Abby and Dave start off this conversation reconnecting after a week of not seeing each other, because we were both presenting at different Christian education conferences. After a little catching up and reconnecting, we shift to our main topic: parent teacher conferences. (‘Tis the season!) We share stories of our own experiences as young teachers, learning how to lead a parent-teacher conference, partly through the school of hard knocks. We describe lessons we learned, and things we found that worked well for getting on the same page with parents, because we all care about the kids. We also share a bit from our perspective of parents about what we hope for in a conference with teachers. We hope that this conversation encourages you, educators, when you meet up with parents to collaborate with them for the good of the kids. We always love hearing from you, dear listeners. You can drop us a line at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com.  Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

We are in a season of transition! It’s been a wonderful journey as a trio, but with changing demands, Matt is going to step away from the podcast. We are grateful for the time and conversations we’ve had over the past four and a half years(!) and we wish him well as he moves into other adventures. Abby and Dave have decided to continue to record new episodes, and we hope you’ll continue to join us in the metaphorical hallway. In today’s episode, we are thinking about what it looks like to be in the middle of the semester when things feel a little stale…or maybe “the honeymoon is over!” We share some ideas and strategies we use to mix things up to look for ways to increase students’ engagement, making the curriculum accessible and meaningful for our students. We hope you’ll be encouraged to talk about your own strategies for mixing things up with colleagues in your hallways as well! We always love hearing from you, dear listeners. You can drop us a line at hallwayconvospod@gmail.com.  Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

After a summer away, it sure felt good to get back together in front of our microphones. This first episode for season 10 is really just catching up on all the things we’ve been doing since we last recorded in May, and sharing about all the cool stuff we have coming up in the next couple of months as well. We’re excited to be back with you, friends, and we hope and pray that our hallway conversations here on the podcast will be an encouragement for you all to have hallway conversations of your own. Looking forward to connecting with you–here on the pod, or in person when we have the opportunity to see you! Dave mentioned his forthcoming book about AI for Christian educators. If you’re interested, you can subscribe to his newsletter (https://drdave.substack.com) for updates about when it is coming out! Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

We are at the end of another semester, and at the end of another season of this podcast adventure. In this episode, we reflect together on our practices, on the things we are taking away from this year, the nature of teaching as “planting seeds,” and the importance of Sabbath for educators. We hope that this conversation encourages you all to wrap up your own academic years well, friends. With this episode, we are going on hiatus for the summer, but we plan to be back with you with new episodes in the fall. We hope you’ll have time to rest, recreate, and re-create this summer! In this episode, Abby refers to a blog post by David Smith that gave her great ideas for end-of-term reflections for her students. You can read this post yourself here: https://christianscholars.com/reflections-on-how-to-end-a-semester/  Matt used the Romero Prayer as a closing blessing for this episode. If you aren’t familiar with this one, you can read it–and the backstory for this prayer–here: http://www.romerotrust.org.uk/romero-prayer Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

After recording our last episode, we left the microphones running as we sometimes do, and had another amazing interaction full of wisdom from our pal, Erik Ringsby. We are including it here as a shorty bonus episode, and we hope it spurs more thinking about how to care well for your students! Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

This week’s episode is a conversation with our good friend and colleague in the Education department, Professor Erik Ringsby. Erik joined our team last year and teaches a variety of courses in special education and learner diversity, and draws on a long career as a special ed teacher and instructional coach. He is a talented, thoughtful educator, and one of our favorite things about Erik is his deep passion for supporting ALL students to make learning come to life. We are confident that this episode will be a blessing and an encouragement to you to think deeply about ways your school can support all the kids you get to serve! Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

This episode was prompted by an email Dave sent to the rest of the crew–we’ll let you listen to hear the details–but it has to do with finding lots of joy amidst some frustration. This got us thinking about the nature of joy, and we share some of the joyful memories we have from our growing up years as we begin. Then we shift to talking about finding joy in the work of teaching, even when it is challenging, demanding, and downright frustrating. How can we look for joy, and help our students learn to see joy as well? We hope this will be an encouragement for you too to choose joy, even when things are frustrating! In this episode we reference Dave’s newsletter: Positivity. Passion. Purpose. You can read the post we discuss here: https://drdave.substack.com/p/joy-amidst-the-hard-stuff You can subscribe for free and it will come to your inbox every other Wednesday. Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

