Punk Rock Preschool Podcast

Today we are doing our first interview on the Punk Rock Preschool Podcast, and it is not one you want to miss. Our guest today is Author, Podcaster, Graphic Designer, Coach, Entrepreneur, and Creator, Christopher Hines. Chris runs the Greatness Podcast Network, which includes podcasts on education, business, finance, community, mindset, and all the other tools for people to create their own successes. Speaking of successes, Chris hosts the Key to Success Podcast as well as five other shows! You’re going to be so inspired by Chris’ grind and hustle and incredible attitude!  You can follow him on twitter at @imjusgreatness, you can pre-order his book, Major 3: Grow to your Goals on Amazon, and you can learn and be inspired by his story, right now! Show Times: * 01:28 – Christopher Hines Introduction * 02:25 – Major 3 – Chris explains how he went from living in his car to being on the verge of breakout success * 06:52 – “Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” * 09:33 – Be yourself and follow your dreams, even if others don’t understand. * 12:05 – “Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler.” * 14:06 – Who is your biggest hero or mentor? * 15:26 – What is your version of success? * 19:09 – What would you do if you won the lottery tomorrow? * 20:46 – “Failure is good.” * 22:18 – Try whatever it is you want to do. You’ll never know unless you try! * 24:02 – How to “Grow to Your Goals” * 25:56 – How to connect with Chris & purchase Major 3: Grow to Your Goals   Resources Mentioned in the Podcast: * Major 3: Grow to Your Goals * Greatness Podcast Network * Key to Success Podcast * Grow to your Goals Merch * @imjusgreatness *  Eric Thomas Speeches

Has anyone ever told you that public trackers “don’t work?” I’ve heard this plenty, but I’ve seen public tracking work with my own two eyes, for myself and for other teachers. I’ve also seen teachers run their class exceptionally without any trackers, either for behavioral or academic motivation. Frankly, I don’t know how there are hundreds of pages of literature dedicated to this idea that public trackers don’t work, can’t work, will never work when there are so many examples proving that sometimes, they do work!  A public tracker (whether for behavior or academic tracking) is a tool. And like any tool, it can be used well or it can be used poorly. Think of a hammer. A hammer is a tool that can be used to break things and cause violence and destruction in the wrong hands. But in the hands of an engineer or an inventor or an architect or a carpenter, a hammer can be used to build and create amazing things. You’re the carpenter in this story! You would never use your public tracker to shame or embarrass kids, so it won’t go wrong! If you teach your students that a public tracker is a tool for them to see what they’ve accomplished and what is still ahead, why would they see it any other way? They won’t! They will see the tracker as a motivator and a metric. When you build the classroom culture around teamwork and encouragement, a public tracker could be the ultimate tool for your kids to take ownership over their education!  The status-quo is concerned that public trackers can harm kids’ self-esteem.  But self-esteem does come from a bulletin board in your classroom! Self-esteem comes from hard work and effort and your own attitude. Self-esteem is what you think of yourself, not what you think of yourself compared to other people. It certainly has nothing to do with seeing your name or initials up on the wall! The only way kids will think that a tracker can have any effect on how they feel about themselves is if we, as teachers, believe that it can. If you tell the class, “The tracker helps us learn as a team and challenge ourselves to reach our full potential,” there won’t be any bragging or gloating or shame or embarrassment coming from the tracker. Ironically, rather than creating some cutthroat culture where every student wants to be at the top, the public trackers have the potential to build a much stronger community among students! For example, when some students have all their letters and they have made their way to the end of the tracker, they don’t take this opportunity to puff out their chests. They go back and help the kids who may still be stuck on their first few letters! What makes kids take this approach? Listen here and get the full story! In our public tracker, a “Land of I Can” seen above, each student had a fish, a duck, a monkey, an airplane, and a caterpillar that each represented a different content area. * Duck (Uppercase Letters) – Traveling to the Pond * Fish (Lowercase Letters) – Traveling to the Pond * Monkey (Letter Sounds) – Traveling up the Tree * Airplane (Number Recognition) – Traveling Cloud to Cloud to the Sun * Caterpillar (Count to 100) – Traveling along number line to Flowers

