Welcome to the second edition of Etcetera. the mid-week email that contains little (hopefully) helpful morsels that you can use with your staff, share with a colleague, or simply enjoy on your own.

Etcetera Vol 1 was the most read email that I’ve ever sent, and not by a small margin. Thanks for taking interest in this new little experiment. I think it’ll be fun to continue as I have the bandwidth. I’m thinking that once a month is a good cadence.

Also, I hired one of my students to run social media for my business as part of his entrepreneurship project. (I’ll be paying him, and all such student projects have to find outside revenue, so I’m not shamelessly exploiting student labor😉).

He’s convinced me that video content is so much more engaging than simple text. I’m wondering if that has anything to do with the high read rate of my last email. Let me know if you’d like to see more such content. I did create a series of vlog-style PD content for a time (see below), but it was very time-intensive. Any new video content would be more on-the-fly (unless you all are really enthusiastic).

On to the content for this week. Here are a few pieces I’ve stumbled upon in the last couple of weeks that you may enjoy, but that wouldn’t have really “fit” in the Saturday newsletter.

Cheers!

Keep it Light

A goal for our next meeting

Next time you’ve got a Zoom convo with colleagues, try this on for size.

Twinning

This is crazy!

“They look the same!”

This is pretty heartwarming. Can you imagine how much brainstorming and good advice would come from the overlap of this personal and professional relationship?! They’ll have quite the collection of stories to tell by the end of their careers.

On Doing Hard Things

The gift we can give our kids

I’ve talked about this before, but I’ve noticed the last couple of years that students are much more fearful about certain things than the were pre-COVID. Whether it’s meeting deadlines or wanting to sit next to a friend, my kids seem to be more anxious than ever.

This is never more true than in public speaking. Being a business teacher, I try to teach my kids that developing the skill of public speaking not only builds confidence, but it can also be a competitive edge when being compared to their peers for jobs and scholarships.

In this video, psychologist Kathryn Hecht claims that exposure therapy is the “gold standard” of helping little humans become more resilient (It’s a bit long, but here’s a clip to entice you). In my experience, I’d have to agree.

To address the issue in my classroom, I often let nervous students present to me one-on-one at the beginning of the term. I’ve definitely had students claim that they’re simply incapable of doing it. By the end, however, their final requires that they present to the class. Aside from students with documented accommodations, I’ve yet to have a student fail to make a final presentation.

Sometimes it takes a private negotiation and a bit of a bribe (food often does the trick), but sticking to my guns and not giving them an easy way out has become a professional conviction for me. That boost of confidence is one of the greatest gifts I can give them.

I’ve contemplated digging into this in more detail. I think it’s something that students of all ages could benefit from. And I know that many of my early elementary colleagues are experts in this domain.

Is this something you’d like to hear more about?

Change Your World

A good note to end on

Enjoy!

Read more

Welcome to the maiden voyage of Etcetera, the mid-week email that contains little (hopefully) helpful morsels that you can use with your staff, share with a colleague, or simply enjoy on your own.

My two commitments are as follows:

1. I’ll never use AI to write my thoughts here. I feel like, too often these days, I’m simply scrolling through emails knowing that someone outsourced their thinking to a chatbot. I certainly use AI in my day-to-day, and to assist with things like Emailable PD, but I want to keep this mid-week check-in candid and informal. You’ll get unfiltered Mike, so beware. (The same goes for my intros on Saturday’s emails. No AI to be found there.)

2. If I found something useful, fun, or interesting, it’s fair game to share. I know not everyone shares my taste. If you at all feel like this is one more thing in your inbox, you can check your Substack preferences and unsubscribe from this section while remaining subscribed to the Weekly Inspo Vids Saturday newsletter.

Let’s get to it! Thanks for reading!

Mike

P.S. I hope the video works above. I was getting some weird errors with my test emails.

On Leadership

“My job is to always be opposite the moment.”

As an Aggie, I’m obviously biased, but this is a great clip on both a leader’s role in the moment and how no one can lift morale with a single speech or action. It takes building a culture.

On Nurturing Tiny Humans

Let’s make our kids dangerous

I have three boys, and I love this. I grew up in a Texas home that was about as classically “masculine” as it gets. Trucks in the driveway and guns locked up in the garage. Now I’ve got nothing against either, and I actually had a very non-toxic father. Still, I want to instill in my boys a greater measure of compassion, self-awareness, and vulnerability than I had as a kid. I want the same for my students.

On Classroom Management

Down the rabbit hole we go …

In my day-to-day search for videos that teachers can actually use, I stumbled upon Tyler Hester in the video below. It’s about seven minutes long, so you can watch a very short clip I made here, but I’ll make a quick caveat.

Now, my warning is this: Tyler talks about a lot of ideas that some might call punitive in our current landscape, like homework, detention, and the like. I don’t have as strong feelings about these concepts as some, but I can imagine he might update some of his ideas if he were making this video today (this video was uploaded 11 years ago).

The thing I love about this video, and specifically about the clip I shared above, is the connection between consequences, consistency, and students feeling safe and respected. As a teacher, I’m going to admit something that I’m not supposed to admit: I’m frequently too lazy to follow through. This is true of my parenting as well.

To be consistent is exhausting. But it’s critical. And students (and kids) internalize that they’re either worth the effort or they’re not. It’s maybe counterintuitive that consistent consequences communicate respect, but they absolutely do. And teachers I’ve coached often struggle to make that connection.

Interesting side note:

My judgmental side came out a bit when I Googled Tyler to see what he’s up to these days. Turns out he taught for just four years and then left for leadership positions in other areas, and now runs a PD company.

I often grow weary of that story. Teacher A is an all-star, a bit prone to self-promotion, and exits before year five to tell other teachers how it’s done. Pretty soon, they’ve been out of the classroom for twenty years, hopelessly disconnected from the real day-to-day in a building, yet make a living telling principals and teachers in the trenches how it’s done.

That was my judgmental side. My researcher side should’ve simply read the rest of his bio.

Tyler then went to Harvard for his doctorate, went back to the classroom before starting his current company, where he serves as the CEO while still serving as a part-time Vice Principal.

Well, I’ve been put in my place. Makes me want to chat with him more. Should I reach out?

Thanks for reading this first edition of Etcetera. I’ll keep at it as long as you’re reading (and when I have time).

Thanks, friends!

Mike