Teachers on Fire

Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. Education X Posts Featured in This Episode: What's the best way to motivate more student learning? Natalie Vardabasso points us to authentic audience. Katie White shares a reproducible framework for student goal-setting that includes My Goal, Materials and Resources, Prior Knowledge and Skills, and Action Steps. Trevor MacKenzie encourages teachers to stick with the cultures of student self-reflection, feedback, and revision that we are building in our classrooms.  Teacher 2 Teacher shares three daily formative questions that teachers can ask themselves about their own practice (credit: Donita Hicks). Tyler Rablin asks why we would never accept public performance reviews for teachers on the walls of our staff rooms but we do just that to our primary students. Roy Smith asks us NOT to tell our students "You should know this already." Zoe Branigan-Pipe sings the praises of a retired principal who left a positive impact on his community. Jason Kennedy reminds us that even as we savour the final bell on Friday, some of our students aren't celebrating quite so much. Let's make sure they feel the love while they're in our care. Julie Ann puts a positive spin on things, expressing that although November was "exceptionally brutal," she's looking for a positive momentum shift as she heads into November. Jay Wamsted comments on a narrative that we're seeing around teacher social media: the idea that admins just keep piling more on teacher plates until they reach the point of burnout. Melissa Aveling shares a fun text prompt that she applied to Microsoft's text-to-image tool to generate a cartoon-like self-portrait. Connect with Me: On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/.

JOSH TOVAR is the proud principal at Memorial Pathway Academy in Garland ISD. He’s been in education for over thirty years and has served at all levels from elementary to university. Josh is the proud son of Virginia and Jesus Tovar, a proud immigrant to the USA, and former US Marine. Welcome to Teachers on Fire interviews, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 9:00 Pacific and 12:00 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. IN THIS CONVERSATION: 0:53 - JOSH TOVAR is the proud principal at Memorial Pathway Academy in Garland ISD in Texas. 1:35 - About the unique mission of MPA and the immigrant story it supports 4:33 - Two stories of personal and professional adversity 10:57 - Why Josh tells the story of his school community and celebrates students 14:55 - How Unlock the Middle has impacted Josh's thinking and practice 20:25 - Josh's three pillars: faith, family, and fitness 24:30 - What time Josh goes to bed on school nights 25:00 - Setting Josh on fire: sharing the beauty of the education profession 30:04 - A professional goal for this year: speaking at NASSP in Tennessee 32:27 - What sets Josh on fire outside of school: being the best dad possible 34:39 - A productivity hack: phone apps that build quick photo collages 34:59 - Educators to follow on X 35:42 - Josh on edtech tools: "I'm still a paper guy" 36:28 - Two book picks: Four Agreements and Define Your Why by Barbara Bray 36:50 - Josh's podcast picks 37:41 - Who I should interview next on the podcast: Erik Francis 39:24 - A YouTube channel pick: JT Spotlights 40:56 - What the Tovar family is streaming these days 41:21 - The best ways for Teachers on Fire to follow Josh CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/. SONG TRACK CREDIT GO! by Neffex *All songs retrieved from the YouTube Audio Library at https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/.

Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. Education X Posts Featured in This Episode: Emily asks: Do you provide time for students to reflect on their learning after a lesson or unit? If so, what strategies do you use? I look at some responses. I recall a George Couros suggestion about giving educators time to write and blog about their professional learning. Susan Jachymiak shouts out the Unsupervised Leadership podcast, so I take a quick look at the work they're doing on their website. Dr. Josh Kunnath decries the practice of using grades to penalize students for behavior, attendance, or missing assignments. We're no longer assessing learning in those cases. Natalie Vardabasso encourages educators to use accommodations to uncover student strengths despite deficits. Jeremy Jorgensen reminds us to integrate student writing into everything we do. If students can write well, they can think well. Jeremy also points to the power of walking as a reflective act. Walking = medicine. Chey Cheney points out that students are not robotic rule-following practitioners: we learn, we observe, we implement, refine, and tweak according to the unique needs of our learners and their environment. Connect with Me: On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/.

