We recorded this episode waaaaaaaay back in the fall, just after Autumn Rivera, Glenwood Springs Middle School Science Teacher, was named 2022’s Colorado Teacher of the Year. This was before she was named a National Teacher of the Year finalist, and we get this amazing glimpse of an earnest, humble, exciting and fun individual like the teacher her students and community have come to love and celebrate.

Join us for this early part of this journey. We talk shop, middle schoolers, and a controversial top 5!

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Sarah Brown Wessling is friend, mentor, coordinator and calming presence for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), where she serves as the National Teacher of the Year program’s Senior Advisor. This means that she gets to travel the country, meet amazing teachers (and me), support those of us entrusted with the Teacher of the Year role, and amplify and elevate the teaching profession. A National Teacher of the Year herself (2010), she brings wisdom, insight, and above all, a love of teachers to a national stage. In a time when teaching is hard…it is HARD, people…Sarah disrupts the struggle with peace and honesty.

Plus a very calming and spiritual top five.

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This episode is a long time coming!

Darrion “DC” Cockrell, the 2021 Missouri Teacher of the Year, has a powerful, heartbreaking, and inspirational story, and he shares it with us. This is less a teacher’s lounge conversation and more of a “chop it up on the front porch” episode. DC discusses his experience with violence, sports, learning disability, and his journey to the classroom.

The temperature rises with a contentious Top 5, one from which we may never recover.

Theme music composed and performed by Kevin Adams.

Sponsor: quetzalec.com

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Scholar, Author, Entrepreneur, and Educator Desmond Williams has been there, done that. A talented and effective classroom teacher, he quickly moved up the ranks to building leadership. But even as a principal, Desmond was not achieving the impact he wanted to. He found himself in frequent conflict with fellow leaders, and gained a sense of clarity.

That sense of clarity has manifested in his DEI firm Nylinka, a book, The Burning House, in which he echoes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s question about racism as a system that perhaps African Americans should try to escape, and frequent speaking engagements and training. Desmond shares his story, questions the notion of Racial Battle Fatigue, and gets out the receipts. Do not miss this one!

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We sit down this cold evening to talk with Autumn Rivera, the Glenwood Springs Middle School science and social studies teacher who begins her term as 2022 Colorado Teacher of the Year this month! She makes history as the first Colorado Teacher of the Year to become a National Teacher of the Year Finalist in 28 years, and only the 9th in nearly 60 years. Autumn shares her path as a mixed-heritage educator of color, into middle school teaching, authentic service work for youth, solidarity and advocacy in the union, and of course, an amazing top five. An exciting and energetic interview as we learn from a brilliant scholar-activist.

Music composed and performed by Kevin Adams

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