The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Engaging Middle Schoolers with Taylor White Brown
Keeping students, especially those in middle school, engaged can be difficult. Taylor White Brown, a teacher from Mississippi, joins today's episode to share simple yet powerful strategies that transform classroom dynamics without creating extra work for teachers while still focusing on student engagement.
Taylor's approach begins with a refreshingly practical perspective: "Use what the curriculum is giving you. Don't make your job harder." Rather than reinventing lessons, she amplifies existing materials through activities like games, buzzers for responses, and friendly competitions that still put learning at the forefront.
At the heart of Taylor's philosophy is relationship-building. "Kids are not going to learn from someone they do not like," she explains, describing how she maximizes every interaction—from hallway conversations to lunch periods—to create genuine connections. These small moments build the trust necessary for students to invest in their learning. When students disengage, Taylor quietly acknowledges their feelings while gently reminding them of their mutual commitment: "When Ms. Brown has a bad day, I show up for you. So Ms. Brown really needs you to show up for me today."
Whether you're looking for more student engagement strategies or simply looking to refresh your teaching approaches, Taylor's practical wisdom offers immediately applicable techniques.
Curriculum Associates, an education technology company, and the makers of iReady presents the Extraordinary Educators podcast. Join host Haley Browning to hear tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We believe all educators are extraordinary and we are here to support you. Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators podcast. Today we are joined by the wonderful Taylor White Brown, and Taylor is a fifth grade teacher currently in Mississippi where she leads the English language arts department in her school. Taylor brings a ton of expertise to her fellow teachers as well as her students, where she is consistently shaping their minds every day through some really incredibly engaging strategies that she talks about in today's episode. So we hope you enjoy today's episode with Taylor.
Speaker 1:Hi, taylor, welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. Of course, we're so happy to have you on and to talk all about the wonderful blog that you have written. It really, really caught my eye just thinking about how important it is to engage middle school students and you have such incredible expertise. So with that I wanted to dive in and kind of jump off of the blog and expand on a little bit of the things that you talked about there Sound good, sounds great, all right, all right, taylor. So, to kick us off, I'm curious if you could talk about some effective strategies that you found for engaging your own middle school students, especially thinking about balancing what you're required to do in your curriculum and making sure that you're including student interests. Is there anything that you would like to recommend or what's worked really well for you and your students?
Speaker 2:So, like the main thing, I would say is use what the curriculum is giving you. Obviously, don't go out and make your job is. Use what the curriculum is giving you. Obviously, don't go out and make your job harder. Use what it's giving you. Know what your students need to know for the end goal and then go from there. Don't change what it's asking you to teach, but just amplify it to meet your kids needs and interests. So, whether it is reading a passage, there's always ways to engage students in reading passages like Connect 4. Let them work in groups, give buzzers, let them make it a competition. Those types of things will engage them, but it's also meeting the curriculum and making sure they meet their end goal.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, taylor, I'm sitting here with my jaw dropped as you're talking about Connect 4 and buzzers. These are things that I would have never thought about in my own classroom, and it really is so wonderful to see how creative you are in bringing this engagement to your students, and I'm sure they so much appreciate it. And so with that, taylor, I'm curious you have these wonderful engagement strategies. How are you making sure to build strong student teacher relationships? It kind of bounces off of this idea of engagement, but also it's really important to make sure that you're in get, you're connecting with your students on a on a personal level yes.
Speaker 2:So it is very, first and foremost, important to build those personal relationships with your kids. I live by the motto it's not even my motto, I can't even quote who says it, but I've heard it a million times. So this is what I live by kids are not going to learn from someone they do not like, and so we have to keep that at the forefront and we've got to know these children, get to know them what they like, let them know we're human, they're human, we have bad days, just like they have bad days. And so I think just being on that level with them and letting them know that you understand those things and then just taking the time to have a small personal conversation whether it's walking to the cafeteria or while you're sitting at lunch or even in the two or three minutes you're walking to activity just giving them an opportunity to share something with you and make a personal connection makes all the difference in how they are also going to work for you in the classroom.
