Episode 71: Serious Play with Dan Jokes

Sophie, Co-host (00:01)
So welcome, Dan. Could you expand a little bit on your educational journey for our listeners?

Dan Thomas (00:07)
Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm glad you I'm glad you know you guys reached out and asked me to be on the show. I am a recently retired I phrase it as a recovering middle school teacher. I taught I taught middle school STEM for 32 years. ⁓ Down just down the road we're actually where I went to school. So I I applied for one job I got the job and I never left the school which is really weird nowadays in education or just about anywhere. ⁓

Sophie, Co-host (00:29)
Wow.

Steve, Co-host (00:33)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (00:33)
But I was the guy that got it was allowed to kind of play with everything and try some some stuff out and really have some fun in the classroom.

Sophie, Co-host (00:44)
That sounds fantastic. I was always the one that wanted to play with everything but was told not to.

Dan Thomas (00:49)
Alright.

Sophie, Co-host (00:52)
Yeah, I get the whole like recovering middle school teacher. I was a middle school teacher too. Steve was high school. But yeah, so we talked about in your intro about your STEM, that you were a STEM educator. So what sort of really cool projects do you like look back on fondly?

Dan Thomas (01:10)
Well, you know, back in the day, I was I've always done the typical STEM projects, you know, your bridges, your catapults, your mousetrap cars, you know, all those typical things we did in. when I started, it was things like I had a shop set up, right? So we had bandsaws and table saws and slowly that morphed into other things. ⁓ But I was always like really focused on on what went into creating the project.

Right. Because that was nice about it, too, is everybody built something different. Still solve the problem, but everybody built something different. So we started doing that. And then I just started playing with a little bit of computer science and I started bringing that in and then a little video production. It just, you know, I I was the guy in the school that like played with the stuff and then like work the bugs out and then sent it to somebody else. So I did a little bit of everything. And, you know, and to Steve's

Steve, Co-host (01:43)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (02:09)
there I taught some high school too. So basically everything in my department at one point or another I taught. So that was kind of fun.

Steve, Co-host (02:17)
Yeah, love that. love the, what resonates with me is like this concept of, you know, they're all building something different with the same goal and game in mind. ⁓ That's just how the world works, right? Like we're going to have different perspectives and how we solve things.

Dan Thomas (02:33)
I mean, if you're if we're looking at what teachers do, that's what we do on a daily basis. You know, my wife works in private and was, you know, works in the private sector. ⁓ And she does accounting and stuff like that. But even her, she does those things on a daily basis where we're solving problems, where we're, you know, nothing goes according to the book ever. All right. And if it does, then something's going to happen.

Steve, Co-host (02:54)
Right.

Sophie, Co-host (02:59)
Yeah, that resonates with me. whole like, nothing ever goes according to plan. You've got to that skill to like pivot, problem solve and keep going.

Dan Thomas (03:10)
Absolutely.

Steve, Co-host (03:12)
So Dan, like so I'm I'm a little like, you know unfamiliar With something that's in your bio and I would love to hear more about it certified Lego So that's something I'm not familiar with super interested in hearing more about that. And yeah, if you can just elaborate

Dan Thomas (03:32)
Okay, there's a couple things there with that too. So first I'm a certified LEGO serious play trainer, is basically it's things like, you know, I always have my LEGO bricks around and I'm actually playing with them now and ⁓

But what that does is it kind of it's a way to build that conversation. know, so so there's that. So so like I could go into into a school and talk to a group of teachers and through the play with Lego bricks, it becomes a medium of how do you initiate a conversation versus that icebreaker like, hey, say one fun fact about yourself, which we all love as teachers or just about any edu. yeah. Everybody loves, you know, two truths and a lie.

Sophie, Co-host (04:15)
all so much.

Dan Thomas (04:20)
type of things. ⁓ But so there's that. So I got trained in that so I can go around and talk to teachers about that. And, you know, industry, I mean, it starts, it's a business, you know, it's a private sector business model for teamwork and stuff like that. Just stuff I really did in class. The other side of that is ⁓ one of my things I picked up post COVID was I work with Lego Education as a contractor.

Steve, Co-host (04:24)
you

Dan Thomas (04:51)
And I get to go into school districts that buy Lego education products. And if they buy a PD session, I get to go in and teach teachers how to play with the with the Lego bricks and the Lego sets that they have and how to implement them in the classroom. And when I'm doing both of those. I love to bring in the fact that this is kind of like my underlying philosophy. I want you to be able to do something with it tomorrow, because we've all done that PD session. We've all done that workshop where

And you you talked about FETC. We all saw a ton of stuff there. But when I go back to my classroom Monday morning. You forget what did Steve say? What was it that Sophie's tip that we know? And then you just go back to doing what you were doing. My whole thing is I want something simple enough and low floor enough that they could use it tomorrow, knowing that it's probably going to be difficult and it's not going to go perfect. But.

Steve, Co-host (05:31)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (05:48)
they have the confidence to be able to do that. I kind of tie all that stuff together because it really, really, really all those both those things and the whole Lego education focus on play and hands-on really fit with what I was doing. I just didn't realize it at the time.

Steve, Co-host (06:06)
Yeah, and Just this knee and I talk I was talking about this this week actually with my pre-service candidates about like just the concept of play and how the kids do less play as they get older and Sometimes that's like a cultural thing. Sometimes it's like, you know this out of the other but part of it's like the education system generally right like just giving them less opportunity to

Continue that play and it was just like a real conversation

Dan Thomas (06:37)
Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. know, I think we and I've this isn't my own phrase, but cemetery Rose, you've walked into a classroom, you walk into the workshops we did or the sessions we did at FTC and you see the desks lined up in cemetery Rose.

know, everybody's straight and everybody's, know, teachers in the front because that's what we expect. My classroom wasn't set up that way.

