**Transcript is automatically generated. Please excuse any errors.
Welcome back, folks. We're here again for our summer series of Let's Talk Books, and this week we're actually lucky enough to have the author. We have Eric Hall, a retired teacher from Cheboygan, Michigan, and he wrote a book about his 27 years in education. And so thank you, Eric, for joining us. We appreciate that you're here and willing to share your stories with us.
Most of them are either laugh out loud or severe tearjerkers. Yes I would agree. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So the the first question, the book is called Controlled Chaos, and it's about the 27 years of your teaching. And this, most folks that don't get a chance to like read the back cover or like...
or just, giving it the first look are gonna be like, why is this retired teacher writing a book?" And it- I don't think it's a love letter to yourself. You have a much bigger purpose for this book than that. And so I'd love to hear about, one, why you decided to write the book, and then what do you hope the, the message of that is?
Sure. Well, first of all I decided to write the book because during my last year of teaching I told my students right away, I said, "Listen I'm retiring at the end of this school year." And throughout the course of the year we were doing different activities and I was telling them stories about my experiences as a teacher, and one of my students told me, "Hey, you should really write a book."
And I kind of always had kept a little blog on just my Facebook page about things- Mm-hmm ... that had happened in class and whatnot, and it kind of got me thinking about, this would be interesting to write a book about the things that worked for me, but also what I learned in the process- Mm-hmm ... of doing those things.
And so when that idea came to me, or from that student, I thought to myself, "This might be something I wanna do." So, a couple months into retirement, it got to be winter in Northern Michigan, and I'm not a winter person. I'm from North Carolina. So I was like, "Well, I'm hunkered in the house. Might as well put some thoughts down."
So I started putting some thoughts down and I decided I wanted to connect it to 27 lessons because of the 27 years I taught. So that's kinda how it started. What I want people to get from it is that right now teaching gets talked about quite often in negative terms. Mm-hmm. And I want people to see teaching as one of the most impressive professions there is.
You can't think of another profession that exists that, that wasn't inspired by a teacher m- by someone- Yeah ... who took a chance on a student. And that's kind of why I wanted to write the book, to tell them that this isn't all bad, that people who are saying you shouldn't go into the profession- are now thinking may- "Maybe I should try it." And that's the biggest takeaway I think when I wrote it. Yeah, and that, I think that plays into the format of how you structure each of the chapters. It's n- it's a, first off, it's a wonderful story that you're telling of something of controlled chaos.
But then, you always finish it off with two things. What did I learn from this, and what can the reader take away? And so I think like a classic teacher, right? You're- Yes ... you're having some reflection, and then I'm gonna give you an assignment. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm still, so I'm still teaching even though I'm retired, so.
Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's that's often my favorite part. I mean, obviously the stories are amazing. But the... I love the f- the fact that you let us into the world of, how you saw that, through your eyes. And then, how can somebody who's reading this not just go, "Oh, that's a really nice story of somebody else in some other town, in some other school who did something cool.
I can't do that." But it's actually wait, no. The questions you ask the, you know, the readers are very simple. How could you make something, stick a little bit more? How could take something that's a little... and make it a little bit more exciting or whatever it might be.
And I think that's what's my favorite part, reading those sections as, as much as the stories themselves, got me smiling or on the verge of tears. Yes. Well, and a good example of that, like what you just said was, one of the chapters is about how I turned my classroom into a, like a laser beam spy mission, mm-hmm. I'm not expecting everyone to go out and buy all these black lights and, spend hours getting their room ready for some kind of spy mission, but how can you take that boring lesson on fractions and make it more engaging for kids? Because we're fighting, as with a world of technology where kids' minds, have to be engaged almost all the time.
Boredom is very difficult for students. So, you almost have to act, be an actor when you walk into that classroom every day and put on a show. And so how do you take something as boring as maybe teaching them similes and metaphors and suddenly make it engaging where they're like, "Wow, I really like this," and that, and they're learning in the process Yeah, I think that's so key.
In, in fact, that's m- my favorite or at least one of my favorite quotes from the book is, "Fun is the Trojan horse that s- smuggles in learning." Yeah. That's... I love that. I love the visual of that. But it is so true that if, if you get to the point of the kids are engaged and it's not so much like a dog and pony show, right?
We're not talking about something that is just spectacular for the sake of spectacular. But y- you're leading in with that fun. The kids get pulled in, and they are like, what I've seen in most of these stories, the kids are preserving the fun. Like, they're like, "We know this is a farce, but this is so much fun that please nobody mess this up," right?
Yeah. And so the kids are, like, protecting the magic that's happening. Right. No one's trying to poke holes in it. No one's trying to force it to end. They're like, "Please, can we just stay in this moment of fun?" And obviously the learning is happening, too. It's not just engaging. There's the other side where they're actually achieving the result, and in some cases far beyond y- what you expected.
Well, and I always said that I didn't... My goal, my main goal when I was a teacher was I didn't want kids waking up in the morning saying, "I have to go to school." I wanted them to wake up and say, "I want to go to school." And that's a big mindset shift. And so doing those things and getting those kids where they're like, "I don't want this lesson to stop.
I wanna keep going." And then you can prove that it's working based on, unfortunately, all the assessments that you have to give these kids. Hey, these are achieving some great results because they're engaged and they remember it, so when they're, like, taking a test they can go, "Oh, I remember when we did this activity where you dressed up as a French chef and it made th- it connected to this."
Yeah. And so it ended up working very well by just doing that engagement piece. Yeah. And often, I mean, you've given several examples where you've taken it to the umpteenth degree- Yes ... which I feel like is, like, for everybody else out there is the dartboard, right? That's the...
That's our target, right? We're trying to get to that point. But along the way we're getting to points where it's the simple thing is still eliciting that kind of joy, and that joy is, able to help the kids, get through that lesson or at least see the point of where we're headed, right?
And so you've masked that in such a simple way. Putting on a chef hat. Obviously you're ... I love you talking about your accent changing from a French chef to like- Yeah ... I don't know what it was at the end, right? I'm not good at accents, I'll tell you that. My students will tell you that, too.
Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that the, the, the kids remember that and that's something that, carries on well past. I'm sure you have former students who are like, "Hey, how's the chef?" Yes. Oh, they do. And in fact, during the school year if I did an activity early on, let's just say October, November, they would c- they would ask me through spring, "Is he ever coming back?"
And they wanted to see him again, even though he was, it was bad acting on my part- ... they lo- they loved it and they wanted to see it again. So, it did make an impact on them. Yeah. That brings up another question. So a lot of these things, let's say that chef activity was, in your mind was a one-shot, right?
But because of its effectiveness and the kids obviously are, loving that m- memory you bring these things back. A lot of these stories, like, for example, my favorite I know you've been asking teachers what's your favorite part. Oh, yeah. And for me it came up with the whole classroom c- real estate and finances and that whole thing.
And it's just so interesting 'cause there's a great story. Yeah, everyone has to read the whole book. Very very enjoyable, very quick read. But I think the characters in that s- scenario are memorable for sure. But, when you have something that is that big where, you're
For months after months you're, you keep coming back to the same system you put into your class, and it seems like it's a lot of work. If you did one of these things once, everybody would applaud you, but it- it's also like you've done it 12 times, you've done it 180 times, you've done it...
and so on and so forth. How long are you able to keep these things up? And were you adding one thing at a time and keeping things, or was it like, "Okay, I ran that thing its course, and now I'm adding something different," just because you're trying to keep it interesting for yourself too? That's a great question.
