On a new Teachers' Lounge, we're revisiting a few of our favorite education conversations of 2025 as we finish up the year.

On a new Teachers’ Lounge Podcast, an Ottawa High School special education teacher helping her students transition to college…from knowing their rights to picking their classes.

On a brand-new Teachers’ Lounge, WNIJ’s Peter Medlin talks with music teacher Ann Smelser from NIU’s Community School of the Arts. He chats about education policy with Crystal Lake Central High School special education teacher Bob Chikos.And he catches up with our monthly teacher correspondent Caio Gomes from Clinton-Rosette Middle School in DeKalb, as well as our student correspondents from Kaneland High School’s student-run news magazine, the Kaneland Krier!

On Teachers’ Lounge, it's Ann Montzka Smelser.She's the Director of the Suzuki Strings Program at Northern Illinois University.Ann’s a practitioner of what’s called “the Suzuki method of music learning.” It’s based on the idea that music talent isn’t inherent, it’s something that’s nurtured through positive encouragement.

On a new Teachers' Lounge, Bob Chikos! He’s a special education teacher at Crystal Lake Central High School.He's involved in education policy at the state level, working on reports about the teacher pipeline and school psychologist shortages.Bob also recently took a fascinating trip around Illinois

On a new show, we talk with our classroom correspondent about immigration anxiety in English as a Second Language classrooms, catch up with students from Kaneland High School’s student-run news magazine, and bring you even more education stories and conversations.

We're revisiting our 2022 chat with Princeton middle school social studies teacher David Gray.He and his students worked on a project called “The Four Freedoms & Beyond," based on President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union speech just before the U.S. entered World War II.

A fateful trip to Haiti showed Vienna superintendent Joshua Stafford why public education is a gift. We also talked about the history of education in America, standardized testing, school safety, and his recent journey to Singapore through the Fulbright program.

An Northern Illinois University physics educator knows that all it takes for kids to get excited about science is their natural curiosity about the world around them.“I've compared it to to listening to a song in a language you don't understand. You can you can hear the melody. You can appreciate the beauty. But if you learn that language, then all of a sudden you know what the song is about. You understand the subtext. So, we can appreciate the world around us, just like that song, but it's written in the language of math and science."It’s here on a new Teachers' Lounge!

On a new Teachers' Lounge Radio Show, it’s time to meet our student correspondents who we’ll interview every month this fall. They’re student journalists from Kaneland High School!Hear that and more education stories and conversations.