🗑 Lessons from public speaker training

📚 Interactive textbooks for teachers and professors

If you’ve ever wanted to break free from the teaching to the textbook – that traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to classroom resources – Classavo gets it. 

When I wrote Ditch That Textbook, I wanted to challenge the status quo of teaching. Now, Classavo is creating an interactive engagement hub and AI-powered teaching assistant. It’s a solution I wish I had when I was teaching.

It’s super easy to pull in content from 2,700 of Classavo’s online textbooks. Add interactive and multimedia elements to it and suddenly, it doesn’t feel like a textbook anymore.

Share with your students and they get to work right away.

If you like the sound of this, here’s what you can do …

•  📚 Higher ed professors: Use the code “DitchThatTextbook” when you sign up, and Classavo will gift a $1,000 semester credit that goes toward the $35-per-student fee for each of your students. (FYI: Classavo is FREE for professors.)

•  🎒 K-12 teachers: Classavo is gathering interest for K-12 classrooms. If you join the waiting list NOW with the promo code “DitchThatTextbook”, your students can get FREE Classavo access FOREVER if they launch a K-12 product (as a thank you for helping them launch).

• 💰 Amazon gift card giveaway: By completing a survey, you’re entered to win one of 5 $50 Amazon gift cards.

Take the next step and help shape the future of learning. Fill out the interest survey below!

📺 FREE ONLINE PD 📺

🎙 The Complete 180 Conference

I’m speaking at this amazing virtual conference that Daryl Williams Jr. is hosting. And you can join us — for FREE.

• Dates: March 17-20, 2025

• Where: All online

• Topics: Classroom management, student engagement, teacher well-being, etc.

• Cost: FREE (with paid options up to $99)

• Is the free version good enough: YES

• Might I want to upgrade my ticket: That’s up to you 😉

My session is called “How AI Can Help Make Learning Fun and Engaging”: It's harder than ever to capture students attention and get them engaged in learning. Could you use some ideas? Your AI teaching assistant can help! This session will show you how to 1) get new, creative, engaging teaching ideas, 2) save time creating those activities, and 3) create innovative new instructional practices your students will love. It doesn't matter if your school blocks and bans AI, either ... these ideas will support you AND make learning fun and engaging for your students.

With the free ticket, you get live access AND one week of recordings.

• To find it: click the button below, close the box to purchase, click “Reserve your spot today” and click the free ticket.

Note: If you register for a paid ticket, I will receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

💡 6 lessons from Heroic Public Speaking GRAD

I showed up to Heroic Public Speaking HQ in Lambertville, NJ, in November 2018.

I brought my phone. I brought an empty notebook. And I brought an open mind.

In groups of new people, I’m very reserved and shy. (People see me on stage and assume I’m an extrovert. I can play that role, but deep down inside, I’m not.)

Over the next four months, I spent 16 days with about 50 others in my cohort, including the CEO of Orange Theory Fitness, an executive from Lou Malnati’s Pizza, the head of the FBI for Mississippi … as well as people from the Amish community, the cannabis industry, firefighters, lawyers, and entrepreneurs.

Broadly, we learned how to craft a speech using the following process:

• The brain dump (content development)

• Organize the brain dump

• Draft a script

• Edit, revise, refine the script

• Build in staging (movement, blocking, gestures, etc.)

• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

• Perform your speech!

Of course, with each training session I attended, I gleaned new ways to do each of these. And with each session, I kept thinking …

“This totally applies to teaching.”

Since you’ll likely never go through public speaker training quite like this, I’ll share 10 lessons I learned that I think could apply to your work as an educator …

1. Silence is magic.

After we had our “big idea” and had written our speech scripts, we started looking for places to include what they called “beats” and “operative words.”

• Beats — Pauses. Where you “take a beat” and pause for effect.

• Operative words — Words to emphasize. (When you emphasize a word when speaking a sentence, the word you emphasize changes how the sentence is received.)

When I started thinking consciously about beats — where to pause — it made me realize something …

One of my faults as a teacher? I talked and talked and talked and I didn’t pause.