How do kids learn self-control and self-discipline? How can they take ownership of their educations and remind themselves to make great choices in school? Self-discipline can’t happen by accident! It comes from teachers modeling discipline and being consistent with it! Always enforcing your classroom rules and expectations doesn’t make you a disciplinarian. It makes you a great teacher because you are constantly providing reminders to your students on how to make the best choices and build the best habits! Discipline doesn’t have to mean punishment. Self-discipline certainly isn’t self-punishment. If we reframe “discipline” to mean structure, focus, and self-control, then we all want lots of discipline in our classrooms! Alternatively, if we don’t enforce the classroom rules and expectations with consistency, kids don’t see us as a fun, easy-going, laid back teacher – all they see is a rule that they can get away with breaking! Let’s send the right message! Give your students the skills of resilience and grit, while still “letting kids be kids.” Now, I’m not exactly sure what it means to “let kids be kids.” I hope it doesn’t mean to avoid responsibility, but sometimes that’s how it seems when I hear people talk about it. Please leave your thoughts in the comments. What do you think when you hear the phrase, “Let kids be kids?” Kids are the best, but at the same time, they are limited in their experiences! Our job as teachers is to expand their minds, inspire them with knowledge, and empower kids by helping them find their passions! Kids can’t run every aspect of the classroom and their interests shouldn’t be the only thing that drives the learning. Not because they aren’t interesting, but because they only have three or four years of limited experiences! There is a ton of joy and magic in a child’s imagination, but there is even more magic in a child’s potential! So expose them to all new worlds, cultures, landscapes, architecture, art, science, etc. and help them pursue the things they love with all their energy! You can still play and have fun! You can still learn a ton and also have responsibility! Play is important but it is not a substitute for responsibility. You can make responsibility empowering and awesome. Kids can “be kids,” engage in play-based learning, and still have responsibility and self-discipline. Find out how on this week’s episode! If you want to have high academic expectations, your classroom also needs high behavior expectations. There are a lot of ideas where I will tell you to find your own style and do your own thing, but this is a rule that I’ve encountered that seems to be pretty hard-and-fast. Kids will struggle to learn at a pre-k level if their behavior expectations match that of a younger child. Ensuring behavior expectations match academic expectations is the one way you can guarantee that your kids have the focus and attention to match their cognitive gains. It is so important that we don’t sell kids short and we give them the responsibilities they can hand...

“There are two things a person should never be angry at: what they can help and what they can not.” Plato knew the deal. This wisdom has existed for centuries! Let’s pass it on to our students so they have the work ethic and mindset to create their own futures! So how do we teach kids to stick with a problem, work hard, and persevere in the face of challenges, especially in a world so reliant on immediate gratification? How do you convince kids that the uncomfortable stages of growth are totally worth sticking through in order to get that feeling of accomplishing your dreams? Should you expect your students to trust your word that “hard work pays off?” Or can we show, rather than tell? A popular meme in the self-help community is “Comfort vs. Growth” and it’s probably an important concept to pass on to the future leaders of the world. It’s hard to be growing as a person in your endeavors and in your personal life if you are always in a comfortable position. Growth is about challenging yourself to be the best you can be! Growth means taking yourself to your limits and then past them! And you can’t grow if you don’t push yourself. That’s a nice pep-talk, but it’s still talk. How can we show students that growth is worth the time, effort, and discomfort? How can we help kids make that instant connection, so they buy-in right away to put in the work on the long haul? We get into all the examples on this week’s episode, but in particular, we discuss some especially fun ways to teach resilience and grit by doing exercise and yoga with your classroom! When teaching exercise, go ahead and exercise with your students! But make sure to show kids how exercise only works if you challenge yourself! Pick up two markers or pencils or anything around the classroom that doesn’t weigh too much. Then, begin bench pressing them with all your might like you are lifting 300 lb. weights! There’s no way you will grow your muscles lifting these little tiny markers! You need to challenge yourself! Plus, you look silly lifting these markers. Your students will see it right away. It’s clear as can be! When you don’t challenge yourself, you look silly and it is obvious to everyone else! This is a great visual and physical representation of how hard work and taking on challenges pays off! You can also teach Yoga and flexibility to help students “feel the burn!” They know exaclty when their muscles are stretching because that’s when it starts to get a little uncomfortable! But just like exercise, it’s not a bad discomfort — it’s your body telling you that you’re growing! It feels great to push yourself and grow and feel your muscles opening up! The longer you do Yoga with the class, the more results you will see! For even more examples, including how to use Meditation to the same goal, listen to the full episode here!