So in terms of like the real estate piece, yeah, that was a lot of work at first. It took a lot of time for kids to understand how banking works and stuff. And of course, when they read the book, they'll understand what I'm talking about here. But every time I would do a lesson, I would see where there was mistakes made that I could make it even better next time.
So I it ... Not only for the students, but you're right, also for me. Because then I'd wanna do it again. If it got to a point where I was doing the same exact thing every single time every year, I'd be a lot less motivated- ... to do it. So if you take, for example, going back again to those laser beams where they had
They were spies and they had to find clues around the classroom. I thought one year, "Well, what if I had a student who was an imposter?" Because they used to work in pairs. Mm-hmm. So I was thinking about Among Us, 'cause that was big at the time. Right. And I thought to myself, "What if I had one of those partners in the whole class be the imposter and whisper to me who they want removed out of the classroom for five minutes?"
And so their partner was working by themselves. So then it became a whole other layer. So I ... we'd be in the middle of doing this spy mission with the, the Mission Impossible theme song playing in the background. Then suddenly I'm like "Caden you ... The imposter says you have to sit out for five minutes," and his partner's like, "No," and then it became a whole thing, so, so it made it more interesting for me. So I kind of tried to step it up and change it a little bit because I noticed some things that worked, some things that didn't. And as every year you have a different class of students. Right ... sometimes you have to do s- things a little bit slower maybe than what you did the year before.
So I liked the adjustment. It kept me engaged, but also I felt like I, if I didn't do it, I was doing a disservice to the students who deserved that much enthusiasm that I gave to last year's class. Yeah. Did you ever do the, the spy thing? Was the spy thing something that came back year after year?
The, the spy thing was probably... I started it, like, eight years before I retired. It stayed with me for the last eight years. Oh. It was actually kind of funny because my son, when I first started doing it, my son was quite young, and then he started helping me set up the room. And then when I first did it, you have to put black paper over all the windows and make it completely dark in there for this to work.
Mm-hmm. And I had just thought of the idea. In the book, I mention I, I noticed that I had a blacklight and it turned a white piece of yarn bright, and I thought, "Well, th- I can do something with this," and I bought up all the blacklights I could find- ... after the Halloween store closed down, right? And so when I did it I did just a little bit of laser beams, but as my son got older and he started helping me, it's like, "We gotta up this game."
So he started adding more and more laser beams to the thing, and pretty soon you could barely walk through there. Then you gotta give them, then you're gonna give them, like, detective hats and trench coats. Then you gotta go, "Okay, well, I gotta come up with a fun saying that they have to come up to me and not just give me the answer, but make it sound like it's a real...
Like I'm just a guy walking through the street, but I'm actually the, the head of this detective agency, and they have to whisper a saying to me." So every year it got more intense, but I think a lot of that had to do with my son going, "We need to do this. Now let's add this to it," and it got, it got more engaging as we went on.
And yeah, so that was about eight years of doing that lesson and being excited for it because my son was helping me take, be a big part of it, so. Yeah, and that's a fun activity you guys are doing together. Yeah. Did s- did he have to go through your class, or was he able to go through somebody else's class?
Like, did you ever have to teach him? Never tau- I did teach my oldest daughter in third grade when I also did the economic system. And, I found out I was a little bit harder on her than I was the rest of the class. I was like, "Well, you just lost your desk for the month. That's what you get," kind of thing.
But no he never... My other two kids never had a chance to be in my class. They just enjoyed helping the other kids in my class do those wonderful activities. So, yeah. That's very cool. One of the other major things that you started, and I'm curious to what point in, in your timeline that you did this, were the houses, where you kinda went the Harry Potter route and you set up houses for the students.
The- Well, I'll ask my first question. My first question about that is, how did that start, and at what point in your career was that, something you did? And how long, how many more years did you do that? Well, yeah. So I started I was a Title I teacher for seven years. Mm-hmm. I went back into my classroom teaching fourth grade in 2008.
And as a Title I teacher, you get to go into a lot of different classrooms, and you get to see what works, what doesn't work. Yeah. And so I thought to myself You know I've read about house systems in England. They, and even the Harry Po- obviously Harry Potter, and I thought to myself, "Well, this would be interesting to put a group of six kids in each group, come up with the names for the group, and then make sure that those kids stay together all year long."
They couldn't ever leave. They had to work together for those 180 days. They were stuck in a pod for 180 days together. And it started evolving into more and more things. Pretty soon we had, a house cup that they had to win every marking period. We added these stuffed animal mascots that they a- each got.
Because each, each house had an animal attached to them. Oh, wow. Y- they each had their own color, their own identity. And then I started posting on some fifth grade classroom groups, and a couple teachers picked up on the idea and they said, "Hey, I I wrote a, I, I took your idea and I wrote a rap that put to music."
And so they'd send it to me, so then we did a house rap that we would do at the end of every day. One of my former students, well, the, from the first year I ever taught, actually wrote the chants that are in the book. Mm-hmm. So it just kind of expanded from there. And from that point, at the 2007-2008 school year until I retired, we used that house system ev- I used it every single year without fail.
And I made it even stronger every year. We ended up having a house leader, someone who was responsible for making sure that those houses, they each got along with each other, and they built a community. And and then at the end of the year, we had an overall house cup winner, and they earned this little plaque that they got that they could take home.
And it was really neat, the connection, because they had their house shirts, but kids from previous years, if they wore their house shirts, they would give, get points for the current class. So they would earn points, or they would come in every morning and look at the screen that had how many points each house had and go, "Hey, my former house, what are you doing?
You need to get back. You need to step up your game and do this." Oh, wow. So there were kids from that 2007-2008 class who graduated this year who in my last year of teaching would come in just to see how their house was doing. Wow. And it's, so it made that, that gap, that bridge that I had where they could see, my current students could see all my former students wearing their house shirts or asking them, "Hey, how's it going?"
Or doing the chant with them. And it really expanded into something just not my one class, but eight classes over a course of that rest of that career, eight to 12 classes that kind of bonded together even though they really didn't know each other, but they knew about the house, and that was important to them.
Yeah. That's really cool. One of the things that sticks out to me about that is- You know, you have the former student who writes the chants. Yes. And then as part of your program, you have the house leader write notes for the future house leader. Yes, I did that too. Yep. So you have this like backwards looking, where they're participating in this, and you have this forward thinking of like, let's keep this going and let's propel it forward in a positive manner.
It's just a really cool way of linking all of that stuff together. And like you said, those last eight to 12 classes, whatever it was- You're- you've built this thing that people still talk about. I mean, I think about my wife's family, their high school, they still talk about which group they were.
And like, the whole chain of the family is in that house, much like the Harry Potter series, so that they automatically will like, get together at a, family function and , talk to each other about it, especially when the younger girls were in the school.
You're building this legacy and the values of it. You could speak to the fact of, what else, obviously something very cool, but there was an academic reason why you did it that has expanded beyond before and after, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then going back real quick, it was kind of funny you mentioned family because I deliberately put siblings that I had in different houses, so when they ever, like if I had a fifth grader, they were in one house, and then their sibling came the next year, I put them specifically in a different house so they could argue with each other, which house was the best, and do the chant against each other. But fir- first of all, when I did this, every, every teacher told me, "Well, there's no way you're gonna be able to keep six kids together all year in one group. I mean, you're gonna have to split them all up." And I was, I ma- I was very deliberate and that wasn't gonna happen.
