Podcast as Accessible Scholarship: Kudlats Takes ‘Chalk and Gavel’ to SXSW EDU
In the world of academia, professor and podcaster may seem like mutually exclusive professions, but Jamie Kudlats would want you — and his fellow academics — to challenge that idea. Kudlats began his career as a middle school math teacher, progressed through administration and then pursued a Ph.D. in education after 15 years in schools. Today, he is an assistant professor of educational leadership at UNC Charlotte, and serves on the editorial board of The High School Journal, on the board of the Centre for Relationship-Based Education and as editor for Law and Policy in Schools. It’s this affinity for education law and its lack of inclusion in educator preparation that drove him to create his podcast, “Chalk and Gavel,” which he’ll be taking to the next level at SXSW EDU for the first time.
Kudlats started Chalk and Gavel with Chris Thomas of the University of Florida after the two met at the Education Law Association annual conference in 2023. “We started talking about how much we both liked teaching education law,” Kudlats said, “and how much we both were committed to increasing educators’ legal literacy.” That was when Thomas mentioned he had always wanted to start a podcast, and asked Kudlats to help him do just that. He was “intrigued by the idea of building a creative outlet for this kind of work.” So began “Chalk and Gavel,” the podcast that connects the courtroom to the classroom.
Kudlats and Thomas hosted a live taping of “Chalk and Gavel” at South by Southwest EDU (SXSW EDU) this week. SXSW EDU is a learning festival based in Austin, Texas that brings together the learner, the practitioner, the entrepreneur, and the visionary to share ideas, network, and create the future of teaching and learning. The 15-year-old festival celebrates learning and innovation through in-depth workshops, engaging hands-on experiences, mentorship, film screenings, future-focused competitions, an expo, networking opportunities, performances and much more. It is a diverse event attended by people from all over the world. From students to policymakers, entrepreneurs to creatives, people come together to learn from one another and engage in thought-provoking discussions.
For Kudlats, this makes “Chalk and Gavel” a perfect match. He sees podcasting as a way of democratizing knowledge. “Standard academic publications have a pretty limited reach; K-12 practitioners — teachers and leaders — aren’t really accessing that type of work. Podcasts and other forms of public scholarship are great ways to translate rigorous scholarly work and make it accessible to a much larger audience,” he said. Kudlats and Thomas hope with this taping (and with their podcast as a whole) to empower educators with the knowledge of law and how it relates to the classroom. This way, those legally literate educators will be able to make better, more legally sound decisions that positively impact both their fellow teachers and their students.
This live taping, which will air on Chalk and Gavel feeds across platforms in April, is a must-see, as it will cover legal topics relevant to the K-12 education world right now. Educators heavily influence, and are influenced by, the law. This podcast will give them real-world takeaways they can bring back to their everyday work. Topics such as student protests, censorship in the curriculums, religion in schools, book bans and parents’ rights can be difficult, and often scary, for educators to approach. “Chalk and Gavel” seeks to provide legal frameworks that make these issues easier to navigate. Kudlats, with his firsthand experience in the K-12 education system, and Thomas, who previously served as an Ohio public school educational law attorney, are uniquely qualified to deliver this information.
By Jenna Beam