The Power of Passion: A Chat with our Seesaw Connect Keynote

Transcript

[00:00] Kris: Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop Podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I’m Kris, your host. Today’s special guest is the one, the only Adam Welcome. Adam is a world renowned keynote speaker, podcaster, blogger, and an esteemed educator. Adam is constantly sharing his amazing ideas all over the internet, including his three captivating podcasts. You can find those and so much more at mradamwelcome.com. Adam, it is a pleasure to have you here on the show.

[00:30] Adam: Kris, what’s up everybody? Thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be on the show to talk with everyone today. Let’s get going, let’s do this.

[00:40] Kris: Let’s do this, that’s awesome, I love the energy. Can you just kick things off by telling us a little bit about your journey into the field of education?

[00:48] Adam: I graduated from college and I literally had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had a couple short false starts and then I actually got a call from a guy I went to high school with and he said there was a long-term substitute job opening at the middle school where I went in the PE department.

And I said, you know what, let me do it. And I loved it. And I went and got my credential and taught, and then it was an assistant principal, it was a principal, it was a director of innovation. And I’ve just been kind of like going since then. I feel like my life professionally has been a bunch of doors that have been opened that I’ve walked through or doors that I checked to see if was unlocked or I found the key and I just kept walking and going and pushing and discovering what was out there.

And it’s led me to where I am now. I’ve been a full-time, I don’t know how to even describe me. I’m a keynote speaker. I do professional development. I get to work with educators all over the country. I’ve worked in 46, soon to be 47 states with school districts and companies like Seesaw and state leadership conferences. And I’ve been podcasting for 10 years and I blog and I just kind of do all the things. It’s really fun. I’m very fortunate to be able to do what I do.

[02:20] Kris: Amazing. I love just such the breadth of experiences you bring because not only do you have this amazing platform to be able to share things and the experience to share things, but also the background of having to know what it’s like to be a teacher, to be a principal, to be a director and being able to impact people on such a deep level. That’s so powerful for you to be able to share that.

[02:36] Adam: Yeah. And I also feel too, one thing I forget, I’m sorry I didn’t add is I’m a dad. I have an 11 and a 13 year old. So I feel that perspective also helps so much just because I’m there with my kids in fifth grade and middle school and just navigating school life from the outside, which I’ll be honest is challenging at times. Because I would oftentimes do things differently. Obviously, when you’re somebody in the field, it’s probably like if you’re a physician and you take your child to the doctor, you’re like, wait, why are you doing that? You should be doing this.

And just different perspective. But I think as a whole, it really helps inform my thought process. And it is kind of like the bookend. I did it as an educator and now I’m doing it as a parent. And then I get to kind of go down the middle and help everybody else. So it’s good. It’s fun. I’m fortunate and I wake up knowing how lucky I am every single day.

[03:30] Kris: Absolutely. And that is amazing. I love it. I love the perspective too as a parent. And I want to lean into that kind of for our next question here. We value family connection and education so much here at Seesaw. And I know you do too, as you just kind of spoke to that. How can educators today better engage their families to really feel connected to those classrooms and connected to the learning that’s happening?

[03:50] Adam: I feel like lack of information, people come up with their own ideas in their head. And the more that you can share, the better. When I was a principal, most of my teachers used Seesaw. And I’ll be honest, so many parents were like, I just love knowing what’s happening. Parents are traveling for business, parents are at work all day. Some parents are working two, three jobs. How do you stay connected? There’s that little rectangle in our pockets. They can take out their phone. They can see what’s going on.

And they also, it’s a connection. It’s a conversation starter with their child with what’s going on. Because everybody listening, if you have kids, what is the most common response when you see your kid at the end of the day? How was school today? My son will say, oh, normal. Like it was a normal day. And obviously as an educator, I’m always trying to think of different questions to bring to them.

[05:01] Kris: And maybe I saw something on Seesaw or Instagram or Facebook, or we got an email newsletter or something from the teacher. And it just gets more buy-in. When I was a principal, we were sharing every day. This was back when Twitter, this was actually long before Seesaw was even a thing. This was back when Twitter, like kind of in the golden years of Twitter and we were sharing every day. And what it did was it brought our strong community together in even a stronger way.

[05:30] Adam: It also allowed us to do things or try things that maybe hadn’t been done before. And why? It’s because adults in the families, they knew what was going on. They were sharing. We were building a strong community. So when we said, hey, we want to do this, more often than not, they were like, go for it. Because we had built trust, because we had communicated. We were sharing pictures of what was going on. Kids were going home and saying, oh my gosh, guess what I did? And the parents like, I know, I saw that. And then they’re having a really deep, meaningful conversation.