Sophie, Co-host (07:02)
That was

sort of the factory model that we were given when we were growing up sort of thing. And so people are still imitating that because it's what they think is going to happen. Yeah, and your classroom wasn't like that.

Dan Thomas (07:06)
Absolutely.

Well, you know, and I think,

you know, I think a lot of teachers, there's a there's a couple thoughts on that I have on that. One, some teachers and I'm not I don't want to single anybody out and I don't want to say, you know, you're doing it wrong. But some teachers don't want to give up that control of they don't want the chaos in the classroom. They don't want the loud classroom. ⁓ And on the flip side of that.

Steve, Co-host (07:20)
Okay. Okay.

Dan Thomas (07:37)
They're so hammered with, got to cover this standard. I got

to put my objectives on the board. What's my learning target? I'm getting observed and I got to cover this, cover versus learn and cover versus discover, I guess is how it's phrased. So I think a lot of teachers are so inundated with mandates and requirements and whatever new initiatives coming down from state ed.

Steve, Co-host (07:54)
Hmm.

Dan Thomas (08:06)
admin, whatever it is, ⁓ that they have to cover these things. they just, at the end of the day, kids don't come to school to watch us work.

Steve, Co-host (08:18)
Right.

Dan Thomas (08:18)
Even though we want to think they do, you know, the only people we really go watch work are our actors and our athletes. Those are the people we want to watch work. You're not going to go sit in an accountant's office and watch them, you know, balance a spreadsheet.

Steve, Co-host (08:36)
That's...

Sophie, Co-host (08:37)
I mean, I might.

Dan Thomas (08:40)
You know, and I stole that one from from my daughter's swim coach. My daughter was a competitive swimmer. And I was sitting on the pool deck with him one day and I coach sports too. I coach football and golf and basketball and swimming. You know, I did a little bit of everything ⁓ because I had a hard time sitting on the sidelines watching people do it wrong.

That's another story. But at any rate, I'm sitting on the pool deck with my daughter's coach and he goes, you know, why, why do these kids come to come to swim practice? Cause if you've ever swam, ⁓ it's tough sport. It's a very, it's, it's a team sport, but it's very, it's very individual because your face is in the water staring at the line for two hours and you're doing 6,000 yards, you know, and, and, ⁓ they, you know, we go to work, we do things like this. We go to conferences and kids come to school because that's where their friends are.

because the big one, and part of it too is for school, that might be the only place they get a hot meal, that might be the only place they get a hug, that's the place they get some positive reinforcement, but they come to school because that's what their friends are. And mom and dad make them or whomever, and it's the law, but other than that, yeah, that's part of that.

Sophie, Co-host (09:41)
Yeah.

Steve, Co-host (09:41)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Sophie, Co-host (09:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Steve, Co-host (09:56)
Yeah, yeah, I there's one line that you said that really like stood out to me and that was like the concept of you know, ⁓ you said like the difference between cover and learning or cover discovery and That just that just took me back to when I was in the social studies classroom because that was something that I'm sure it's like this in other states, but like, know, if you teach world history in california like

Sophie, Co-host (10:09)
discover.

Dan Thomas (10:12)
Yes.

Steve, Co-host (10:25)
the concepts are very ⁓ big picture and conceptual and there are certain things that you definitely go deep on, right? Like you hit the French Revolution really hard, right? Like you need to hit the causes of the first world war and like the nuances that are, and then there's other things like, we're just covering this, we're just covering this. And it's almost just like, why do it besides the fact that you have to? If that's all it's gonna.

And that's that's that was kind of just a good like reflection kind of moment for me as I were you know Thinking back on how I was doing all that

Dan Thomas (10:58)
Yeah, you know, I stole another thing because teachers love to steal and borrow, edu-borrow things. ⁓ Along those lines, Steve, you know, that's where like my STEM class and kind of things I took for granted. You talked about the big picture and the concepts and stuff like that. But as a 12 year old or a 13 year old or a 15 year old or wherever class you're in, however old you are, we as adults have knowledge of the First World War. We have knowledge of the French Revolution.

Sophie, Co-host (11:05)
Yes.

Dan Thomas (11:28)
I can't remember a lot of it, but I know about it. So if we started talking about the first world war and how that started, we'd have some working knowledge, whereas a kid doesn't. So that's where that discover part of it comes in. And I like to start class. And this is kind of like my little platform right now is let's do an activity before we hit that content. Let's do something.

Steve, Co-host (11:39)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (11:55)
Get our and I like to get my hands dirty with stuff. I call it getting hands dirty, but we're going to play with our hands. We're going to do something. And that could be sketching that could be building with Lego. That could be whatever, right? Making a video, whatever it is, TikToks. But let's do an activity about. War, for example, right? Let's I don't know what that is off the top of my head, but then then let's talk about, OK, how did this war start? And maybe we do something where we do start with like a gang fight.

you know, a fight between kids in school. What would you do? Because I mean, that's kind of how World War I started, if I remember right. There was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, initiated it all. And there's a backstory there. I'm glad I know that. Wow. A shop teacher. And so, you know, we do an activity and now that kid has, that 12 year old kid has, and I go back to 12 year olds because that's what I taught, that 12 year old kid now has an idea

Steve, Co-host (12:27)
Mm.

You get the star, Dan. You get the star.

Sophie, Co-host (12:40)
You're doing better than me, Dan.

