Show Notes:
In episode 54, I interviewed Tim Cavey (@mistercavey), host of the popular “Teachers On Fire” podcast. Dave is a teacher from Canada who just earned a Master’s degree while researching content consumption through podcasts. We discussed how to be an evidence-informed educator by creating and consuming content.
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About Tim Cavey
My name is Tim Cavey, and I’m an 8th grade educator teaching in Surrey, BC, Canada. Now in my 18th year of education, I’m currently pursuing a Master’s of Educational Leadership degree.
My MEdL program has re-invigorated my passion for education. Favorite topics include collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, design thinking, growth mindset, inquiry, PBL, visible learning, and strategic uses of technology in education.
My Mission (The HOW)
Enter the Teachers on Fire podcast, where I profile agents of growth and transformation in K-12 education. Each week, I chat with an inspiring educator to bring you their highs and lows, passions and goals, and the voices and influences that are shaping their thinking and inspiring their practice.
Still early into this passion project, it’s been a pleasure to play a small role in professional learning and networking across North America and the world.
My Vision (The WHY)
We live in an age of phenomenal opportunities for content creation. We can all write, record audio, or produce video content and share it with the world using nothing more than our smartphones. As educators, I believe we should be leading the charge on content creation by modeling a lifestyle of Create> Consume. The Teachers on Fire podcast is one expression of that intention.
My vision was and continues to be the contribution of important conversations to inspire innovative practices by educators around the globe. As you’ll see if you explore my Tributes page, I’m pleased to say that the show is already making a positive impact.
What Inspired Teachers on Fire?
Although many educators, authors, entrepreneurs, and podcasters collectively inspired me to start this project, one content creator deserves special mention. John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneurs on Fire produces an awesome podcast that ran daily for many years. Although he’s slowed his publishing pace today, I still listen faithfully. Thanks to his guests, ideas, and constant encouragement, I found the faith in myself to believe I could contribute something of value to today’s education conversation.
John’s entrepreneurship podcast follows a fairly scripted interview format that I found enjoyable and interesting. I liked the predictability of the outline and looked forward to seeing how each new guest would answer the questions that I knew were coming. After searching for a similar show in the education space, I started to wonder and dream about producing an education version of Entrepreneurs on Fire.
Couldn’t I have thought of a more original name for my show? Honestly, I tried to find one. I brainstormed countless names for days and weeks, but every idea either didn’t sit right or it was already taken. After noticing that @TeachersOnFire was available on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Anchor, iTunes, Medium, and other platforms, I was sold.
I later discovered that Dave Burgess uses the phrase Teachers on Fire in his revolutionary book on teaching, Teach Like a Pirate. This was another happy coincidence and simply another confirmation that I was on a good track.
Connect with Tim:
Tim’s Website: teachersonfire.net
Tim’s Twitter: @MisterCavey
Tims’s Instagram: MisterCavey
Our Conversation
Dan Kreiness
Well, leader of learning listeners, I once again have an amazing guest. I’ve mentioned this before, but I really believe it that I think season three of leader of learning is shaping up to be absolutely the best season yet because of these amazing guests. And this time around this episode, we have Mr. Tim Cavey, the host of teachers on fire podcast, as well as some other projects that he’s involved in that we’ll talk about soon. But Tim, welcome. Thank you for joining me. And if you could please introduce yourself to the listeners.
Tim Cavey
Dan, thank you so much for having me man. What a pleasure to be here. We’ve been in touch for some time and and now I get to appear live on the show well not live but on the show. So thank you so much for the opportunity. Yeah, I’m an eighth grade teacher homeroom teacher in Surrey, BC, Canada. And as you said, I’m the host of the teachers on fire podcast, we’re approaching 100 episodes, it’ll be passed that I guess by the time this episode is released, and I’m also getting involved in some other pet projects, which are a lot of fun as well. And we might get into some of those. But in a nutshell, that’s that’s kind of Oh, and I’m just completing my master’s degree. So that’s very exciting as well.
Dan Kreiness
That is exciting. And we will also talk about that because, well, we’ll get there in a few minutes. But all right, let’s back up and talk about the teachers on fire podcast, because I feel like correct me if I’m wrong. That is kind of where you got started on making this shift to be more of a content creator than a con than just a content consumer. And, again, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like it’s really picked up steam and it’s gotten quite popular and and just take us back to why you got started on doing the podcast, why you continue to do it and what you’ve gotten out of it.
