Hey, this is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 18 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, I talk to Anthony Cody about how teachers can take an active role in changing

the policies that impact their teaching.

My understanding of educational policy is spotty at best, but it has gotten better since

I started blogging two years ago because I discovered pretty quickly that if you're going

to put your opinion out there in the public, it better be based on some facts.

And up until about a year and a half ago, I really only had my own limited world.

My experience with the Common Core was as a university instructor.

I worked with pre-service teachers and the Common Core was introduced to me as a new set

of standards.

I looked at them.

They seemed fine.

My state was an early adopter of them, so I introduced them to my student teachers.

I said, we're going to have to work these into your lesson plans now and help them learn

them and get used to them and that was pretty much it.

And then a couple of years down the line, I start to hear a whole lot of noise about them

and I honestly didn't really know what the problem was at first.

Long story short, my questioning of the whole situation eventually led me to someone named

Diane Ravich who keeps a really incredible blog going.

She updates it, I'd say, at minimum of 10 times a day where she basically just, she's

almost like a newsfeed on educational policy on things that are going on right now.

She's a huge advocate for public schools.

...