Oh, yeah. Well, I suppose I was fully let in. Education clock, educated educators talking education. It's Friday.
Hey, hurdles in home runs. I'm here with the chairman of the boards. Jacob, Jacob, how you doing today? I'm great, Johnny. I'm excited to talk about some hurdles and some home runs.
Yes, sir. Well, there are always plenty of in spring, not extra curriculars here at busted pencils. We call them essentials as they provide sort of those not sort of they actually do provide those opportunities for all of us to be learners in more than just our classroom.
Right. It could be, you know, a club that we're a part of. It could be, you know, a sports program. It could be a dance class. It can be any of those so called out there on the streets. They call them extra curriculars, but here at busted pencils.
No, Jacob's shaking his head. He knows the drill. Those are essential. They're essential, Johnny. What I just don't understand this whole extra thing. Yeah, I know. Well, you know, what happens is we call them extra and then oftentimes they're the first to go when we're in a budget crisis, which I shouldn't make make light of because I pretty certain every single state in the country right now scrambling to finalize budgets and to really set them into debate over them.
I mean, and not a shocker. It's like we keep talking about it here at busted pencils. Public education has been under attack and it's kind of at this point, you know, it's it's disgusting to say the least, but we still remain optimistic and we still stay fighting, right?
In a sense of saying like, hey, come on, if you believe in public education, which we know, Jacob, the popular majority of the country, I'm not just talking about like, well, did did it.
Did the state turn blue or did it turn red on the news when the voting happened like what regardless of party voting information that we learned from the most recent elections is that people across our country by and large in big numbers.
Support public education, so it's like it to me remind remains a no brainer. Let's fund education, but when we call things extra curriculars.
The first things to go when we're doing the cuts are the extras sort of kind of the culture kind of goes with that right like wants and needs social studies lesson from elementary school.
We do those charts, what are our wants, what are our needs? It's important, especially when we're talking responsible economics because then when we go down the list, we say what we got to cut back on spending.
Well, we can eliminate some of the wants and keep the needs that's why we call them essential curriculars here.
Because we need them and not call them and we know that now Jacob, I'm biased because we've talked about it before because I'm a coach and a teacher.
I've always been both and I love the two hand in hand. Yeah, all kinds of different teaching styles out there and it's like you could be a coach and not be a sports coach.
You know, it can be the chess moderator. You could be coaching just make we don't have to call it coaching, but we could be like directing the choir or working with, you know, the magic, the gathering club.
That was a club I got to see when I visited the school this week, Jacob, I was after school, checking out the essential curriculars in the school and talking to the different teachers and moderators who get to see kids in a different setting.
Then just say their biology classroom or their English language arts classroom, they get to build relationships, show interest in and and help kids form communities or provide space for kids to form communities.
Just like kind of the football team would do or the tennis team would do or cross country or golf were talking spring essentials here.
Absolutely.
But I got to see magic, the gathering, I also, which is a card game, Jacob, I learned about, I mean, I knew about it because I remember there were friends of mine who collected sets and boom, they play these card games and kids were telling me about this week and I was glad that they have that aspect of the curricular.
Jacob, I also learned, I know listener out there, you're going to be like, come on, Johnny, really, you just learning about this. Well, yeah, I'm a little slow on the take on some of these things.
But I learned about esports extensively this week, Jacob, you just learned about esports now, Jacob, I know, you sound like me with eight man football, Johnny.
Yeah, it's kind of the same. You're behind the curve. I know, I know. Well, actually, this is my own, I'll admit on there here with you, Jacob, I'll admit, I had heard about it, but I was kind of that guy.
Not not to be dismissive of it because I'll support in like I'm telling, I'll support clubs, organizations, groups for our young people to have those essential curriculars.
But I heard about it and I just thought, isn't that video game club? Like isn't that people who get together and play video games and like, they're like, no, it's esports. I mean, they had jerseys, they were training. I mean, they were, this was fascinating. This was super cool. I'm into it. I'm learning even more about it, Jacob.
So expect a show coming up soon where we interview some esports state champions. I got to hang out with a coach who's a state championship esports team. And man, this is where I'm getting that Jacob today.
