James Sturtevant Hacking Engagement

Yes...I know it's January 8th, but it's not too late to lay the New Year's Resolution Ice-Breaker Game on your students. This goal-setting opportunity affords teachers a wonderful chance to:deputize students in their resolution questenlighten kids about their lives outside the classroommake themselves more approachablegives teachers a needed boost in obtaining their goalshelps kids get to know one anotherencourages students to set goalschallenges kids to make their goals public, which gives goals more umphThis is an exceedingly easy activity to set-up. All you need is a class roster copy for each student and a Padlet Labeled New Year's Resolutions. Pass out a roster to each student and provide each with the Padlet link. I gave my students the following directions:For the next minute, create some resolutions for this year. Please keep the resolutions to yourself and any resolution you publish in this activity must be school-appropriate. Next, choose one resolution you're willing to share. Post it on the Padlet, but DO NOT attach your name!Read each post on the Padlet. Try to match some of the resolutions with your classmates on the roster I provided.

Heard enough? Unfortunately, many adults think that this crop of teenagers are the harbingers of the apocalypse. They are not. The world will go on. Hopefully the previous quotes demonstrate that adults from different times and climbs have felt similar anxiety about their youth. Harry Truman was right; there is truly nothing new in the World.Episode TemplateThe Problem:Teachers can get fed-up with contemporary youth.The Solution:Learn to accept that many student-teacher annoyances are out of your control.What you can do Tomorrow:Make a list of all the things about contemporary youth that you find distasteful.Eliminate everything on the list that is out of your control.Your New Year's resolution is to focus your energy to help students improve in areas where you have influence and to accept aspects of their nature's that you can't control.Learning to focus in this way will help your students and take a huge burden off your shoulders. HAVE A MARVELOUS 2018 AND THANKS FOR LISTENING!

A 30-year teaching gig is no walk in the park. It's hard to imagine anyone doing the same thing for 30 years, but that's exactly what many teachers do. Please don't interpret this statement as negative towards this noble profession. It certainly was not intended that way...it's just human nature to get restless regardless of how much you love a job. I love teaching. I love my students. However, I've gone through seasons in my career when I felt stymied. Such feelings were my primary motivation to write my books and create this podcast. For some teachers, migrating to administration fulfills their goal-oriented natures, but admin is certainly not for everyone. The rest of us mere teachers must generate our own tactics for battling complacency. This episode offers an idea...become Google certified. To talk about this fascinating option is the effervescent Stell Pollard. Stella is a 4th grade Science teacher from Frankfurt, Kentucky. After her rookie year in the classroom, Stella felt like she needed to up her instructional game. She pursued Google certification as a result of this professional restlessness. In the process, she's transformed her classroom and opened professional doors for herself. Stella is going places! She is not only on a mission to create the best possible learning environment for her kids, but she's also on hero's quest to help colleagues do the same.

Episode 83 was a real treat for me. I yakked with Elontra Hall about something near and dear...storytelling. I'm so committed to enhancing this skill in the classroom, that I just couldn't quit with one episode. What makes this episode so special, is I bring back the original sources. Samantha Hart and Merrick Kasper are here to explore storytelling from their perspective. What's interesting, however, is that these two brilliant young folks don't address teachers using stories, but instead kids using stories to peer teach.My students used the hero's journey template to enlighten their peers. Of course my buddies the Hyperdocs Girls have an outstanding hero's journey template ready and waiting for you to copy and transform. In addition to a peer teaching storytelling activity, these young ladies will also introduce you to a neat tool called Storybird. Storybird empowers kids to take a story and transform it into a beautiful and enchanting picture book. It's remarkably easy to use and a highly recommend it. My kids were meandering through a unit on India. We needed to grasp the impact of two remarkable individuals...Siddhartha Gautama and Ashoka. Here's how we did it:Students paired up...one took Gautama and one took Ashoka.Each student then applied their subject to the hero's journey template. Here's my rendition which I created for this assignment. Students made each page of their Storybird a phase in the hero's journey.Kids then enlightened their partner by presenting their Storybird.