How do you pick the themes you teach? Do you lesson plan yourself or with a team of teachers? Do you use your school’s provided lessons or do you create your own curriculum and teach what you love? If you want more freedom and flexibility, you should take it! You deserve to have fun! Listen here and get all the tools to design a curriculum that works for you and your classroom!   In this episode, we go through a week-by-week, unit-by-unit, and even a day-to-day breakdown to help you develop and organize a curriculum that is filled with your favorite topics and teaches subjects that truly matter to your students! During my training with Teach for America, the organization stressed an important value of “urgency.” Until I developed my own curriculum, I never realized exactly what TFA was trying to emphasize. After all, it seemed like urgency and Pre-K didn’t together in the least bit. Boy, was I wrong. Soon, urgency drove everything. Urgency meant filling each day, each week, each month – filling every second of the year with meaningful, important work! I got into work at 6:30 every morning and I couldn’t stand missing school because every day we were learning something important! When you love school and you love what you’re teaching, you feel that urgency everyday! For example, you can’t wait to teach about predators and prey so the class can learn about food chains and from there they can better understand ecosystems and from there they can get a better grip on how our actions (pollution) affects all the living things in an ecosystem. That’s just one example of how each day, each week, and each unit builds on the next. For the full breakdown of how to scaffold, structure, and organize your year, listen to this week’s episode and download our freebie below. By structuring your year so every lesson builds on the last, you will gain so many opportunities to reinforce past lessons and concepts! Add to the list provided in the freebie! Include your passions and any other topic that you think will inspire or prepare your students for the world!  Pick and choose your favorite subjects and teach the topics that need teaching the most! Build life skills, social skills, and critical thinking skills into your units! Speaking of life skills, with each unit, we learn about a job that goes along with the week’s theme. For example, when we learn about Outer Space, students also discover that they can be an Astronomer or an Astronaut! When we learn about Dinosaurs, if kids find their passions, they know they can one day become a Paleontologist. Empower your students by giving them a path to pursue their passions. Give yourself the freedom and flexibility to have fun in your classroom! If you want to design your year, your weeks, and your days so you are no longer limited by time blocks & clunky excel sheets, we have everything you need right here. Thank you so much for joining us this week (I’m sorry about the leaf blower in the backgroun...

Teaching and parent communication don’t have to be separate things. For Mother’s Day, give moms (and dads) the best gift ever – an opportunity to see their child’s growth every single day! Most parents wish they could spend the day with their child so let’s give them the next best thing! Build parent communication into your day-to-day schedule by using social media! When you post your students’ work on the wall, post it on the Facebook wall as well!  Move your classroom into the 21st century and involve parents with daily updates! In this episode, learn how you can keep parents happy and up-to-date without taking any additional time from your already busy day! Find out how you can use each social media service to share your classroom’s accomplishments! * Create a Facebook group for weekly updates and sharing moments. * Post classroom work to Instagram! * Share the funniest student quotes on Twitter. * Give parents access to your favorite resources on Pinterest and YouTube. *Make sure to get all necessary permissions from district, school, and parents before posting any classroom images on social media. You can adjust the privacy settings on most social media accounts to limit access to parents.* If you want to learn how to use each of these platforms in your classroom, download our latest episode. In the past, you relied on print newsletters in the backpacks, phone calls after school, and home-visits on select occasions to communicate with parents. Now, it’s easier to communicate in the digital world than it is in the physical world. Most parents are on social media, so take advantage of the widespread reach that these channels offer you! Build a classroom community online! In an online community, parents can connect with one another, set up play-dates, and make friendships that mirror those of their children! That’s pretty cool! By using these online updates, parents are privy to exactly what their children are learning each week. When students rush home and excitedly tell mom and dad what they learned in school, now mom and dad can respond with all of the context they need! Because you shared your Pinterest boards and YouTube playlists, parents can take the learning one step further! We all want great relationships with parents and families. But teaching can be an exhausting job! When you make a positive phone call home, you want it to be authentic and in good spirits, but sometimes the day doesn’t always cooperate. When 3:00 PM rolls around, you may be zapped, stressed, or just not in the mood to make that phone call. But with the classroom social media accounts, all you have to do is take a picture and click a button. With that simple gesture, you will empower parents! By showing parents what is happening in class, they are more equipped to reinforce all of the important concepts at home! In these online chats, you can talk to parents frequently and answer their questions right away.  Make yourself available!

