#48 Fall Back...Sometimes That's Okay

Hey, this is Dave Burgess, and you are listening to The Dave Burgess Show, where we talk education, lifestyle, entrepreneurship, fitness, wellness, principles of success, interview elite performers in their field, and most importantly, cover topics that will empower, inspire, and uplift you. Let's go.

Welcome to episode 48 of The Dave Burgess Show, Fall Back. Sometimes that's okay. That's right. It's that weekend where we change the clocks again. We fall back one hour. It is going to be lighter in the morning. It's going to get darker earlier. And this made me think about way back 20 episodes ago on episode 28, I had one called Spring Forward and not just on the clock, right? And so I thought I would riff on falling back this time and see how this goes.

Now there's this phrase that people often use in education, and by the way, I've even used a phrase very similar to this myself, which I'll tell you about in a second. Here's the phrase. The most dangerous phrase in education is, this is the way it's always been done, all right? And in fact, in the book P is for Pirate, wait, you didn't know that we have a book called P is for Pirate, Inspirational ABCs for Educators? That's right. I wrote it with my ex-wife, Shelly, and it's an awesome book, goes A through Z, and we talk about our philosophy of education with a fully illustrated ABC picture book, but not for kids, it's for adults. And then we have contributors from all kinds of cool people in the back of the book as well as they shared their letters and what they thought their letters would stand for in education. So it's a cool book.

But anyway, on the D chapter, we did a little shout out to Matt Miller and said, D is for a ditch, right? And we said, ditch that textbook, ditch that outdated curriculum, ditch those preconceived notions of what is right and wrong in the classroom. The worst reason to do anything is because that's the way it's always been done. But let's talk about the corollary of that. Wait, corollary? Is that even the right word? Who cares? Who's going to stop me? I'm using it.

Let's talk about the corollary. The corollary to that is, hey, just because that's the way that we used to do it, doesn't mean that it's wrong. Doesn't mean that something that is new is necessarily better. I love the definition of innovation that George Kuros talks about in the innovators mindset, and that is that something to be innovative, it should be not just new, but needs to be better too. Innovation means new and better, right? And so just because an idea is new does not mean that it should replace something that is already working. There's that phrase, right? Don't fix it if it's not broke. And so sometimes we have to remember that.

Or sometimes, here's another one, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? And so just because you're getting rid of some part of something that we're just no longer serving our learners, doesn't mean that the whole concept needs to go away, right?

So I have a couple of unpopular examples of this. One of them being lecture. It is very popular to say, listen, we do not want the sage on the stage, we want the guide on the side, we want more project-based learning, all these. These are things that I don't disagree with, right? But that doesn't mean there is not a place for powerful lecture within our classrooms. When someone says, I don't like lecture, what they really mean is, I don't like bad lecture, I don't like boring lecture, I don't like disengaging lecture, I don't like an over-reliance on lecture, right? But there is still a place where someone can, in a very powerful way, stand up in front of a group of people and deliver content and instruction.

I believe that there's still a place for lecture.

Another one that's super popular to bash on, worksheets. Well, yeah, bad worksheets are bad. Busy work worksheets are bad. But just by the very nature of something being printed on paper, doesn't necessarily make it bad, right?

And yes, there are lots of examples of where we have gone wrong with worksheets. But there's also examples of where you can do powerful things on paper. I talked about in a previous episode, the idea that when I do an EdCamp, one of the things I would do is I would write in the little description of my session, I would say, listen, like rest your devices, put your devices on their chargers, come to my session, and we're going to talk about, here are some cool things that you can do with just an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, 8.5 by 8.5 square paper, and a 4 by 6 index card. That's all we're going to use. And I'm going to show you some cool magical things that you could do in your classroom with students. Okay? And so charge your devices for an hour, come spend some time with me, and then you can take your devices back out again for the next session.

Now, like I'm old enough, as some of you are going to know this name, some of you are going to be like, who the heck is that, right? I'm old enough to remember going to like Dinah Zyk's foldables workshop. So you go to a conference and there'll be a session by Dinah Zyk or one of her followers, and you will learn about how to make graphic organizers with pieces of paper and do all these cool folds and cuts and tears and different things, and you would have all these different ways to make graphic organizers that the kids could use in class. I used some of those foldables. I love things like origami, right? I'm a fan of things like origami. I think there's something that's kind of naturally engaging about taking a piece of paper and turning it into something else, and so I would use some of these ideas from foldables in my classrooms when I was teaching.

Now, just because there are new ways to use technology to create graphic organizers, does that mean that it can't be powerfully done on a piece of paper? I think the answer is that it can still be done on a piece of paper in some cases. So let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah, we want to use technology, but again, just because something uses paper and that seems outdated, old, antiquated, doesn't mean that you can't still use it in a very powerful way.

Hey listen, handwritten notes. The very fact that technology has taken such a large place in our life actually makes handwritten notes even more powerful. It hasn't made them less powerful. It's actually now they stand out in a unique and special way.

The phone call. Picking up the phone and calling someone. Now I have to admit, sometimes I just assume I'd rather have a text and maybe if you're going to call me, maybe text me and see if it's okay to call. Sometimes I have some people that just call out of nowhere and I'm just like, is this person crazy? You're just ringing my phone. No, text me first, right? But yes, picking up a phone and calling someone is still okay.

