Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. MAKING NEWS on X THIS WEEK: Natalie Vardabasso calls out a series of oppressive assessment practices that she "has something to say about." Natalie is back with another challenge: "Stop grading everything students do." Monte Syrie reflects on his change of thinking about "his" students being called out of class to attend ...
Oct 29, 2023•21 min•Season 1Ep. 236
Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. MAKING NEWS on X THIS WEEK: California's Governor Newsom just signed a bill requiring cursive writing (handwriting) to be taught to all students in grades 1-6. Here's why I think that is a terrible decision. Prodigy Education is encouraging teachers to support student out-of-school performances (sports, competitions, reci...
Oct 21, 2023•23 min•Season 1Ep. 235
Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. MAKING NEWS on X THIS WEEK: Scare a teacher in four words! Thanks to @TeacherGoals for this fun challenge. Dr. Brad Johnson reminds us to show appreciation to our leaders during National Principals Month, and I shout out my principal, Andrea Wiebe. Empower your learning targets by using them, talking about them, reflectin...
Oct 16, 2023•15 min•Season 1Ep. 234
Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. MAKING NEWS on X THIS WEEK: In this edition: Bill Ferriter says that "Giving zeros is one of the most unprofessional actions a teacher can take." Do you agree or disagree? Tom Schimmer suggests that opposition to standards-based grading really comes from teacher desire to coerce students into compliant behavior. Agree or ...
Oct 08, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 233
Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. MAKING NEWS on X THIS WEEK: Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, going LIVE every Saturday morning. Join the conversation and see your comments featured live on the broadcast! In this edition: Chey Cheney observes Truth and Reconciliation Day - Canada's national holiday and annual invitation to reflection on our ongo...
Sep 30, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 232
Welcome to Saturday Morning Teacher Talk, airing LIVE on YouTube every Saturday morning at 8:30 Pacific and 11:30! Join the conversation and add your comments to the broadcast. On X This Week: 0:45 - Where are YOU on the Teacher Hierarchy of Needs right now? (Dr. Brad Johnson) 3:33 - Tony Vincent shows off the new Quizizz AI feature that will automatically generate quizzes based on any selected YouTube video, URL, PDF, PPT, or text prompt. 6:24 - Tony Vincent also shares an exciting feature comi...
Sep 23, 2023•14 min•Season 1Ep. 231
Join me LIVE for Saturday Morning Teacher Talk at 8:30 Pacific, 11:30 Eastern on YouTube! Here's what we discussed on this edition of the show: How many hours of school work are you putting in daily outside of contractual hours? (Fixing Education) My colleague dreads coming to work each day. What can I say to them? (Crappy Teacher) How are you building culture in your classroom and school using physical contact? (Zac Bauermaster) When teachers are policing student Crocs in schools, who wins? (Ja...
Sep 16, 2023•23 min•Season 1Ep. 230
Dear New Teacher, Thank you for joining the teaching community. Thank you for your commitment to the learning and growth of our little people. Thank you for bringing your optimism, your ideas, your passions into our world. We love you. We need you. We’re glad you’re here. And it’s because we appreciate you that we want to help you make it. We want to see you grow, not go. We want this work to give you life, not take it from you. So with that in mind, here are some tips and strategies that will h...
Jul 30, 2023•11 min•Season 1Ep. 229
Here's the bitter truth about student video submissions. They take forever to fully review. FOREVER. Some of my dear students sincerely expect me to watch every second of everything they post. Bless their hearts, but I can’t meet that demand and stay sane at the same time. What are we to do? Should we just give up and avoid video submissions altogether? Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflecti...
Jul 28, 2023•11 min•Season 1Ep. 228
The next morning, my principal was his usual encouraging self. At first. “Great email, Tim. Your communication was professional as always. There’s just one small issue.” Uh oh. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can read any time at teachersonfire.net . Read the blog post featured in this episode at https://teachersonfire.net/2023/07/17/how-i-learned-a-lesson-about-student-...
Jul 20, 2023•8 min•Season 1Ep. 227
My creative silence is both a symptom and a cause, so finding the time and bandwidth to create again is bringing my fire back this summer. How are YOU recharging, colleague?