Tim Cavey
Well, thanks a lot. I love talking about it and sort of looking back at the Genesis story. So I would say I’ve been a podcast listener. Now. I have to back up and say I’ve been doing a lot of podcast research lately, Dan. So this is all fresh in the mind. But podcast came out in the early 2000s. Around 2004 is when they think the podcast term was first coined. And I was a listener, I would say right from the very beginning or from the early years, and at the time I listened to Dave Ramsey, if you know him, and I started picking up some sports shows, and then moving into the to the mid 2000 teens, is that a thing? I don’t. I started listening to entrepreneurship and business kinds of podcasts. And I can’t even remember how I landed there. But they were interesting to me. And one of the messages that some of those podcasters put out a lot is create content. We live in a phenomenal time where you can share your message and create content for free and share it with the world. And so yeah, I started to get excited about this idea of creating an educational podcast one of my favorite Business and Entrepreneurship podcasts was called entrepreneurs on fire. And that’s with John Lee Dumas. And he still produces his show at the time. It was a daily show. And it followed a fairly prescribed format. And I started looking forward to, you know, the questions that he would ask each guest. And I really liked his format. And so I started to think Is there something like that over in the education space? And at first, I couldn’t really find much by way of education podcasts. And so, of course, since getting into teachers on fire, I’ve discovered there are literally hundreds of us out there, including yourself doing this and it’s awesome. It’s amazing. But yeah, that was kind of my origin. And I think going back to those some of those entrepreneurship podcasts, people like John Lee Dumas and Pat Flynn and Gary Vee and Chris Drucker and others, you know, they all preach this message of content creation which I think fits so well with our message to our learners as well, I think it’s a message that translates really well into the classroom. And we might get into that some, some of that as well. But yeah, so
Dan Kreiness
Yeah and
Tim Cavey
Go ahead.
Dan Kreiness
And so the idea then, and you know, I believe that we both really share that. Why about why we started podcasting in terms of creating the content. But as far as the teachers on fire show is concerned, the idea was really to highlight great teachers doing great things, right?
Tim Cavey
Yeah, exactly. I think George Couros has an expression and I’m still not going to get it right. But it’s basically how can you make learning go viral? And I love that idea because we have this opportunity through this medium through this platform to share the brilliant ideas and practices that other educators are doing on a daily basis. So yeah, it’s, you know, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, not every educator is going to listen unfortunately, to education podcasts on their commute, but many will. And I think it’s just a phenomenal way to get to know other educators to hear what is happening, and to share ideas. So the the slogan, if you will of my show is profiling agents of growth and transformation in K 12 education. And I know that’s what you do as well with maybe a little bit more of a leadership emphasis. But it’s a you know, it does take some work, but it’s, I think, a high calling in a sense, and I’m really enjoying it.
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, you got it, man. I love the way that you are using the show to highlight educators. Although it’s kind of defunct now, I had started up a flip grid a couple years ago, toward the end of the school year called teacher feature, where we started really sharing about teachers we were working with, or maybe even other educators that we were connected to on social media, who we just wanted to give shout outs to and, you know, advertise and market the way that that teacher was doing really great things, you know, in their schools and in their district. So I really appreciate that aspect of it. Let’s be honest, we both will probably attest to the fact that sometimes education gets a bad rap. And you need that that positive marketing, let’s say and, and getting other people to realize just what is really amazing that people are doing in their schools and out there in the field of education.
Tim Cavey
I just want to jump on something you said to Dan about flip grid. So in my master’s thesis, I’ve been looking closely at educational podcasts. And in some ways podcasts don’t seem to fit within the web two point O tools of professional learning networks that we associate with Twitter, and Facebook groups and so many of these other environments. And I say that they don’t appear to fit at first glance, because they are one directional, and in some ways, they’re kind of form of static content. But once you dig a little deeper, you see all the other associated means of communication, right? So you and I are having this conversation on your podcast. And then we can engage further about this conversation on Twitter, on Facebook, maybe on LinkedIn and other environments, and they’re all connected. And so some researcher coined the term architecture of participation. And I really love that. Just last week, I saw actually one guy in my twitter PLN Jim meta, I hope that’s, I believe that’s his real name, Jim meta, and he has put together a flip grid wake lit, curated collection of video responses to the podcast that he listened to. And I just thought that was so amazing when I stumbled on that that here is this educator who is sharing his learning and reflections in a video way so I hope we’re getting into more of those reflections
Tim Cavey
Yeah. Did you see it?
