers and her guest Cindy Dougharity-Spencer, the teacher of History and Economics at the Grant Union Junior/Senior High School in John Day. Cindy...