Steve, Co-host (12:46)
Cough

Dan Thomas (12:55)
to anchor that concept to. He has something physical, maybe something tangible that he can, he or she can anchor that to. And now, now that they have that, now we can attach vocabulary to it, right? So now that vocabulary has meaning and context. Whereas a lot of what we were taught as teachers, maybe you guys, because my undergrad teaching was very old school shop-related, and that's another story for another day. ⁓

We were taught the front load vocabulary. Hey, let's make a list of these vocabulary words. These are working and then let's look for these as we go. But those vocabulary words don't mean anything to a 12 year old who has no idea what an archduke is. Right? You know, and that's where I think like piece things like AI can come in handy with that. Like if we're going to talk about the impetus of World War One, I can throw that as a history teacher into

Sophie, Co-host (13:39)
Mm. Yeah.

Dan Thomas (13:53)
Chad GPT, Magic School, School AI, pick your poison there and ⁓ say, hey, how can I make this relevant to a kid in California or a kid in Jamestown, New York? ⁓ You know, what's going on in my school that I can do a little five minute bell ringer activity that's going to relate this topic to what they're already feeling. You know, because that makes it real and relevant to the kids and then they own it. And then

What else is going to happen too at the end of the day? Once once that final comes around or in New York State when we hit our regents and things like that, those kids are going to score better because they own the learning with it, right? As opposed to just regurgitating it on a Friday exam.

Sophie, Co-host (14:40)
Yeah. And it'll stick with them longer. They're like the retention will stick with them longer because it is relevant and connected to something that they can draw back on. Yeah.

Dan Thomas (14:44)
Exactly.

Next one.

Steve, Co-host (14:53)
So Dan, I'm just curious, I feel like you and I taught similarly. There's a lot of what you say that just like, yeah, love that and really resonates with me. People ask me this often, the way that we teach, especially from the PBL lens, what do you feel was the most valuable skill that your kids got from you?

Dan Thomas (15:23)
Well, you know, that's a great question. ⁓ Because there's a lot actually underneath there. And I think, you know, you're hitting that PBL piece and doing a hands on project. And again, it could be in a social studies classroom. It could be in a math classroom, whatever, or a STEM classroom like mine. But those kids are going to remember that. And you're going to learn some things that

Steve, Co-host (15:29)
Right.

Dan Thomas (15:45)
You can't explicitly teach in a classroom. You're gonna learn how to collaborate, right? We're not gonna walk into a classroom on Monday morning and say, hey, today we're gonna learn about collaboration. But if you do a PBO project, that's built in, right? You you're gonna get stuck. You're gonna have to develop your own answers. You're gonna have to do some research. Your things are gonna not work properly. So you're learn a little bit of grit and some perseverance. You know, we talk about these...

Sophie, Co-host (15:58)
Yeah, no.

Dan Thomas (16:12)
Their 21st century skills is what they used to be called. I mean, it's 2026. Come on, we're a fourth of the way through. I've heard the phrase durable skills, right? And I'm like, that is what we need to teach our kids. Because information, the information, like, like if I wanted to go back to the World War I example, if I wanted to find out more about that, I can just throw that into Google. I can probably find a YouTube video. I can probably, you know, throw it into it again, a chat GPT or something and get some

Steve, Co-host (16:17)
Yeah, agreed.

Sophie, Co-host (16:24)
Mmm.

Dan Thomas (16:41)
some quality feedback and some quality information on it. ⁓ So what's the point of doing that? Let's work with that. And then through a project or through ⁓ some type of, and it could be even like I saw Kalo Haslem at FETC in the Brisk booth doing a D &D camp, a Dungeons and Dragons campaign virtually through Brisk. And I'm like, that is amazing. Why couldn't you do that with World War I? Right?

So that's what that kid's going to remember. And now all of a sudden, if they own that, come test time, they're going to be able to decipher that question a little bit more and kind of read between the lines, so to speak. I think that the skills that, going back to Steve's question, which is, this is a long answer. ⁓ What did the kids learn? Grit and perseverance, ⁓ you know, and thinking. They learned how to think.

Sophie, Co-host (17:34)
Yeah.

Steve, Co-host (17:35)
Yeah, I love that answer

Yeah, I love that answer. ⁓ and and sophie dropped it in the chat just kind of shows how well she knows me and sees me present on pbl but like, ⁓ my answer my answer is always like Teaching kids how to ask good questions and the right questions Wow Well, that's the answer that i've given often sophie, ⁓ but yes like yeah, Sorry dan

Dan Thomas (17:54)
Yeah.

Sophie, Co-host (17:54)
That's

actually my answer.

Dan Thomas (18:00)
Easy, easy. Do I have to separate you two?

Sophie, Co-host (18:04)
Yes

Steve, Co-host (18:06)
⁓ So that's what happens around here sometimes. ⁓

Sophie, Co-host (18:10)
⁓ But yeah, so my classroom, I taught math. it's not as, like it's not in my experience, it's not as easy to do project-based learning for every single standard, but it is so much easier to do math with project-based learning. And I did a lot of cross-curricular activities and I did one of my, the hands down, ⁓ my favorite strategy that I learned in my first three years of teaching that I continued and still do to this day is

Dan Thomas (18:22)
No!

Sophie, Co-host (18:40)
I don't answer their questions with an answer.

Steve, Co-host (18:43)
Yep.

Dan Thomas (18:43)
No.