April Domine, my former superintendent, once made a power suggestion. She encouraged me to read a book by Daniel H. Pink called A Whole New Mind. It was an amazing recommendation. The crux of the book is that the right side of the brain is going to be the star of the future. The subtext of the title says it all: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. As I read this excellent book, I felt Daniel was verbalizing everything I’ve always felt about the learning process. And to top it off, he is a fellow Buckeye!Daniel devotes an entire chapter to the power of story. In the opening part of the chapter, he refers to earlier parts of the book. One reference is fact-based. He challenges the reader to recall some important specific data point from one of the opening chapters. No doubt, most of the readers struggled to recall a specific statistic...I certainly did. He then asks readers to recall a fascinating comparison between the legendary John Henry, The Steel Driving Man, and Gary Kasperov, the chess champion defeated by the IBM computer in 1997. Both John Henry and Gary Kasperov demonstrated the limitations of even the most skilled and determined human in the face of advancing technology. When Daniel referred to these rich narratives, the feelings I had when I first read them, the moral, and many of the details, immediately surfaced on my hard-drive.Here is what Daniel Pink has to say:Our difficulty retrieving that isolated factoid, and our relative ease summoning the sad saga of Gary Kasperov, aren’t signs of flaccid intelligence or impending Alzheimer’s. They merely demonstrate how our minds work. Stories are easier to remember because, in many ways, stories are how we remember.And here is where my guest Elontra Hall makes a grand entrance. Elontra is from Detroit, but he lives and teaches in the UK. The story about his migration is fascinating and will be explored in this episode. He and I became friends on Twitter and I instantly loved his vibe. I prompted him to be a guest. He agreed as long as he could talk about storytelling. I was totally down with that condition!

Many teachers cringe when they hear “humor in the classroom” because it brings to mind the class clown--the scourge of serious learning. First of all, I want to note that not all class clowns are problematic. Some kids are just delightfully funny and have skills to use their humor without harm or disruption. However, there are class clowns that seem to be “the scourge” because teachers just do not know how to deal with them. In the past, many class clowns faced frightening consequences. (Back in the day, they probably took the brunt of the corporal punishment meted out at the principal’s office.) But regardless of the consequences, every school still had class clowns. It is not acceptable to violate the Geneva Convention; so let’s explore a better way to live with class clowns.Teaching is a tough existence if you are at odds with your students. You can learn to welcome them, appreciate their humor, and keep them from disrupting or dismantling classroom plans or relationships. I’ll share some tips that I have learned from working at this challenge.The most effective way to manage class clowns is to connect with them. Education would be a dull enterprise without their humor. Embrace that they exist, and try to get them on your side. And that dear listener...is what this episode will help you do!

Just the other day...I was cruising down the hallway at my school and I landed on the business end of 3 outstanding compliments in the span of about 5 minutes. These compliments were totally unsolicited and really hit the spot! I felt an adrenaline rush for the remainder of the day as a result. I'll bet you've experienced an unexpected compliment, or two. Didn't you feel like it was Christmas morning?Unfortunately, many are reluctant to praise their fellow man. What a pity. Don't just think, Wow...my buddy is looking really fit. Tell them! They probably need to hear it and it will inspire them to keep working out. When it comes to students, teachers frequently compliment kids on their academic efforts, but how about expanding our repertoire? That's what this episode is about. Two of my original sources...Freshmen Catherine Cook and Audrey Justice will explain the power of teachers paying kids compliments.I'm going to promote a systematic, premeditated, and public way to do just that. The verbal praise coupon is a way to bond with your kids, make them feel great, and perhaps elevate them in the eyes of their peers. If you're tired of awarding the same old extra credit, this episode is for you.

