#442 – Teach Like a PIRATE, with Dave Burgess

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What does it mean to “bring yourself” into your classroom?
• How can personal passions be used to connect with students?
• Which part of the PIRATE acronym most resonates with you, and why?
• What is one “hook” that you might try in order to boost engagement in your class?
• Why does Dave emphasize enthusiasm even when passion is missing?
• How can constraints actually help spark creativity?

• Teach Like a PIRATE (Dave Burgess)
• Teach Like a PIRATE: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator (written by Dave Burgess)
• AI Optimism: A Guide to Redefining Artificial Intelligence in Education (written by Becky Keene)

#442 Teach Like a PIRATE, with Dave Burgess

AVID Open Access
49 min

Transcript

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The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

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Dave Burgess 0:00
And so, like, all these presentational decisions that we have every day in our classroom—they can be haphazardly thrown together to create a threadbare blanket of boredom, or they could be intentionally woven into a beautiful, rich quilt of engagement, depending upon how you stitch it. So you want to control everything at your disposal to make school amazing for kids.

Rena Clark 0:27
Topic for today’s podcast is Teach Like a Pirate with Dave Burgess. Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at AVID.org.

Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:56
I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:58
And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and—

Paul Beckermann 1:02
We’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:06
Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark 1:11
So our quote for today is from our guest Dave Burgess. In a guest appearance on the Wired Educator podcast, Dave said, “Always inject yourself into your teaching. What is unique about you, your particular strengths and talents, your voice that you add to your classroom is what makes you most powerful and effective.”

All right, who’s up first this week?

Winston Benjamin 1:39
I’ll jump in. The thing that I’m thinking about this is how effective modeling liking yourself and understanding yourself is important in schools. As children are growing up, there’s a lot of chances where they’re still trying to figure out what is the valuable, unique piece of me, and how can I be okay with others looking at me, unsure if what those pieces are?

So I think by a teacher embedding who they are—their genuine self—letting students and letting kids know it’s okay to be quirky, it’s okay to be you, it’s okay to like what you like. I’m still your friend, and you still like being in this space. So I think that, to me, is what makes teachers effective and powerful: the modeling of it’s okay to be you.

Paul Beckermann 2:29
I love that, and I’m glad it’s okay to still be quirky, because here I am.

Rena Clark 2:36
I mean, I did my “close your Chromebook” dance today, and the kids are like, “What is she doing?”

Paul Beckermann 2:40
Oh, no. I wish I had seen that, Rena.

Dave Burgess 2:44
I love that. I always tell teachers, like, if they don’t think you’re crazy, you’re probably not.

Paul Beckermann 2:51
I love it. I love it. All right, I’m thinking about the word authentic, you know. I think being authentic—your authentic self—is part of the art of teaching. You know, there’s the art and the science, but it’s that unique flavor that you bring to the classroom.

We might use the same lesson design strategy or something like that, but all of our personalities and unique talents and interests are different, and that makes the final product different. Just imagine how boring the school day would be if every classroom was identical. You know, we need that little spark of originality and uniqueness and quirks and all right.

Dave Burgess 3:26
And it’s not just for the kids. It’s for us too. Like, I don’t want to go to work and be boring and to fit into some mold and to be like everybody else, either. And so I think it’s a more effective way to teach for the students, but also it’s a more fulfilling way to go through your career.

Rena Clark 3:43
Absolutely. I mean, that’s very exciting. I want to dig in. So we’re welcoming Dave Burgess to our podcast, and if you haven’t heard of Dave—so Dave is the New York Times bestselling author of Teach Like a Pirate. I just want to say that with my pirate accent, but let’s hear it. We got it just like that.

That was one of my favorite books—like our Teach Like a Pirate. He’s co-author of P is for Pirate, and the president of Dave Burgess Consulting Incorporated. And so Dave goes—he delivers powerful and inspirational keynotes, innovative books, and does a lot of professional development.

So as a teacher in San Diego, California, Dave was a two-time Golden Apple winner in the Grossmont Union High School District, and then Teacher of the Year at West Hills High School. So we got a high school teacher with us today and was voted a faculty standout for 17 consecutive years. So definitely has some experience under his belt here.

And then is this exciting? So at a recent ceremony in Washington, DC, he was awarded the BAMMY for Secondary School Teacher of the Year by the Academy of Education, Arts and Science. And so he specializes in teaching hard-to-teach, hard-to-motivate students with techniques that incorporate showmanship and creativity.

So I’m hoping to take some nuggets back with me today as we dig into this. So I talked a lot about kind of some of the background, but if you just want to tell us anything else about yourself, Dave, or you know about your personal interest—bringing in that personality—and how your background has really influenced your approach to teaching, we’d love to hear from you.

Dave Burgess 5:25
Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. I’m honored to be on. And so I think what I’ve been spending most of my time with lately is trying to amplify the voices of other people. And so, you know, I wrote Teach Like a Pirate, and it came out in 2012. I can’t even believe I’m saying that right now, but it came out in 2012. I was speaking about the message for five, six, seven years before that, before the book even came out.