Sophie, Co-host (18:45)
I asked them questions to guide them down the right path. ⁓ And they hate it, but then they, they are, eventually they do, they get it. And my favorite time was like, is this answer right? And I'm like, I don't know, is it? And they're like, well, what do you mean? And I'm like, well, did you check it? And they're like, so then they, it's putting it back in, it's building their own confidence too, because they're like, okay, let me think through this. And, ⁓

Dan Thomas (18:48)
And they hate that. And they hate that. But they love it at the end.

Right.

Yes.

Sophie, Co-host (19:13)
I did do a lot of collaboration. My desks were in ⁓ weird rows or then groups. They taught each other and they talked through the math. was so fun. ⁓ But that's the putting the learning back on them and having them do more than what you're doing. If you walk out of your classroom and you're not even you're the only one tired, you're not doing it right. And you're the only one tired. not doing it right.

Dan Thomas (19:36)
Yes.

Sophie, Co-host (19:41)
⁓ So asking good questions, learning what questions to ask, would say to answer Steve's question, even though it wasn't mine. That would be what my kids learned.

Dan Thomas (19:41)
If, yeah.

If you don't

see frustration in the classroom, right? You need to see frustration in the classroom. You need to see maybe a little bit of anxiety. I mean, it's not a bad thing. You need to see a little bit. You need to see struggle. You need to see failure. And in my classroom, on top of that, not only did we celebrate the awesome successes because that's what you do. Sometimes we celebrated the epic failures too, because something just blew up and it didn't work and it was hilarious. And as long as nobody got hurt.

Steve, Co-host (19:57)
you

Dan Thomas (20:18)
Right. I mean, we were we didn't play with like explosives and stuff like that. But but, know, when the kid epically fails on a catapult or a mousetrap car that goes backwards like.

Sophie, Co-host (20:18)
Yeah.

Dan Thomas (20:31)
Yeah, you you fell walking down the hallway one day, too, right? You you've tripped going up the stairs. You know, and I equate it being being a sports coach, and I think teachers need to go and see their sports coaches and their musical people and their art people in the classroom. A professional baseball player, Major League Baseball player is if he's up to bat one for three, a 300 average is

phenomenal, which means that two out of the three times he's up getting paid multimillion dollars, he fails. Right? Two out of the three times he fails or three out of four. Right? And we got to normalize that.

Sophie, Co-host (21:17)
Yeah, and like, and then it's not just like, I would say this to my kids too, because math was one of those ever all the kids come in with math anxiety. And I would say to my students to whatever season it was, that baseball player didn't just walk up to that home base to bat and immediately bat that well. He practiced, he made mistakes, he got it wrong. And that's what you need to do with math too. You've got to try.

Dan Thomas (21:24)
Yeah.

Steve, Co-host (21:28)
you

Sophie, Co-host (21:46)
before you can just, so many of them are just like, I don't even wanna try. I'm just, I'm gonna fail. Like you already set yourself up for failure.

Dan Thomas (21:54)
Yeah,

you know, and I think that's why I recommend I did a session there at FETC and I told the people I'm like, go to football practice, go sit in a basketball practice. Right. So so many times we get like, hey, these kids should know how to write or these kids should know how to set up a math problem. Go to your football practice, go to basketball practice and watch the basketball players shooting free throws for 20 minutes before practice starts. Right. You think that should be automatic, although Shaq couldn't.

Steve, Co-host (22:03)
you

Dan Thomas (22:23)
you know, hit the backboard sometimes, you know, but, you know, he did okay for himself. But, you know, but those little things like that, the repeated practice and the perseverance and right. And I think you need to take a look at what's going on in those other classes. And, you know, I'm not saying bring everything in from that, but again, going back to before, why does a kid join the football team? Why does a kid in the musical? Why is a kid in the band? Right. Because that's where their friends are and they enjoy it.

Sophie, Co-host (22:35)
Mm-hmm.

is where their friends are.

Steve, Co-host (22:52)
Hmm.

Dan Thomas (22:53)
And, you know, going to that band

analogy, if you're an elementary teacher, walk past that orchestra room when they're learning to play the violin. It probably sounds not good. But then you go to the concert at the, you know, when they're in middle school and all of a sudden that kid can play. Why? Because they practiced and they did it over and they did the fundamentals and the little things. ⁓ One of the things I had on my board besides plant corn, get corn was.

Sophie, Co-host (23:02)
Ooh.

Dan Thomas (23:21)
from Bill Walsh, was the head coach for the San Francisco 49ers back in the 80s. And he says, take care of the little things and the big things take care of themselves. Right. So if you take care of the little day to day things that you can do, you know what? That test at the end of the year is going to take care of itself. But if you're focusing on that output, right, if you're focusing on on that project or that essay or that math problem, but you missed doing the little steps in between, it's not going to work.

Steve, Co-host (23:50)
It so so you know, no, no, no, no, this is great. I so like when as we're diving into all this, like to me, the elephant in the room is like our and when I say we, mean like as a country, I guess like just our fixation on the standardized test. Right. Like just that fixation has kept us from achieving what like largely what you're talking about.

Dan Thomas (23:51)
Sorry, I got a little deep there.

Yeah, you know, there's. We're so focused right now on product. We're so focused on what what is that output piece that we're going to get. And again. In school, does it really matter what that output piece is? Right. Like like I get frustrated this time of year now that it's being tax season and it's the beginning of, know, and I'm going to see, Mark safe from doing the Pythagorean theorem today. I'm glad I learned that instead of how do I do my taxes, right? I can't tell you the last time I wrote a poem.

Sophie, Co-host (24:21)
Yeah.

Steve, Co-host (24:41)
Thank you.

