Teaching like a Pirate!

This last week I was one of about thirty JSU students who were lucky enough to get to Skype with author Dave Burgess. Dave Burgess has done what we all secretly (or not so secretly) want to accomplish: to have our philosophy and methods of teaching known and respected nation wide. He has done this through his book Teach Like a Pirate.
     Pirates are daring and adventurous. They sail into uncharted territories with no guarantee of success. They reject the status quo and refuse to conform to any society that stifles creativity and independence. They are entrepreneurs who take risks and are willing to travel to the ends of the earth for that which they value. Pirates don't much care about public perception; they proudly fly their flags in defiance.


Karen Nelson welcoming us into her classroom.
Ms. Nelson set up the Skype session with Burgess
through her classroom Twitter account. 
Dave Burgess beginning our Skype session with a
description of the creative process that made
Teach Like a Pirate possible. 



In our Skype with Dave Burgess Thursday night, he described his experience creating the content for his book, Teach Like a Pirate. He said that he was approached while teaching at a high school in San Diego and asked to share his methods for having such a successful classroom. He didn’t know how he would ever explain his "madness" to others, especially not in one book. Burgess described the journey of coming up with his PIRATE acronym: he had every major point he wanted to talk about in this book and one night, he had finally stared at them long enough that he could see them forming a word:
Passion
Immersion
Rapport
Ask and analyze
Transformation
Enthusiasm
Burgess said everything really fell into place after that; he started seeing more and more similarities between pirates and effective, passionate teachers.
      Like pirating, teaching is an adventure full of challenges and excitement. They way you approach your adventure can mean the difference between being shipwrecked on Burnout Island or finding buried treasure.
I know I speak for the whole Foundations of Effective Teaching class when I say thank you to Karen Nelson for setting up this awesome experience for both us and the teachers at Kitty Stone Elementary School. She and Mrs. Gena Thornburg, my professor, worked excessively hard to set up the collaborative blog we used this semester to share thoughts and "AHA moments" about the many wonderful books we and our Kitty Stone Elementary teachers read. Ms. Nelson also shared some of her classroom methods and some wonderful ways to integrate technology in our future classrooms. I cannot wait to take some of her green screen and Minecraft edu ideas and use them with my own students! I would also like to thank Mr. Dave Burgess for taking the time out of his insanely busy schedule (he was actually Skyping us in his hotel room after he finished an opening at a conference) to speak with us and answer our questions. It was wonderful getting to ask him first hand his thoughts on his book and methods we can use.

For more pictures of our pirate party, take this link to the Anniston Star New's website:
http://www.annistonstar.com/gallery/jsu-kitty-stone-elementary-pirate-party/collection_04f7cd8a-efb1-11e5-aaf7-d329871eef15.html

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