You’ll find a list of our latest episodes below. can listen to them right here on the Web site or click here to learn how to follow us using a podcast app on your phone, like Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
On this week’s podcast I talk with marine scientist and educator Lacie Ownbey of the Indianapolis Zoo. We talk mostly about a specific kind of learner engagement: one that is authentic – related to real-life science concepts. Engaging with content directly gives students, especially young ones, an emotional – or...
How can our informal education sites and programs include everyone? It’s a question we all wrestle with. Remember how last week’s guest, Elise McFarland, described teaching about California’s Spanish missions to young visitors who might have roots in Mexican, European, Native, African, Asian, and Catholic communities...
On this week’s podcast, I talk with Elise McFarland, an Interpretation and Education Manager for the California State Park system. In her far-ranging job, she’s responsible for several parks’ cultural resources and, of course, many levels and modes of interpretation. Like many informal educators – especially outdoor...
On this week’s podcast, I meet Brittany Sabol, the training director at Environmental Volunteers. EV is an organization that turns everyday folks into extraordinary informal educators who go into classrooms to provide science enrichments. Working with volunteers is a huge part of many informal education sites – they...
On this week’s podcast, I talk with Minnesota naturalist Claire Dobie about the job of a nature-based educator. It’s an interesting gig and one I know well, as I did some version of nature-based education for more than a decade before switching over to classroom-focused work. We naturalists, interpreters, rangers, and...
This week, I talk with Memphis piano teacher Jim Cornfoot. Many informal educators have a relatively narrow sense of our field’s scope. We tend to think of our community as looking just like us – just outdoor educators, or museum docents, or just coaches. From my conversation with Jim, though, I think you’ll realize...
On this week’s podcast, I talk with Eileen Garcia-Sanchez of the San Antonio Zoo in Texas. It’s a fully-accredited preschool that takes a lot of its inspiration from the world of outdoor education. At the school, children spend a majority of their time outdoors, on both the school’s outdoor campus and in the zoo...
This week, I talk with Jim DePompei of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in Los Angeles. This storied facility was founded over 75 years ago, so generations of locals have experienced its tanks and displays. What most (including me) remember, though, is the grunion dance. Grunion in the sand Grunion! Back in the 1950s, one...
Welcome to The Classroom Beyond – our very first podcast episode! For our inaugural podcast, I talk with science educator Kady Yeomans of the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia. The small city is the museum hotspot of rural Georgia, and the 100,000-foot Tellus is their crown jewel. Kady and I talk about...
Coming soon: The Classroom Beyond, the podcast for informal educators! We’ll be chatting with naturalists, coaches, music teachers, museum guides, and docents – all of us who teach outside of the classroom! We’re dropping our first episode on November 29th. Here’s a little taste of what’s to come – follow now and stay...