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, no, I saw that actually
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, sorry to cut you off. I did see that and and while you’re talking about it, I also wanted to give a shout out to Dr. Randall Sampson if you haven’t met Dr. Randall he, he’s awesome. He’s got such amazing energy and probably a lot of the pictures that you’ve seen him and he’s carrying this wwe championship belt like belt that he you know, he really loves people to be champions of education and champions for kids. I love getting to spend time with Randall when I’ve seen him at conferences and stuff, but the reason I mentioned his name, and the reason why I believe your friend, what’s his name? Jim meta. You said?
Tim Cavey
Jim meta, yeah.
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, I think the reason maybe he’s created that flip grid and wakelam curation is because Dr. Sampson is really big on using alternative professional development measures to gain master’s level college credits. So graduate credits for professional development based on listening to podcasts, go going to conferences, all the all of these other ways that teachers and educators are developing themselves that’s outside of your typical and traditional PD. I love that I’ve not really taken advantage of it. But I would imagine that with all the podcasts listening and creating that you and I do, we’d probably earn many, many college credits for that.
Tim Cavey
Well, I mean, I guess in some ways that takes a bit of the shine off it Dan if if Jim is actually just doing that to complete course credits but you know, it’s still amazing.
Dan Kreiness
Well, no, I still I don’t know me to like deflate your balloon there a little bit or but but no, I still think it’s really cool. And maybe he’s not, I have no idea.
Tim Cavey
Oh yeah
Dan Kreiness
But still that that someone really puts that much stock into what they are, you know, the content they are consuming and reflecting on what that means and how much it means to them professionally, I think is awesome, regardless of the outcome.
Tim Cavey
Oh, no, totally. I’m I completely agree. And, I mean, that’s the point that I’m trying to make is we want to make this reflective? We want to make it two way, you and I, Dan are part of a group of podcasters. And one of the questions we’ve wrestled with is how do we invite our guests to actually contribute and engage with the ideas that they hear on the podcast? And so yeah, I got excited because to me, this is one way to do that. And I hope more people will, will jump on this, this model of video engagement with content, I think it’s super exciting.
Dan Kreiness
And you know, I’m going to shout out another great podcast and some mutual friends of ours the on education, guys, Mike and Glen, if you haven’t listened to on education, amazing, amazing podcast, and they’re building quite an amazing brands along with it and now at this point, but they mentioned something on one of their episodes recently about the word segway and how people kind of get tired of hearing it but I believe in my heart of hearts that you just provided a pretty good segue because you were talking a little bit about the research you’re doing in your masters and for your thesis around this idea of podcasting, consumption mostly right to for professional purposes. So here’s what I’m wondering. And I’m going to take you back a few months to a conversation that you and I had on boxer about research in education. We’re both researchers right now, you at a master’s level, and we at a doctorate level, and we discussed the importance of or really the place of educational research in schools. Let’s go back and kind of revisit that a little bit, because I think it was a really important and timely conversation. And I’ve heard it come up a little bit here and there, or seen it rather on on Twitter and things of that nature that educators need to maybe bring in research more and make sure they’re really doing, what research says they should be doing versus what they see on Pinterest and Twitter and you know, stuff like that. What do you feel about that?
Tim Cavey
Well, something I just showed up in my staff meeting yesterday was the idea of being evidence informed. And I you know, I think that really nails what you’re talking about we can, I think, you know, Dan in education right now we have all of the, as you say, the Pinterest, the Instagram worlds, and those are great. And we have a lot of what I would say is sort of popular reading over in the book area, but we have a lot of great ideas and inspiring practices that are not necessarily linked directly to research and not necessarily linked directly to evidence. So yeah, 100% as educators and it working within the discipline of education, we have all the disciplines hopefully are directly informed by evidence and research as well. And so we want our practices to be founded on not just what feels good or what someone else is doing, but what actually works for learners and you know, our school paid a lot of attention to John Hattie, who is I kind of feel like he is the king of academic research in some respects. And yeah, I agree. My former district really believed a lot in the visible thinking or visible learning research that he conducted. So I yeah, and you know, his, some of his reading is a little bit drier, for sure. It’s not as fun as let’s say, some of the DBC books that I also love. But yeah, when you’re working with John Hattie and visible learning and a lot of the material that is coming out from his organization, you know, that it is founded in, in some cases in thousands of studies. So, yeah, I think it is really important to make sure that we know that what we’re doing works.