Are you ready for a breakthrough? At the end of the year, it’s more likely we are going to be having a breakdown! In this episode, learn how to unleash your students’ full potential in the final part of your school year so they are inspired to leave a permanent mark on history! (You can catch up on ACT I: Discovering Potential & ACT II: Unlocking Potential) In ACT III, breakthroughs are in no short supply! In fact, the entire unit is focused all around breakthroughs in art and science! Using these two media, students will unleash their potential on the world and create their own inventions and imaginings to last through the generations. In the final Act, we take the lessons from ACT I and II to a whole new level. Even bigger than changing the world, artists and scientists can change history! Shakespeare, Beethoven, Michelangelo! Einstein, Galileo, Newton! These are names that ring out throughout history! Teach your students to be the future artists and scientists that leave a permanent mark on the world.  Great works of art, ground-breaking inventions, symbolic architecture — they all outlast their times.  Show kids that they can bring their wildest dreams and imaginings to life! When you create something incredible, people will tell your story for generations.  Unleashing potential means that when the story of your classroom ends, the story that the world will one day tell – that one is just beginning. Let’s get your story started right now. Creativity is bringing imagination to life. So in Act III, you create. Create your own collages, mosaics, murals, sculptures, and portraits. Create your own t-shirt designs and then bring them to life. And more than anything else, create your own stories with each student putting creating their own characters with their own conflicts who spread their own message that can reach the entire world. That’s the power you have! To give your students a way to unleash their ideas on the world! Help them share their stories! Help them express what they think is important! By creating an art portfolio of all different types of expression – as well as teaching performance art (acting, dancing, singing, & musical instruments) and making music videos, students saw their chance to spread their message and share their passions with the world! It was all within their grasp and it never has to leave! Now with all that creativity and changing history, you make think we are finished… Nope! We still have to explore the reaches of the galaxy, discover the latest cure to save humanity, and invent the newest gadget to revolutionize the world. The next life-changing breakthrough is right around the corner. If you’re ready to have your own breakthrough, listen to the full episode here! Thanks so much for joining us this week! Did you think of some important skills I missed?

Do you want to save money, teach kids personal responsibility, and make the school day run much smoother all at the same time? If this sounds too good to be true, you are going to love what you learn in this week’s episode! When you start the school-year, your classroom is filled with brand new crayons, sharpened pencils, untouched watercolors, and glue-sticks that have never seen their caps removed. Ahhh. Good times. But those good times soon become a romanticized memory. School kicks into gear. Crayons break. Caps are lost. Markers dry out. The watercolors become colored water.  At that point it feels like you have two choices: (1) get annoyed that students are careless with class supplies and replace them OR (2) resign yourself to the fact that preschoolers aren’t always going to take care of class supplies and replace them. I didn’t like either of these options and I’m sure you don’t either! Any option where you have to constantly replace broken and mistreated classroom supplies is less than ideal.  That’s why I stopped asking students to take care of the classroom supplies. Instead, I asked them to take care of their own supplies! I gave each student their own packs of crayons, watercolors, pencils, and glue-sticks, and, wouldn’t you know, they started taking much better care than they ever did before!  Find out just how to make this work in your classroom in this week’s episode! The reason this worked so well in my classroom isn’t a mystery; it can all be explained by the Tragedy of the Commons and the concept of moral hazard. Now this is about to get a little wordy but bear with me; I’ll bring it back to make sense. Wikipedia’s definition of the tragedy of the commons explains, “the tragedy of the commons is a situation within a shared-resource system (your classroom) where individual users acting independently (students) according to their own self-interest (getting work done) behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action (using up glue-sticks, coloring too hard).” Moral hazard is the idea that when you don’t have to suffer the consequences for your actions, you are probably going to be less cautious than if you had to deal with those consequences. So if a student forgets to put the cap back on a glue-stick and then that student puts the glue-stick back into the class supply to dry out, will that student ever realize they did this? They can just get a new working glue-stick the next time the class does an activity! No consequences. And not only will there be no consequences, this student may never even learn that they put the glue back incorrectly and so the mistake will repeat. Starting to sound familiar? To solve this problem, I stopped asking students to take care of the class’ supplies and I started asking them to take care of their supplies! Here’s how it looked: Every student in our classroom had their own pencil box that belonged only to them. Each box was filled with a pencil, an eraser, a glue-stick, a 16-pack of crayons, a pair of scissors, and pack of watercolors. These items were each student’s responsibility. If they broke a crayon or left their glue-stick dried out, they would have to replace it by using the money t...

