In the spirit of “Best of the Year”, we’re revisiting some of our favorite Teachers’ Lounge conversations of 2024.
This year, Teachers’ Lounge celebrated its 5th birthday. I know the pandemic warped many of our perceptions of time, but that one really threw me through a loop. We’ve been doing this show since August 2019, and in that time have featured well over 100 educators nominated by our audience. It’s been a great ride, and in 2024, we continued to bring more and more voices to this show.
We talked with everyone from dance instructors to agriculture teachers, a music teacher exploring climate change with classical music and a professor who wrote the first history of American motherhood.
On our Teachers' Lounge Radio Show, we followed a year in the life of a teacher every month,
We also brought even more students into the fold through our student correspondent segment. Students on a speech team laughed and cried reflecting on the end of their high school season, and elementary school kids acted out scenes from their drama class.
We couldn’t do any of it without support from you, our listeners. It’s your nominations of educators in your life that power this show and have for the past 5 years. If you want to nominate a teacher to be on the podcast in 2025, email us at teacherslounge@niu.edu.
With all of that being said, let’s dive into a few of our favorite conversations of 2024.
First up, really fun one, I always say that it feels like we’ve talked with educators of all sorts on the show, but this one was a new one for me: Jamie Vargo and Carl Linder are dance instructors at Vargo’s Dance in Geneva, Illinois. They invited me into their studio to chat with them about the very-different paths that led them to dance, how to create a space that’s fun and comfortable for social dance, their annual Michael Jackson “Thriller” street performance and much more!
Next up, sometimes you have a conversation that stops you dead in your tracks. That’s how I felt having the honor to talk with NIU distinguished teaching professor Gulsat Aygen. Dr. Aygen is a renowned linguistics teacher, author, & translator. She’s had an unbelievable life, from growing up in Turkey, spending time as a political prisoner in the 1980s, coming to the U.S. to study and then teach at Harvard and then at NIU. We had a wonderful conversation about her life and the ultimate goal of education. We start off talking about teaching English as a non-native speaker.
Some teachers just exude enthusiasm in a way that, as Marianna Ruggerio would say, "infects you with passion." Marianna is a physics teacher at Auburn High School in Rockford and our conversation left me infected with her passion for physics and for learning.
We talked about how she teaches her students to think like a physicist, what that really even means, and dispelling misconceptions about physics that might make students feel like it’s not a class for them. We start off talking about how many students have access to physics classes if they want to take them!
And, last up, one of the conversations that stuck with me from this year was my chat with Erik Czerwin. Erik taught English at Guilford High School in Rockford and spent a few years as our “Classroom Correspondent” on our Teachers' Lounge Radio Show. We interviewed him every single month, to follow the school year in his life. And, this spring, Erik made a major life decision: he decided to leave teaching, to leave the classroom -- and I got to have an honest conversation with him about why:
Of course, you can go over to WNIJ.org or wherever you listen to podcasts and hear extended versions of those conversations.
Again, thank you to everyone who listened or interacted with Teachers’ Lounge in any way during the past year. And, of course, here’s to all of the teachers, coaches, professors, parents, & students that make education special.
SHOW NOTES
Educators in this episode:
Music: Our show's theme music is from the northern Illinois-based band "Kindoves" and their songs "Popn," "Origins" and "Quiche." You can find more of their music on their Soundcloud page. You can also listen to the episode of WNIJ's own Sessions from Studio A where they were featured.
Teachers! People who know teachers! People with stories about teachers! Send us an email and be part of the show! Also, send us your topic recommendations: teacherslounge@niu.edu