Dan Thomas (24:51)
But I had to write a poem and

it's the process, right? I use the Pythagorean theorem all the time. I built a deck. I refurbished a house, right? So I had to figure out some things that I didn't have, you know, and I had to figure out area and square footage. And then going back to like what Sophie with math, we have a kid that I had a kid a couple of years ago that didn't want to do area and volume, right? Just wouldn't do it. He was capable. But I'll tell you, and I told the math teacher, I'm like,

Steve, Co-host (25:16)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (25:21)
You got to make it relevant. And I said, because in five years, this kid's going to be out pouring concrete with his dad and being staying at the end of your driveway and be able to figure out the volume and the cubic yards of concrete. You're going to need to pour your driveway and do it all in his head and give you a quote right there. So why can't he do it here? Because it doesn't have meaning to him. That's not applicable. And how hard is that now in the age of AI?

Sophie, Co-host (25:39)
Mm-hmm.

Like there's so much that I would have been able to do if I had AI in the math classroom to make it extremely relevant, excuse me, for every single student in that room. Like for example, my son is obsessed with Mario right now. Bowser, Yoshi, anything to do with Mario. You do any activity with Mario, especially with Bowser in it, he's gonna do it. So why wouldn't you do it?

Dan Thomas (25:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the kid next to him might be infatuated with dinosaurs. So you could create a worksheet with dinosaurs and another worksheet or a scenario with Mario and Luigi attacking the dinosaurs.

Sophie, Co-host (26:20)
Mm-hmm.

Right? Blend it all together. I love it.

Dan Thomas (26:24)
You know, so you could cross curricularly. There's your right. Or I always love

to do that cross curricular piece. I always hit up my math or science teachers and social studies in English. You know, I'm like they read. What was it? The giver? I think it was the giver they read in seventh grade, and I think that's the book I'm thinking of where the kid creates contraptions and stuff like that in the book. I don't remember off top my head and I'm like, OK, well, let's.

Steve, Co-host (26:33)
Thank

Mm.

Dan Thomas (26:51)
bring that kid in and say, would this kid create in this scenario? And so, so, you know, we're pulling in content like, like as a special area, even as a core four, you know, you could bring in content, you know, from the other classes. STEM, STEM, math and science really tie well together. So there's a, but, we both, we need to write and talk and, and share ideas. So there's your ELA component.

Sophie, Co-host (27:06)
Yeah.

Dan Thomas (27:20)
And there's got to be a history behind it. So there's your, how was it used in, you know, maybe they're doing medieval Europe and I could build catapults while they're doing medieval Europe and talk about how the siege engine was used to, to, uh, attack a castle. And then we have some fun with it. Right. So we, played cornhole actually with our catapults. I think I got sick of chasing pink pong balls around. So I bought, um, uh, little bean bags and I made a quarter scale cornhole board. So we played cornhole.

Steve, Co-host (27:34)
Nice.

Sophie, Co-host (27:39)
Nice.

That's fantastic. Yeah.

Dan Thomas (27:50)
And was hard. And we still learned the

physics of it. we still, you know, we still learned how to because it wasn't necessarily about physics either. It was it wasn't necessarily about simple machines. But hey, it's going to break. How do I adjust my catapult to hit that target repeatedly? So those are the thought, you know, because because it's going to solve problems. Information's right there. Right. Information's right there at their fingertips and their phones and their on their devices. But how can I?

Sophie, Co-host (28:06)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (28:15)
Unless like Sophie said, how do I ask that right question? And Steve, how do I ask the right questions? I don't know. I'm not going to take any. I'm not going to separate you two again on that one. But but, you know, asking the right questions. What do I put into a chat GPT to get that answer? What do I what do I need to do in order to balance the spreadsheet or this machine is broken out on the shop floor? What am I going to do to fix it? Right. So that's what I think where the whole

Steve, Co-host (28:32)
Yeah.

Dan Thomas (28:45)
That's where the kind of I think education needs to go right now is in that regard. Not so much information and output, you know, take this test, but can we build kids that think? Can we train these kids to think and be ask the right questions and be be OK with not being OK? Stuff we do as adults.

Steve, Co-host (29:06)
Yeah.

Sophie, Co-host (29:06)
And then there's another level of that too. feel like you can think information's at your fingertips, but is it good information? Is it accurate information? You've got to like, and check multiple sources and yeah. And that's something that the kids are like, I remember, I remember in high school, we had the computer labs and the big like desktops. ⁓

Dan Thomas (29:13)
Right, so you have to be critical thinkers.

Steve, Co-host (29:27)
Thank

Dan Thomas (29:27)
Yeah.

Sophie, Co-host (29:29)
going in and I was doing a research project in English about Persephone and I found a website from a dude that just made his own website himself and the teacher was like, well, let's go look to see who this person is and if it is a reliable source. And I remember that to this day because I thought, this guy has so much information on this website. It's really easy to read and I can just like copy and paste it. Cause you know, I was in high school.

Steve, Co-host (29:36)
Thank you.

Dan Thomas (29:42)
Yeah.

Right.

Sophie, Co-host (29:56)
⁓ And she, we went and looked at the author and was like, she's like, this is an unreliable source. And I was like, ⁓ so I had to keep digging. I had to keep looking. ⁓ But it's something where like, yeah, I tried it. I looked for it. I was wrong. Okay, just keep going. Try again. ⁓ And I feel like there's a lot of things where that's not the case where, and they get a lot of anxiety about being wrong. Like, yeah.

Dan Thomas (30:05)
But you tried something.

Because they're playing the game. Because

Steve, Co-host (30:24)
Yeah, and they're so used to that game.

Dan Thomas (30:25)
they're playing the game and they're trying to get points.

