Retro Report welcomed 24 teacher advisors to its fourth annual Council of Educators summit in New York last week. Over three days, the council, composed of secondary-level teachers from across the country, collaborated with Retro Report on new classroom resources related to short docs, including lesson plans and interactive maps. Filiz Yargici, Retro Report’s education manager, and David Olson, Retro Report’s director of education, introduced some new Retro Report short docs and professional development opportunities coming this fall.
The teachers gathered on Thursday at Retro Report’s Manhattan newsroom for a dinner and overview of the nonprofit news organization’s goals, new releases, and professional development opportunities, including the webinar “Atomic Bomb Survivors and the Lessons of Nuclear War” on Aug. 13.
Highlights of the following two days included workshops led by the education team, with sessions on best practices for creating lessons and interactive resources and tips for navigating online resources from the Library of Congress.
Over the course of the 2025 CoE Summit, teachers learned about new Retro Report classroom resources and participated in a series of workshops with one another.
It was a first visit to Retro Report for council member Matt Jackson, a social studies teacher at Norman North High School in Norman, Ok. He finds Retro Report videos “short, timely and geared toward teachers.”
“It is real quality content that is being provided and created for us by professionals, so that’s really a great thing to have access to,” he said.
Olson and Yargici led a workshop on building engaging classroom resources. “We are figuring out what we can create that accompanies our films and lessons that will really have an impact in classrooms,” Olson said. “I don’t think there is a better way to do that than to ask teachers directly.”
Emily Orr, Retro Report’s interactive producer, showcased new interactive resources. She demonstrated ways educators can use existing templates to pitch their own ideas.
Brande Johnson, a teacher from Nevada, was attending her third summit. Her favorite part, she said, was talking to other teachers, “plus getting the sneak peeks of everything that is coming out.”
She keeps the previews on her radar, she said, to decide how to use them in her classroom.
Producers Joseph Hogan and Matt Spolar discussed their roles and personal experiences working at Retro Report in a Q&A session. Hogan outlined Retro Report’s production process and discussed his current work, a short doc on Tiananmen Square that will be published this fall. Spolar shared a clip of one of his new projects.
“Life is full of projects,” said Chuck Taft, who has been a council member for four years. “These documentaries are projects, and I love how it starts with a question: something they are curious about, because that is how we learn. We ask questions, we’ve got to be curious. If you are not curious, you don’t learn.”
Taft said he enjoyed hearing how producers developed narratives, found credible sources and how they sometimes have to pivot when they hit a roadblock.
Council members wound down at a major league baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Saturday night, where the Phillies beat the Yankees, 12 – 5.
Our Council of Education at the Yankees Stadium watching the Yankees vs. Phillies game on Friday, July 25, 2025.
Are you interested in applying to become a Council of Educator member or teacher advisor next year? Create your free account to be added to our weekly newsletter, where we will share information on how to apply this winter.
GRACE OH, an audience engagement intern at Retro Report, is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, studying communications and public relations.