So and then a little bit after that, I realized that, you know what? People started to come to me and say, “Hey, how are you doing this? Everywhere I look, I see this pirate thing, but you don’t have some big publisher. How are you doing this?” And the truth is, I published Teach Like a Pirate from a laptop at the kitchen table. I said no to all the publishing contracts.

So I did a ton of research, formed Dave Burgess Consulting, and published it, and then realized that a lot of other people were not happy with the publishing landscape as well. And so what I have been focusing on for the last, you know, stretch of years is really trying to find other people with powerful messages and amplifying their voices through Dave Burgess Consulting.

So I publish over 200 books now. Many of your guests are published—you know, I looked through your list of guests that you sent over, and quite a few of them are my authors from Dave Burgess Consulting. And so, you know, thanks so much for having them on the show. But so that’s really been kind of what I’ve been up to recently.

I’ll add one more thing to the bio that I’m excited about. Nobody else is, but I’m excited about this. Whenever I tell people this, they don’t know what to do with it because they think I might be pranking them. But this is the truth: I’m a 2023 inductee into the International Pirate Hall of Fame.

Rena Clark 7:09
Well, we have the Seafair Pirates around here. I’m very curious about what this means.

Paul Beckermann 7:16
We should say, “Arrrh-right.”

Dave Burgess 7:19
I’m just debating whether I should add it to my dating app. Might be a red flag.

I love it. If people are wondering who else is in there, Blackbeard’s in there. So like, there’s real pirates, but then there’s also people like this. This won’t surprise you: Johnny Depp is in the International Pirate Hall of Fame. Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Treasure Island, is in there. And so people—an array of different people from different parts of pirate culture.

Winston Benjamin 7:48
That’s so cool. That’s awesome.

So now that we know that you’re embedded in this idea of being a pirate and pirate ideologies—I have a sense of what pirate ideology means because I watch also—I enjoy One Piece, the anime and manga, right? So I have a very distinct idea of what piracy means. Thinking about what that connection to teaching is, sometimes it’s a stretch for me—not for me, but for just like an idea of those two terms being connected.

For those who haven’t really got a chance to read the book or are struggling to put those two distinct, disjointed ideas together, can you tell us about the book, Teach Like a Pirate, and what inspired you to write it? Because, you know, sometimes we get ideas and then we don’t carry it through. So like, what’s it about and what made you carry it through?

Dave Burgess 8:45
Yeah, so let’s address the pirate thing first, right? Because I, of course, I get asked that quite often. And so what I always tell people is that it has nothing to do with the dictionary definition. We don’t want teachers to go out and attack and rob ships or anything like that, right?

So it’s got everything to do with the spirit of a pirate. And to me, the spirit of a pirate is someone who’s unconventional, someone who’s willing to reject the status quo, someone who’s willing to sail into uncharted waters with no guarantee of success—a risk taker, a rebel, a maverick in the classroom, right? So it’s about embracing that spirit of being a pirate.

In addition to that, pirates are known for having hooks, and this is a sort of play on words. This is about a whole set of hooks they can use to draw students almost magically or magnetically into what you’re doing in the classroom.

And then it also serves as a kind of a foundation of the book. The first part of the book, anyway, is an acronym. So the P-I-R-A-T-E of the word “pirate” serves as an acronym to talk about six different parts of education and teaching that I talk about through the first third of the book. And so it’s an acronym, it’s a play on words for hooks, and it’s about kind of that spirit of standing out, being different and unique, and rejecting the status quo.

Paul Beckermann 9:50
All right, so I’m going to have you pick one of your acronyms from the pirate. Because I think it’s passion, immersion, rapport, ask and analyze, transformation, enthusiasm. Did I get them?

Dave Burgess 10:09
Yeah, you got them all. Yep.

Paul Beckermann 10:10
So pick one. What’s one that you’d really like to emphasize right now and tell us a little bit about it?

Dave Burgess 10:12
Okay, well, I’ll just start at the beginning. I always tell, like, when I’m speaking, I say it starts with the P of pirate. And basically what it stands for is passion. And it’s this idea that we have this deep, dark secret as educators: that we know we’re supposed to be passionate about our work. But the truth of the matter is we’re not passionate about everything that we teach.

And like, when I say that to an audience, I kind of pause and say, like, let the freedom wash over you. Like, you know, there’s those days where you’re looking at your content standard, that part of your unit, that part of your curriculum, and it’s just not your thing. There might be lots of stuff that you love to teach, but you know there are those days.

So if it’s so important to be passionate, but yet you can’t bring passion for every single thing in your curriculum, what do you do then? And so what I did in the book is I broke passion into three categories, and those three categories were something that was helpful for me as a way to look at it in my life as a teacher. And so I kind of offer this to other educators.