In this episode we have the opportunity to interview our new friend, Shaun Brooker, who serves as Head of School at Hamilton Christian School in Hamilton, New Zealand. It was a pleasure to meet Shaun in person at the recent Converge conference in Orlando, and we were delighted that Shaun was able to join us for the show, despite the time difference between the Waikato region in New Zealand and Northwest Iowa–he is 18 hours ahead of us! Shaun is a thoughtful, passionate leader, as you will find as you listen. In this wide-ranging conversation about Christian education, Shaun shares his vision for the Kingdom work we get to engage in as Christian educators. We hope you’ll be blessed by this conversation, and we suspect this is not the last time we’ll have Shaun on the show. At the end of the episode Dave asks Shaun about an important piece he has written entitled “The Letter,” which we hope everyone will read. You can find this piece here: http://www.christianeducation.org.nz/index.php/christian-education/28-the-letter Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Friends, we know it’s been a bit since we’ve had a new episode. Never fear! We have more fun ideas still to come this spring, including some great interviews. In the meantime, we’d like to share Dave’s side project: another podcast! This one is a STEM-oriented podcast supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation called It’s Good to Be Smart! The idea is that science teachers (grades 5-10) could use the episodes in this podcast to support their teaching. Season 1 is all about matter–the building blocks of the universe. This episode is all about the Periodic Table of the Elements. We hope you enjoy it–and maybe consider sharing this podcast with a science teacher you know! It’s Good to Be Smart! is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and more. You can also find on the web at https://goodtobesmart.podbean.com/ Dave has created instructional resources to support using It’s Good to Be Smart! with students. You can access these materials at https://goodtobesmart.com/

Matt noticed that it was four years ago last week that we started this podcast adventure–and what a wonderful time it’s been for us! We’re so grateful to you all, dear listeners, for joining us on this journey. We hope it will continue to be a blessing for you. In honor of that milestone, we start things off with some reflections on what we have learned and what we love about this project. This week we are joined in the studio (aka, Abby’s office with the creaky table) by our good friend, Darryl De Boer. Darryl brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from his roles as Director of Education at Surrey Christian Schools, and Director of Teaching for Transformation at CACE. Our discussion this week is coming in response to our recent (successful!) accreditation process in the Education program at Dordt University. We wonder together about accountability and trust in Christian education. We hope that the discussion will be an encouragement for you to think about the right role of accountability in your own school context, and the important role of trust in those accountability processes. Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

In this episode we think about whether teaching is best pursued as a solo project, or whether it makes more sense in this day and age to look for ways teachers can collaborate in the work of teaching. We share some stories of our own experiences–in higher ed, and in our K-12 teaching–where we tried co-teaching. We explore the benefits and drawbacks, and try to paint a realistic picture of what a strong co-teaching approach might look like in practice. We hope this will encourage you to have more conversations about what collaborative teaching could look like in your own schools. Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Welcome to a crossover episode with our good friend, Dr. Justin Bailey, who hosts the In All Things podcast. Justin reached out to us, because he wanted to interview Dave about his book, which is out now! We agreed, and what you have before you today is a special episode all about the book. Justin, Abby, and Matt ask Dave about his motivations for writing the book, the content, the approach, and really the heart of it all: developing an imagination for teaching “Christianly.” Dave’s book, Always Becoming, Never Arriving: Developing an Imagination for Teaching Christianly is available now. You can find it on Amazon and Bookshop.org! Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Always-Becoming-Never-Arriving-Imagination/dp/B0DR19KQWH/ Bookshop.org link: https://bookshop.org/p/books/always-becoming-never-arriving-developing-an-imagination-for-teaching-christianly-david-j-mulder/22146371?ean=9798385205066 If you’ve never listened to the In All Things podcast, we highly recommend it to you! You can find the show on all the major podcast apps, and right here on the web: https://justinbailey.podbean.com/ Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Christmas time is here! (Cue the “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!” music!) It’s the end of the semester, and we take a little time to reflect on what we’ve done and what we’ve learned this semester. Matt prompts the discussion this week with a two-part question: 1) What gifts did we receive from our students this year? And 2) What gifts would we like to give to educators? We have a lot of great things we have found blessings from our students, from their reflective responses, to their self-knowledge, to their hospitality, welcoming nature, and idealism. We also have gifts we would love to give to our fellow educators, including bravery, collaboration, authentic professional development, and resources for mental health. Thanks, as always, for listening. We appreciate you so much! We hope that this Christmas season is a blessing for you amidst the blur of busyness, friends!  Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

For those who have been with us from the beginning, you might remember how this podcast started with just Matt and Dave, and how we didn’t tell each other the question we were going to bring in, and just stumbled our way through thinking on our feet about how we might answer that question. We are recapturing a bit of that feeling in this episode! We sat down at our microphones at our normally-scheduled recording hour…and looked at each other expectantly, waiting for someone to remind us what our topic was for this week’s episode. We quickly realized that we never agreed on a topic! But we decided to go forward, and record anyway. We hope that this conversation gives you a further sense of who we really are behind our podcast personas! Matt gave us a little direction by sharing an Advent piece by Frederick Buechner to begin, and we launched into a ranging conversation about what gives us hope right now. We also talk about recommendation letters, the amazing students we get to teach, some recent adventures in pedagogy, things we are grateful for, and other playful shenanigans. Maybe this episode will be a good reminder to take some time to check in and connect with your colleagues! Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/ In this episode, Dave mentions Andy Crouch’s book, The Life We’re Looking For, which is one of his favorites lately. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+life+we%27re+looking+for&hvadid=593689271884

