I, for one, am a real sucker for a good “Best of” list. You know, best albums of the year, best movies, that sort of thing.
So, as 2025 winds down, I want to revisit a few Teachers' Lounge conversations from this year that have stuck with me.
I’ve got four of them for you. We caught up with Todd Stellmach, a band and choir director at Marengo High School who is spreading his love of music to everyone — not just students who usually join a school band.
We’ll sit down with a Julie Zaborac, a West Aurora physics teacher who will roll canned vegetables down the hallway and grow synthetic rubies in a microwave to get her students to learn by playing and, as a student recently told her, to learn just enough physics to keep you out of the hospital.
We’ll chat with Joey Brewer, a social studies teacher trying to help his students get curious, ask questions, and learn more about their rural community that often gets forgotten.
We’ll finish off talking with Joshua Stafford, a southern Illinois superintendent about the value of public education and the trip to Haiti that changed his life.
It's been a challenging year in many ways but, luckily, it’s also been chock-full of insightful conversations and stories that have taught me a lot. I truly do hope this show helps you think about the people in your life who have helped you become who are; to think about how we learn and how we teach.
I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but education really is one of the most important and, frankly, expensive things we do collectively as a community and as a country. So, I think we owe it to ourselves and each other to think deeply and critically about it; to dive into the challenges and triumphs of education and highlight the folks doing that hard work,
Thank you so much to Josh, Joey, Julie, Todd and everyone who has been kind enough to come on the show this year.
And, of course, thank you so much for listening to Teachers' Lounge.
As always, feel free to nominate an educator in your life to be on the show. It’s how we get our great guests. Send them our way to teacherslounge@niu.edu.
Sincerely,
Peter Medlin, education reporter and host of Teachers' Lounge