And the three ways: one is your content passion. So what is it about your curriculum, your content, that you’re on fire about, right? And if you’re outside of the classroom, this would read within my job description in the system right now, what is it that I’m passionate about, right? But that’s not going to catch everybody, right?

But there’s two other areas. One of those is your professional passions. So completely outside of your content center, what is it about just being an educator that you’re passionate about? What are your professional passions? And really trying to bring a focus to those reasons why we have chosen to get into this.

Most people don’t choose their profession of education just because of their content passion. It’s something much larger. It’s a mightier purpose behind being an educator and having that life-changing impact on students, for example, right? And so a real focus on professional passion as a way to decrease burnout and to find more fulfillment in the profession.

And then the third area of passion is your personal passions. And that kind of goes through that quote that you opened with—this idea that what is it, completely outside of education, are you passionate about, and are there ways that you can embed that into what you do as an educator?

Like, we’re at work too high of a percentage of our lives to unplug ourselves when we walk through the doors of the building, right? Like, I’m trying to add more of myself to my classroom, right? And I don’t want students to just graduate knowing my curriculum. I want them to graduate knowing me as well.

That’s part of developing rapport and relationships with kids and having them come to see you as a human being, as opposed to like a test-preparing automaton or something, right? And so when you can start to combine all three areas of this passion together—that content passion, which hopefully you have for some of what you teach, at least; that professional passion for those mightier purpose reasons for doing what we do; and those personal passions—and when you could add all three of those together into your life as an educator, that’s when you become uncompromising and relentless in that pursuit of excellence and greatness.

And you are able to sail over those obstacles that a lot of other teachers crash into and burn out. Because again, it’s not just about the numbers and circles at the end of the year. It’s about this mightier purpose.

Rena Clark 13:22
I was thinking, like, passion is like the pixie dust that gets the boat sailing over. I like it.

Earlier you talked about the hook, so I’d like to dig in just like, how do we really hook kids and boost classroom engagement? What are kind of some of your thoughts about that? And especially—and I’m thinking of even some of the students I currently have that, you know, they maybe have ADHD or they don’t really want to be in school or necessarily your class. So what is the key? How do we support? How do we hook?

Dave Burgess 13:54
Yeah, and so there’s—in the book, there’s 30 of them, you know. There’s 30 kind of presentational hooks that I talk about in the book—different ways to draw students in. And so there’s so many, but like, one of them that I think about all the time is there’s this principle in sales of “What’s in it for me?” And that’s what—like, if you’re a good salesperson, you’re always thinking in those terms, right?

I think as educators and teachers, we have to think the same thing, like they’re sitting there saying, like, “Why? Why should I be learning this? Why do I need to know this?” And sometimes teachers bristle when kids say something like that, or that’s what their mindset is. But if you think about it, that’s kind of our mindset too. When we go through, like, a professional development or we go to a meeting or something like that. You know, you sit through a professional development, you’re thinking to yourself, “What am I doing? Like, I could be in my room working on stuff right now. Like, what’s in it for me? What am I going to get out of this? Like, why am I listening to this person?”

So if we have that feeling inside when we’re learning—we’re as learners—why wouldn’t we expect that our students would have the same thing? There’s things that they’d rather be doing too. So that time spent in school, they want to know what’s in it for them. And if we don’t have an answer for that, then that’s problematic, right?

And so that’s one thing I think about. And then the other thing I think about is like, what are teachers into outside of school? What are students into outside of school? How can I use that inside of school, right?

A quick example of that would be, maybe you would say, like, “What are my kids into outside of school?” Maybe it’s gaming. And so then it’s going that next step and saying, “Well, what is it about gaming that draws them in? And how can I layer some of those kind of concepts and ideas into my teaching?” Right?

And it’s not that you’re going to necessarily be gaming in class, but maybe some of the concepts and principles that make gaming so engaging you can layer into class, right?

I’ll give you a quick example of this. Basketball—I was a basketball player, basketball coach. That was my gateway drug into teaching, right? And so I always thought, “What’s my favorite month?” March. March Madness. I love the tournament, right? And so as a Teach Like a Pirate-style teacher, I’m forced to ask, “How can I use that?” That’s one of the key questions of Teach Like a Pirate. “How can I use that? What is it about March Madness that is so engaging for people? How can I layer those ideas in my class?”

Well, one very easy answer is brackets. And so, like, when you see something in brackets, your brain just automatically wants to see—think about what would move forward, right? So you can use brackets in class. Have all different kinds of ways you can use brackets.

But it’s not just something like that. You know what’s engaging about March Madness? When an underdog team knocks off one of the big dogs and makes an unexpected run through the tournament. People love that underdog Cinderella story, right? And so that’s just human nature—understanding, like, “Oh, we love it when the underdog knocks off the big guy,” right? How can I use that principle in my classroom?