In this episode we start off with some random check-in questions from Matt, inviting us to share some things about ourselves. (Be ready for some silliness, dear listeners!) This leads us into Dave sharing a story about teaching while not feeling well…and how he nearly passed out in class. The question Dave raises: how much should we let students see us as “real human beings?” We talk through various aspects of appropriate self-disclosure for teachers, the role of liking students and being liked by students in return, and strategies for giving students glimpses of who we really are beyond being “just the teacher.” We hope you’ll laugh along with our banter, but also that this might spark some introspection and conversation with your colleagues about right relationships with students. Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

We start off this episode sharing about the different things we’ve been doing lately, with different conferences where we’ve been presenting lately. (It was marvelous for Abby and Matt to meet up with many listeners at CEA!) Dave’s conference actually sparked the topic for this week’s conversation: so many of the sessions at his EdTech conference dealt with AI in Education. We have questions, and maybe the beginnings of some answers. We discuss a whole range of ideas, from what AI is and what it currently can and cannot do, the potential impacts on teachers’ pedagogy, and how to focus on having humans do the things that humans should do…while also imagining ways that we can have machines do things that machines are good at. These are murky waters, for sure, but we hope this somewhat-longer-than-normal hallway conversation will be encouraging, and might spark some more hallway conversations of your own about the role of AI in education. In this episode, we mentioned the fact that Dave recently had a chapter published in a monograph by the Association of Christian Schools International that is all about AI in Education. You can learn more about the book here: https://your.acsi.org/pdp-store/Product-Catalog/Product-Details?productid=%7B03BC9D7A-5D6C-EF11-A670-002248218222%7D&srsltid=AfmBOor-gBOI96z2BNH5J5x9hfa0p_as5MktUIpinVzf75ZYhOfXm4QP Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

This week we start off with a rant about Christmas decorations already being out in the stores (it’s only the middle of October!) which turned into a just-for-fun check-in question about our favorite Halloween treats from our youth. The heart of our conversation today stemmed from an impromptu conversation Matt had with a campus visitor about the Education profession, and the prospective student was definitely not planning to become a teacher. Their conversation prompted our discussion: why aren’t people coming into the profession today? We think around some of the narratives about the profession, and what parts are true, and what parts are…less true. Dave shares his take on why–and how–educators can work to elevate the profession and we brainstorm ideas about how those of us who teach can help encourage other people to join us in the joyful challenges and rewarding work we get to do as teachers. We have some specific words of encouragement for you all, listeners, to help encourage your own students to consider becoming teachers–we hope you’ll have those conversations too! Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

We’re (finally!) back in the studio (okay, Abby’s office with a creaky table) to record again. We’ve missed this so much! We start by catching up about some of the events of our summer, and the things we have upcoming–lots of opportunities for us to meet up with Christian educators in different places. We love connecting with colleagues across North America, and around the world! And along these lines, our main conversation this week is about “connection” in schools–as in, what does it look like for people to be “connected” to their school community? Matt shared some quotes to get the ball rolling, and once we got started, we found we have both lots of ideas as well as plenty of questions about what being “connected” in a school community looks like in the flesh. We discuss the difference between “welcome” and “belonging,” and we wonder together about what it looks like when students (or faculty) are disconnected from their school community. We also wonder about the benefits of “close-knit community” and if there is a shadow-side to this, though it certainly sounds appealing. Throughout this conversation, we share examples and stories from our own experiences, both in schools and in broader communities. We hope, as always, that listening to us thinking out loud will be a spark for some hallway conversations of your own! Dave mentioned that he is going to be speaking at ACSI’s Flourishing Schools Institute; this is going to be a pretty phenomenal conference! You can learn more here: https://www.acsi.org/flourishing-schools-institute Matt and Abby will be at the Christian Educators Association Convention at the end of October, and if you are going to be there, be sure to connect with them there! More information about the convention here: https://www.ceateachers.org/ Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

Our final episode for this season–a little time to reflect on Matt’s question, “What does it look like to end well?” We shared some of the joys and sorrows we feel at the end of a term, ideas for how to end well, and some of the things we deeply believe about the rhythms of the school year. We also took some time to look back over this year and name some of the things we have learned. We recognize that we are all still works in progress and have not yet “arrived” as teachers and leaders. We hope you’ll be encouraged by this conversation to wrap up this year well. A programming note: we are going on hiatus for the summer. The hallway is going to be a little quiet for the next few months! But we anticipate picking up again in August. We hope that you too will find time to rest, recharge, and recreate during your summer season. Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/

This week we are delighted to have a long-time listener and friend of the podcast joining us for a conversation: master educator, Al Bandstra. Al teaches 6th grade at Sioux Center Christian School, and has written substantially about effective classroom management. His forthcoming book is about what he calls “infectious behaviors,” and this conversation is all about what Christian educators can do to address the challenges of individuals and groups that aren’t behaving as we hope and expect they will. We share a variety of stories we’ve experienced, and Al shared with us from his ongoing research and exploration of ways he has found success to address challenging behaviors and broken relationships. If you have ever had a student–or group of students–that has been a challenge for you, we are confident that you’ll find both stories of solidarity as well as words of encouragement here about classroom culture, appropriate authority for teachers, and even acknowledging our own humanity.  Hallway Conversations is sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education. You can learn more about the good work CACE is doing at https://cace.org/