CDColin Dabkowski
← Teaching
College English 12 · Since 2022

Mentor podcasts

Every semester, my College English 12 students read Tuesdays with Morrie, choose the person who has shaped them most, and interview them. The result is a lasting record of a relationship. It’s been one of the most meaningful projects of my teaching career.

“Listening is an act of love.”
From my introduction to Mentorship Magazine, fall 2025

How it works

  1. 01

    Read

    We read Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom’s account of weekly visits with his dying professor, as part of a unit on how people build meaningful lives.

  2. 02

    Choose

    Each student picks the person who has shaped them most: a grandparent, a sibling, a teacher.

  3. 03

    Interview

    Students write and revise their questions, record the conversation, and edit it into an episode or video.

  4. 04

    Publish

    The class designs a website for the collection, and we share it with families and the whole school.

The collections

6 class sites
Spring 202614 episodes

English 12 Podcasts

PodcastsStudent-designed site

Students designed the site themselves. Instead of listing episodes by author, they present each one anonymously behind a quote from the conversation, so visitors pick the line that speaks to them and discover the student and mentor behind it. Some students interviewed living mentors; others worked from family stories to learn about someone who has died.

“Always keep learning.”

Visit the class site ↗
Fall 202518 interviews

Mentorship Magazine

Video interviewsEssays

This class took one lesson from the book to heart: listening is an act of love. Several of the interviews are powerful reflections on the effect adults can have on kids. I wrote the introduction, “The Power of Listening.”

Visit the class site ↗
Spring 2025

Voices of Experience

PodcastsCaptioned videosPrintShort-form video

Projects came in several formats, from podcasts and captioned video interviews to print pieces and short vertical videos, all built around the question at the center of the book: Are you proud of the life you’re living?

Visit the class site ↗
Fall 2023

Mentorship Journeys

PodcastsReflections

Visitors start with a personality quiz that leads to one of the student podcasts, and each podcast links to another. Each student also wrote a reflection on how mentorship has shaped their principles and ambitions.

[This site is set to sign-in only. Make it public to link it here.]
Spring 202321 episodes

Podcast Project

Podcasts

The class made these podcasts so they wouldn’t take the Morries in their own lives for granted. Their challenge to listeners: Who is your Morrie? Think of who has left an impact on you, and take some time to talk to them.

Visit the class site ↗
Fall 202218 episodes

The Morrie Experience

Podcasts

The earliest collection online. Students were asked to look beyond their parents for a mentor, and they presented the episodes as a “fishbowl of podcasts,” each with a fish avatar, in honor of the class pet that got them talking.

Visit the class site ↗