And I didn't put all my strongest kids in one group, all my struggling kids in one group. I wanted it to be a high, medium, low range where those kids who needed more support could get that support from those kids who maybe understood the concept, but also those low students helping the high students with social skills and other functioning that they didn't know.
So it kind of helped in that regard. Plus, with the points that I was giving them, "Hey, you guys worked really well as a group today. You earned X amount of points," or, "Wow, I'm giving 10 points for every person in your house that, that got an A on their assignment or that turned in their homework- or something like that. So it really pushed those groups to do the best because they wanted to win. And so, that's where the academic part played in because they wanted to do better because they knew o- obviously there was a reward to it, but they just didn't want to see anyone else win. And so to them it was competition too.
So they didn't realize it at the time, but they were competing the whole year and so looking at that scoreboard every day, because it was a digital scoreboard on a big TV that I had in my classroom, they could see automatically when I was aw- awarding points and they were like whoa, we got to do something here."
So- ... that, that's where that kind of the academic piece came in is because they were more willing to help each other. Plus, they didn't know each other going in a lot of the times. They weren't friends. They didn't hang out in the same circles, but they became friends because- They had to stay together, and they had to work things through, and it showed a lot of growth.
And it showed quite a community that they ended up building at the end of the year. So, yeah, that, that's that. Yeah, and you... There's lots of stories where, that pop up in other stories, other chapters, where the social aspect played a part, right? Where they picked each other up or they were there for each other because they were part of the same house.
And I think there's, there's definitely a lot of tear-jerking moments in there, or almost tear-jerking. Yeah. Yeah. I, there was one time I added, and I actually started doing this the last few years of teaching, is if you won for the most points for the week, there was a mystery envelope, and you could either choose to take it or pass it on to the house that was in second place for the week.
But they didn't know if it was something good that was gonna happen to them or something bad, so they had to take that risk. So as a house then they had to discuss is the risk worth it? Will it be a reward or will it be a risk? If they open it and it says they have to go in front of the class and sing Baby Shark, that's what they had to do.
If the reward was you earn an extra 50 points, then that's what they had to do. I mean, it got a little bit crazy. I mean, there was one year where or one time where another house won and they got to steal the house leader from the other house for a week and put them in their group. Well, now that house leader that was taken had to decide, "Do I wanna earn points for this current house that I'm now stuck with, or do I wanna sabotage them so my house doesn't suffer?"
So, I mean, it all worked out. , There was a lot of... they had a lot of thinking they had to do the whole time, so. But that community piece, again, was so important because as you mentioned in the book, there are a couple examples where students helped each other out because they were in the same group together.
So yeah, it was a fun system. That, that's one I definitely really enjoyed. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. The question I usually end, ask at the end of every episode is, like, how can you, how can somebody who's listening who is, , on the fence of wanting to try some of these things how can they...
What's a, what's your advice for the baby step that they can take? And that's usually how we start. So this is kind of a similar idea, but, like, what is the one material, one non-material tool or item that you think teachers need to be successful in the classroom? So, like, to control their chaos, right? So someone's trying to step into this world that that you've...
similar to the one that you've built. What would be s- one material and one non-material thing you think that they would need to start off with? Well, that's a great question. My first principal always used to tell me, "You build connections before you build the curriculum." So, and, and so to me, that was always important, is I wanted the kids to know that I believed in them and that I trusted them, and it was very important for me to get the kids to trust each other, because we're in it all together for a whole year.
So I spent the first few weeks not even really focused on academics, but focused more on just getting to know each kid, seeing what we all had in common. I'm not an icebreaker guy. I hate icebreakers, i- ... every year at PD they're like, "Let's, find a person whose favorite color is blue."
And I'm like, "No, please don't do this to me. I've known these people for 20 years." And so I didn't wanna do icebreakers, but I wanted to have conversations where they felt comfortable after those first few weeks of, "I trust Mr. Hall, I trust the students in my classroom, I'm not afraid to be myself." And so that's the one thing that I would recommend people do, all teachers do, is don't start off the year right away with a worksheet about, what did I learn last year, and let's review these math facts.
Why don't you do something where it's, let's sit down, let's just talk. How many of you have a dog? What's your dog's name? What, who's into Pokémon? Oh yeah, I like Pokémon too. And you kinda go from there. So connection is important. And I know relationships, that word is overused. It really is, in education.
But it's, but it is an, it is necessary. And if you do it the right way you'll be successful. Material thing. That's a great question. It all depends on what your comfort is. I mean, if some people don't mind embarrassing themselves, then, after October when Halloween's over, buy those, cheap costumes and figure out what you wanna do with them later on, yeah ... yeah, but i- I can't really think of anything material, everyone kind of does their own thing. It's what you just feel comfortable doing. Yeah, and if you've laid the groundwork, with those c- conversations at the beginning, there's a, a whole lot less that you have to worry about.
Exactly, and I remember you telling me a- at the book signing about how you had a conversation with your students, "Well, you're the tallest in the room, so you get to make the decision." See, that joking with the kids, they appreciate that, they appreciate the humor. They appreciate that y- you're y- you obviously care about them because you're joking around with them, and that means a lot to them.
Even if we don't see it, y- Yeah ... they know it, that means something to them. Yeah. So. Yeah, I think building the relationship, the fact that you can have, those off-the-cuff conversations or you can stop and talk about things that are important to them I think it's all the value.
I had a colleague and I've told this story 1,000 times, but I had a colleague where we both started, and it was actually my first year teaching, and I was 21 and I, I knew everything of course, yeah. From the beginning, I was the best teacher that ever was made. Yep ... but y- one of the things that I started off with was like, let's spend a lot of time, like this is how we're going to work.
And over the years I got better at that and it was m- much more of a conversation rather than me then kind of dictating, right? Especially at the beginning it was like, "This is how... this is the way." Yes. But he would like, he couldn't handle that stuff and he would jump right into academics, and then, he'd have behavior problems later.
And I think that it's, the, the time that we spend building the foundation, especially in those first few weeks, that's the place where you set up all the other ones. And all the other ones become that much easier. And like all of these stories that you've told are building upon that relationship that you've built and they know that like, "Hey, I can You know, talking about trust in the room or taking risks in the room, kids aren't gonna be afraid to like raise their hand or, put themselves out there because they know that this is how we do things.
And so the, the sooner you can build that foundation, the easier it is to do all of these things. But also you have a whole lot less, issues in the classroom, a lot less classroom management, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's what people tend to forget is that when you build that relationship and when you get to know each individual kid, you're right, the classroom management issue becomes a lot easier because they don't wanna leave the room.
They don't wanna get kicked out. They wanna be there. They wanna experience that. And I think it's o- oftentimes I've found that when students came from a classroom where the classroom management was based off of they didn't get to know the kids, it was harder for those kids to build trust with me, and it took longer for me to get them to trust me because of their experience in the previous year, where if you have that relationship with a teacher the year before, it's gonna be a lot easier because they see that you also care about them, so.
Yeah. It's just a, it's a, a never ending... You're feeding the cycle, right? Absolutely. Just keep feeding it. You mentioned PD and, and- ... how exciting that can be. And so, and one of our other questions from your fan club here how would you design a program to help teachers grow in their profession?
What do you think is, , the way to attack that? Because oftentimes, we talk about kids, especially in our area, kids, we want students to be lifelong learners, we want them to do all these things. Yeah. Right? And then you go into a professional setting to talk about these things with teachers, and they're like just let me correct my stuff.