I talked to an esports coach. Okay. You know about esports Jacob give us like what is esports for the listener out there who's like me who's like, I have no idea what they're talking about.
I think it's about video games because Johnny said that. But what's esports Jacob because you know about it to summarize it quickly video game club is for people who want to have fun.
And esports are for people who want to drill rigorously to play a video game at a incredibly high performance level, just crazy good at the game. I mean, just get good at the game, go up against other people who are good at the game from other schools or other.
There's professional esports, Johnny. So you can you can go through the pipeline just like the NFL, I guess. Yeah, I'm loving this. Yeah, I don't like watching it because when people are so good at the game, it just makes me mad. I'm like, I like to play call of duty. I can't do that. What are you doing?
But yeah, it's becoming a thing and it's getting bigger. It's even I think a lot of it's beyond my own comprehension at this point because it's just getting so big around the country.
Well, you know what? That means we'll get some esports coaches on maybe some people who participate in esports, you know, reach out to us. We'll we'll holler out to you, but I was fascinated. I was like, they were talking about team strategy. They were doing all kind. I was like, my I'm here for this support it added into the essential curriculars because it is it is happening. And why get excited about Jacobs because I got to talk to group of kids who immediately then later I went home and did a little more research.
Around this and say that this is like you said, really growing. That is connecting them to a community. They're like they're working with each other. They're working with coaches. They got a coaching team. Right. And they're learning and it's part of their school. It's a school function. And so there. I know this as a teacher and a coach. The two went really nicely together because I am, I am a firm believer that every child in our public schools should have some essential curricular activity.
That they belong to that they're part of maybe maybe more than one, but at least one where they have the opportunity to be coached as part of their learning. Yeah. And that's kind of where I'm going today, Jacob is because, you know, I think and I'm not alone in this, but I think that coaches and teachers can learn a lot from each other in the sense that there's different styles of both and that there's a lot of kind of crossover, but often.
We kind of separate the two things out some kind of thinking about like it's important for coaches to learn from teachers from teachers to learn from coaches and kind of where do those things cross over, you know, that that's that's one of the ah ha as I had as we were closing off the week this week.
Absolutely. I think that's a great connection to make with teaching and coaching their Johnny because it makes me think about I'm a football fan. That's my primary sport and you look at coaches. There's so many different types of coaches and you see situations where a player just doesn't work in one place goes somewhere else gets a different coach was a different style.
And all of a sudden, hey, they're learning all the plays, they're getting it, they're executing and that's just like teaching. I mean, everyone learns differently teachers have to have those different abilities.
You can't just sit there. I mean, I guess sometimes that happens, but if I'm a teacher, I can't sit there and be Bill Bella check in my sixth grade English classroom and say, well, this is how I teach it.
You know, you got to have different methods for different students. And I think if you know the things that you can learn in one can translate to the other. That's a great point.
Yeah. And you got to some of the things I'm going to touch on because I've been thinking through this for a little while. And in fact, I get to get to work with a lot of coaches.
And they are specifically getting their degree and curriculum and instruction because one of the things they've identified in their pathway to career, these are professional coaches.
Like that's their goal to be a professional coach and working with them as a teacher educator and as also a coach.
We, they learn a lot about some of the same things a little bit different, but a lot of the same things together with teachers and principals who are also getting their master's degree in that topic.
But it's been a big aha for me over the years that coaches learn a lot from teachers and teachers learn a lot from coaches.
And then it kind of boils down to Jacob, like learning, you know, like schooling versus learning or sometimes I'll say like, like liberating education from schooling.
Like schooling, I'll talk about is like, you know, like the seven periods of the day, the bell rings, the 50 minute classes, the sit in desks.
Teachers are always kind of trying to work within that system to make it more engaging by and large schooling when I say that or our school systems kind of around the world.
But in general, we could say here in North America is they're pretty similar.
Right, there are patterns that were socialized to that we just keep reproducing.
Yeah, look at how we play school. This is how we do school.
And those patterns are really kind of like habits of mind for both students and teachers.
So it's hard to change how we teach because those habits of mind often overrule and like we default to the routine, especially when we're in like stressful situations or retired or things like that come up.
So changing how we do schooling to be less less about compliance and more about engagement is hard work.