And so I repositioned my Revolutionary War unit, for example, to emphasize the underdog nature. Like, who did we think we were standing on the green in Lexington in front of the most powerful army on Earth? Nobody thought we could win. In fact, people mocked us, right?

But then I tell the story of how we rose up and defeated England and became a country. I can get the kids so fired up they’re ready to knock walls down, like “USA! USA!” Like, I can get them pumped about this, but it’s by tying it into that underlying principle that people love the Cinderella story, right?

So it’s always looking around the world and saying, “Oh, what is it that draws people in, and how can I use that in my classroom? How can I layer that in and embed it?”

Winston Benjamin 17:39
I feel like I can jive with that. Like, I’m 100% down with that idea of engagement and hooking. But in your subtitle of the book, it’s “Boost Your Creativity.” And since I was a little kid, I’ve always felt that I wasn’t creative. Right now, as I’ve become an adult, it’s kind of still embedded in my brain that I’m not creative.

So in that, how do you help push a teacher who thinks that they’re not creative tap into that creativity? Because, like we say, what we do for our teachers, we do for our kids, right? So what are some of the ways that you can think about where we can help teachers tap into their creativity, even if they don’t think that they’re that creative?

Dave Burgess 18:34
It’s a super common belief. And so what I call—anyone who believes this, I say that you’ve fallen victim to what I call the myth of the blinding flash of light: that there’s creative people and not creative people, and creative people just walk around and, like, “Oh,” they keep getting struck by these creative flashes of light, right? And the not creative people stand over to the side and go, “God, I don’t get those flashes of light. If only I could get those flashes of light.”

Well, I’m here to tell you that’s not the way that creativity works. Creativity is not something that’s available to certain categories of people or certain levels of intelligence or genius. Creativity is available to anyone who’s willing to pay the price, pay the dues, invest their time, their energy, into the creative process, the brainstorming process—the process I believe that is nothing much more than the process of asking questions.

Questions are the key to creativity. If you change a teacher’s questions, you can change the whole class. E.E. Cummings said, “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.” I believe that 100% to be true.

So it’s by providing educators with a style of questioning that they’re not used to using. So if you ask outside-the-box questions, you will come up with outside-the-box answers. There’s this paradoxical belief about creativity: people think that freedom leads to creativity. Often it’s the opposite—constraints and restrictions lead to creativity.

So like, if you were to say to a teacher, “Hey, I want you to design a wildly and creatively—like wildly and creative, outrageously outrageous—lesson for next week. Go.” Well, they wouldn’t even know where to start, right? But if you channel them, say, like, “Here, listen, I want you to design a creative lesson for next week. But here’s the parameters. I want you to incorporate a kinesthetic activity that gets every kid up out of their seat at least once during this lesson.”

Well, now all of a sudden they go, “Okay, how can I get kids up outside of their seat this lesson?” Or you give a frame to it. “I want you to create an Amazing Race partner activity where kids are racing in teams against each other.” And now all of a sudden, by asking these questions, you start to channel their creativity.

Same thing happens with students as teachers. We know if you say to a group of students, “Hey, this for this next project, you choose the format and topic. Go.” Well, there will be nothing happening in your classroom or chaos, right? But if you give them a little structure, then they can become wildly creative.

It’s very similar to if you think about the form of music that is most known for its improvisational genius: probably jazz. Jazz musicians are known for being able to improvise, play off each other, and create something unique in each performance. But it is only because of the underlying structure of the music that they can then come back to and play off of and play. But without that underlying backbone and structure, it would be a chaotic experience that wouldn’t stick together, right?

So creating—having some structure for people as they go through the creative process—and even just being aware that there’s a creative process to begin with is super important. And so that’s why the whole foundational part of the Teach Like a Pirate book—the center section of the book, the largest part of the book—is literally questions. Under each presentational hook, there’s just questions which then you can ask of your curriculum, your content, to try to draw answers. 170 of them, in fact, are in there. And it’s certainly not an exhaustive list. It’s just a starter pack kind of thing. And so that’s all provided for educators inside of there.

Winston Benjamin 22:14
As you’re talking, I’m coming to realize my thing is I’m not artistic. I can’t draw. I’m creative. I love hip hop. I love scratching. I love doing things of that nature where if I feel confident in my thing—so I think, like you’re saying, it’s changing the frame of how we see what we’re asking for, right? Because again, through my life, my art teacher said I wasn’t creative, so I took that as a whole. So I like your reshaping to being asking better questions.

Dave Burgess 22:45
Yeah. Hey, me too. I grew up with two Technics 1200 turntables, a mixer, a microphone, and a Roland TR-808 drum machine in my dorm room.

Paul Beckermann 22:55
That’s worth a few bucks.

Dave Burgess 22:59
Yeah.