Leave me alone." Yes. How would you approach it? How could you take some of your ideas and give those to teachers? Well, well, first of all, P- PD, I've got a... I could write a whole book on PD. That's book number four, I think. That could be book number four because, teachers are also the worst listeners, if you haven't noticed.
Yeah. And we're sitting on these, we're sitting in these hard chairs and we're looking at PowerPoints, and it's mostly about data or a new curriculum that we've received, or let's align standards. It's not, at least in my area, it's not engaging. It's not something that makes you go, "Let's go into that classroom and tackle the world now," and be pumped up and ready.
And so if I were looking at PD from the eyes of a teacher now, I would actually tell teachers, "Let's look at the curriculum," because obviously that's the most important part. But what can we do to make it better, where it's not just, "Here, I'm teaching the lesson. Here's the worksheet. I'm gonna grade it.
We're gonna go over it. Here's the next lesson. Here's the worksheet." How can we take those things and make them so that kids feel they're unforgettable? Mm-hmm. That the lessons that we are giving them are unforgettable. And, you take a look at, like, that economic system, right? There's so many standards- That are covered just from that system- Mm-hmm
that I didn't even have to teach them because they were learning how to do it. And getting that engagement piece, while oftentimes it's difficult to do, especially in elementary school 'cause you're covering five or six subjects, and not everything has to be engaging. I mean, the kids do have to learn boredom sometimes.
But how, how do we get those lessons and actually make them stick with the kids? Because we've all aligned the curriculum before. We've all unpacked the standards, because that's the new thing. We've all unpacked them. I don't know where they get unpacked, but they're unpacked somewhere. Right?
The standards are somewhere. We've taken them out of the suitcase. We don't know where they are. But, instead of looking at all that stuff, instead of putting them in we gotta cover these lessons this week, these lessons this week, and make a pacing guide, why not spend some time going how do we engage the kids with these standards that we've unpacked?
And I think that's probably where I would start with is let's just not worry about, oh, we gotta cover this lesson on this day and use this worksheet. Well, what are we gonna do to make the kids remember how to do these things? I used to take expressions. So it was funny, my, my cousins, or my nephew and my nieces live down in North Carolina, and for some reason up in Northern Michigan expressions and things that kids say don't hit Northern Michigan for about six weeks.
Like brain rot and yeet and all those things, right? You hear them all the time, but they don't come up to Northern Michigan. So I started using them in my lessons. I took everything that my nephew and nieces told me, no cap and all that stuff, right? And I put them in my lessons, and they had no idea.
The kids were like, "I don't know what you're talking about." But I would say, "Well, no cap means I'm not lying. It's just something I use now, kids." And so they would pay attention to these expressions. And then weeks later- ... they would finally hit Northern Michigan and they'd be like, "Mr. Hall, did you create that?"
I'm like, "I think, they think I'm the guy who started Six Seven for goodness sake." It's like I'm the guy. So I would use those expressions in my lessons and just because they were like, "What's he gonna say next?" And my students would always say, "Expect the unexpected when you walk into his class."
That's the advice that they'd always give the other s- kids who were coming in. And so taking that PD and going how can we connect with the kids- Mm-hmm ... but also how do we make these lessons more engaging so they're not so boring? Like the PD is, i- is boring when we're sitting in it. So, yeah, I think it, it's probably a lot harder your fourth or fifth graders are ripe for this moment where they wanna go on the adventure, and the, the teachers may not wanna go on that adventure.
But- Yeah ... if we... I call it the Harry Potter-izing. If we, Harry Potter-ize our schools, and there everything is so full of there's either a challenge or a competition or some joy attached to everything learning, that's something we can definitely steal. And it doesn't take a lot.
We don't have to do... I think a lot of folks might read this and be like, "Whoa," but, like, this is also built over, years and years. And so adding- Yeah ... one little thing and finding a way to connect one little way. And maybe it's next semester, maybe it's next year that you can add that second thing.
But you can slowly start to build a system that, feeds this kind of energy, and that to me, as a teacher, was, always the most exciting thing. Like, I wanna come in to school and have fun, too. We're gonna cover everything we need to cover. Right. But, like, why would I make it boring for myself?
That's right. Yeah. It'd be the longest six hours ever or seven hours ever. It would be so... I don't know why people would do it if they're just gonna be bored the whole time doing it. I don't wanna sit all day and look at my students just sitting at desks doing worksheets the whole time. I want them up and engaged.
And it's interesting you mention about, the, the whole Harry Potter thing. When I started getting that idea out there in different Facebook groups and things, and I started having people reach out to me going, "What's the name of these houses? What do they mean? What are your colors? What are the chants?"
And I'd share everything. I'd explain it all to them. One school ended up taking it K5. So tho- there were four houses K5. So teachers were in one house, and they would all once a week get with the kids during assembly and talk about, "How can we beat this other house?" And their whole building had these big TVs with the points updated all the time.
So those four houses became suddenly a school community, where a fifth grader who was in one house is in the same house as a kindergartner, and they can talk to each other and be like, "What are we doing here? How do we make this better?" Yeah. And it actually was really neat to see it done school-wide. I tried to do it school-wide.
It... A lot of teachers are very hesitant to break- Of course ... the, break the norm of what they're typically used to doing. So, but I thought it was really neat that a whole school took it on and did it. That was amazing to me. Yeah. That's super cool. I think, and that's the power of the reach, right?
I mean, if you're sharing things or vice versa, these teachers who are receiving, right, stealing things from these other groups that you might be sharing or whatever it might be, that can slowly start building and making it a lot easier because now you have the momentum of somebody else.
And I think if you're- If you recognize there is something lacking in the classroom, and that, that could be a, a concept that, I was a math teacher and we've, in- initially it was like measurement, man. It's always at the end of the t- end of the book. We're never gonna get there. Yes. So like, how do we, bring that into other things so that we don't con- continually skip that?
And when you recognize that there's something missing, then you can find, fun ways to do it and pull that back in. But you have to seek those things out. And what better way to do that than to, talk amongst your school, your, the other teachers, and hopefully get a few more people who can be involved.
It is hard but if you can't do that, at least you can reach out to folks who are posting on, Facebook groups or whatever else. Yeah. Or read a great book like this. There you go. Definitely. I... By the time I actually left in my last year, there were six different states in Australia that were using the house system that I had created with the same names and everything.
So it's kinda cool to see at least five districts in a, in another country using those same chants. And my students on the last year got a chance to talk to those kids from Australia, and said, "Hey, you're in the same house I am, but I'm, overseas. How crazy is this?" And they got to chat, and it was really neat to experience that.
Oh, that's so much fun. Yeah. And that's such a simple thing, too. I mean, it's just, it's... At that point, you're just sharing an idea, and the idea is what is, made the connection, right? I mean, obviously there's a lot of work behind those ideas, but it's such a simple thing to bring joy in, and to make the whole process a lot easier.
Absolutely. All right. As we as we wrap up here are there any, any final thoughts or lessons you wanna share with those folks who who may pick up this book? And in fact I'll just say this before we go any further. So all of my all of our clients out there who are gonna, are listening to this now you're already receiving this book, so, you're gonna get a copy of this book.
But for anybody else out there who is listening to this and is, doesn't already get one of these in the mail, you should reach out and we'll- I'll make sure you get one because it's something I think everyone should l- should read. Are there any other stories that you wanna share or f- final thoughts for folks as they embark on this, this path of hopefully making their classroom less chaotic, but, hopefully a whole lot more fun?
