This is Jennifer Gonzalez, welcoming you to episode 163 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast.

In this episode, we are going to talk about classroom jobs.

This might actually be the perfect time for this episode.

At first, I just thought it was a neat idea something teachers could implement pretty easily,

something that would be a nice change of pace from what we usually talk about.

But by the time I finished talking to my guest today, I had convinced myself that this might actually be the thing that helps wake up a lot of our remote and hybrid classrooms from

the white knuckle, just get through it mentality. I think some of us have settled into as the

2020-21 school year drags into its second half. Just maybe. What we're talking

about is classroom jobs. Jobs we assigned to students to help keep our classrooms running.

Now, I know this is typically something we associate with face-to-face classrooms during normal times,

but I was absolutely delighted, and I don't use the word delighted every day, to learn that

not only can we assign jobs to students in remote classes, the job students do can not only

make those remote classes really, really enjoyable, but they can also

help students discover passions and develop talents that they can take with them well beyond your

class. My guest today is Tom Gibson, a middle school STEM teacher from Austin, Texas. Tom has basically mastered the art of managing

a whole program of classroom jobs, and he's made that process work for remote learning, too.

In today's conversation, we talk about why setting up student jobs is such a good thing to do,

how to troubleshoot common problems with a

job system, and what some of Tom's favorite classroom jobs are. Once you hear some of these

ideas, I promise you are going to want to try them. Before we get started, I would like to thank

Kid them for sponsoring this episode. If 2020 taught us anything,

it's that the tools and routines that have traditionally powered classrooms need more flexibility.

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