What does your perfect curriculum look like? I’m not asking about THE perfect curriculum, because there is no such thing! There is only YOUR perfect curriculum. What works for you? What do you want to teach? How can you bring energy, passion, and enthusiasm to class every day and leave your students with the skills and mindsets to succeed in the world? Find the most important, inspiring, fascinating, and attention-grabbing topics and empower your classroom with a love of learning! Teach the subjects that make your eyes go wide and your voice get loud with excitement! Whatever that is, bring it into the classroom and everyone will see great results! No matter how advanced, if you love something and care about it, you will be able to explain it to your students! I guarantee it. Don’t just tell kids that learning is fun! Show them! Help your students understand why you are so passionate about these topics you are bringing into the classroom. When you build a curriculum that intentionally brings out your enthusiasm, students respond in kind with more enthusiasm! They want to find passions of their own and you have the opportunity to show them just how to do it! I never wanted to have to under-sell the school-year to parents. I wanted parents to be excited and thrilled by what their child would learn. That never happened as long as I was opening Parent-Teacher conferences by saying, “This year, we are learning our colors and farm animal noises.” That’s not exciting! So instead I told them how their children were going to learn about art and science and the environment and outer space! I told parents that our class was going to learn to read and write and become rock star entrepreneurs! I loved Parent-Teacher conferences because it was an opportunity to share all the awesome things we were learning and set the best expectations! Parents left these conferences knowing that their child was going to learn a ton (or thinking that I was a pretty crazy teacher) – but either way, by the end of the year, everyone was thrilled! Because we learned everything I said — and then some! If you want to get parents just as excited about the school year, this is the episode for you! To make YOUR perfect curriculum, you have to teach the things you love. This injects a new level of energy, love, and enthusiasm into everything you do. More so, it models a passion that your students soon want to find for themselves. And even bigger than the topics that inspire, what are the topics that kids need to learn to succeed? What are the life-skills, mindsets, and habits that students can use going forward to make their lives better? I didn’t just focus the Punk Rock Preschool Curriculum on health, civics, business, art, science, and environmentalism because I am passionate about those things. I focused on these things because I want my students to truly become the future leaders of the world and these are the fields in which I felt I could help them do it. These topics may be different for you. In fact, your curriculum probably should be different! Because it is your curriculum! What do you think students need to know? What are the topics that are missing from a K-12 public education?

Your perfect school-year continues in this episode of the Punk Rock Preschool Podcast! After your class discovers that learning is everywhere – in the classroom, in their home, in their community, in the world, and in their lives – they are going to want to put this knowledge to good use! Students have started to discover their passions and they are beginning to see how all they’ve learned in school is coming together into something great. After covering letters, sounds, numbers, and much more during the first half of the year, your students now have all the keys to learning on their own and unlocking their potentials! We jump from students discovering their potential in ACT I to helping them use everything they learned about school, the world, and themselves to go forward and unlock their potentials in ACT II! Lights, camera, action! The first half of the year was an introduction to school and an introduction to learning. You taught your classroom how much they could accomplish in the world and they began to believe in themselves. By learning about nature and the environment, kids recognized that they could literally change and impact the world. And once the class understands that they can change the world, it’s our  job to start showing them how! That’s what we discuss in this episode of the Punk Rock Preschool Podcast! Show your students that everything you learn can be applied to your life! Every student can their knowledge to not only make their lives better but to also make the world a better place! In ACT II, we get into lots of the examples on how to make this crystal-clear in your classroom. In the Punk Rock Preschool Curriculum, ACT II is also known as “The World of Success.” In this 9-week unit that made up the third quarter of the school-year, our class learned about health, civics, and business. With each of these units, we used what we learned in school to make our lives better. In the Healthy Kids Curriculum, which you can purchase here, kids can immediately feel the benefits of breathing, meditation, stretching, exercise, sleep, bathing, etc. so they knew that the more they learned about health, the stronger, faster, and healthier they would be! Students saw exactly how what they learned in school made an impact on their lives – and it made them feel better! And since we learned in ACT I that we can make an impact in the world by recycling, students are already primed and ready to go!  They already know they can make an impact on the world! So now take that opportunity and show them ALL the ways they can leave a positive effect on themselves, their communities, and society as a whole! In this episode, find out how you can teach four and five-year-olds how to use government, charity, and business to make their mark on the world! “Unlocking Potential” can definitely sound buzz-wordy. That’s why I like to think of it more like  giving kids an outlet to use what they learn. By helping kids unlock their potential and use what they learn to champion causes that...