Well, the first thing I tell teachers is you're gonna make mistakes, and that's okay. And it's okay for students to see that you've made mistakes because then they feel like not everybody has to be perfect. But the biggest takeaway I would take from this book is everything that you do in your classroom, look at it through the eyes of the child.
Look at it through the eyes of the student sitting in front of you. Would you be engaged by that lesson? Would you be happy to be in that classroom? Would you be excited every day? Mm-hmm. Would, on snow days, would you go, "Oh man, I'm missing school today," or would you be the one going, "Yay, no school," that's the big takeaway is you're with these kids, like I said, seven hours a day, 180 days a year. Look at it through their eyes and see is this where you would wanna be? And that's the biggest takeaway I think is you gotta think about it from the perspective of the students that's sitting in front of you.
Yeah. I love that. I also, and f- to flip that on the head I think that teachers should bring more of themselves into the classroom. There's- We were all fourth graders once, and hopefully having, these experiences. And that we have so many skills and characteristics and ideas that we hold onto that we could be sharing, and so, the more you share yourself, the easier it is for the kids to connect and to be a part of it. So, for me, I was al- always playing music in class because that's what I wanted to do. But it was also a way for me to, like, I'm bringing my joy we're making music out of everything that we're doing, and therefore, the kids are...
That becomes a normal part of our deal. Kids are singing, kids are dancing because that's okay, that's how we do things in our class, right? Absolutely. And so that, I think if you bring, whatever your personality might be or whatever that skill might be, you bring more of yourself in there. You can't possibly lose.
No. Every- How it's funny you mention the music, 'cause every transition, instead of saying, "Okay, let's move on to math," I would just play a song, the song that they knew, oh, it's time to start this next lesson. And so they would do, they knew what they had to do once that music- That's funny ... came on.
And it was really funny because, again, so they would eventually sing along, even I found a kindergarten song, because they used to hate... they were terrible at putting their names on their paper. They couldn't do it. For some reason. Mm-hmm. I'd hand them the worksheet, they couldn't.
They'd go right to the first problem, never put their names on the paper. And so I found a Dr. Jean song. But she sings a lot of kindergarten songs- ... and there's one called Name On Your Paper. And it's this, it's the... I, I, if Dr. Jean ever listens to this, I'd feel terrible. It's not the best song, but it's a catchy song.
And so I would play it, and they'd remember, "Oh, I gotta put my name on there." But then they started singing along to it, like it was the greatest song ever. It was like like Taylor Swift was singing it. They just loved it so much. So, doing things like what you said but, adding music.
I never cared if they did their work standing up, s- laying on the floor. I did have a policy about you had to keep your shoes on after one student kinda ruined my air freshener one time when he took his shoe off. And so, a- I wanted them to be comfortable, just like we had talked about PD.
We don't like sitting in hard chairs for so long. Why should we make our students do it? So just little things like that. But yeah, that's just some of the things that, that I did, mentioning music, that I thought was really fun, so. No, that's great. All right, so the book is called Controlled Chaos.
We're with Eric Hall. Eric, is there some place that folks can find you? And what's next for you? Okay, I have a website called mrhallwrites.com, a Facebook page called One Hall of a Story. And I write, I do that I put a story on there once or twice a day, mostly about classroom antics that happened to me.
What's next for me is I'm in the process... Obviously, this book, I'm doing a lot of book signings and going around and promoting the book, but I also am working with my publisher on a second book called Before I Knew Better, and it's actually not necessarily mistakes, but things I thought I knew that I turned out I didn't know.
Like you had mentioned, when you come out of, teacher school and you're like, "I am gonna be the best. I took a six-week classroom management course. No one's gonna tell me how to do it. I know what I'm doing." And then you find out, "Oh, boy, this is a bad... This is bad." Yeah ... and I'm working, so I'm working on that book.
Just one example, when you're laminating, make sure your tie isn't on top of the thing that you're laminating because- ... you're gonna be ... so, things that I learned. I learned about the reply all button once. That was a big mistake. So- ... you just... That, that's my next book, Before I Knew Better.
I'm slowly getting through that. So, that's where I'm at. Well, I'm excited for that one, too. This has been a great one and it sounds like we've got, we've already identified together book two, book three, book four- ... book nine. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Well, I appreciate the time, and thanks for the conversation.
Absolutely. I really appreciate you having me, and I appreciate all the support.
Welcome back, folks. We're here again for our summer series of Let's Talk Books, and this week we're actually lucky enough to have the author. We have Eric Hall, a retired teacher from Cheboygan, Michigan, and he wrote a book about his 27 years in education. And so thank you, Eric, for joining us. We appreciate that you're here and willing to share your stories with us.
Most of them are either laugh out loud or severe tearjerkers. Yes I would agree. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So the the first question, the book is called Controlled Chaos, and it's about the 27 years of your teaching. And this, most folks that don't get a chance to like read the back cover or like...
or just, giving it the first look are gonna be like, why is this retired teacher writing a book?" And it- I don't think it's a love letter to yourself. You have a much bigger purpose for this book than that. And so I'd love to hear about, one, why you decided to write the book, and then what do you hope the, the message of that is?
Sure. Well, first of all I decided to write the book because during my last year of teaching I told my students right away, I said, "Listen I'm retiring at the end of this school year." And throughout the course of the year we were doing different activities and I was telling them stories about my experiences as a teacher, and one of my students told me, "Hey, you should really write a book."
And I kind of always had kept a little blog on just my Facebook page about things- Mm-hmm ... that had happened in class and whatnot, and it kind of got me thinking about, this would be interesting to write a book about the things that worked for me, but also what I learned in the process- Mm-hmm ... of doing those things.
And so when that idea came to me, or from that student, I thought to myself, "This might be something I wanna do." So, a couple months into retirement, it got to be winter in Northern Michigan, and I'm not a winter person. I'm from North Carolina. So I was like, "Well, I'm hunkered in the house. Might as well put some thoughts down."
So I started putting some thoughts down and I decided I wanted to connect it to 27 lessons because of the 27 years I taught. So that's kinda how it started. What I want people to get from it is that right now teaching gets talked about quite often in negative terms. Mm-hmm. And I want people to see teaching as one of the most impressive professions there is.
You can't think of another profession that exists that, that wasn't inspired by a teacher m- by someone- Yeah ... who took a chance on a student. And that's kind of why I wanted to write the book, to tell them that this isn't all bad, that people who are saying you shouldn't go into the profession- are now thinking may- "Maybe I should try it." And that's the biggest takeaway I think when I wrote it. Yeah, and that, I think that plays into the format of how you structure each of the chapters. It's n- it's a, first off, it's a wonderful story that you're telling of something of controlled chaos.
But then, you always finish it off with two things. What did I learn from this, and what can the reader take away? And so I think like a classic teacher, right? You're- Yes ... you're having some reflection, and then I'm gonna give you an assignment. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm still, so I'm still teaching even though I'm retired, so.
Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's that's often my favorite part. I mean, obviously the stories are amazing. But the... I love the f- the fact that you let us into the world of, how you saw that, through your eyes. And then, how can somebody who's reading this not just go, "Oh, that's a really nice story of somebody else in some other town, in some other school who did something cool.
I can't do that." But it's actually wait, no. The questions you ask the, you know, the readers are very simple. How could you make something, stick a little bit more? How could take something that's a little... and make it a little bit more exciting or whatever it might be.