Jul 14, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 226
What does the world’s most successful YouTuber have to say about creativity, learning, and education? [TIMESTAMPS BELOW] 0:00:00 - Meet Mr. Beast! He's the world's most successful YouTuber. 0:27 - What does Jimmy think about education, learning, and creativity? 0:52 - Lesson 1 from Mr. Beast: Extreme learning guarantees extreme results. 2:09 - Lesson 2 from Mr. Beast: It's still possible to start at zero and become a master artist. 3:36 - Lesson 3 from Mr. Beast: Accelerate your growth by learni...
Apr 23, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 225
Are you ever bothered by school emails or communications stealing your personal time? Here are two radical suggestions that have been game-changers for me. Let me know what you think. TIMESTAMPS 0:00:00 - The problems of phone-related stress for teachers 1:43 - Scheduled emails problem no. 1: they waste too much time 2:09 - Scheduled emails problem no. 2: they create unnecessary confusion 2:31 - Scheduled emails problem no. 3: email avalanches are stressful 3:02 - What do teachers think of sched...
Mar 06, 2023•9 min•Season 1Ep. 224
I’m writing this post from a delightful cafe in a quaint little touristy town near my home. The sunshine is pouring in through three walls of windows. Steam from my freshly brewed coffee wafts lazily upward. A creamy slice of carrot cake sits waiting to be consumed. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on Fire Magazine at Medium.com. Read the blog pos...
May 01, 2022•6 min•Season 1Ep. 223
Love or hate the policy decision — speaking, teaching, and breathing just became physically easier for exhausted educators across North America. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on Fire Magazine at Medium.com. Read the blog post featured in this episode at https://medium.com/teachers-on-fire/two-years-later-a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-a-pounded-prof...
Apr 09, 2022•6 min•Season 1Ep. 222
The reality: not every student has submitted the required products for a particular learning activity by the due date or deadline. What should the responsible teacher do? Here’s how some teachers respond: They update checklists of unsubmitted assignments on a weekly or daily basis. They regularly post names of students whose work is overdue on the classroom whiteboard or digital equivalents. Missing essays: Brian, Jackie, Solomon, Jenny, Stefan. They meet 1:1 with the students whose work is miss...
Mar 26, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 221
I knew that if we were to improve this student-teacher relationship and get learning back on track, this student would need to feel fully heard by the teacher. And the teacher would need to feel heard by the student. A meeting seemed like a logical next step. But I wanted to approach this very carefully. I wanted to think about ways to allow the student to feel heard without creating a slam session against the teacher. And I wanted to allow the teacher to feel heard by the student without them f...
Mar 13, 2022•7 min•Season 1Ep. 110
We recognize that our assessment beliefs and practices fundamentally shape every other aspect of learning that occurs in the school environment. As such, we engage in constant professional learning and seek to apply evidence-based thinking to our practices. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on Fire Magazine at Medium.com. Read the blog post feature...
Mar 06, 2022•6 min•Season 1Ep. 219
Following the thread, I had a startling realization. It’s a thought that I’m sure has crossed many educators’ minds over the last two years. We don’t even let our middle schoolers behave like this. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on Fire Magazine at Medium.com. Read the blog post featured in this episode at https://medium.com/teachers-on-fire/com...
Feb 26, 2022•5 min•Season 1Ep. 218
How could you be so sure that your wonderful class or school community was X … only to hear that others view it as Y? Simple. You’re doing lots of great things within your own walls. But you’re doing a really bad job of telling your story. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on Fire Magazine at Medium.com. Read the blog post featured in this episode ...
Feb 19, 2022•8 min•Season 1Ep. 217
Dale Carnegie once said that “A person’s name is to that person, the sweetest, most important sound in any language.” And so it is. If we want to build meaningful culture, community, and relationships in our schools, we need to learn our students’ names. This is one way to do it. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on Fire Magazine at Medium.com. Rea...