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” Ben Franklin, as always, dropping wisdom. And as I’ve found, listening to actual philosophers usually affords the best teaching philosophy.  In this case, it’s spot-on. But how do you get kids involved in a preschool discussion every single day? Stop asking students to raise their hands! Find out how you can make this work in your classroom. When I called on students individually, the class could never keep their focus for very long.  Students’ attention spans would slowly fade as they waited for each of their classmates to work through an answer. By the time you’ve called on all twenty students, most of them have tuned out. Not to mention, this slow process zaps the energy and excitement that you built with the hook of your lesson. It’s no wonder Einstein said, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” I know what you must be thinking. “No hand raising? It still sounds hectic and wild and like a crazy classroom!”  Well, maybe… but that’s what excited, involved participation looks like! The classroom is electric! I am willing to deal with a louder, more excited classroom if it also means this kind of excitement. By removing the barriers to participation and encouraging students to join in on the fun, carpet time will become the greatest part of the day! Instead of calling on every student, come to the carpet and ask every student to call out! Watch as participation, engagement, and the energy in your classroom jump to new levels you never thought possible! If my students had an idea to share, I wanted to hear it!  Each morning I would ask an open-ended question, then we would open up the floor to a free-for-all of rapid fire responses. During this extreme brainstorm, it felt you like you were actually in a hurricane or tornado of answers!  Before you know it, kids will be throwing answers at you faster than you can handle! To get a better feel for these open-ended questions listen to Episode 008: How to Teach Critical Thinking in Preschool. You can also purchase our weekly lesson plans that include everything you’ll need to help your students make high-level connections and participate at the most in-depth levels. Now this may still sound a little chaotic, after all I just said kids will be “throwing” answers at you and it will feel like a “hurricane or tornado.”  Even if that’s the case, this podcast episode is your lifeboat in the storm (the brainstorm, that is). I’ll always be straight-up with y’all. I had concerns when I started this style too. Thankfully, in spite of my worries, students began to adapt to the free-for-all environment and their personalities boomed! And I’ll admit it — I was a bit surprised!   The first surprise had to do with our class ended up developing an extremely strong culture of respect. By shouting out answers and having students talk over one another, you would think that would send the wrong message about respecting the ideas and sharing time with others. Not so! Whenever I would call on a student to explain their answers, the rest of the class would fall silent and listen. This is because we always knew that we could learn from anyone and everyone and we should always listen when someone had the floor. Our classroom rule was eyes and ears on the speaker; not the teacher. By not raising hands,

What does your perfect year look like?  As you and your students embark on all of your learning adventures, what will be the story of your classroom? How does your journey begin and how do you want it to end? Listen here as we write the perfect script and turn your school-year into a blockbuster movie! Like any great movie, we need a compelling hero to save the day. Luckily you have the most compelling cast of characters imaginable: your students! The kiddos in your class are the heroes of this story, and we are all rooting for them to succeed! With such a strong supporting cast of friends, family and teachers, there’s nothing these little heroes can’t accomplish as they take on the world! And, as any hero should, your students will face some challenges, but through these challenges, they will learn and grow and eventually save the day! That first paragraph was the movie trailer. Now that you’ve seen the preview, let’s get into Act I of this future Oscar-Award Winning film, Discovering Potential. * ACT I – Kids Discovering Potential * ACT II – Kids Unlocking Potential * ACT III – Kids Unleashing Potential For a full breakdown of these three acts and what they mean (not just buzzwords, I swear!), listen here.  Dedicate the beginning of your year to helping students discover the joy of learning. Make an awesome first impression and start the year off right. Help your students discover their roles and responsibilities in the classroom, school, and community.  Help kids discover who they are and what they love by exposing them to the world and inspiring passions. And help these little people discover that with hard work and a love of learning, they can all change the world. Instead of pouring all of your energy into trying to convince a crying students that school “is going to be alright,” kick it up a notch and convince them that school is going to be incredible! With the right tone and enthusiasm, most kids can be convinced that anything is cool enough to give it a shot. And with YouTube and Netflix you literally have the most amazing resources in the world to persuade your students that learning and school are awesome. In this episode, we go over all the discoveries your students will make in the first part of the year, so they can unlock and unleash their potentials throughout the rest of their lives! Not only will kids discover all that school has to offer, but they will soon discover that learning is all around them! The first part of our curriculum is designed to teach students this hugely important observation! In the Punk Rock Preschool curriculum, we start the year with units on school, teamwork, & confidence.  These three weeks focus on how our classroom is a team, our roles in that team, and how working together helps us accomplish our goals. Then we jump into community, geography, and culture. Students then discover that learning continues as we expand out from the school and classroom bubble to the community, city, country, and eventually the world — virtually traveling the globe to see all the learning that exists in every corner of the planet! Finally,

