100: What Good Quality Teaching Looks Like with Dr. Janna Dresden + Dr. Ronald Cervero

Today is our 100th episode and to celebrate we have two very special guests! Joining us on the podcast are two nationally renowned professors who are experts in online learning and teacher education, and... they also happen to be my parents!

As I hope comes through on The Mentor Sessions podcast, I am very interested in studying the craft of teaching yoga, as its own practice. I love asking questions about why we teach something the way we do, how we could be more expansive and inclusive in our teaching, and how we can continue to grow and evolve in our teaching practice. 

When you meet my parents today, you won’t be at all surprised that these are the kinds of questions I find inspiring. In my family's case, the apple appears to have fallen directly underneath the tree 😂 It’s funny though, because I don’t remember long conversations about quality teacher education around the dinner table or anything... I was a dancer pursuing a professional career, and very much felt that I was on my own path. But as my focus shifted away from the dance world, and towards the yoga world, I quickly became very interested in unpacking what good quality teaching looks like (it looks like 1 million things, of course!) and making space for conversations around that. 

Today I’m so excited to introduce you to Janna and Ron, my parents, so we can hear from an academic view what good quality teaching looks like and how we might bring these inquiries into the yoga world. 

In this episode you’ll hear:

• an explanation of the basic idea of pedagogy
• what we have we learned from recent studies in neuroscience about how people learn
• what good quality teacher education look like and how we might evaluate that
• how my Dad brought online learning to the University of Georgia way back in 2001
• how online learning has changed in the last 20 years
• the joke my Mom told at my wedding that had everyone cry-laughing