JASON KENNEDY is a 23 year veteran educator with experience in classrooms from elementary through college. He has served as an instructional coach, school building administrator and district administrator. His passion lies in collaborating with others in designing highest quality learning for all learners. Welcome to Teachers on Fire interviews, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 9:00 Pacific and 12:00 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. TIMESTAMPS: 0:42 - Jason Kennedy's current context in education 1:14 - A story of adversity: dealing with binders and narrow vision 3:10 - How writing impacts his professional learning 5:26 - Quitting teaching and designing learning instead 8:04 - Why we should focus more of our efforts on Tier 1 13:32 - The science of reading and the science of learning 16:41 - What are students doing versus what are students learning 17:43 - A professional goal: publishing a book about instructional leaders 19:21 - Two daily questions for every building leader 20:41 - Should every building leader be an instructional leader? 23:00 - An area of personal passion and interest: AI 24:10 - A current productivity habit 25:56 - An account to follow on X 26:14 - An edtech tool to check out 26:34 - A book recommendation 26:57 - A podcast recommendation 27:21 - A recommendation for a future guest 27:38 - A YouTube channel pick 27:59 - What Jason's streaming right now 28:51 - The best ways to follow Jason online 29:36 - Final thoughts and goodbyes. Thank you for joining us, Teachers on Fire! CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/. SONG TRACK CREDIT Fast and Run by Nico Staf*All songs retrieved from the YouTube Audio Library at https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/.

Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. Education X Posts Featured in This Episode: Tierney Kennedy asks "How would you creatively reduce teachers' workload/stress without reducing students' learning?" Dr. Matt Rhoads says that five years ago, he was against phone bans. Now in 2023, he calls on every single school in K-12 to ban phones. Roy Smith encourages teachers to give students more opportunities to write without being graded each and every time for the quality of their work. Marcus Luther argues that every teacher should have multiple systems in their classroom for affirming and celebrating students outside of traditional grades and feedback. Tyler Rablin describes how ELA teachers at his school or district are inviting students to describe their fictional characters and settings in Canva's AI image generator, with great results. Stacey Roshan draws attention to a Canva app called Equations (Beta), which gives educators some great tools to build and use equations for different purposes. CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/.

BRYAN GLOVER has served as a middle and high school teacher of science, principal, and district administrator. He is back in the classroom trying to bring to life a vision of learning that centers students' curiosity, agency, and creativity. Welcome to Teachers on Fire interviews, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 9:00 Pacific and 12:00 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. IN THIS CONVERSATION: Current context in education An experience of adversity: managing the dissonance between his vision for student agency and the very real constraints of the system Motivation for writing reflectively about his professional learning journey What is setting him ON FIRE in his teaching practice Professional goals Personal passions that set Bryan on fire outside of the classroom A productivity app that sustains Bryan and helps him keep track of everything Accounts to follow on X Edtech tool picks Book recommendations A podcast that Bryan tunes into A YouTube channel selection What Bryan's streaming when he has no brainpower left Where to follow Bryan online CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/. SONG TRACK CREDIT Fast and Run by Nico Staf *All songs retrieved from the YouTube Audio Library at https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/.

Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. Education X Posts Featured in This Episode: Teacher2Teacher shares a Vocabulary Throwdown frame, courtesy of Jill Webs. The frame allows students to work in two teams on a single shared Doc and race to properly populate the frame around a single vocabulary term. Monte Syrie challenges the assumption that students won't do the work if teachers won't grade it. Is that really true? I share some examples that speak to the contrary. Lynnette Earle encourages teachers to do the hard work and take risks, whether we're making changes to our assessment practice or trying new things in the classroom. Model the learning. Melissa D (Dean of Math) says that the feedback that we give our students should make them feel known. Wow. Such a great challenge to apply to the feedback that we share with students. Teacher2Teacher shares a powerful self-assessment frame for students, courtesy of Katie Novak and Catlin Tucker. Jeremy Jorgensen reminds us that with all the consumption that our students do, it's so important to give our students daily opportunities to make and create. Meagan Alfano suggests that we start using a new hashtag: #WhatIfEdu. Her first What If: "What if we just let kids read what they want to read?" TCEA shares a great graphic that reminds us of some quick and easy steps we can take to make our learning tasks and assessments more accessible for multilingual learners. Nicholas Emmanuele suggests that in his experience, good rapport with students doesn't seem to be going as far as it used to in terms of gaining student cooperation, effort, ethic, etc. Julie Ann points out just how much more work teaching is compared to where the profession was 20 years ago. Annick Rauch, author of the PheMOMenal Teacher, reminds us of this quote from Maya Angelou: every storm runs out of rain. Teacher2Teacher shares a list of 9 outstanding ChatGPT prompts that can help Math teachers. Canva for Education shares a fun post: name the idiom represented by four different AI-generated images. A few live viewers competed to name the images first. CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/.

