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Originally appears in the Winter 2022 issue.

By Green Teacher’s editorial team

This is the first of what will be a regular feature in the magazine: articles and lesson plans that align with episodes of our podcast, Talking with Green Teachers (TWGT). In the Appendices of this inaugural offering, you will find three lessons, one for each of our age categories: Elementary (Ages 5–12), Middle School (Ages 10–14), and High School (Ages 14–19). Before we get to those, however, let’s look back at how the podcast came to be as well as its conceptual underpinnings.

A cautious start

Truth be told, we were pretty reluctant to even entertain the notion of starting a podcast. Yes, we realize that’s maybe not the most encouraging way open this story, but bear with us. For those with even a passing knowledge of podcasts, you’ll likely know that the market is saturated, so to speak. Indeed, the commonly heard phrase “everyone has a podcast these days” has more than a ring of truth to it. With the revolutionary growth of open-source digital platforms like Youtube and Podbean as well as high-quality video-conferencing programs like Zoom, it has truly never been easier to produce audio (and video) content.

Speaking of content, we hear that word a lot nowadays in online circles. Whether you are a blogger, vlogger (video logger), podcaster, or social media influencer, you are in the “content game.” One of the core tenets of this approach is the need to churn out regular content. Given that few people or organizations have the financial and human resources to regularly produce high-quality content, there is an awful lot of filler out there. Putting out “content for the sake of content” is a lot like consuming empty calories. Add to that the fact that many podcasts have become echo chambers for disinformation, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy theorizing, and the pushing of political agendas, and we had plenty of reason to put this project on ice before the end of the first brainstorming session. So, why did we persevere?