Well, good coaches are kind of similarly liberated from that classroom practice.
Now they have their own habits of mind. I've kind of talked about like I can remember being a being an athlete in a participant in youth sports and coach was kind of about riling people up and yelling at them when they weren't doing good.
And that didn't really develop lifelong, you know, like people who love the the sport or the activity or who develop those skills or who go who get better at something that they really like.
I got a question for you, Jacob. I want to ask you to kind of reflect on a time in your life where you learned something or you felt really supported and pushed to go outside of your comfort zone.
I mean, even though you're maybe doing something that you love, right? So imagine like you're doing an activity you signed up for you kind of have an affinity for you like doing.
You learned something new you felt supported or pushed to go a little outside your comfort zone.
Do you have it? Do you have it? I'm putting you on the spot. Do you have a memory of a time in your life where you were pushed? Yes. Yes, Johnny, I do.
When it comes to athletics, I've always been terrible. So the only thing I was pushed to do and like football in middle school was go throw up in the bushes.
When it comes to being pushed to learn something, I think in college, when I was trying to get my minor in film, I got some really good instruction from a teacher.
And I bring this into sort of the essential curriculars realm because it's not just like your general eds. It's more pursuing passions.
And in that, I had a really great film teacher who introduced me to silent film and old black and white movies. And so I was born in 1999.
I'm part of the generation who's like, ah, it's black and white. I don't know if I want to watch that. And just seeing his passion for it and having somebody an instructor who could connect with me, share that passion.
And say, hey, no, I like Pulp Fiction too. And if you like Pulp Fiction, you're going to love this movie from 1947.
Okay, well, you're relating it to something I care about and it just opened me up to a whole new world of stuff.
And that guy's my favorite teacher I've ever had because he just shared my passions, brought me into stuff.
And I ended up learning a lot more than if I just had some guy who said, okay, we're watching the Wizard of Oz today. Let's see what happens, you know.
I think that aspect of whether it's coaching or teaching, having somebody who shares your passion, who cares about the same things you do and can expose it even more of it.
That's super important, Johnny. I don't know if you've had that experience.
I have. And I love that you shared that. That's a great example, like just kind of making a connection between something that you that the teacher knew you liked.
And relating it to something maybe foundational or inspirational or related to that to kind of bring value to your whole experience as a learner.
I got a tangent question for you, Jake. Now you brought it up. I mean, like, like, I'm not going to be able to let it go. What's in the briefcase?
Oh, and pull fiction. That's that's Marcellus Wallace's soul, isn't it? That's what I thought too.
I don't think there's a great answer. I think it might be essential education in there, but I don't know for sure.
Oh, there it is. There it is. Popular, popular belief is that it's Marcellus Wallace's soul in the briefcase. Yeah. Jacob's declaring here. And I'm here for it.
That's just the pencils. Well, you let it education toc we're saying what isn't that just.
Education yes. If you watch the movie in carefully, you pay attention to all the clues, when they open up that briefcase, that's just the spirit of education shining through
experience of education that emancipated education, breaking free from traditions of schooling.
There it was. It's quite a metaphor. It's Wallace's briefcase. Yeah. If you haven't seen Paul fiction listener, get out there and watch that film classic.
From when Jacob was born. And I'll say here I was probably 95 when that movie came out.
Johnny was playing hockey and becoming a teacher back then. Okay. So wow, back in the day, just a year before my first year teaching.
So Jacob, you were just a baby. And and here I am. And here you are. Here we are working together.
Now I do generationally here on busted pencils. 25 years later, I get to work with my heroes and make a podcast about education. So it's all worked out.
I love it. I love it. Well, Jacob, all right, not getting into it a little bit here. I want to talk about so when I say coaches can learn a lot from teachers, teachers can learn a lot from coaches.
It's, I want to touch on a few things and you mentioned them and you kind of brought them up, you know, really good coaches. Right. First of all.
coaches have to maintain and this is an all things where they're like whether I talked to chess coaches or, you know, instructional coaches.
Anybody coaching is constantly trying to figure out and navigate how to connect learning.
So they're teaching to a performance to some kind of action. Right. Maybe from your golf coach, like I'm trying to correct help you correct your slice or your hook.
