Hello everyone! This podcast is many things to many people. It's where educators can gather and enjoy the good news and positivity of education. It's where educators can learn the latest approaches to fostering deep and meaningful literacy classrooms. And it's a place where we discuss complicated issues in and around education today. Today, and over the next few episodes, we will be diving into the culture war in education today. This war has taken many forms and many voices have chimed in (often not in education), and this has caused a dilution of clear messages and goals. Those who care about education and its future have found ourselves often talking around each other rather to one another, and have seemingly fallen down endless rabbit holes as we defend our stances or accuse others of causing more harm than good. As an independent podcast that has found a healthy audience, I view this podcast as a place for us to dialogue across the divides, come to understand one another (even if we do not agree), and become educated on the issues so that we can truly work together to create a better world of education than the one we have today. Much like my episode with PragerU's Jill Simonian, this is my attempt at creating bridges to one another, finding common ground, and setting the stage for us to move forward on the biggest issues we face as educators. To start this several episode mini-series, I have brought on the co-creator and owner of the Chalkboard Review, Tony Kinnett. Tony has recently made headlines because of his takes on CRT and recent fallout with his school district, as well as his work in education. In this hour long episode, we discuss numerous topics. We touch on: Critical Race Theory Book bans Curriculum Race Supporting marginalized communities Public schools vs Charter vs Private ...and much more! Strap in, this should be a good one for you.     This episode is sponsored by Heinemann—the leading publisher of professional books and resources for educators—and their professional book, Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Practices by Lorena Escoto Germán. With Culturally Sustaining Practice as its foundation, Textured Teaching helps secondary teachers stop wondering and guessing how to implement teaching and learning that leads to social justice.  Lorena Germán shares her framework for creating a classroom environment that is highly rigorous and engaging, and that reflects the core traits of Textured Teaching: student-driven and community-centered, interdisciplinary, experiential, and flexible.  The actionable strategies Lorena uses to bring Textured Teaching values to life illuminate what is possible when we welcome all types of texts, all types of voices, and all forms of expression into the classroom. Learn more about how to become a culturally sustaining educator. Visit Heinemann.com to download a sample from Textured Teaching.