You know, I was actually listening to ⁓ another podcast and I drove to Florida and Dr. Peter Lilley et al was on it. I forgot whose podcast it was off the of my head, but he's wrote the Thinking Classrooms book and they were talking about questions and things like that. like, you know, the kids and kids playing the game of school, like a kid will wait four minutes and 20 some seconds before they know you're going to give them the answer because you've got to move on. Right. ⁓ Or, or, you know,

Sophie's sitting in his computer lab looking up for Stephanie. And as a teacher, I walk past, now she's going to ask me a question because she might've been on YouTube watching a YouTube short about a kid that's doing some new dance or on TikTok, right? So they're going to ask you a question. So you got to let the kids be kids too on top of it, right? So yeah, so there's a whole bunch of stuff that I think needs to be.

reframed for lack of better term. I'm not like saying, and I don't want to be up here saying, know, what you're doing in the classroom teachers is wrong. Change this. You know, here's a new initiative. No, teachers are doing some awesome things. And I don't want to make sure I get that message out there. We got teachers in schools all across the country, big, little, small, rural, urban, know, middle of the city, underprivileged, over-served, all that stuff.

Steve, Co-host (31:30)
Yeah.

Dan Thomas (31:56)
that are doing some awesome and amazing things. Right. And but nobody knows about it. We know about the crappy teacher because that's in the paper and stuff like that. Or that's the teacher that gets it. Mom goes on TikTok and complains about because they targeted their son or whatever it is. But we don't hear about so few of those teachers doing the really cool things and the awesome things. And if you think back to when you were in school. know, that teacher that was really tough on you.

Steve, Co-host (32:02)
Mm.

Sophie, Co-host (32:13)
you

Steve, Co-host (32:19)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (32:25)
that you hated in the minute when you were there. When you're done, you're like, yeah, that guy was pretty good. That was a pretty good teacher. But the guy that was your friend all the time, maybe you knew how to get away with things and you knew, you ⁓ but the one that was tough and strict and accountable is a good word for that. You know, they kept you accountable. That is the teacher that you remember. And that is the teacher that that that kind of

Sophie, Co-host (32:38)
didn't learn a thing.

Dan Thomas (32:55)
built you the way you are. And I think that goes a long way and that needs to get out there. And that's what I also tell people when I do podcasts and I do workshops and stuff is like, put the stuff out there. Your school's got a social media. You're doing something awesome, right? And you may have been doing it for 20 years, but you know, send it to your social media person makes invite your your admins into the classroom. You know, and the other thing that I tell them, and this is a PBL thing for you, Steve, how hard is it for a

to take a Friday morning once a month, go to the coffee shop and get a couple of pots of coffee and a couple dozen donuts and bring in some parents, some business people, some politicians to showcase your students for an hour on a Friday morning at eight o'clock, right?

Steve, Co-host (33:40)
That that was such a Such a That was an important part. It was almost like I I got to a point where like I'm not doing PBL any other way then Involving the community involving mentors doing it purposefully ⁓ Like that grander audience, you know as we talk about in that PBL lens like It's so important and it's so authentic

Dan Thomas (33:44)
huge.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, and those people, those community members want to come into the school and they want to help. I mean, majority of them, some might not, some might be too, but they're there. And it makes it relevant for the kids, right? Because, and again, those are the people paying your taxes. Those are the people paying the school taxes. Those are the people that they're invested in. The kids you're turning out are going to go work for them and they're going to go buy products from them. So if I bring Steven from

Steve, Co-host (34:12)
They do.

What?

Dan Thomas (34:34)
the local Steve's Convenient Mart. Now, if I need a soda, I'm going to go see Steve because I remember seeing him in there and it's going to be a little bit more. Again, I come from a small town, a lot of that is. But you even have that in New York City too with the bodegas and the little corner stores and in San Francisco. You know, you have that. So tap into that because those people want to come in. And what's worst that's going to happen? They say no.

Steve, Co-host (34:47)
Mm.

Mm hmm.

yeah. Yeah. And that and it's they'll know they do. it was like an every year thing. They loved it. ⁓ So good. Yeah. Dan, not to not to switch gears too much, though, because I do want to make sure that we touch on your show. And so you do have the mic to prove it that you're a podcaster yourself. Really interested to hear about your show. I believe it's Ed Tech Clubhouse.

Dan Thomas (35:05)
Somebody wanna come in?

Yeah.

I do.

Steve, Co-host (35:30)
Podcast would just love to hear more about it

Dan Thomas (35:33)
It's actually the TechEd Clubhouse podcast because I was a TechEd teacher. And we talk about a lot of things, Steve. I've gone a bunch of different ways with some stuff, but I love to bring people on and learn some things, all walks of life. And we talk about just what kind of is relevant in education at the time. I am only like 70 some episodes in and

Steve, Co-host (35:38)
sorry, sorry, sorry, I can read.

Mm-hmm.

Dan Thomas (36:05)
And I'm growing, you know, I love to play golf. So that's the, that's where the TechEd Clubhouse came from. That's where the Clubhouse idea came from. ⁓ So, and I taught TechEd was what it was called in New York state. And then like just that Clubhouse feel of like, just sit down and have a conversation. Like it's the 19th hole, which is, know, if you're, if you're not a golfer, that's the patio where you have a couple of adult beverages.

Steve, Co-host (36:11)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (36:34)
and rehash all the awesome shots and all the terrible things you hit and settle up your little bets. But it's just a great. Yeah, just a great place to go sit to sit and have some conversations. And ⁓ yeah, so I just talk to people and I get some people on and just random ramblings of myself sometimes when I just need to get something off my chest. And I've been talking a little bit lately about engagement and

Sophie, Co-host (36:41)
Like the fifth quarter in football.