And I think that's what's my favorite part, reading those sections as, as much as the stories themselves, got me smiling or on the verge of tears. Yes. Well, and a good example of that, like what you just said was, one of the chapters is about how I turned my classroom into a, like a laser beam spy mission, mm-hmm. I'm not expecting everyone to go out and buy all these black lights and, spend hours getting their room ready for some kind of spy mission, but how can you take that boring lesson on fractions and make it more engaging for kids? Because we're fighting, as with a world of technology where kids' minds, have to be engaged almost all the time.
Boredom is very difficult for students. So, you almost have to act, be an actor when you walk into that classroom every day and put on a show. And so how do you take something as boring as maybe teaching them similes and metaphors and suddenly make it engaging where they're like, "Wow, I really like this," and that, and they're learning in the process Yeah, I think that's so key.
In, in fact, that's m- my favorite or at least one of my favorite quotes from the book is, "Fun is the Trojan horse that s- smuggles in learning." Yeah. That's... I love that. I love the visual of that. But it is so true that if, if you get to the point of the kids are engaged and it's not so much like a dog and pony show, right?
We're not talking about something that is just spectacular for the sake of spectacular. But y- you're leading in with that fun. The kids get pulled in, and they are like, what I've seen in most of these stories, the kids are preserving the fun. Like, they're like, "We know this is a farce, but this is so much fun that please nobody mess this up," right?
Yeah. And so the kids are, like, protecting the magic that's happening. Right. No one's trying to poke holes in it. No one's trying to force it to end. They're like, "Please, can we just stay in this moment of fun?" And obviously the learning is happening, too. It's not just engaging. There's the other side where they're actually achieving the result, and in some cases far beyond y- what you expected.
Well, and I always said that I didn't... My goal, my main goal when I was a teacher was I didn't want kids waking up in the morning saying, "I have to go to school." I wanted them to wake up and say, "I want to go to school." And that's a big mindset shift. And so doing those things and getting those kids where they're like, "I don't want this lesson to stop.
I wanna keep going." And then you can prove that it's working based on, unfortunately, all the assessments that you have to give these kids. Hey, these are achieving some great results because they're engaged and they remember it, so when they're, like, taking a test they can go, "Oh, I remember when we did this activity where you dressed up as a French chef and it made th- it connected to this."
Yeah. And so it ended up working very well by just doing that engagement piece. Yeah. And often, I mean, you've given several examples where you've taken it to the umpteenth degree- Yes ... which I feel like is, like, for everybody else out there is the dartboard, right? That's the...
That's our target, right? We're trying to get to that point. But along the way we're getting to points where it's the simple thing is still eliciting that kind of joy, and that joy is, able to help the kids, get through that lesson or at least see the point of where we're headed, right?
And so you've masked that in such a simple way. Putting on a chef hat. Obviously you're ... I love you talking about your accent changing from a French chef to like- Yeah ... I don't know what it was at the end, right? I'm not good at accents, I'll tell you that. My students will tell you that, too.
Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that the, the, the kids remember that and that's something that, carries on well past. I'm sure you have former students who are like, "Hey, how's the chef?" Yes. Oh, they do. And in fact, during the school year if I did an activity early on, let's just say October, November, they would c- they would ask me through spring, "Is he ever coming back?"
And they wanted to see him again, even though he was, it was bad acting on my part- ... they lo- they loved it and they wanted to see it again. So, it did make an impact on them. Yeah. That brings up another question. So a lot of these things, let's say that chef activity was, in your mind was a one-shot, right?
But because of its effectiveness and the kids obviously are, loving that m- memory you bring these things back. A lot of these stories, like, for example, my favorite I know you've been asking teachers what's your favorite part. Oh, yeah. And for me it came up with the whole classroom c- real estate and finances and that whole thing.
And it's just so interesting 'cause there's a great story. Yeah, everyone has to read the whole book. Very very enjoyable, very quick read. But I think the characters in that s- scenario are memorable for sure. But, when you have something that is that big where, you're
For months after months you're, you keep coming back to the same system you put into your class, and it seems like it's a lot of work. If you did one of these things once, everybody would applaud you, but it- it's also like you've done it 12 times, you've done it 180 times, you've done it...
and so on and so forth. How long are you able to keep these things up? And were you adding one thing at a time and keeping things, or was it like, "Okay, I ran that thing its course, and now I'm adding something different," just because you're trying to keep it interesting for yourself too? That's a great question.
So in terms of like the real estate piece, yeah, that was a lot of work at first. It took a lot of time for kids to understand how banking works and stuff. And of course, when they read the book, they'll understand what I'm talking about here. But every time I would do a lesson, I would see where there was mistakes made that I could make it even better next time.
So I it ... Not only for the students, but you're right, also for me. Because then I'd wanna do it again. If it got to a point where I was doing the same exact thing every single time every year, I'd be a lot less motivated- ... to do it. So if you take, for example, going back again to those laser beams where they had
They were spies and they had to find clues around the classroom. I thought one year, "Well, what if I had a student who was an imposter?" Because they used to work in pairs. Mm-hmm. So I was thinking about Among Us, 'cause that was big at the time. Right. And I thought to myself, "What if I had one of those partners in the whole class be the imposter and whisper to me who they want removed out of the classroom for five minutes?"
And so their partner was working by themselves. So then it became a whole other layer. So I ... we'd be in the middle of doing this spy mission with the, the Mission Impossible theme song playing in the background. Then suddenly I'm like "Caden you ... The imposter says you have to sit out for five minutes," and his partner's like, "No," and then it became a whole thing, so, so it made it more interesting for me. So I kind of tried to step it up and change it a little bit because I noticed some things that worked, some things that didn't. And as every year you have a different class of students. Right ... sometimes you have to do s- things a little bit slower maybe than what you did the year before.
So I liked the adjustment. It kept me engaged, but also I felt like I, if I didn't do it, I was doing a disservice to the students who deserved that much enthusiasm that I gave to last year's class. Yeah. Did you ever do the, the spy thing? Was the spy thing something that came back year after year?
The, the spy thing was probably... I started it, like, eight years before I retired. It stayed with me for the last eight years. Oh. It was actually kind of funny because my son, when I first started doing it, my son was quite young, and then he started helping me set up the room. And then when I first did it, you have to put black paper over all the windows and make it completely dark in there for this to work.
Mm-hmm. And I had just thought of the idea. In the book, I mention I, I noticed that I had a blacklight and it turned a white piece of yarn bright, and I thought, "Well, th- I can do something with this," and I bought up all the blacklights I could find- ... after the Halloween store closed down, right? And so when I did it I did just a little bit of laser beams, but as my son got older and he started helping me, it's like, "We gotta up this game."
So he started adding more and more laser beams to the thing, and pretty soon you could barely walk through there. Then you gotta give them, then you're gonna give them, like, detective hats and trench coats. Then you gotta go, "Okay, well, I gotta come up with a fun saying that they have to come up to me and not just give me the answer, but make it sound like it's a real...
Like I'm just a guy walking through the street, but I'm actually the, the head of this detective agency, and they have to whisper a saying to me." So every year it got more intense, but I think a lot of that had to do with my son going, "We need to do this. Now let's add this to it," and it got, it got more engaging as we went on.
And yeah, so that was about eight years of doing that lesson and being excited for it because my son was helping me take, be a big part of it, so. Yeah, and that's a fun activity you guys are doing together. Yeah. Did s- did he have to go through your class, or was he able to go through somebody else's class?
