"What the 5th Grade Classroom Feels Like" with Adrian Neibauer

Marcus finally gets a chance to talk with Adrian Neibauer, a 5th grade teacher who just finished his 21st year of teaching and also happens to be the author of Adrian’s Newsletter—probably Marcus’s favorite weekly read on teaching out there.

In this conversation, Adrian reflects on his path into the elementary classroom; what it was like to leave the classroom for a different role and then return with a new perspective; and what his classroom looks and feels like at this point in his career. Towards the end, Marcus also asks him about some points from two of his recent newsletter articles:

• “Have I Become Richard Vernon?” (May 13)

• “I’m not an Entertainer” (May 20)

We definitely recommend you checking out Adrian’s writing and subscribing to his content. If you like the reflections here on The Broken Copier, it definitely could be for you!

And as always, we love to hear your thoughts! Along with emailing or commenting, you can leave us an audio message for the next episode (Adrian was the first one to take us up on this several months back, by the way): fanlist.com/brokencopier

Also, do you have interesting in being a guest on the podcast? Click here to sign up. We may be delayed in our responses, but we definitely want to start inviting more teachers to come on & share their stories. 

Thanks, as always, to: 

Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden; and Courtney Milavec for graphic design.

Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro. 

 Email us here: thebrokencopier@substack.com.

Thanks for listening (and tell your friends)!