Dan Thomas (37:04)
And what it looks like and what it doesn't look like. And that seems to be like a hot button issue right now. That seems to be like, and I think it's one of those things too, that it's something that's there. But teachers and administrators and parents and kids don't really like look at it like engagement. My kids are quiet and they're working on their project. Okay, that's not engagement. That might be.

Steve, Co-host (37:07)
Mm.

Sophie, Co-host (37:31)
Yeah.

Dan Thomas (37:32)
But my class was chaotic and loud and noisy and a mess. And that's engagement, too. ⁓

Steve, Co-host (37:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dan Thomas (37:41)
So we're just

Sophie, Co-host (37:41)
Yeah.

Dan Thomas (37:41)
kind of looking at some different perspectives of some things. And if it works for you and resonates, great. If it doesn't, you wasted 20 minutes of your day, maybe.

Steve, Co-host (37:52)
Yeah,

no, I yeah, I love that I and I something I talk about often is and I did not come up with this like maybe katie novak I I forget who but like basically like talking about like stealing things right borrowing things like just it's that concept of that concept of like engagement versus compliance and what which one Which one is it and it's okay. That's a little bit of the two but don't confuse the two either

Dan Thomas (38:07)
How'd you borrow?

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, you know, I grew up in the late 1900s. I went to school and, you know, the meme that's out there is if you didn't cry doing homework at your math homework at your table with your dad, then did you grow up as a Gen Xer? Because you did things because the teacher said, hey, we got to write this essay. You wrote the essay. You know, and kids today are the same but different. And I bring this analogy up like

Steve, Co-host (38:41)
Mm.

Sophie, Co-host (38:45)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Thomas (38:48)
If you watch the Breakfast Club and you walk down the hall today, you're going to see the jocks. You're going to see all those different kids in groups and stuff. They might be a little bit different, but you're going to see those. But the difference is the kids today in the classroom.

Sophie, Co-host (39:01)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Thomas (39:05)
won't don't want to do the work unless it means something to them, unless it has some, they have some ownership. And it's so that that's, think, kind of the only real difference that I see from from kids. But a 12 year old, a 12 year old, a 12 year old, you know, I don't care, you know, if it's if he was 1982 when I was 12 or, you know, 2026 when when my students are 12, they're still the same kid and they're they're kids. And I don't care if they're five or 18.

Sophie, Co-host (39:21)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Thomas (39:35)
because we spend so much time with them that we forget that they're kids.

Sophie, Co-host (39:36)
and nice.

And they still love stickers, even if they are 18. Right?

Dan Thomas (39:42)
So do teachers, look at the laptops.

Steve, Co-host (39:46)
Yeah, I don't know. I now teach pre-service teachers. They're like kids too.

Dan Thomas (39:53)
Yeah.

Steve, Co-host (39:55)
They're really big kids, but yeah.

Dan Thomas (39:58)
I'm 55 and I still I'm still just a big kid. Like I like toys and you know, I play with Lego on my table for crying out loud. You know, and so. If you're not having fun, then it's work. You know, if you look over my shoulder here, you'll see this little sticker that I got is called Where's the fun in that? Which I which was my pin at FTC. Right, so.

Sophie, Co-host (40:04)
You're playing with Legos! Well, here you go.

Yes! Where's the fun in that?

one.

Dan Thomas (40:25)
I don't know. ⁓ But that was, that was, I learned that from my dad.

There's a story that I told, I did a little Fudo, what was a nice gate version of a Ted talk a couple of years ago, and it was titled Where's the Fun in That? And the story goes, ⁓ my dad was retired and he was fiddling around in his basement and he was trying to get this car radio to work, right, in his basement so he could listen to whatever it was when he was pretending to weld or fix his tractor or just trying to stay out of my mom's way. ⁓

Steve, Co-host (40:32)
Nice. ⁓

Dan Thomas (40:58)
And my brother comes in and he goes, dad, why don't you just go to Walmart and buy one for 20 bucks? And he goes, where's the fun in that? So I kind of brought that into my classroom, right? Like that, like one of those aha moments when you think about it, like that's what you remember. Where's, where's the fun in just buying a solution, right? Yeah, he could have gone and bought a radio, probably a better one than this stupid car radio and two car speakers that he went to the junkyard and picked up.

Steve, Co-host (41:03)
So.

Sophie, Co-host (41:17)
Mm-hmm.

Steve, Co-host (41:17)
Right.

Dan Thomas (41:26)
But he enjoyed the problem solving. He enjoyed the trying to find the solution. you know, and that's where the fun is. And if it's fun, if we're having fun, then we're not doing work.

Steve, Co-host (41:38)
That so what what that reminds me of so I have this ongoing debate with people that I know about like to to cook or not to cook like so do you you just order something and it'll be brought to you right but like for me I grew up I grew up in a family where that's Sophie ⁓ I grew up in a family where like part of the fun was the cooking like part of it was like ⁓ Experimenting part of it was like making stuff that

Sophie, Co-host (41:52)
Yes.

Steve, Co-host (42:06)
You your grandmother made and like it's just a part of you, right? And so Well, I think there's room in life for both scenarios. ⁓ is that that's that's kind of what ⁓ That's what kind of resonated with me. We said that Well, dan, this has been super fun. I am you know i'm just looking at the clock where we are coming down towards the tail end of the show here or tail end of the episode and we're gonna ask you what we ask everyone on this show, ⁓ what is

What is under the hat for you? What is top of mind in education for you right now?