Like, did you ever have to teach him? Never tau- I did teach my oldest daughter in third grade when I also did the economic system. And, I found out I was a little bit harder on her than I was the rest of the class. I was like, "Well, you just lost your desk for the month. That's what you get," kind of thing.
But no he never... My other two kids never had a chance to be in my class. They just enjoyed helping the other kids in my class do those wonderful activities. So, yeah. That's very cool. One of the other major things that you started, and I'm curious to what point in, in your timeline that you did this, were the houses, where you kinda went the Harry Potter route and you set up houses for the students.
The- Well, I'll ask my first question. My first question about that is, how did that start, and at what point in your career was that, something you did? And how long, how many more years did you do that? Well, yeah. So I started I was a Title I teacher for seven years. Mm-hmm. I went back into my classroom teaching fourth grade in 2008.
And as a Title I teacher, you get to go into a lot of different classrooms, and you get to see what works, what doesn't work. Yeah. And so I thought to myself You know I've read about house systems in England. They, and even the Harry Po- obviously Harry Potter, and I thought to myself, "Well, this would be interesting to put a group of six kids in each group, come up with the names for the group, and then make sure that those kids stay together all year long."
They couldn't ever leave. They had to work together for those 180 days. They were stuck in a pod for 180 days together. And it started evolving into more and more things. Pretty soon we had, a house cup that they had to win every marking period. We added these stuffed animal mascots that they a- each got.
Because each, each house had an animal attached to them. Oh, wow. Y- they each had their own color, their own identity. And then I started posting on some fifth grade classroom groups, and a couple teachers picked up on the idea and they said, "Hey, I I wrote a, I, I took your idea and I wrote a rap that put to music."
And so they'd send it to me, so then we did a house rap that we would do at the end of every day. One of my former students, well, the, from the first year I ever taught, actually wrote the chants that are in the book. Mm-hmm. So it just kind of expanded from there. And from that point, at the 2007-2008 school year until I retired, we used that house system ev- I used it every single year without fail.
And I made it even stronger every year. We ended up having a house leader, someone who was responsible for making sure that those houses, they each got along with each other, and they built a community. And and then at the end of the year, we had an overall house cup winner, and they earned this little plaque that they got that they could take home.
And it was really neat, the connection, because they had their house shirts, but kids from previous years, if they wore their house shirts, they would give, get points for the current class. So they would earn points, or they would come in every morning and look at the screen that had how many points each house had and go, "Hey, my former house, what are you doing?
You need to get back. You need to step up your game and do this." Oh, wow. So there were kids from that 2007-2008 class who graduated this year who in my last year of teaching would come in just to see how their house was doing. Wow. And it's, so it made that, that gap, that bridge that I had where they could see, my current students could see all my former students wearing their house shirts or asking them, "Hey, how's it going?"
Or doing the chant with them. And it really expanded into something just not my one class, but eight classes over a course of that rest of that career, eight to 12 classes that kind of bonded together even though they really didn't know each other, but they knew about the house, and that was important to them.
Yeah. That's really cool. One of the things that sticks out to me about that is- You know, you have the former student who writes the chants. Yes. And then as part of your program, you have the house leader write notes for the future house leader. Yes, I did that too. Yep. So you have this like backwards looking, where they're participating in this, and you have this forward thinking of like, let's keep this going and let's propel it forward in a positive manner.
It's just a really cool way of linking all of that stuff together. And like you said, those last eight to 12 classes, whatever it was- You're- you've built this thing that people still talk about. I mean, I think about my wife's family, their high school, they still talk about which group they were.
And like, the whole chain of the family is in that house, much like the Harry Potter series, so that they automatically will like, get together at a, family function and , talk to each other about it, especially when the younger girls were in the school.
You're building this legacy and the values of it. You could speak to the fact of, what else, obviously something very cool, but there was an academic reason why you did it that has expanded beyond before and after, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then going back real quick, it was kind of funny you mentioned family because I deliberately put siblings that I had in different houses, so when they ever, like if I had a fifth grader, they were in one house, and then their sibling came the next year, I put them specifically in a different house so they could argue with each other, which house was the best, and do the chant against each other. But fir- first of all, when I did this, every, every teacher told me, "Well, there's no way you're gonna be able to keep six kids together all year in one group. I mean, you're gonna have to split them all up." And I was, I ma- I was very deliberate and that wasn't gonna happen.
And I didn't put all my strongest kids in one group, all my struggling kids in one group. I wanted it to be a high, medium, low range where those kids who needed more support could get that support from those kids who maybe understood the concept, but also those low students helping the high students with social skills and other functioning that they didn't know.
So it kind of helped in that regard. Plus, with the points that I was giving them, "Hey, you guys worked really well as a group today. You earned X amount of points," or, "Wow, I'm giving 10 points for every person in your house that, that got an A on their assignment or that turned in their homework- or something like that. So it really pushed those groups to do the best because they wanted to win. And so, that's where the academic part played in because they wanted to do better because they knew o- obviously there was a reward to it, but they just didn't want to see anyone else win. And so to them it was competition too.
So they didn't realize it at the time, but they were competing the whole year and so looking at that scoreboard every day, because it was a digital scoreboard on a big TV that I had in my classroom, they could see automatically when I was aw- awarding points and they were like whoa, we got to do something here."
So- ... that, that's where that kind of the academic piece came in is because they were more willing to help each other. Plus, they didn't know each other going in a lot of the times. They weren't friends. They didn't hang out in the same circles, but they became friends because- They had to stay together, and they had to work things through, and it showed a lot of growth.
And it showed quite a community that they ended up building at the end of the year. So, yeah, that, that's that. Yeah, and you... There's lots of stories where, that pop up in other stories, other chapters, where the social aspect played a part, right? Where they picked each other up or they were there for each other because they were part of the same house.
And I think there's, there's definitely a lot of tear-jerking moments in there, or almost tear-jerking. Yeah. Yeah. I, there was one time I added, and I actually started doing this the last few years of teaching, is if you won for the most points for the week, there was a mystery envelope, and you could either choose to take it or pass it on to the house that was in second place for the week.
But they didn't know if it was something good that was gonna happen to them or something bad, so they had to take that risk. So as a house then they had to discuss is the risk worth it? Will it be a reward or will it be a risk? If they open it and it says they have to go in front of the class and sing Baby Shark, that's what they had to do.
If the reward was you earn an extra 50 points, then that's what they had to do. I mean, it got a little bit crazy. I mean, there was one year where or one time where another house won and they got to steal the house leader from the other house for a week and put them in their group. Well, now that house leader that was taken had to decide, "Do I wanna earn points for this current house that I'm now stuck with, or do I wanna sabotage them so my house doesn't suffer?"
So, I mean, it all worked out. , There was a lot of... they had a lot of thinking they had to do the whole time, so. But that community piece, again, was so important because as you mentioned in the book, there are a couple examples where students helped each other out because they were in the same group together.
So yeah, it was a fun system. That, that's one I definitely really enjoyed. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. The question I usually end, ask at the end of every episode is, like, how can you, how can somebody who's listening who is, , on the fence of wanting to try some of these things how can they...
