Teaching Through Emotions Podcast

Teaching through Emotions (TTE) is an award-winning podcast created and hosted by Betsy Burris, a teacher educator and psychotherapist, and co-hosted by Joe Johnson, a veteran Spanish teacher. The podcast offers a psychodynamic perspective on education, helping teachers build resilience and succeed by sharing familiar stories and practical insights. The show is produced by Jullian Androkae, with audience development by Andreea Coscai, and music by Tom Burris/Jabbering Trout.

Creator/host Betsy Burris is releasing a Valentine’s Day advent calendar on Substack to help listeners get practical tools to work on their relationships every day, not just on “love day.”

The Teaching Through Emotions (TTE) podcast is challenging the status quo of Valentine's Day with a new initiative designed to cultivate lasting connection: The Valentine's Day Advent Calendar.

Starting February 2nd, TTE will roll out the red carpet for healthy relationships. Instead of focusing on chocolates and flowers, this 10-part series focuses on the “work, wherewithal, and wisdom” required to maintain genuine connection.

The advent poses a vital question: Shouldn’t every day be Valentineʼs Day? To answer this, TTE is publishing a new post every weekday leading up to the holiday.

“We want to celebrate the coming of the day by committing to being in healthy relationships,” says Betsy Burris, creator and host of Teaching Through Emotions. “Each post will give readers food for thought as well as a specific skill to practice. If you practice these skills with your partner, your Valentine’s Day will be truly meaningful, the way it should be.”

The series will educate on essential tools of emotional intelligence. One of the highlighted skills will be “Staying in Your Garden,” a foundational TTE concept focused on boundaries and personal responsibility.

This initiative represents the evolution of the Teaching Through Emotions podcast, fostering a direct and authentic relationship with listeners. It transforms the passive experience of listening into an active practice, providing the community with practical tools to do the real work of love.

On February 2nd, the first three posts of the series will be free to all subscribers. The final seven posts will be exclusive to paid subscribers.

TTE is encouraging readers to view a subscription as the ultimate Valentine’s gift to themselves or their partners:

A one-month upgrade costs roughly the price of a beer.

The “Staying in Your Garden” print or mug as the perfect companion to the lessons.

Teaching Through Emotions is a reader-supported publication and podcast. The newsletter offers free and subscriber-only lessons on emotional skills that go beyond the classroom.

Teachers today face intense, multifaceted challenges driven by high rates of burnout, severe classroom management issues, and overwhelming administrative burdens. Key issues include managing complex student behaviors, dealing with pandemic-related learning gaps, navigating excessive paperwork, low pay, and inadequate resources.

Teachers are struggling with disruptive behavior, needing to focus more on managing conflict than teaching. Addressing learning loss from previous disruptions while, keeping, students, engaged, in, a, fast-changing, technology-driven, landscape. Excessive paperwork, data recording, and, planning, time, constrict, actual, teaching time. They also have to navigate difficult communication with parents, lack of support, and high-pressure, standardized, testing, demands.

Teaching through Emotions is a Women Who Podcast award-winning podcast that provides a rare form of relief for educators. Rare because it looks at bad feelings and bad behavior as *meaningful* and *useful.*

Betsy says: “We share stories of real-life terrible teaching moments, sprinkled with commentary and a ton of empathy, then show you how to transform those moments into happy endings. You also get to hear interviews with remarkable people about their unique takes on education.”

To join the countdown and start building healthier relationships, visit Teaching Through Emotions.