What is critical thinking and how do you explain it to a class of four and five-year-olds? One of my students summed it up best when she said, “Mr. G! My brain is talking!” Yup, that’s pretty much the best explanation of “thinking” I can imagine. And it got me thinking, “Critical thinking must be when  your brain isn’t just talking; it’s when your brain is asking all the right questions!” So how do your students go from “my brain is talking” to thinking through and answering super high-level, open-ended questions on their own?  Find out in this week’s episode: How to Teach Critical Thinking in Preschool. Socrates once said, “Understanding a question is half an answer.” This is 100% true in preschool! Whenever you ask an open-ended question, it can be hit-or-miss: students either respond in a hurricane of answers or you are met with blank stares and silence.  Here’s an example. When I would ask my students, “What are all the animals that live in the ocean?” I may one or two answers of “fish” followed by blank stares and silence. And that’s okay! I’ve been there! Sometimes, it almost makes you want to shy away from asking these open-ended questions because that silence can be so uncomfortable. But the trick is to take Socrates’ advice and help your students understand the question! Ask it again and again and again and put it in their terms. Get on their level! Reframe and rephrase and lead them down the right path until the question clicks for them! Kids know plenty of ocean animals; they are just not coming to mind right away because students starting off preschool and pre-k need a little help making those connections! They need help knowing what questions their brains should be asking. Always assume your students know the answers; they just need help realizing that the information in their heads in their heads is linked to what you are asking. So help them out by asking the follow-up “Socratic Questions!” For example, after asking, “What are all the animals that live in the ocean?” I would then try to ask the question in as many different ways as I can to help my students make the connections from what they already know to what we are talking about right now! Here are some questions I would ask to help model the thinking process and set an example for the questions they will start asking themselves: * Who are some animals that live with SpongeBob in the ocean? What are some animals in Finding Nemo or Finding Dory? * What are the biggest animals in the ocean? What are the scariest? The weirdest? * What are some animals with shells? What are some animals that aren’t fish but still live in the ocean? * What are some kinds of fish? What fish do you have for pets? What are some fish that you eat? * Describe specific animals that they may know but didn’t already get. See if you can give them clues to guess. i.e. seahorse, octopus, shrimp, etc. These are just a few examples of the questions you can ask to help your class start answering any open-ended question on any theme. By asking follow-up questions and reframing your original question, you are teaching your students what kinds of questions to ask themselves “in their brains!” You are modeling the thinking process and helping kids make connections they will remember the rest of their lives. And once they start making these connections,