If you're like me, it's always a slice. Right. And my coach is directly thinking about how can he teach me directly related to a performance correct in that swing. Right.
And I think sometimes in education, we can learn from that by, you know, we have to think about everything we're teaching connected to some kind of performance. Well, in the teacher realm, we call that assessment.
And we often call that authentic assessment. So listening out there as a teacher or an education is like, oh, well, those are our assessments are formative and summative assessments.
But it's a reminder that like talk to coaches. I've said this before Jacob teachers learn the most when they're talking to other teachers about teaching.
And I layer on to that have some conversation with coaches or maybe you're both and connect those two worlds.
How are the objectives you're teaching when you're a coach aligned to a performance. That's a big goal that good coaches have.
And that teachers also have mastery of in different ways. And so when they talk to each other about how and why they do that.
Big learning happened in their big changes and instruction for both groups.
Other one Jacob that we kind of distill out in the kind of conversations between coaches and teachers is give more timely feedback.
Oh, excuse me, choking on my, I'm my own coffee here, but here we go.
Jacob every teacher out there's like, walk, walk, walk.
Because this can be ever time consuming. It's one of the things I'm super excited about.
Like Tim, I give him a hard time all the time on the show. I said, Tim, come on, you're really about this AI stuff like side of hand.
But I'm excited about not replacing giving feedback from teachers because I'll get to another point Jacob.
It's really important about both coaching and teaching. That's super essential.
As part of a good learning relationship. But so not replacing the humanness of me giving feedback to my students.
But ways I can learn to utilize AI tools.
To help reduce the amount of time it takes to give meaningful, personable timely feedback.
This is huge AI could be a tool that we know that it feedback is important.
You know this, if you're being coached in anything, real time immediate feedback is going to give you the best kind of the optimal circumstance for change in behavior.
Remember, everything we want to teach is connected to performance. Well, if we want to change that performance somewhat, one of the most important things we could do is give you real time feedback.
Technology has helped that in coaching. And I'm excited Jacob to explore more and busted pencils.
And then my own learning how AI tools can help teachers do that as well.
Like in coaching, you see sometimes the high, like the iPads that they have on the sidelines or the bench or, you know, maybe it's been singing. You're off key.
And you're, and you're choir director can say, hey, hey, you're off key a little bit. Change your pitch, change your tone. I'm not a singer.
I could be using the wrong terms. You know what I mean? You know what I mean out there? If you're a coach or a teacher and a capacity real time feedback connected to also looking at the video of like my golf swing.
Right. Then they say, hey, here's where you need to kind of turn your hips a little bit more. Right. And and put put your wrists and arms forward.
And I see in the video where I'm not doing it in real time. We could correct that. So timely feedback.
So good coaches give a lot of timely feedback. Right. In like day after a game after the maybe maybe 30 minutes after practice or even during practice.
Here's an adjustment you can make. Boom. Huge for the learner.
Building relationships. That's the other one. Great coaches have good relationships with their with their players, their members of their organization.
Good teachers also have great relationships with their students.
Being able to see whether it's your player or your student, which the two I'm going to blur, they kind of become one in itself.
Being able to see that learner in a different light, understanding who they are.
Because that's it. That's a really key aspect to it is the relationship. So building that relationship. Right.
Another dimension. For example, teachers, you all know this listener out there for your teacher that it's sometimes hard to see our students in another light.
But I encourage you all to do it. All the great teachers talk about doing this.
Think about, okay, I understand this person as a language arts learner in third period. But who else are they?
Find something unique about them. Maybe attend another activity at the school and great teachers are always doing this.
Because what they're able to do is see that person in a different light. This is especially important with a struggling learner in our classroom.
Somebody who's providing the behavior challenge to us, understanding what are the things.
How can I see them as a learner, not just a distraction in my classroom, but they might be legitimately.
I've been there like, come on, man, second hour. You know, it's morning, this geometry class.
I got a, I got a whole peanut gallery of goofballs that sit in the back corner.
And you know, in my mind, they're goofballs.
All right, but how can I see them in some other light than just let that kind of assumption stereotype or experience that I'm having with them define them.
They're learners and great teachers out there. No, I'm talking about the same thing for athletes.