One fine day in my little education world...I witnessed the negative power of sarcasm. I was hanging with a colleague who became frustrated with a student's lack of effort. The young man did not have his assignment. Instead of asking the kid...What happened?Were you unclear on instructions?Tell me what's up.Let me help.my teacher comrade responded to the news of the student's lack of preparation with sarcasm, "Wow...that's really going to prepare you to compete in the global economy!" This volley was well received by the rest of the class. There was much laughter and a few of the young guy's classmates tossed in some verbal darts aimed at the youngster to support their teacher. The young man laughed too, although he blushed. I wondered if he was really okay with the barb. This entire episode might seem innocent. I'll argue however, that it was a poor relational move on the instructor's part. The teacher absolutely elevated himself at the expense of his student. I don't know if the kid was injured by the comment, but it's conceivable that the sarcasm could have reinforced many of the insecurities the boy already had about himself. While his exterior was saying, "Good one Mr. X. You got me there!" Internally, he may have thought, Wow. I guess it's true. Maybe, I am irresponsible. Maybe, I do have a bleak future. I certainly don't know if these thoughts were deviling this kid, but why risk it? I'll argue that you should purge sarcasm from your classroom. This may be a tall order because sarcasm can be a vice. At the time of consumption it feels real good, but the aftershocks can be unsavory. Let's get rid of this tendency and your students can help in this process.

Russell Doup is my nephew. Russell Doup is a 25-year-old stockbroker and former Ohio State football player. Russell Doup is living with his uncle...yours truly...while he builds his client base. Consequently, we hang out a lot. About a month ago, we watched The Founder the story of Ray Kroc who was the force behind McDonald's. We both loved the movie. Ray, played by Michael Keaton, was a champion networker. He used this skill to transform a small hamburger stand in California into a dominant multinational corporation. Russell is a 24/7 networker. We agreed that the movie was inspirational and it inspired a passionate conversation about networking.Watching the movie challenged me to inventory all the times I've benefited from networking. I met my lovely wife through social networking (this was old school social networking prior to the internet...I'm talking 1988). Every teaching interview I've landing was the result of personal and direct networking. As Russell and I sat on the couch and discussed the implications of The Founder, a thought struck me, Networking is darned important, but schools don't teach kids how to do it. I turned to my nephew and asked if he ever learned about networking in school. He responded negatively. My experience as a student was the same. In the midst of this Eureka moment, I knew I had to do an episode on networking featuring my networking nephew!

On a brilliant October afternoon a couple of decades ago, the fire alarm shattered the tranquility. Our school was experiencing a gas leak. The students and staff hurriedly spilled out of the building and marched on to the practice football field. We were told to stay put and wait till the all clear signal could be issued. You've probably experienced such situations...1,000 adolescents herded outside and told to wait patiently. It was bedlam!What I found so interesting was the reactions of the kids. They exited their institutionalized classrooms into a beautiful day and immediately came to life. As they frolicked in the afternoon sun, one droll young man approached me and said the following, Mr. Sturtevant...our staff much looks better in artificial lighting. I laughed uproariously, but the comment struck me. Just maybe it takes removing kids from a bland, sterile, uniform, institutionalized setting to stoke their creative juices and find joy. And here dear reader, is where Dr. Casey Ewy makes a dramatic appearance. Dr. Casey teaches at Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Manhattan Kansas. Dr. Casey is all about DEINSTITUTIONALIZING classrooms. Her objective is to build a family atmosphere in her room which will bolster relationships, ignite creativity, and stoke engagement. Joining her on today's episode is her team of like-minded colleagues Richard Hancock, Haley Smith, and Heather Smith.

When evaluating a new tech tool, I must be able to use it within 5 minutes...or I just bag it. If I can't figure it out by then, my students will be lost. I was conducting a PD session in Ft. Worth this past summer. A young lady called me over and said, "Have you heard of Flipgrid and if so, have you used it?" My answer was, No and no. I made a mental note to try it when the school year started, but I remember thinking...It has to pass my ease of use test. Last week was 8 weeks in and I finally got around to it. I'm glad I did!Flipgrid is a cool way to encourage student voice. You record a video question and then kids record a 1 to 90-second video on their smartphones or Chromebooks in response. I mastered Flipgrid in about 3 minutes. My students figured it out in 2. This tool is great in terms of providing a creative vehicle for student expression. In last week's episode, Chrissy Romano warned that ostentatious presentation tools like Flipgrid might unravel introverted kids. My response, which Chrissy liked by the way, was to take anxiety away by permitting students who were uncomfortable to interview someone.To help me in my Flipgrid explanation quest is an awesome original source. Aharon Rockwell is a freshman and in my Global Studies class. Aharon knew I had a podcast and approached me about being a guest. I jumped at his offer and I'm glad I did. He's a great guest!

