TBD: Teaching Based Discussion

On perhaps the final episode of TBD, Heath gets the chance to talk to Mr. Glawe, Pioneer's Director of Orchestras and 2021 Michigan String Teacher of the Year. The discussion ranges from Glawe's trailblazing partnership with Upbeat music for the virtual school year to his Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band.

On this episode of TBD, we sat down with Pioneer director of bands and music department chair David Leach. Mr. Leach has become somewhat of a Pioneer legend over the last twenty years winning countless awards for the band and himself. This run includes being part of the program that won the Grammy award for best public school band in the country not once but twice. However, we talk to him about who his idols were growing up as a band kid in Ann Arbor and which experiences from his career meant the most to him.

On this episode of TBD, we talked with Pioneer English teacher Jefferey Kass about the philosophies towards school that he developed at a young age, his career as a sports radio personality in California prior to teaching, the novels and poetry he has written, and much more. The interview provided some perspective on how the pandemic has reshaped our priorities and left us with a greater appreciation for our high school experiences.

After a two month hiatus, the TBD podcast is back and better than ever with an energy-filled interview with Ms. Martini, one of Pioneer's Spanish teachers. We discuss what it was like to grow up in a large Italian family, the origins of her teaching principles, and what happened behind the scenes for teachers over the summer.

On this episode of TBD we talked to Debra Fitzgerald, who is an English and Journalism teacher as well as the Newspaper Advisor. She is also a former student of Ann Arbor Pioneer, although she had a much different high school experience then either of us. We discussed her career before teaching, coronavirus, and the "real world", especially how little high school represents it.

On this episode of TBD we sit down with Rita, the Spanish Department Chair at Pioneer, who teaches Spanish 2 and Spanish AP. We discuss her roundabout way of ending up as a Spanish teacher, online school, and potentially releasing a Spanish language version of this podcast.

In this episode of TBD, Heath and James sit down with Ms. Wilkening who teaches 9th grade and AP Biology at Pioneer. We discuss her childhood, teaching career, and passion for swimming as well as, inevitably, online learning.

In this bonus episode of TBD, only Heath has a conversation with Mr. White almost exclusively about virtual learning. It should be noted that this discussion took place immediately before the start of the school year.

On this episode of TBD we sat down with Jodi Bullinger, a Pioneer alum and AP Psychology teacher. She puts a positive spin on the online learning situation with a psychological approach. We also discuss some fascinating anecdotes from her childhood and past students.

Two high school seniors (Heath Monsma and James Catanzaro) talk to their teachers about a variety of topics including: what they were like in high school, how and why they developed their teaching style, and the ongoing challenges of online school.

We apologize for any sound quality issues on our end, we were still working out the bugs of online recording at the time.

In our second episode we talked to Mr. Rice, a math teacher at Pioneer who has taught multiple levels of math. He is currently teaching AB Calculus and Pre-Calculus. Heath was sick at the time of the episode, but James was still able to sit down with Mr. Rice and learn more about him!

On the first ever episode of TBD, we sit down with the APUSH teacher at Pioneer, Mrs. Roldán, and got to know a little bit more about her.