[06:15] Kris: About literacy or math or language arts or recess or what happened to the lunchroom or an assembly that day. I used to say if kids get home and parents don’t know something about that happened that day, I feel like we’re not sharing enough. And I know teachers, you’re thinking, gosh, I have so much to do, Adam, Kris, what are you talking about? Like, I don’t have time for this.

[06:45] Adam: And I would say, hey, put kids in charge. On some level, we started a program at my school called social media interns. And what it was is I just gave kids an iPad and they went around and they took pictures of what they saw at school. And then we would post them on our social media pages or they would mash it up into an iMovie. They would post it on Seesaw or whatever. I mean, I know schools that use WhatsApp communities. You can put it on WhatsApp. I mean, there’s so many different ways out there to do it.

[07:21] Kris: For sure. And the one piece I want to pull out from what you said there is also make it really meaningful. You know, make it purposeful in connecting people and in a way that’s going to spark conversations or questions even so that you don’t have students who come home and you say, how was your day today? And they say, it was good. It’s great. Whatever. Pass the one word responses using pictures, videos, any kind of media that you can and allow kids to do it. I absolutely love that idea.

[07:45] Adam: Well, and just one more thing too, with that being said, Kris, school has changed so much since we were in school. I was in school in the late 80s and 90s and it’s changed. The world has changed. So if you are not an educator or have been an educator, you’re pulling on your experience, which in a lot of ways, not in all ways, but in a lot of ways, it’s an outdated experience.

[08:15] Kris: That’s why it’s even more imperative for schools, teachers, principals, counselors, bus drivers. Hey, if you’re the bus driver, you could be starting these conversations and talking about things for kids to talk about with their parents. Tie it back to the curriculum, tie it back to experiences, tie it back to social situations that kids are going through so that they can in turn talk about it with their parents so they can just be a better human being in school, but also in the community.

[09:00] Adam: Using the network that’s around them to their best advantage. I love it. You did mention the Connect conference, which I do want to jump into next. We are beyond thrilled to have you being our keynote for the Connect conference happening in August. If you want to get the link, it’s just connect.Seesaw.me. We’ll have that also linked here at the bottom in the description for you to go to. But I just want to prime the pump here. Can you just share a little inspiration behind your keynote that you’re going to be delivering?

[09:40] Kris: Yeah, 100%. I’m super stoked for this summer and the Connect Conference. I always like to say everybody’s going to laugh. Some people are going to cry. We’re going to pull on your emotions. We’re going to give you some ideas that you can go and take for your classroom or your school when school starts in a couple of weeks or three weeks after the conference, whenever you’re starting. It’s all about kids, creativity, innovation, and just that push to get started.

[10:15] Adam: I feel like so many people have ideas and they just don’t know how to get started. And the best way to get started is to simply try the thing, to take a risk, to put your kids in charge. You don’t need to be the expert in it.

[12:03] Kris: You’ve been a classroom teacher, a principal, a director. Thinking back to all of your experience in education, can you just share maybe a success moment that you had that really helped to shape your educational philosophy and one that has really helped to drive your direction that you’re going today?

[12:20] Adam: Yeah, I’m kind of laughing. I did mention at the beginning, my dad also was a teacher. My dad taught second grade for 35 years. So I definitely grew up in his classroom. And he was a very innovative teacher before I would say innovation was kind of even a buzzword and a thing. And, you know, I would say my first few years as a teacher were very important to where I am now.

[14:22] Kris: Just basically, if you have 30 kids, if you’re in secondary, you have 120. If you only teach one way, you’re not teaching all of your students. It’s like, Kris, if you and I go golfing, I’m a horrible golfer, maybe you’re a great golfer and there’s 10 other people in our golf lesson and the golf pro only is teaching one way, well, you’re not going to get anything because you’re way over here because you’re a really good golfer and I’m all the way over here.

[16:41] Adam: Would I be enjoying myself if I was teaching in this way? And if I was a student learning this way? And so I think you just hit a whole bunch of bells in my head of like, those are moments that I wish I could reframe and I wish that I could teach in a different way.

[18:53] Kris: Yeah, everybody listening might be thinking I’m going to say artificial intelligence, but I’m not. And by the time we’re recording this and by the time it comes out, there’s going to be a new technology that has already come out and just the lag time, if it’s a couple of days or a week from the recording.

[21:12] Adam: You’re not gonna be sprinting in September, October, for sure November, January, February, March, April. You’re gonna be burned out, you’re gonna be sick, you’re gonna be like, I don’t know if this career is for me. So start slow, taper, which is a running term for just go a little bit slower.

[23:31] Kris: Thanks everybody, have a great day. Thanks Adam, bye.