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, you know, you brought up the educational book aspect of it, and I’m not here to throw anyone under the bus and and bash any of the amazing authors or publishing companies that are out there at this point, I think quite honestly, they have been tremendously inspirational to so many I mean thousands, 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands of educators. However, I think we do find that quote unquote, educational publications. I don’t know I was going to say often Yeah, I’m going to go with often, okay. They often are a little touchy feely, for lack of a better term. They talk a lot. It’s much more narrative and talking about experiences and trying to connect with readers and other educators. And so I get that piece, but maybe lacking some some deeper research and some real theory behind it. Would you agree?
Tim Cavey
100% and I, again, I’ve really, really enjoyed some of the books that I mentioned from Dave Burgess consulting, for example, who, you know, I think of sparks in the dark, for example, by Todd Nesloney, and I really respect him and his co author and a number of other books. Balance like a pirate with our mutual friend Sarah Johnson. And you know, I could go on. So these books are valuable, they’re inspiring. But I agree when you want to get a little deeper when, let’s say assessment when you want to think deeply about assessment and in that area, we want to link our practices closely. Again, with research, I’m repeating myself, but yes, I do think it’s important to get into some of the books with cited research with, you know, backed by studies and make sure that we know why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. And, you know, it’s funny because as a doctoral student and someone who is in the thick of writing my dissertation and being entrenched, really in research, I see the need for it absolutely. Like you’re saying, but I personally, I don’t want to become that guy who’s like, you know, I guess for lack of a better term, like that nerdy sort of educator who keeps going back to Well, this theorist and this researcher, you know, because I think that’s very unnatural, and it turns people off. But yeah, I think that understanding why you’re doing something, understanding the the evidence based practices that are behind the daily decisions that teachers are making in their classrooms, is important. I’m not sure exactly what the best way is to go about that though. I don’t see people going into libraries or online. You know, Research Libraries too much, but I guess my advice would be just, you know, kind of do your fact checking, right, like reading educational books is awesome. listening to podcast is, is great. Hey, we’re two podcasters and we want to plug our shows and get as many people listening as possible but really doing your fact checking and and making sure that you’re staying as relevant as possible and terms of the current research is important.
Tim Cavey
Dan, I just think that for so many educators out there, I think it’s a victory already to have them tuning into professional learning networks at all. And so what I mean by that is there are still a lot of teachers out there who really could and I, I don’t want to give this a negative tone, okay. But there are so many educators who, let’s face it, they have no interest in listening to an educational podcast, or starting an educational Twitter account or reading an educational blog, they are doing their thing, whatever their thing is. And so I think victory number one is just inviting and connecting teachers in this space and in the social, pardon me, in the professional learning network space. And then once they are here, and once they’re engaged, and they have that growth mindset and they are, their practice is evolving and improving forward, then call them up to maybe a little bit of a higher level in some cases, so, yeah, you know, and I’ll admit it to on my show that a lot of teachers just will not read graduate level research. It’s too dry and you and I both know that yeah, it can be you know, when when you’re coming across the citation every two sentences that’s not the most entertaining reading but yeah, it’s it is important and it has its place for sure.