MELISSA BLACK has been an early childhood educator and teacher leader for over fifteen years. She believes that all children are capable of learning and achieving great success and believes that the role of a teacher is truly the work of an activist and requires the skills of an artist. Welcome to Teachers on Fire interviews, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 9:00 Pacific and 12:00 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. IN THIS CONVERSATION with MELISSA BLACK: 0:47 - Current teaching context 1:14 - Story time: an extremely difficult teaching experience at a previous school 4:48 - Why she writes about professional learning on Medium 5:49 - What is setting her on fire in the area of elementary literacy 6:36 - Professional learning goal: clear and concise instructions for students 7:29 - A joy outside of the classroom: reading 8:04 - Replacing doomscrolling with writing 8:51 - Someone to follow on X: Sharyn Kish (@KinderKish here on YouTube) 9:26 - Edtech tool recommendation: Fundations Fun Hub 9:50 - Book recommendations 10:17 - Podcast pick: Sold a Story 10:47 - YouTube channel recommendation: English for ABC 11:14 - Streaming choice: fashion channels 11:49 - Where to follow Melissa Black online CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/.

Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. MAKING NEWS on X THIS WEEK: What advice would you give a new teacher feeling that late-fall energy slump? (from Teacher 2 Teacher) Annick Rauch, full-time teacher and author of PheMOMenal Teacher, shares why she pushed herself to go for a run after 11 hours of report card writing. Tyler Rablin questions the need for tests or big assessments at the end of units that measure learning against a handful of standards at once. Tom Schimmer challenges traditional grading paradigms that put the weight of the assessment on the title (rather than the cognitive complexity). Marcus Luther asks his students these three check-in questions each month as a way to tune in to the needs of his learners. Monte Syrie explores the level up that occurs when we approach assessment AS instead of assessment OF. Sara Candela says that it's time to give students the gift of boredom. Boredom leads to building. Following up on the post from Marcus Luther, Adrian Neibauer shares six reflective questions that he asks his students on the regular. Emily points out that anyone can be a teacher. Not everyone can be an outstanding teacher. Christina says that her teacher superpower is getting middle schoolers to laugh at her bad jokes. Zach Groshell reminds students and learners of all ages to use slide decks effectively - not as presentation scripts. Scott Martin wonders if the advance of AI should be pushing education more in the direction of character formation instead of content memorization. Dr. Matt Rhoads lists his picks for top edtech tools of the year. Kyle Niemis shares an amazing list of 14 AI use case demonstrations from 14 tech coaches, including a shareable Google Sheet. Make sure to take advantage of this resource. CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/.

JEREMY JORGENSEN is a veteran teacher of 25 years who's passionate about learning, teaching, working with kids, and supporting educators. Welcome to Teachers on Fire interviews, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 9:00 Pacific and 12:00 Eastern! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. IN THIS CONVERSATION with JEREMY JORGENSEN: 0:53 - Overcoming an early-career struggle: classroom management 4:17 - Current teaching context in Arbor Vitae, WI 5:57 - Show your work: Jeremy explains his habit of reflective writing 7:33 - EL Education and Jeremy's role as an ELfluencer at the coming conference 11:57 - Tim talks about the power of Austin's Butterfly 12:53 - Professional goals: bringing energy and positivity, reflecting regularly 15:06 - A source of passion outside of school: summer camp 17:28 - Jeremy's key to mindfulness is his weekly review 19:56 - Lightning round: Jeremy's top picks for education voices 22:05 - Where to follow Jeremy online 22:22 - The mission and vision of Why Edify CONNECT with ME On X @TeachersOnFire (https://X.com/TeachersOnFire) On Facebook @TeachersOnFire (https://www.facebook.com/TeachersOnFire/) On YouTube @Teachers On Fire (https://www.youtube.com/@teachersonfire) On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/ Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/. SONG TRACK CREDIT Chef Brian by Latasha Dude by Patrick Patrikios New Year by Bad Snacks Positive Fuse by French Fuse Summer in the Neighborhood by Bad Snacks Tropic Fuse by French Fuse Sunny Travel by Nico Staf Coupe by The Grand Affair Fast and Run by Nico Staf Go! By Neffex *All songs retrieved from the YouTube Audio Library at https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/.