A happy parent can tell you so much more than any evaluation from an administrator.  Now that I am out of the classroom, I can say that without having to worry that putting my parents’ happiness above all else can somehow harm my job status. Where I taught in Oklahoma City, we used the Marzano’s Instructional Strategies as a metric for our teachers’ success, and NOWHERE in the Marzano’s Evaluation do they ask parents — “Are you happy with the job the teacher is doing?” Actually, nowhere do they ask parents anything.  This is bonkers, backwards, and all sorts of bad. And I am not bashing Marzano’s. This is a systemic cultural problem in education. Parents aren’t valued because parent satisfaction doesn’t really affect enrollment. Without school choice, the system is not structurally designed to consider parents dreams, hopes, and desires. A good principal, teacher, or district obviously wants parents to be happy but the system ensures there is no skin in the game! In this episode, take on the establishment and fight for the rights of parents!  For those who aren’t fully on board with school choice, that’s okay! In this episode, I’m not getting into the macro-policy discussion. I’m more interested in this fundamental question: Do parents have the right to choose where they send their child to school? If they don’t have that right, what can be the consequences? Let me use an analogy to show why treating parents like they have a choice is crucial to making them the proudest, happiest parents in the world.  Imagine if there was only one doctor in town and he wasn’t very good (just like there’s one school in an area and it may or may not be very good).  Your child gets sick and you don’t want to send him or her to this doctor in your area because he has a bad reputation; instead, you want to send him or her to a different doctor who is much better. However, this doctor is in a different part of town and this doctor only serves the people in that part of town. In fact, the city made a law that you aren’t allowed to take your child to any other doctor but the one in your town, even if he’s not very good. So even though the doctor in your part of town is failing and he’s messed up year after year, you have to keep bringing your kids to him. Thank goodness we have “Doctor Choice!” If that example seems scary, it’s because it is. This is why many of our public schools are failing in this country. No matter how good or bad a school is, parents can’t do a thing. So, going back to Marzano’s, it is no surprise that parents are not even factored into the discussion when evaluating teachers. Parents aren’t asked for their hopes, dreams, and expectations when developing a curriculum. And parents aren’t consulted when crafting new standards and benchmarks. If our school system values parents’ opinions and happiness, it has a funny way of showing it. Despite everything, you can make parents feel like the valued customers they are. The biggest mindset shift that teachers and schools can make is to start treating parents like customers. And if my analogy hasn’t convinced you, that’s okay. You don’t have to believe in school choice to make parent satisfaction a main focus of your class. Imagine that parents can choose to send their child anywhere in the world; wouldn’t you want them to still choose your classroom? In this episode,

A field trip to the movies can actually be one of the most effective ways to spend your time. If that sounds counter-intuitive or maybe just flat-out wrong, then you may be surprised by what you hear in this episode of the Punk Rock Preschool podcast. If you want to connect with your students on a more personal level, a field trip to Beauty and the Beast may be the perfect way to do so. Kids love it when you share stories about your childhood! For one, they get a real kick imagining you as a kid — who knows what image they are creating in their minds! And after the initial shock of learning that you were once their age and that life was a little different back then, students will then want to know more to help complete this picture they are putting together in their brains. So give them the pieces!  Help them relate and share the ways your childhood is the same as theirs! This is where Beauty and the Beast (and other childhood classics) come into play. Kids love stories of when you were a kid, especially if you loved the same stuff they do! Tell them how you watched the same movies as a kid and played the same games. Show off your Pokemon cards if you still have them laying around. It isn’t hard to see how this strengthens the bonds between you and your students. By sharing your matching childhood interests, you help four and five year olds build perspective. They can now more easily put themselves in your shoes and you can more easily put yourself in theirs! With such a great exercise in empathy, it’s no wonder friendships will soon follow! Beauty and the Beast is a perfect example of a movie I loved as a kid and now a movie that a new generation of children are going to fall in love with as well. The original movie came out in 1991; so growing up we had this movie and all the other Disney classics on VHS. But if Beauty and the Beast wasn’t your movie; it doesn’t have to be Beauty and the Beast. Luckily, Hollywood loves a remake and honestly, so do I but only because they help me relate to my students. Pick any children’s movie that you have a fond memory of — Power Rangers, Jungle Book, Cinderella – those are just a few remakes in the past two years! Once you find the movie that you loved as a kid, share it with your students! Just like you may recommend a song or TV show to a friend, do the same by sharing a favorite movie with your class. A lot of teachers like to address the class as “friends,” so this shouldn’t be a big jump to treat them as actual friends! Share your opinions! Give them your hot takes! And most importantly, relive these memories again but this time, alongside your students! This gives you a common language, a common experience, and hopefully, a common love! Because you are sharing a memory from your childhood, it makes it all that much more magical for your students. It forms a connection that will blossom into a friendship. So what does a friendship with your students really look like? How can you talk to four and five year olds the same way you talk to your peers? How does a field trip to the movies make all this possible? Listen here and learn more. Resources and People Mentioned in this Podcast: *