A number of years ago, I took the Myers & Briggs personality assessment. I was tabbed an ENFP. When I read the description of my type, I was thrilled. I thought, Yup that's me and I'm glad it's me. My enthusiasm, particularly for the E classification which stands for extrovert, was well-founded. Being an extrovert is the gold standard in America, particularly in our schools. As students, extroverts are the volunteers, the kids who make cheesy videos, the guys who march up to the homecoming queen and ask them out (my wife was a homecoming queen), and the students who inject levity into drab academic settings. As teachers, extroverts are the hams. Even worse, many extroverts seem determined to transform quiet contemplative students into mini versions of them. Extroverts say things like, I'm going to pull you out of your shell, or... Put yourself out there. I've done this! I must change!And here's where my stunning guest, Chrissy Romano-Arribato from the Garden State, makes her grand entrance. As impressive as Chrissy truly is, I invited her on this episode because she's a proud introvert. She's going to help blowhards like me help the 1/3rd of my students that are introverted.

I became politically aware in 1968...my 7th year of existence. The world seemed on fire. The young Jimmy Sturtevant was busy being a kid, but events kept invading my innocence. In April of that year, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Just weeks later, Robert Kennedy suffered the same fate. The insanity of the Democratic convention in Chicago monopolized TV coverage, but what really captivated the young me was the Mexico City Olympic Games. I watched in wonder as one African-American athlete after another shattered world records in the high altitude of Central Mexico. One black American gold medal winner climbed the podium, donned a black glove, raised his fist in the air, and then bowed his head during the National Anthem. This moment came back to me this past week when the NFL/National Anthem controversy descended. I knew that I had to do an episode on this topic. My objective is not to promote my views, but rather to help brother and sister educators navigate the rhetorical minefield that is this issue. I also knew that I needed help. I decided to share my mic with someone who doesn't look like me...someone who has had a different life experience. And that my dear listener...is where my good buddy Marlena Gross Taylor makes a dramatic entrance. In this episode, Marlena and I will break down this issue and build you up in the process. We'll give you courage to tackle your fears and take on this controversy confidently.

I like to think that I have a wonderful rapport with my students. And yet…I’m still their teacher which is a significant barrier. I also have 40 years on my kids. To them, I’m someone who has a lot more yesterdays than tomorrows. My observations on their lives, while I hope respected and valued, does not carry the weight of a peer.Just 4 sentences into this intro, the wonderful word peer makes its grand entrance. Peer acceptance, peer constructive criticism, peer praise, and peer collaboration are the powerful fuels that ignite and propel the outstanding education tool called Peergrade. Anyone who’s taught for more than 5 minutes knows the power of peer influence.In this episode, I’ll interview David Kofoed Wind the founder of Peergrade. Peergrade is a marvelous way to capitalize on kid’s natural inclination to listen to their peers. This tool randomly assigns student creations to classmates and then guides and monitors evaluations. Peer feedback is not only highly valued but it’s also welcomed because it’s often couched in contemporary youth vernacular. Kids understand how to communicate with other kids. And finally, a student evaluator who focuses on just one narrative written by just one peer does not suffer eye-strain and fatigue that teachers often experience wading through 100 student narratives. A 1 on1 evaluation experience is a fresher, focused, and perhaps more useful interaction.Joining me in the Room 111 Studios is Kristen Spayde. Kristen may sound familiar. She starred in Episode 39 about going paperless and in Episode 58 when we dished with the HyperDocs Girls. Please give this awesome tool a try!

f you've taught for any time what so ever, you've probably suffered through painfully boring student presentations. And if you were bored, think of the other students. Let’s strive to make such presentations are:More attractiveMore engagingLess time-consumingMore interactiveIn order to create such presentations, your kids must first run the gauntlet.According to various sources, fifteen to twenty words is the average sentence length. That seemed long, till I actually wrote a sentence:When I was in high school, I would have laughed uproariouslyif anyone had informed me that I was destined to be a teacher. (24 words)This will be a wonderful challenge for your students. They may revolt. Not only is it important to reduce the number of words, the limit will also hopefully dissuade copying and pasting. This awful practice flirts with plagiarism and makes for exceedingly dull presentations as students drone the words of another.