Winston Benjamin 23:03
Yeah, baby. I still got crates of records in my garage, my downstairs. My downstairs is all records. So like, yeah, I feel you. Thank you. Again, two different people from different places, bald-headed and glasses, but similar. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Beckermann 23:17
It’s so true. I do songwriting challenges all the time, and the more restrictive the challenges are, I swear, the more creative my songs are and the more original they are, even though everybody that’s doing the challenge has the same restriction. It forces you to come out the other side somehow uniquely, and it’s really cool.

So anybody listening to you, Dave, can feel the passion in your voice, and we know that you’re a passionate speaker, and passion is important to teaching. But why is passion such a cornerstone of teaching? And how can we consistently bring that? Because some days we might not be feeling it.

Dave Burgess 23:54
Yeah, so in the book, I talked about the difference between passion and enthusiasm, because sometimes those things are kind of used interchangeably, right? And so passion is something—you know, it goes into those three categories I talked about as, like, kind of this deeper-level thing.

Enthusiasm is something different, though. So enthusiasm—Carlos Santana has this quote that I love: “Enthusiasm is the most contagious thing in the world. The songs become incidental. What people receive is your joy,” right? And for educators, I say the lessons become incidental. What people receive is our joy, right?

And so that enthusiastic approach, that energy, that charisma that you bring into the classroom is so important. And when you see someone like a Carlos Santana play live, right, you are drawn in to the charismatic nature of their performance. If you would have seen a Prince or someone like that—like an icon—really perform live, you would realize that it goes far beyond the notes, right? There’s something coming out of this human being which is different and is powerful, and is empowering, uplifting, and inspiring, right?

And so as educators, the same way, I might teach the same lesson as that teacher across the hall, but when I’m teaching it, I’m not going to say it’s going to be better, but I’m going to say it’s going to be uniquely me, and they’re going to feel that this is something I care about.

Let’s not ask kids to care about something that we don’t care about, right? You know, you talk to a teacher and they say, “I just don’t understand why kids are not inspired by my curriculum. I was talking to them about the Spanish-American War, and they just act like they don’t even care.” And I’m thinking, like, “I don’t care much about it either while you’re talking about it.” Like, if you’re not enthusiastic about it, don’t expect kids to be either.

And so then that’s something that sometimes you have to bring. Maybe passion can’t be fake, but enthusiasm can. And there’s this strange thing that happens: the best way to become enthusiastic is to act enthusiastic. And when you act enthusiastic, it creates almost like this loop where then you actually become enthusiastic.

And so I can get myself pretty wound up about something that I’m not too wound up about to begin with by just the way I move my body, the way I speak, the way I gesture, the way my intonation, my inflection. And next thing you know, you can be pretty wound up.

Rena Clark 26:42
I love this. I was just thinking you got to bring the rizz to gain the aura points for the kids. But here’s the thing—

Winston Benjamin 26:49
Six, seven.

Paul Beckermann 26:50
I was wondering if that was coming.

Rena Clark 26:55
Of course. Both Winston and I are in middle school all day, so—but here’s the thing. I just, like, when your rizz is low, you’re burnt out, you’re—just as you said, how I was thinking: What is some advice that you might have for some teachers or educators that are just questioning, is this career still worth it for them?

Dave Burgess 27:17
Okay, so I’ll give you two different answers that are very different. And so the first answer is this: I never think there’s any shame in stepping away from a career that you are no longer enthusiastic about and no longer excited about, and don’t think you’re being effective because of that.

And so, you know, some people like to shame people who leave the profession, and I’m never going to be that person. It’s not for everybody, and maybe it was for you, and now it’s not for you. And that’s an okay decision. And life is long, and we publish a kids’ book that says—I want the name of the book because it’s called I Want to Be a Lot. And like, sometimes we ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And the kind of theme of this book is, like, “I don’t want to be just one thing. I want to be a lot.” Like, why do I have to choose one thing?

I think the same thing for us as adults. Like, if you’re ready to move on to something else, move on. So that’s one answer.

A second answer, though, would be that typically it comes from either a lack of focus on those mightier purpose reasons for being an educator that we talked about earlier, right? Because you’re letting some other things get in the way of that focus which brought you to this profession to begin with.

It could be that you are too immersed in your work, and you’re not developing areas outside of education. You’re not unplugging and getting into other areas of life and kind of filling your own bucket outside of education.

And it also could be, you know, you’re allowing public perception of teachers and education to cloud your vision of your role and the importance of your role. And so those are kind of all separate things that need to be addressed.

I tell people all the time—I call it—there’s a section I call creative alchemy, where I say, “Hey, listen, if you—” there’s something very strange about my book that maybe people don’t pick up on right away. There’s not one single education book reference inside of it. Not a single one. Now, it’s not because I don’t like education books. I published over 200 of them. It’s because that’s not where it came from. It came from the outside, drawn in.

It was my background as a coach that influenced how I break down instruction, how I give feedback to students, how I develop a motivational component to my class. Like, how a coach gets a team ready to knock down a wall coming out of a locker room, I can do that with my students.