• For one, pausing gives students time to process what we just said. (And if they’re learning something new, chances are they need more processing time than we might think.)

• Pausing also creates “wait time,” giving students a chance to answer or ask a question.

• It’s also a rest … a relief … a verbal “breath of fresh air.”

When you’re teaching (children OR adults), if you haven’t thought about pausing / “beats” / silence, it might be time to think about it.

2. Make decisions ahead of time.

You may have seen earlier that they teach us to script our speeches.

Obviously, for educators, we can’t script and memorize and perform. (And don’t. And won’t!)

One reason I STILL script, memorize and rehearse my speeches? It lets me make as many decisions as possible ahead of time.

• How will I describe a new idea?

• What doubts might my audience have that I can address?

• What might be complicated enough that I might need to slow down my delivery — or repeat something — or add more pauses?

By thinking through how we’ll teach, we can make decisions like that ahead of time so we aren’t inventing as much in the moment in front of our class.

3. Consider the The Foundational Five

Early in our speech development, we had to come up with our Foundational Five — answers to five big-picture important questions …

• What’s your big idea?

• What’s your promise to the audience? (What will they get out of this?)

• What does the world look like to them? (In relation to your speech)

• What are the consequences if they don’t act?

• What are the rewards if the do act?

A quick thought about each of these in relation to what you’re about to teaching can help your students see the relevance of what you’re about to teach.

4. Don’t “backspace” when you brainstorm.

If you take a moment (or several moments!) to brainstorm possible ideas for a lesson or a class, this idea has really helped me …

Don’t edit them as you think of them. Let them flow onto the page.

Write down bad ideas. (You might be able to work them into good ideas.)

I’ve found that I get into a better flow if I write allllll my ideas down instead of just keeping what I think are the good ones in the moment.

5. Movement matters.

If you’re talking to a group, it’s easy to let your words do the work for you.

And sometimes, we talk with our hands and just do whatever feels natural.

That’s a good first step. But adding more intentional movement — with your body, with your hands, etc. — can help your audience (your students!) better understand what you’re trying to say.

• Show emotion with your body, your posture, etc. What does it look like?

• If you’re showing a series of steps, start to your right and take a step to the left when you do each step. (That moves from the audience’s left to right, like they’re reading a book.)

• If you have a quick side thought, move to a different spot while you discuss it … then return to your original spot to continue.

These are just a few off the top of my head that work for me.

6. Use a “concept car” to keep things fresh.

Ron Tite, a marketing expert and keynote speaker, shared his approach to adding new material to a speech.

Below are green squares that stand for small segments of his 45-minute keynote speech.

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Each time he speaks, he introduces what he calls a “concept car.” In the automobile industry, concept cars are prototype cars that show creativity, styling, new technology. They aren’t intended to be used as-is — but to provide an example of what could be.

The concept car is in red below.

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟥🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Most of his speech is tried-and-true content (green). If he bombs a new bit (aka “concept car”), it isn’t going to kill his speech. But it’ll let him test a new idea in front of a live audience.

If it works, he might expand it and try it again (in yellow).

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

And if it works — and is worth including in speeches going forward, he’ll make it a part of his regular speech (green circles).

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟢🟢🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

How this applies to teaching? You might have a fantastic lesson that always hits. But you never know if it could be better until you try something.

If you have a “concept car” mentality — try something new in small doses, then if it’s great, expand it — it’s a safe way to innovate while still getting good results.

Performing a speech = performing a lesson

As an educator, we aren’t performers in the sense of showing up on a stage and exaggerating our delivery wildly and inauthentically.

But we are performers.

The way we speak, the way we show up, how we convey a message … it’s all a performance.

“All the world's a stage, // And all the men and women merely players; // They have their exits and their entrances, // And one man in his time plays many parts …” — William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene VII

I know it changed the way I teach — teaching adults AND teaching kids — when I started seeing performance as part of my teaching.

Maybe it’ll do the same for you.

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!