It's my pleasure to bring you this awesome interview all about motivation, health, diet and exercise featuring Alicia Hurps our school's Exercise Science Sports Medicine instructor. We get deep into the weeds of all these topics and hear Alicia's answers to my silly happy fun time questions. Please enjoy!

It has taken me 2 years to figure this out, but I finally have an answer to how the pandemic has changed current students. I believe this is profound and once you understand my chat bubble theory, you'll see evidence of it every time you interact with teenagers. Joining me on this episode is return guests, Kim Tatman and Shannon Kenily. If you can listen until you understand the first 20 min of this episode you'll be way better interacting with kids today and you'll stop thinking they are "different." Please take time to pay attention to this. It might be my most important work to date.

I put three questions from high school students together into this episode that addresses the issue of not letting friends drag you under.  The questions are Should I make decisions to better myself or to make others feel good about themselves, can my happiness determine my success, and Is cutting off negative people in your life a normal thing?

In an activity at the beginning of the new year, I asked students to list their classes and the grades they'd like to receive in those classes.  Then I asked them to write three things they could do to earn that grade.  I compiled their answers and picked the top 5.  In this podcast, you'll also learn what makes a gray goal and how to turn these goals into clear black and white goals.  After almost 30 years of teaching, I'm confident if students did these 5 things, it would almost guarantee an A.  Can you guess what they are?

Should students use calculators?  When should they use calculators?  Do they over-rely on calculators?  Do we teach math right?  Find out how math should be taught like martial arts.  It's the perfect system.  

Here are several questions from actual high school students. How do you get unstuck when you are in a rut and feel like you can't complete a project? The answer to that one is between the answers. Enjoy!

It's back to school time

2020 - pandemic started - heard about a school that had a graduation for the 2020 students. Good on them.

2021 - The mask year

2022- the normal year filled with learning gaps, online/in-person teaching, and quarantines

2023 - Let's call this one back to normal. - so what do we need to do

The 3 most important things teachers should do this year

1. Get way into your subject and get consistent about communication and deadlines. Become a team with your students. Gen Z wants the subject first and you second. Millennials were a little bit the other way. Gen X was totally the other way. Remember to a Gen Z Wi-Fi and cell phones are like lights and running water. Deadlines are so important. Accountability will be key this year.
2. Increase and develop interpersonal skills.
   1. Handshaking with gloves if you have to.
   2. Encouraging them to speak up and develop their voice.
   3. I've heard many teachers talk about how they forgot how to act. Of course, they were forced into a zoom world and told to stay home and not touch anything for a long time. Mask up and stay 6 feet apart.
   4. Covid is still real but this has caused the strange behavior.
3. Stress that career and retirement are really important.
   1. Grades matter -       remember people with 4-year degrees make about double what people who don't have a college education do.
   2. Building some long-term career is super solid advice. How many people do you know will never be able to retire? This all starts in high school.
   3. Changing jobs every 3 years is hazardous. Wouldn't it be much better to figure out what you want to do and go all in on it? This is the point of high school.
   4. You may have little deflections on the way up, but you can't see what you don't aim at. High school is to teach people how to aim.

Life is rough no doubt about it. Sometimes it's really, really bad. I don't want to downplay how bad someone may have it but many times though our perspective gets off and our imagination takes over making life seem way worse than it really is. Is your perspective off? Come with me in this episode and lets explore our perspectives.