My background as a magician influenced my sense of staging and showmanship and incorporation of props, right? My background as an entrepreneur and marketer—like, how a marketer crafts a message in order to get someone to take action and try to influence them to take action. I’m trying to do that with my students. I’m crafting messages, and I’m crafting everything I do in order to get students to take action and to buy into something, right? So I’m very much using marketing, sales, entrepreneurial techniques in my classroom as well, and as a speaker too.

I want teachers to take action and to do something different in their classroom, and I’m a pretty good salesperson, and so I’m using those techniques. My background as an MC—like, if you were to see me do a professional development workshop, you’d be asking yourself, “Wait a second, is this PD, or is this like a performance? Like, what’s happening here?” Well, because I’m used to speaking in a fast and flourishy way on a microphone in front of people.

So all these things have come together to create the best me. But Teach Like a Pirate is not about teaching like me. It’s about taking your strengths, your talents, your voice, and weaving them together with some of these human nature ideas from Teach Like a Pirate, which will just engage human beings, to create the best you.

So I’m not trying to create clones of Dave Burgess in the classroom. It’s not going to work for people, right? Because it’s so uniquely me what I do, right? But what is so uniquely you, woven together with human nature kind of hooks, can create something very powerful for each individual educator.

Winston Benjamin 31:12
Man, I like listening to your conversation about bringing in the person to the profession—the humanization of the action in the class. And this question is coming from a place where I know that there’s a lot of teachers who are hesitant to make an action, not because they don’t think that they could do it, but they worry that it’s going to impact the students negatively. They’re going to fail. The idea that they have isn’t going to be successful, and then that’s another missed opportunity for students to get a chance to get a good educational opportunity, right?

So my question to you is, how do you help—what would you say to those teachers who are hesitant because they’re worried that it might impact the students negatively, or they might fall on their face? Not because they’re just lazy, but because they truly recognize the importance of, like, “I gotta teach this thing.” So what would you say to those teachers?

Dave Burgess 32:21
I would tell them very clearly that they are going to fall on their face. They’re going to mess up. There’s going to be disasters. There’s going to be lessons that blow up in their face. Things are going to fall flat, and that’s part of the program.

I remember talking to an educator, and they said that they were ready to leave the profession. And I’m like, “Whoa, hold on.” And they’re like, “I’m just not cut out for this. Like, nothing’s going right.” I’m like, “Whoa, tell me what happened.” And basically they described an experience where they had, like, 30 kids in their class. Twenty-nine of them were wildly engaged. One kid popped off, was a behavior problem, and caused an issue. They walked away from that lesson feeling like a failure.

And so listen, like, if you set up your rubric for success that you have to have 100% engagement from 100% of your kids on 100% of the days, you have now set up a rubric for your career that’s going to guarantee you a lifetime of disappointment. It’s not about any sort of perfection. It’s about getting better. It’s about getting more engagement. It’s about getting more kids to buy in. But it’s never going to be perfect. There’s always going to be things that blow up. There’s always going to be things that go wrong.

And understanding—new teachers, for example, think that’s their fault. They think it’s them. More experienced teachers realize that’s just part of this bargain. That’s just part of this game. That’s part of the art of teaching—is going through those moments and coming out the other side.

All progress is found outside of your comfort zone. So if you’re never willing to be uncomfortable as a teacher, then you’re probably not growing. And so you have to kind of fight through that desire to—you know, like, mediocrity doesn’t motivate. That’s another one that I say. Like, mediocrity—I don’t want to come to school and be lukewarm. I don’t want to come to school and be average. I want to come to school and crush, right? And that’s what gets me fired up to come in the next day.

And part of doing that means that you’re going to mess up sometimes. That’s okay. So kind of inoculating them ahead of time that you are going to mess up, you are going to fail. But you know this amazing thing? They come back the next day and you make it right, and you learn to see that failure as feedback. You don’t personalize it. You don’t beat yourself up about it. You don’t beat kids up about it. Everything that happens in the classroom is feedback. They’re providing you the real-time gift of feedback to help you improve and hone your craft.

Pirates don’t yell at the wind. Pirates don’t curse the wind. Pirates read the wind. They shift their sails, they catch the wind, and then they go, right? And so the wind of the classroom is that student response and feedback that we get. You don’t ask wind to change. You read wind, shift your sails, and catch it where you need to go.

Paul Beckermann 34:59
Yeah. So, all right, so I’m going to play on the pirate boat metaphor a little bit. So the wind is blowing. What’s been blowing in your sails lately? What have you been thinking about? Kind of a wide-open question. What’s Dave Burgess been pondering?

Dave Burgess 35:17
Yeah, so Dave Burgess has been pondering, much like the rest of the world, how does AI fit into all of this? And so one of the things that I think is a misutilized—like underutilized—way of incorporating AI is as a brainstorming partner. I have been absolutely blown away by what AI can come up with if you’re a good prompt engineer and you’re asking—

So, like, for example, those questions in the book about, like, “How to add kinesthetic activities to this? Or how can I add an artistic component to this lesson to give them more a chance for creative expression? How can I get my students outside?” The Safari Hook. “How can I get my students outside my four walls for this?” All these kind of things like this.

