Saturday, August 15, 2026

Special Edition: Rethinking Traditional Classroom Rules & Rewards

Listen below:

Tune in weekdays for 15-min daily news roundups:

It’s back-to-school season, but what do kids actually need to thrive in the classroom?

Brittany Wheaton, founder of Teaching to a Riot, joins us to challenge some long-standing ideas about student behavior. We talk about the psychological needs that may be hiding underneath certain behaviors, why some kids fall apart after holding it together all day, and why she believes common reward systems can sometimes backfire.

Plus, what parents can do when they can’t control how their child’s classroom operates.

This episode is sponsored by 

Get 20% off  Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when you sign up at  RosettaStone.com/newsworthy today!

Stop piecing your software together. Go to Odoo.com/newsworthy to learn more.

To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to ad-sales@libsyn.com

Guest: Brittany Wheaton

Brittany Wheaton has spent 17 years working with K-12 students, 13 of them teaching kids with emotional impairments, learning disabilities, and cognitive impairments. She’s an AuDHD behavioral kid who became a behavioral teacher. She’s the founder of Teaching to a Riot, where she now trains and coaches full-time on the psychological needs driving neurodivergent students’ behavior — safety, comfort, autonomy, belonging, and competency. Her work helps teachers stop managing behavior and start meeting the needs underneath it. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Be sure to tune-in again each weekday (M-F) for our regular episodes to get quick, unbiased news roundups in ~10 minutes!