What My Students Taught Me

What My Students Taught Me

A podcast featuring teachers reflecting on one of their most challenging and memorable students — whenever possible in counterpoint with the student’s version of the same events. What My Students Taught Me is created and produced by Columbia Journalism School's Teacher Project with partners including the Atlantic.com and public radio stations across the country.

Episodes

The Student Who Taught Me To Share Unconditional Love

February 27, 2019 • 6 mins
Sixth-grade teacher Elvalisa Guzman often sees parents fade into the background at her Chicago public school of mostly Mexican immigrants. They often assume they can’t do much to help academically. But through one quiet student, Guzman comes to appreciate the unseen power of unconditional parental love. This episode was produced in partnership with The Teacher Project and WBEZ.
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The Student Who Taught Me To Hold Students Tight

February 20, 2019 • 7 mins
When Ericka Mingo went from teaching high school to teaching adults at National Louis University, she thought her new students would need less from her. She realized every student, regardless of age, needs to know their teachers are there for them. This episode was produced in partnership with the Teacher Project and WBEZ.
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The Student Who Encouraged Me To Put Learning Ahead Of The Rules

February 6, 2019 • 4 mins
Everything in Rebekah Ozuna’s classroom is designed for the little bodies and fast-firing neurons of 3- and 4-year-olds. Tiny chairs. A carpet for story time. Colorful bins full of blocks and toys. Even the windows are low to the ground so her students can see outside. Ozuna teaches in an inclusive special education setting at Knox Early Childhood Education Center on San Antonio’s South Side. Half of her students have disabilitie...
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The Student Who Taught Me It's Never Too Late

January 30, 2019 • 4 mins
Perhaps the hardest part of being a high school teacher is seeing students drop out or fail to graduate. In her second year teaching at Grand Prairie High School, Rebecca Dodd formed a special connection with student Cheyenne Musgrave. "She was a student that just captured my heart right off," Dodd says. "She reminded me so much of one of my own children." When Cheyenne withdrew from school on her 18th birthday, Dodd took it har...
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The Student Who Taught Me Not To Take It Personally

January 16, 2019 • 5 mins
When Lotus Hoey started teaching English as a second language a few years ago, she felt right at home. Her own parents immigrated from China, so she had to learn English at school, too. “Initially, when I first started school, I did not speak any English at all. I only spoke Cantonese Chinese and as I was growing up, it was difficult for me to continually translate for my parents who spoke no English,” Hoey says. When her student...
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The Student Who Proved Grades Aren't The Only Measure Of Success

December 19, 2018 • 4 mins
Karen Sowers was a young, idealistic history teacher at Lakeview High School in Garland, Texas when she met Donald Pierson. Donald was charming and charismatic, but completely uninterested in school. For years, Karen thought he was her biggest failure. But, long after Donald left her class, an unexpected encounter taught Karen she’d shaped Donald’s life in ways she couldn’t have imagined. This story was produced in partnership wit...
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The Student Who Taught Me To Search For - And Nurture - Hidden Gifts

December 13, 2018 • 6 mins
Sandy Lyons heard about Da’Keondrick Whitley a long time before he set foot in her second-grade classroom at Presidential Meadows Elementary School in Manor, Texas, northeast of Austin. She learned to look past his reputation, and search for his hidden gifts. This episode was produced in partnership with Texas Standard.
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The Student Whose Cockiness Tested My Patience

December 14, 2017 • 15 mins
Teacher Jerome White knew from the first moment he met Donald Meyer that the student was a math whiz—and that Meyer was very aware of his natural abilities. White struggled in his first year teaching Donald pre-calculus at New Orleans’ Lusher High School to convince the student to focus in class, do his homework, or recognize that he might have something to learn. “It wasn’t a malevolent act on his part,” White says. But he “seeme...
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The Student Who Challenged My Teaching On Race

November 16, 2017 • 18 mins
At first, the Philadelphia high-school student Valentina Love Salas was not exactly excited about taking African American history, a required course for graduation. She had heard that the class was depressing. She had also suffered from racist taunts and bullying in the past—painful experiences that made her reluctant to speak her mind in a class focused on issues of race and identity. Her teacher, Ismael Jimenez, was accustomed t...
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The Student Who Wasn't Afraid of Being Sad

November 2, 2017 • 16 mins
When Jessica Carlson agreed to teach English in an alternative program for at-risk students eight years ago in Colorado Springs, she knew that she would have her hands full. But she wasn’t prepared for Kim Hardy. Hardy, new to the school and state, resented being in the alternative program and bristled at Carlson’s sunny demeanor. Hardy turned every classroom interaction into a battle, and made Carlson dread coming to school. T...
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The Student Whose Silence Transformed My Teaching

October 18, 2017 • 12 mins
The Student Whose Silence Transformed My Teaching by Columbia Journalism School's Teacher Project
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The Student Who Taught Me To Grow Up

September 14, 2017 • 15 mins
In his first year teaching history at Shady Side Academy, a small private school in Pittsburgh, Matt Weiss was determined to be the “fun” teacher. A natural performer, he went off on long tangents, shared stories from the weekend, and sometimes played guitar during class. Most students encouraged him. But Kate Schelbe, a junior in his U.S. history class, was not impressed with his antics. She sat stone-faced while other students l...
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The Student Who Broke My Heart

August 31, 2017 • 15 mins
In parts of New Orleans, Michael Ricks is a legendary educator — known for his full girth and even fuller heart. Most people just call him “Big Mike.” For years, Mike’s formal title was academic and behavioral interventionist, although in practice he serves as a combination between disciplinarian, social worker, and friend. Mike met Cyril, one of his most memorable students, at the middle school where he worked in the years before...
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The Student Who Raged Against My Politics

August 17, 2017 • 16 mins
During the first few weeks that Ashley Lamb-Sinclair taught 15-year-old Connor Cummings’ sophomore English class, the two of them had a great rapport. But their relationship changed dramatically a few months later, when Lamb-Sinclair returned from maternity leave. It was 2012, an election year, and the teacher started getting pushback from some students at North Oldham High School, located in a Louisville, Kentucky suburb, about h...
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The Student Who Almost Got Away

August 12, 2017 • 14 mins
As a young teacher, Ingrid Chung saw herself in 12-year-old Kayshaun Brown. “What I saw in Kayshaun was the same type of intelligence, rebellious streak, and desire to go against authority that I had as a high-school student,” she says. Chung first taught Kayshaun, who goes by Kay, in her seventh-grade English classroom at the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science in the South Bronx. That year went smoothly enough. K...
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The Student Who Got Away

July 31, 2017 • 15 mins
Chris Zajac’s story epitomizes the mundane heroics of school teaching. The author Tracy Kidder spent a year following Zajac in the late 1980s, when she was a fifth-grade teacher in an economically depressed section of Holyoke, Massachusetts, known as The Flats. The result was the bestselling Among Schoolchildren, a book that documented in intimate detail the struggles of a teacher who would not give up on her most challenging stud...
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