Hey, I was brainstorming these things on my own or collaboratively with other teachers, and now we have the greatest brainstorming partner in the history of the world who never gets tired. Other people get tired of talking education with me, but AI never does.

And so I would like to see teachers using it more as a brainstorming tool for the presentational components of their lesson. And so this is what I mean. I have this thing that I’m super passionate about. It’s a triple Venn diagram. And so I look at teaching as a triple Venn diagram, and one of those circles I label as content. And we have to have that circle, or we’re just entertainers or babysitters. But there’s lots of ways to learn your content. There’s professional development for your content. There’s books about content, places online to learn your content. So that’s one circle.

Then there’s a second circle that interlocks with that. I call it techniques and methods. And we have this whole toolbox of techniques and methods that we’ve gotten from our colleagues, from our credential programs, from conferences. And lots of books have been written about the techniques and methods of teaching.

But then there’s a third circle that I think people don’t spend enough time talking about, and that third circle is what I have a zeal to go and talk about. That third circle is what I label presentation. So yes, you know your content. Yeah, you’ve got all these techniques and methods, but now, how are you going to present it in such a way that it’s engaging for kids? How are you going to present it in such a way that is relevant for them? How are you going to present it in such a way that it draws them almost magically or magnetically into what you’re doing in your room? That’s the third circle of Teach Like a Pirate, right?

And so, like, I drive teachers crazy when I work with them with their lessons, because I ask them so many questions. I’m like, “Hey, like, are the lights going to be on or off when the kids walk in for this one? What are you going to have written on your board? Have you chosen a musical selection for this day? Do you have any props that you might be able to utilize as a part of this, right? What are you going to say today when they leave to get them excited about coming tomorrow?” Right?

And then pretty soon teachers are like, “Well, just stop. Like, I don’t decide all that stuff. Like, I don’t decide if the lights are going to be on or off when the kids walk in.” And I say, “Yes, you do. You do decide that because the lights are either going to be on or off when they walk in tomorrow, right? So you either decide that or you abdicate responsibility for that decision.”

And they’re like, “Okay, yeah, I decide that. And the lights are going to be on tomorrow when the kids walk in.” I say, “In and of themselves, all these things I’m talking about, they just seem so small, insignificant, right? But they’re not. In and of themselves, they build and stack upon each other.” And so, like, all these presentational decisions that we have every day in our classroom—they can be haphazardly thrown together to create a threadbare blanket of boredom, or they could be intentionally woven into a beautiful, rich quilt of engagement, depending upon how you stitch it. So you want to control everything at your disposal to make school amazing for kids.

Winston Benjamin 39:02
Love it. Yeah, I’m over here being like, “Yo, bro, stop making me want to run through a wall.”

What? It’s time for our question: What’s in your toolkit?

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 39:15
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin 39:25
Rena, Paul, what’s in your toolkit? What are you thinking about right now?

Paul Beckermann 39:31
So I’m still kind of thinking back to the opening quote, and Dave kind of talked about that throughout the episode, a little bit about injecting you into what you do at school. And I think back, you know, to my English teaching days, and we were doing demonstration speeches in speech. So I brought in my electric guitar, and I did a demonstration speech. The kids thought that was the coolest thing. You know, when we’re doing creative writing, I’m sharing personal examples of my own writing. You know, I write with them, and then I share when they share, so that we’re equally taking that risk.

There’s an informative speech—okay, so I do a sample one about bass fishing, so I can show them how they can incorporate the visuals into it. Bring yourself in, and it kind of fires yourself up, but it makes that connection with the kids, and they’ll remember it. It gets sticky. That’s what I’m thinking about for a toolkit.

Rena Clark 40:25
So thinking like, adding on, bringing yourself in—and I’m trying to always relate to my students and draw their interests. So actually, I’ve been loving using AI to gather more information about students’ interests, so creating chatbots to get that information. But it can do it really well in a much quicker way, and then analyze some of that information for me when I have so many students.

Just like recently, knowing that so many of my students are really into fishing, and then trying to make that connection, wearing my earrings that my father-in-law fly-tied for me. And just being able to have those connections with students. But there’s different ways that we can elicit that information, not just another Google Form. And conversation is always fantastic, but sometimes we’re not able to reach the larger crowd, so sometimes some different ways to elicit that is great.

And so, yeah, SchoolAI chatbot, or MagicSchool, or whatever you prefer, are really helpful to kind of elicit a lot of those personal interests and then apply them in your lesson.

Winston Benjamin 41:27
That’s dope. So I’m going to take something that Dave said in this conversation: thinking about sales—being a salesperson. What’s in it for me? Like, as a teacher, as you’re planning your lesson, literally ask, “How will my students respond to this? How will they see what’s in it for them? Why do I care about this math lesson or science, or what’s in it for me?”