Dan Thomas (42:41)
Right now for me, Steve, to be honest with you is the idea that ⁓ our teachers aren't allowed to be teachers right now. They're so inundated with mandates and scripted curriculum and you know, that, I got to cover this. I just put something out on TikTok yesterday and I don't know when this is coming out, but it's, you know, I put something out on TikTok like, hey, it's Friday.

And so what if you didn't get done? Right. So what if you didn't get your project done or your your lesson done? Did you make a connection with a kid? Did you did you notice a point in your lesson or your class where all of a sudden, you know, you had to switch gears because something happened. Right. ⁓ You noticed a kid that was struggling or you got a group of kids that were struggling. So why go on, you know, have that human moment and make those connections?

Steve, Co-host (43:12)
Mm.

Dan Thomas (43:39)
So I think that the practice of teaching, right, and the art of teaching is kind of going away. And I think we need to go back to what I said earlier, where we got 20 year veteran teachers or more that are doing some awesome things, right? Because they're allowed to teach. They're allowed to go in and they don't have this canned curriculum that they have to read from. Or they do and they're modifying it. So just...

Sophie, Co-host (44:06)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Thomas (44:07)
being a professional and bringing that back and realizing that, it's OK to be a teacher. It's OK to, you know, as opposed to being somebody that holds a teaching position, right? ⁓ You know, and if AI can do your worksheet, then it's not a good worksheet. if, you know, AI is not going to replace the teacher that's being the teacher, AI is going to replace the teacher that's holding the teaching position, just regurgitating information and reading off the slide deck at the front of the room. Right. But they're not going to replace

Steve, Co-host (44:15)
I love that.

Sophie, Co-host (44:18)
Damn.

Yeah.

Dan Thomas (44:36)
that human connection that we have that we have to have in the classroom. ⁓ So between being that teacher and then making making ⁓ the thinking and the learning visible. So how do I know that that kids learning something along the way? Because going back to like Steve's project based learning stuff. When it came time to evaluate the project in those things, I already knew what the grade was because I talked to Steve and Sophie as they built it along the way. So I knew that

Steve, Co-host (44:41)
Hmm.

Dan Thomas (45:04)
they got it and I was able to redirect because I had micro conversations with them along the way. I wasn't up in the front of the room. And I'm saying, again, there's a great place for direct explicit instruction and I'm, level one, level two and interventions and all that stuff. There's a place for all of that. But if that's all you do, then you're you as a teacher are missing out because you're not enjoying and you're not making that connection that that that kid's going to come back

Steve, Co-host (45:28)
Thank you.

Dan Thomas (45:30)
in 10 years when you're, you know,

Steve, Co-host (45:33)
Yeah.

Dan Thomas (45:33)
need your furnace service to net kids going to come in your room, come in your house and and remember you because you've made a connection with that kid. And that might change and it might change, you know, and some kids you're

Sophie, Co-host (45:41)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Thomas (45:44)
not going to make a connection with, right? Some people don't like me. It's hard to believe, but some people don't like me. And that's OK. But yeah, so so basically, Steve, those my two answers are, you know, be a teacher and be professional. And how can you make the thinking and the learning visible in your classroom?

Steve, Co-host (45:48)
Yeah.

Love that. Love that touch. good answer. Well, Dan, we have one more thing for you and we've never done this on the show, but I think it's super appropriate. ⁓ we are, Sophie and I are very interested in pairing. So she's, so she's interested in a joke, Dan. So I know you got this in your back pocket. you may have like a list somewhere, ⁓ sticky note, but like, very interested in a.

Sophie, Co-host (46:16)
huge fan of your daily jokes.

Steve, Co-host (46:32)
Daily Dan Joke.

Dan Thomas (46:34)
Okay, so I'll tell you my wife's favorite one. This is my wife's favorite one and I still don't know how to take it. So, ⁓ so we're sitting on the couch the other day and I said, I asked my wife, said, are you the only one? Am I the only one you've ever been with? She goes, yeah, all the rest were nines and tens.

Steve, Co-host (46:54)
Well, snap.

Dan Thomas (46:56)
So no, back to the dad joke thing. Like if you follow me on socials, I post a dad joke and a selfie every day. And they're appropriate to put on your slide decks at school, right? So, cause I had some friends of mine in the West Coast that use them in their morning slide decks.

Sophie, Co-host (47:12)
They're fantastic. do appreciate them. They always bring a smile to my face and some... Yes, they always do.

Dan Thomas (47:16)
Absolutely. Again, we've got to have fun.

Steve, Co-host (47:20)
Yeah

And for those that are watching listening, ⁓ just you know, like dan's handle like we just look up. ⁓ and dan you can correct me on this, coach Thomas tech that seems to be the consistent one across the platforms So yeah, definitely catch those follow dan. ⁓ you will get you'll just get like a good start to your day that and You get lots of stuff

Dan Thomas (47:35)
Yep. Yes.

You get stuck.

Sophie, Co-host (47:45)
You get lots of stuff for sure. I love it. I love it.

Dan Thomas (47:47)
More stuff is coming.

I got some things in the works. There's some stuff coming down that I'm real excited about. I'm hoping I can flesh it out and and get some cool stuff moving. I got I got some ideas rattling around in this big empty space up here.

Steve, Co-host (48:05)
Yeah, no, love that. that. Dan, thanks again. ⁓ You're welcome here anytime. Really appreciate your thoughts, your mind, your insight. But yeah, this has been fun.

Dan Thomas (48:17)
Absolutely has been my pleasure.

Steve, Co-host (48:20)
Awesome. All right friends. Well until next time keep your hats on but your minds open take care