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The top education issues of the year & an elementary school check-in | Teachers' Lounge Radio Show

Teachers' Lounge Radio Show!
Spencer Tritt
Teachers' Lounge Radio Show!

In case you didn’t know, our podcast Teachers’ Lounge is also on the radio! We’ve got all the interviews with Illinois teachers and education stories you love -- along with exclusive segments -- in a monthly, hour-long show on WNIJ.

On this episode, it’s time for our annual “Top Issues of the Year” episode with Jason Klein, the Senior Director of Learning Partnerships at Northern Illinois University.

Also, we have “student correspondents” -- where we follow a group of students in a club, sport, or activity -- throughout their entire season.

We’ve been doing this for a few years now. We’ve followed an upstart high school e-sports team, a speech and debate team with a storied tradition, and -- most recently this fall -- we featured the drama club at Hinckley-Big Rock High School as their students set out to put on their first fall play in over a decade.

And that’s the story we’re bringing you today. This fall on the radio show, we checked in with our theater students every month. Now, we're combining all of those segments, so you can hear their whole journey from auditions to opening night.

We also catch up with our classroom correspondent: Dominique Yackley! She’s a 5th-grade teacher at Founders Elementary School in DeKalb. As our correspondent, we interview her every single month to follow a school year in a teacher’s life.

On top of all that, we see what’s going on with our student correspondents! They’re students we’ll talk with on every episode of Teachers’ Lounge. This year, we’ve got a group of 8-year-old students from Spectrum Progressive School in Rockford to keep us in the loop with everything going on for them in elementary school.

If you’ve never listened before, our show is based on an idea -- we’ve all had teachers in our lives who shaped who we are. And we want to hear about the teachers who inspired you. Every educator we have on Teachers’ Lounge, whether teacher, coach, counselor, or professor, is nominated by our listeners.

So, tell us about the person who comes to your mind. Shoot us an email and nominate an educator at teacherslounge@niu.edu and they could be on the show!

Don’t worry – the podcast isn’t going anywhere. You can still catch episodes every other Friday on WNIJ.org or wherever you get podcasts.

Peter joins WNIJ as a graduate of North Central College. He is a native of Sandwich, Illinois.