Or anyone in your essential curricular activity or thinking about like, hey, got a player.
It's like, man, this guy is always, you know, trying to cheat the drill.
Coach is no one I mean by that. Like they're not giving 100% in practice practice.
Trying to get out of practice. We're talking about practice, Johnny.
We're talking about praxis. Praxis.
Oh man, I brought it up. I went there at the AI.
Okay. Okay. We digress from a previous show.
Clip that praxis. Yeah, I'm talking about praxis.
I, this one I always struggle with. I can tell a player is cheating a drill.
You know, like they're there. They figured out kind of a way to get out of the primary function of the drill, especially if it's a conditioning activity or something.
Jacob, like, you know, sends us to the bushes.
You can or in my case, and hockey to the garbage can. Yeah, you know, where you can, you know, just get rid of the demons and get back to it.
But cheating the drill. I can say, oh, this is a player. He just cheats the drill or she's just trying to get out of the core.
Right. And that can start to cast the stereotypes of the better relationships.
I have knowing them both in that activity and outside of the activity.
The more success I'm going to have the olding some learning around.
How do I get them to change their performance? How do I get them to stay enjoying.
What they love to do. That's why people come to essential curriculars.
That's another thing too about coaching and teaching. Jacob is in our essential curriculars for the most part.
We're able to choose. We're able to, like you said, that's right. Like how you talked about your film class. Yeah, you were saying it's almost like an essential curricular because it's stuff I cared about.
Right. Which is telling to all of us the more school can be.
Things we care about. So if I'm a history teacher or if I'm an English language arts teacher, I'm a biology teacher.
Figuring out ways to have my classroom connect to things that students care about that they're excited to go to is going to change that dynamic.
Right. And that's exciting thing about teaching and coaching is every group has a bunch of here we go with the teacher jargon diverse learners.
Yeah. People who like different things. And the more we learn about those different things as teachers, it's sort of like a built in fun puzzle for good educators, which I'll say are good coaches and good teachers.
Figuring out what things matter to our students, to our participants in their lives and connecting as often as we can, our activities to that.
It's going to make it more meaningful. It's going to make it more engaging and it's going to produce learners all the way around.
So I kind of went off on a Jacob today on a personal kind of connection. I love to make for all of our listeners out there, who are teachers, who are coaches, thank you for what you do.
Because it is absolutely essential. And that's what we're about here bus depensals. Like you said, Jacob, we're we're we're we're looking right into Marcellus Wallace's briefcase.
We're looking into the spirit of education. Yep. And trying to make connections and have conversations. I say it often teachers learn the most when they're talking with other teachers about teaching.
That's what we do here on bus depensals, but coaches are teachers and teachers are coaches. So I kind of get off my soap box Jacob for the day here hurdles and home runs.
Here we are. It's the end of the week wrapping up. But that's my plea. Teachers talk to coaches, coaches talk to teachers, teachers who are coaches, talk to yourselves and others.
Right. Learners out there. Listen and get involved. If you're not part of an essential activity in your school, find one. Right. Find one. Get connected because everybody.
It's a fundamental belief. I have Jacob about being a member of our communities. Everybody should be part of some group where they love what they're doing and they get to be pushed as a learner.
That pushed as a learner part is what we do as coaches. Right. And good teachers are great coaches and great coaches are good teachers.
And all of those things fall into that category of, hey, just getting our learn on together. So Jacob, thanks for today. Listener. Appreciate you. Keep tuning in. Keep downloading and now it is time for your moment loves in.
It is the citizenry rather than the government that is the ultimate source of power and the locomotive that pulls the train of government in the direction of equality and justice.
Thank you, listener for grabbing this episode of busted pencils, hurdles and home runs. And remember to grab great podcasts, chocked full with more busted pencils content on Apple podcasts, Spotify. And of course, you can always get it at the civic media website or come see us at busted pencils.com.
Don't be late for a home room on Monday listeners and be sure to grab next week's class and session on Wednesday. And if you don't already know and you're going to love this, you could catch busted pencils broadcast at 3 p.m. Central time every Saturday across all the civic media's network stations for an hour of your favorite blue college scholars, Tim and Johnny and keep busting pencils.
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