The handmade gift. Yeah, sure. You can get anything delivered in two days or one day or even same day with Amazon to someone, right? But sometimes taking some time and creating a handmade gift is all the more powerful.

What about antiques? They actually get more valuable as they get older.

What about vinyl records? There's been a big return for some people into vinyl records and understanding that kind of richness and sound and hearing some of those crackles and pops and the way that it was originally recorded and all that kind of stuff. People get really into audio files, get really into their vinyl record collection and like to have that big giant, that big album cover with the liner notes and all those kind of things like that. Hey, shout out to principal liner notes, Sean Gaylord, as I mentioned that there.

Yeah. So the vinyl records. How about phones that don't connect to the internet? Sometimes people want to be, they want to be able to still be, you want to be able to reach them, but they don't want to be able to access the internet.

So there's been some, in some cases of resurgence of people that want to have a phone that doesn't connect to the internet, internet. That's not me by the way. Just so you know, old books, some of my favorite books were not even written in my lifetime. I love to go back and read them. Yes. Some of these books maybe have some problematic language or examples and ideas in them, but the principles in these books are super, super powerful. So sometimes old books are, I spend more time on old books than new books in some cases.

Right. How about just this past weekend, I was in New Orleans for my niece's wedding. Okay. And what they had done is my brother who was father of the bride and his wife had, they rented a old New Orleans mansion and like an Airbnb. And my mom stayed there and some of the other family members stayed there. And when I went there to visit them, what was cool about it was not that it was all tricked out new. What was cool about it was that it was historic. What's cool about it was that it looked like something from a long time ago, you know, there was very like historically significant. And when you went inside, it was not all pulled together. There were defects. There was, there were things in the ceiling where there was like chunks missing and doors didn't like work exactly quite right. And like there was a weird construction and strange thing.

Like there was a section where in order to get to the third floor, you had to go through the second floor bathroom and there were steps in the bathroom, literally right next in between the bathtub, which was sunken in the floor and the toilet, you had to go right past the toilet and up these stairs in through this door and then go up into the third floor. So that literally the only way in and out of the third floor was through the main bathroom of the second floor, which is wild. Like you could actually I don't know this from personal experience, by the way, but you could sit on the toilet and you could like grab the leg of someone who was going upstairs or going through the downstairs. Like it was that close to the stairs. Maybe I'll put a picture of it out on Twitter. But you know what? This was all part of what made it so cool. It was what gave this house character. It was unique. It was different. It was all you walked inside and just had that smell of like walking into some place, not in a bad way of smelling, but in a good way of something that's nostalgic, right?

And that was a it was a super fun place for them to all stay at. And for us to have like a we had a luncheon the day after the wedding there and people got to come and got to see, you know, this big, tall, high ceilings and chandeliers and all of these things made it even better. So staying in a new place, you know, would actually have been a downgrade compared to staying in this house that was just so super cool. And as we went around New Orleans on the weekend, it was Halloween weekend, right? It was so fun to see all these old places done up for Halloween. And that was what was special and unique about it.

Right. Okay. And so we're not going to reject things just because they're old. We're not going to reject things just because there's something new has come along. Now, if the new thing is better, then, yeah, let's take it on. Let's tackle it. Right. Well, I'll give you I'll give you one more example. In-person conferences during the pandemic, most conferences, all conferences basically went virtual. Right. And there were some people that were saying, like, you know what, this is greater for affordability, maybe greater accessibility for people that can't travel and get to certain conferences and things like this. And less time away from work. There's a lot there's lots of reasons why virtual conferences might be a good thing.

But now that in-person conferences have come back, we start to realize, like, oh, there's just something different about being in the same space with other people who feel like you do, who are passionate about the same stuff you are. There's something that's like a secret sauce about being in the same room together, about passing each other in the hallways in between sessions, about going out for lunch together and maybe talking about the different sessions that you attended, going out that night and having conversations with people. There's something different about an in-person conference.

So are we throwing out virtual conferences? Absolutely not. But let's not throw out the in-person conferences either. Maybe the best example, maybe the best thing to do is a mashup. Maybe we want to have in-person conferences that have virtual options, which allow greater accessibility and affordability for people, right? But you also have that in-person possibility as well. And so let's look for ways that we can combine the old and the new to create a more powerful something in the center, right?

We don't want to just have old practices and education, but maybe we don't want us to have the new stuff either. Maybe we want to take stuff that's worked for us and is tried and true over and over again. These things have been shown to be effective with students, with learners, right? And then add in our new ideas, our new innovations, and then create that beautiful mashup, that beautiful combination of things, which may be the best option of all. So maybe new isn't the best option and old isn't the best option. Maybe the greatest option lies somewhere in the middle.

So when you're thinking about educational ideas and innovation, sometimes it's okay to fall back. Let's spring forward where it's necessary, but fall back on some stuff that's been working for a really long time, and it still works today.

Thank you so much for listening to The Dave Burgess Show. Let's connect. I am at Burgess Dave on Twitter. My name just flipped around to Burgess Dave. On Instagram, I am DBC underscore INC, and I blog at DaveBurgess.com. Please share your thoughts and comments on social media using the hashtag DaveBurgessShow. It would mean the world to me if you share the show with friends and colleagues, and I would be honored if you left a positive review on whatever platform you listen on. Hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode, and if you have a question, a topic, or a guest recommendation for the show, just email me at Dave at DaveBurgess.com. Put podcast question in the subject line, and I absolutely cannot wait to join you on the next episode.