Feb 02, 2022•6 min•Season 1Ep. 216
This episode comes to you from a Tim Hortons coffee shop. Host Tim Cavey is joined by fellow edu podcasters Tim Stephenson (Science 360) and Bryon Carpenter (Fresh Air at Five). This is a learning conversation. We talk about what’s firing us up, the content that keeps us going, and the practices that stoke our fires. Join us. My guests today are: Bryon Carpenter @BryonCar : Husband, father, teacher, fisherman, carpenter. Google Certified, EdTech leader. One Word for 2022 is Presence. Podcaster: ...
Jan 26, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 215
Guess what, administrators. If you want your educators to teach responsively, dynamically, and sustainably, then you’ve got to create safe spaces for experimentation. That means that it has to be okay for teachers to try some new things. To leave the familiar from time to time. To make spontaneous decisions. And to make mistakes. That means that it has to be okay for you as an administrator to walk into a classroom where the lesson plan hasn’t been completely defined. Where the learning activity...
Jan 18, 2022•7 min•Season 1Ep. 214
Think for a moment. What if there was a physical skill that could actively determine an adult’s willingness to write virtually anything of length for any reason? What if this single skill determined whether basic academic tasks required minutes or hours? And what if proficiency in this same skill dramatically limited or expanded the number of academic options available to students outside of high school? Wow. That’s huge, right? If such a skill existed, you would think it would get a LOT of atte...
Jan 11, 2022•7 min•Season 1Ep. 213
Put your K-12 assessment tools to the test with 15 powerful questions. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on Fire Magazine at Medium.com. Read the blog post featured in this episode at https://medium.com/teachers-on-fire/level-up-your-summative-assessments-with-this-checklist-3f05312b7ba2 . My name is Tim Cavey, and I’m proud to contribute to the ed...
Jan 03, 2022•6 min•Season 1Ep. 212
We’re all developing learners. Every last one of us. As adults, we often have the luxury of walking away from learning that proves difficult or doesn’t interest us. Students in our current models of K-12 (or at least K-8) don’t usually have that option. So when we see our kids in the learning pit, let’s not panic or shame. Instead, let’s engage in thoughtful conversations. Let’s ask helpful questions. And let’s see what we can do to give them a helping hand. And we’ll celebrate the growth that f...
Nov 29, 2021•8 min•Season 1Ep. 211
In 2017, I attended ISTE in San Antonio, Texas. ISTE, or The International Society for Technology in Education, hosts the largest conference for educational technology in the world. My first visit to the exhibitors’ hall was eye-opening. Wow, I thought. There are a lot of edtech companies in education right now. Welcome to SPARKS: mini-segments intended to spark your thinking and ignite your practice. These short episodes are based on my written reflections, which you can find on the Teachers on...
Nov 22, 2021•8 min•Season 1Ep. 210
I first read Ron Berger’s Leaders of Their Own Learning in 2018, and I’ve been sold on the power of learning targets ever since. I believe they’re an essential part of successful instruction, assessment, and student learning. I post learning targets on my Google Docs. On Slides. On Classroom. On Seesaw. I try to refer to them often in my instruction. And I ask students to use our targets to assess their own learning. But how much attention do students really give to learning targets? Do they act...
Nov 15, 2021•6 min•Season 1Ep. 209
Choosing the path of sanity and sustainability isn’t easy at first. It requires trusting the process. It involves sharing agency and ownership with students. It requires the release of teacher guilt formed by the wages mindset of assessment. But take courage, colleagues. This is the path to joy in our work. The path to doing what we love to do. The path to reclaimed weekends and holidays. The path to healthier humanity and more emotional margin for students, colleagues, and family members. And, ...
Nov 07, 2021•9 min•Season 1Ep. 208
In this edition of the Roundtable, host Tim Cavey is a panel of educators who are passionate about the learning opportunities created by virtual whiteboard tools. Join Melissa Aveling, Kate Stevens, Lise Farquhar, Tim Belmont, and Jeffery Frieden on an audio tour of Google Jamboard, Padlet, Whiteboard.fi, and Whiteboard.chat. Whether you’re well-versed in these tools or a complete newbie, I can promise that you’ll be inspired by the ideas shared here. Welcome to Roundtables: livestreamed convers...
Oct 25, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 207