Speaker 1:It's really powerful that you're tapping into what sounds like every single minute of your day, whether that be, you know, like you said, like a walk to get their lunch or walking over to a special. You're making sure to foster and make sure those connections are strong over the course of any opportunity that you can. So that's really wonderful to hear, taylor. So with that Taylor, I'm curious how do you handle students that may seem disengaged or maybe they don't want to participate, or maybe they are having that off day? You said we all have bad days and it's important to recognize that. What do you do? What is your first step in kind of mitigating or seeing how you can address that issue?
Speaker 2:All right. So of course, like you said, we all have bad days, and so when we notice or I notice that student is unengaged or there might just be something going on their head's down, that's not typical behavior. So you know you want to have a conversation with that student, you want to engage with that student and try to help solve whatever might be on their mind. However, you don't want to necessarily do that in front of other students and so I always try to like, pull a chair up by a student and say, hey, like there's something you need to share with me. Do we want to go? Do you want to go talk or is it just a bad day? Like giving them that opportunity to share and letting them know that you see it, you are there to listen. They may not want to speak, they may not want to share, However, just letting them know I see you, I understand.
Speaker 2:However, when Ms Brown has a bad day, I show up for you. So Ms Brown really needs you to show up for me today. Can we give Ms Brown just the next whatever amount of time it is for that class period? And typically students are going to comply when they see that. Okay, they see me, they hear me, I'm going to do what they're asking me to do, and so typically I have found that that works very well in my classroom.
Speaker 1:I love that, Taylor, this whole they see me, they hear me but also giving them this moment of I'm giving you what I'm doing and giving you my best. I would really appreciate if you could give me your best as well. That's giving them that extra push that they may need after a long day or whatever is happening outside of the classroom. It's a nice little grounding moment for them. I think that's really powerful. Okay, so last question, Taylor, I'm curious Could you share a favorite kind of hands-on or interactive activity that you found that works really well for your students? I know there are a lot of teachers that listen to this podcast, so I would love to leave them with like one activity that they could just take and bring into their next school day.
Speaker 2:Yes, so my all-time favorite activity. It does not even have a name. This is something that I do and I have seen another teacher do on our campus, but it doesn't have a name. So I'm just going to kind of describe what I do. It's a very competitive, which is why I like it. I'm very competitive. My students are absolutely 110%, very competitive.
Speaker 2:So I pull out my passages, whatever we're working on, my question sets, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:I love to do this specifically for test review days on, like when I'm going through standards with passages and questions, but I bring four different treats, so where it may be like a sour candy, a chocolate bar, a bag of chips, you know, whatever it might be, like a soda, can be anything and I list them on the board and I use a name generator to make sure that it's there for all students. And like, if the random name generator picks a student and they say the correct answer, they get to go to the board and claim whatever prize they want. However, the kicker is the next student that goes that answers a question correctly. They also get to claim whatever treat they want and they can erase any name they want to erase to claim the treat they want, so it becomes very heated, although it is very good encouragement and motivation for them to participate and it's good review, so they're getting everything they need while also getting to have fun and review the standards oh, I love that, taylor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, motivation across the board. And you're, you're meeting your middle school students where they're at I. I know when I was in middle school I would have done anything for a midday soda, you know. Oh, that's perfect, okay. Well, that was all wonderful, taylor. We'll make sure to go ahead and link your blog in the show notes for this episode so any listeners that would like to take a deeper dive into your day-to-day strategies can take a look there, and we were just so happy to have you on the podcast today, taylor, thank you so much. Well, thank you so much for having me Get inspired by following us on social, and please tag us in your posts on X at Curriculum Assoc and on Instagram at my iReady.
Speaker 1:If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducators at cainccom. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation, please leave us a review. Remember, be you be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Curriculum Associates believes that with the right supports, all children can reach grade level. We provide evidence-based, high-quality instructional materials and world-class implementation services to classrooms across the United States. Editing completed by Shane Lowe, social media by AdCity Hannon, guest booking and production by Haley Browning. This podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.