Or how can you ask yourself to consider, what would the potential responses of my students be? So how can you consider and use that in your planning? Like, what’s in it for my students? I know you like it. I know you’re interested in it. But what’s in it for my students, other than me saying it’s important?

Dave, what would you like to throw into our toolkit for our listeners at this point? Any tool, your books, anything that you would like to throw in?

Dave Burgess 42:24
Yeah, so as a publisher of books, I’m a lover of books, and I have one within reach of me. Just so happens, and the fact that three of the four of us are from Washington, this happens to be a Washington author of mine. And so I’ll throw this into the toolbox, and that is Becky Keene. Yeah, Becky. Becky Keene wrote a book called AI Optimism, which is on the Dave Burgess Consulting label, just came out this past spring, and it’s fantastic.

And just a way of looking at the use of AI in a kind of a unique way, in a way that is more optimistic, maybe, than some people are looking at it. And she also incorporates—she, like, if you remember way back when people just talked about the SAMR model, right? And then that kind of went out of fashion. And she’s like, “Whoa, hold on a second. Look how this lines up with the use of AI in education,” and kind of draws that parallel in the book. And so I’m going to add that into the toolbox.

Rena Clark 43:31
Awesome. I’ve known Becky for a long time. I’ll have to get her on.

Paul Beckermann 43:35
Yeah, yeah, for sure they do. All right, it’s time for us to jump into our one thing.

Transition Music 43:42
It’s time for that one thing. Time for that one thing, that one thing.

Paul Beckermann 43:54
All right, one thing time. What’s your final takeaway today? Rena, Winston, will let one of you go first. Who’d like to start?

Rena Clark 44:00
I just love the idea that structure allows for creativity. Truly a one thing this time.

Paul Beckermann 44:09
Very concise, Rena. Very good. Winston, what are you thinking about?

Winston Benjamin 44:13
I don’t know if I’m going to be as concise as Rena.

Paul Beckermann 44:19
That’s the most concise anyone has ever been on this show.

Winston Benjamin 44:22
I know, really, though. The thing that I’ve been struggling with is actually—like, I love the pirate idea. I’m trying to find me, right? You know what I’m saying? Like, you found your demonstration of your pirate, right? Like, I’m trying to find—ground myself in my interest right now. So that’s really what I’m trying to think about. My one thing is identifying my interest so that I can publicly speak it to my students in an authentic way. So that’s really where I’m thinking about.

Paul Beckermann 45:02
I’m stuck on a few things, and since Rena was so short, I can add more than one. That passion—content and professional—piece really resonates with me, because we’re not always going to be passionate about one thing. You know, it might not be the content every day, but there’s something. Maybe it’s our personal interest, maybe it’s that professional piece, that content. Somewhere we need to bring some passion into what we’re doing, because you can’t fake that. I mean, kids are going to see right away if it’s a nothing thing to you. So you got to bring something to that.

And I’m also resting on what Dave said, that all progress is found outside of your comfort zone. That’s true. I mean, if you don’t take any risks, you never grow. And sometimes trying something new can feel a little risky, but it’s going to be your opportunity to grow. So I’m thinking about a couple of those things.

Dave, your final chance to share something with our listeners. What would you like to leave us all with today?

Dave Burgess 46:06
I’m going to leave them with a quote from someone else, and that’s Seth Godin. So Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors, kind of more on the entrepreneurial marketing side of things. A lot of the best books in education are found outside of the education section. I shouldn’t say that as an education publisher, but it’s true. I love to read outside. I love to read wide, right?

And he said, when I’m thinking about my journey from teacher to author to PD speaker to publisher, all that kind of stuff—lots of people are always looking to be chosen. They’re looking to, you know, they think they have to raise their hand. They think they have to be selected in order to either write a book, share their message, go speak at conferences and all that. And it’s just simply not true.

You’re probably doing amazing work, and you need to share it with the world. And so Seth Godin’s quote was this: “Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” And so if you have something powerful, if you’re listening to the show, and you have something powerful that you think that you would like to share with the world, you don’t have to be selected. You don’t have to be chosen. Pick yourself. Reject the tyranny of picked. Go out and do it and share it with the world.

Rena Clark 47:16
I love that. Take those words to heart. Hopefully some of our listeners will take that to heart.

Dave, it’s been such a pleasure to have you on the show today. I remember reading your book a couple different times. So again, if you haven’t read it yet or you just want to pick it up, Teach Like a Pirate—still so relevant, I think, more relevant than we realize. And, you know, we look forward—hopefully we’ll have you back again, talk about some of your other authors, or whatever else is maybe new.

Dave Burgess 47:46
Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really enjoyed it, and I really appreciate it.

Rena Clark 47:51
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 47:57
We invite you to visit us at AVIDOpenAccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 48:10
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 48:14
And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 48:19
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 48:21
You make a difference.