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, no, totally. And it’s almost like based on what you just said, a step by step process, let’s say where teachers who really want to step up their game as educators will maybe first and foremost get connected and find their tribe you know, form a PLN whether that’s through social media like Twitter, or you know, we enjoy boxer very much. As matter of fact, I just did a research interview where someone is doing doctoral level research on social media for educators and I talked quite a bit about voxer you know, of course, reading publications, but then maybe that that last piece of the puzzle is the fact checking research part. I don’t know, maybe it’s a little bit of that that ladder effect where you sort of need to climb the ladder of, of connectedness and of professional learning. I don’t know. But here’s what I really wanted to ask you about too as we wrap up, and I appreciate all the talk about the research and and connectedness and finding your PLN. I wanted to make sure I gave you time to talk about those other projects that we kind of teased out before. So again, Tim has the teachers on fire podcast, amazing. I’ve listened, I think from the start, really, and you’ve brought on some great guests, and I’ve learned so much from your show, but you also now have another podcast, teacher blogs, as well as this teachers on fire magazine, and both of them are picking up quite a lot of steam. So please, if you could explain about what you’re doing with that as well.
Tim Cavey
Well, thanks, Dan. Yeah, so the teacher blogs podcast is based on the idea that there is so much good blogging happening and so much good writing. And we just don’t have time to read it all. But there are a lot of us, I think you have a longer commute, Dan, and we have some friends who have even longer commutes three hours a day in the car. And so for educators in those situations in those contexts, it just makes sense to produce more good listening. And so the teacher blogs podcast is basically a an opportunity for bloggers out there to go ahead and read their own content record themselves on their phone and share that clip with me. And that’s all I’ve been doing is, is basically flipping out those clips. And so what you have is an audio form of, of all of these great blog posts, and so that’s the teacher blogs podcast. At the time of recording here, Dan, I’ve gone through a really strenuous week with my thesis work and so I’m a little behind on the teacher blogs podcast, but my goal is to put out three episodes a week. And then over on the teachers on fire magazine, thank you for mentioning that as well. That’s at medium.com. And not everyone is familiar with medium. But basically medium is a curated aggregator of, again, blog posts. And it’s presented in a pleasing format, let’s say but it’s again, the the big emphasis is on the curation. And so, you know, their goal is to try to generate high quality. And I’ve got a publication called the teachers on fire magazine. And so I’m inviting writers to submit pieces to the magazine all the time. And as more writers join the team, and as we publish more pieces, then it just gains a higher profile within the medium platform. And so we get more eyes on the work that is happening there. And so that’s been really exciting and fun as well. And, and frankly, Dan I am, as I end my thesis work here, I’m excited to get get back into writing as well. My writing won’t always be graduate level and heavily cited work. In fact, most of it will not be. But hopefully it will be founded in some good research and good pedagogy and be a value to other people. So I’m looking forward to getting back into that as well.
Dan Kreiness
That’s great. And what I appreciate most about what you’re doing is trying to hit on various media in terms of
Dan Kreiness
Yeah, modalities, that’s a good that’s a good word. So like some people enjoy reading things. Some people enjoy listening. I you know, you mentioned my commute, I would much prefer to listen to a podcast or in that case, a blog post then sit there to take the time and read it on the computer or on a device. And I love that and what else I love about all the stuff you’re doing is you know, you have a podcast I have a podcast and let’s face it, both of us want as many people to listen as possible, but it’s not in competition with one another. It’s all about you know, being connected and supporting one another. And so I just want to, you know, get it out there on record and on the air to say that I’ve really appreciated the connected you know, the the way that we’ve connected over the past year, year and a half and how we’ve supported each other, you supported me and the way that we really have started to push each other. So thank you very much for that. Thanks for coming on and giving us some time here. Before we go. You know, let everybody know where they can find you out there.
Tim Cavey
Modalities
Tim Cavey
Well, the appreciation is mutual. Dan, I’ve enjoyed your smooth sounding voice long before I actually came to know you. So thank you for doing this producing this podcast. And by the way for sharing so vulnerably from your own journey and your own experiences. I’ve really enjoyed that as well. People can find me at teachers on fire and maybe I’ll just leave it at that teachers on fire on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, wherever I can be found. Yeah, wherever you are, hopefully I’m there. That’s a better way to put it but teachers on fire.
Dan Kreiness
Perfect and of course, links to everything that Tim is putting out podcasts and publications, online publications and blog posts will all be in the show notes for this episode. Tim, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, buddy. You know, I’ll talk to you soon in the in the Voxer land.
Tim Cavey
Alright, sounds good. Dan, thank you for joining me on this learning journey. And yeah, once again, I’ve learned so much from you and I it’s just a pleasure to partner with you in the educational podcast space. So keep up the great work.