What's a, what's your advice for the baby step that they can take? And that's usually how we start. So this is kind of a similar idea, but, like, what is the one material, one non-material tool or item that you think teachers need to be successful in the classroom? So, like, to control their chaos, right? So someone's trying to step into this world that that you've...
similar to the one that you've built. What would be s- one material and one non-material thing you think that they would need to start off with? Well, that's a great question. My first principal always used to tell me, "You build connections before you build the curriculum." So, and, and so to me, that was always important, is I wanted the kids to know that I believed in them and that I trusted them, and it was very important for me to get the kids to trust each other, because we're in it all together for a whole year.
So I spent the first few weeks not even really focused on academics, but focused more on just getting to know each kid, seeing what we all had in common. I'm not an icebreaker guy. I hate icebreakers, i- ... every year at PD they're like, "Let's, find a person whose favorite color is blue."
And I'm like, "No, please don't do this to me. I've known these people for 20 years." And so I didn't wanna do icebreakers, but I wanted to have conversations where they felt comfortable after those first few weeks of, "I trust Mr. Hall, I trust the students in my classroom, I'm not afraid to be myself." And so that's the one thing that I would recommend people do, all teachers do, is don't start off the year right away with a worksheet about, what did I learn last year, and let's review these math facts.
Why don't you do something where it's, let's sit down, let's just talk. How many of you have a dog? What's your dog's name? What, who's into Pokémon? Oh yeah, I like Pokémon too. And you kinda go from there. So connection is important. And I know relationships, that word is overused. It really is, in education.
But it's, but it is an, it is necessary. And if you do it the right way you'll be successful. Material thing. That's a great question. It all depends on what your comfort is. I mean, if some people don't mind embarrassing themselves, then, after October when Halloween's over, buy those, cheap costumes and figure out what you wanna do with them later on, yeah ... yeah, but i- I can't really think of anything material, everyone kind of does their own thing. It's what you just feel comfortable doing. Yeah, and if you've laid the groundwork, with those c- conversations at the beginning, there's a, a whole lot less that you have to worry about.
Exactly, and I remember you telling me a- at the book signing about how you had a conversation with your students, "Well, you're the tallest in the room, so you get to make the decision." See, that joking with the kids, they appreciate that, they appreciate the humor. They appreciate that y- you're y- you obviously care about them because you're joking around with them, and that means a lot to them.
Even if we don't see it, y- Yeah ... they know it, that means something to them. Yeah. So. Yeah, I think building the relationship, the fact that you can have, those off-the-cuff conversations or you can stop and talk about things that are important to them I think it's all the value.
I had a colleague and I've told this story 1,000 times, but I had a colleague where we both started, and it was actually my first year teaching, and I was 21 and I, I knew everything of course, yeah. From the beginning, I was the best teacher that ever was made. Yep ... but y- one of the things that I started off with was like, let's spend a lot of time, like this is how we're going to work.
And over the years I got better at that and it was m- much more of a conversation rather than me then kind of dictating, right? Especially at the beginning it was like, "This is how... this is the way." Yes. But he would like, he couldn't handle that stuff and he would jump right into academics, and then, he'd have behavior problems later.
And I think that it's, the, the time that we spend building the foundation, especially in those first few weeks, that's the place where you set up all the other ones. And all the other ones become that much easier. And like all of these stories that you've told are building upon that relationship that you've built and they know that like, "Hey, I can You know, talking about trust in the room or taking risks in the room, kids aren't gonna be afraid to like raise their hand or, put themselves out there because they know that this is how we do things.
And so the, the sooner you can build that foundation, the easier it is to do all of these things. But also you have a whole lot less, issues in the classroom, a lot less classroom management, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's what people tend to forget is that when you build that relationship and when you get to know each individual kid, you're right, the classroom management issue becomes a lot easier because they don't wanna leave the room.
They don't wanna get kicked out. They wanna be there. They wanna experience that. And I think it's o- oftentimes I've found that when students came from a classroom where the classroom management was based off of they didn't get to know the kids, it was harder for those kids to build trust with me, and it took longer for me to get them to trust me because of their experience in the previous year, where if you have that relationship with a teacher the year before, it's gonna be a lot easier because they see that you also care about them, so.
Yeah. It's just a, it's a, a never ending... You're feeding the cycle, right? Absolutely. Just keep feeding it. You mentioned PD and, and- ... how exciting that can be. And so, and one of our other questions from your fan club here how would you design a program to help teachers grow in their profession?
What do you think is, , the way to attack that? Because oftentimes, we talk about kids, especially in our area, kids, we want students to be lifelong learners, we want them to do all these things. Yeah. Right? And then you go into a professional setting to talk about these things with teachers, and they're like just let me correct my stuff.
Leave me alone." Yes. How would you approach it? How could you take some of your ideas and give those to teachers? Well, well, first of all, P- PD, I've got a... I could write a whole book on PD. That's book number four, I think. That could be book number four because, teachers are also the worst listeners, if you haven't noticed.
Yeah. And we're sitting on these, we're sitting in these hard chairs and we're looking at PowerPoints, and it's mostly about data or a new curriculum that we've received, or let's align standards. It's not, at least in my area, it's not engaging. It's not something that makes you go, "Let's go into that classroom and tackle the world now," and be pumped up and ready.
And so if I were looking at PD from the eyes of a teacher now, I would actually tell teachers, "Let's look at the curriculum," because obviously that's the most important part. But what can we do to make it better, where it's not just, "Here, I'm teaching the lesson. Here's the worksheet. I'm gonna grade it.
We're gonna go over it. Here's the next lesson. Here's the worksheet." How can we take those things and make them so that kids feel they're unforgettable? Mm-hmm. That the lessons that we are giving them are unforgettable. And, you take a look at, like, that economic system, right? There's so many standards- That are covered just from that system- Mm-hmm
that I didn't even have to teach them because they were learning how to do it. And getting that engagement piece, while oftentimes it's difficult to do, especially in elementary school 'cause you're covering five or six subjects, and not everything has to be engaging. I mean, the kids do have to learn boredom sometimes.
But how, how do we get those lessons and actually make them stick with the kids? Because we've all aligned the curriculum before. We've all unpacked the standards, because that's the new thing. We've all unpacked them. I don't know where they get unpacked, but they're unpacked somewhere. Right?
The standards are somewhere. We've taken them out of the suitcase. We don't know where they are. But, instead of looking at all that stuff, instead of putting them in we gotta cover these lessons this week, these lessons this week, and make a pacing guide, why not spend some time going how do we engage the kids with these standards that we've unpacked?
And I think that's probably where I would start with is let's just not worry about, oh, we gotta cover this lesson on this day and use this worksheet. Well, what are we gonna do to make the kids remember how to do these things? I used to take expressions. So it was funny, my, my cousins, or my nephew and my nieces live down in North Carolina, and for some reason up in Northern Michigan expressions and things that kids say don't hit Northern Michigan for about six weeks.
Like brain rot and yeet and all those things, right? You hear them all the time, but they don't come up to Northern Michigan. So I started using them in my lessons. I took everything that my nephew and nieces told me, no cap and all that stuff, right? And I put them in my lessons, and they had no idea.
The kids were like, "I don't know what you're talking about." But I would say, "Well, no cap means I'm not lying. It's just something I use now, kids." And so they would pay attention to these expressions. And then weeks later- ... they would finally hit Northern Michigan and they'd be like, "Mr. Hall, did you create that?"
I'm like, "I think, they think I'm the guy who started Six Seven for goodness sake." It's like I'm the guy. So I would use those expressions in my lessons and just because they were like, "What's he gonna say next?" And my students would always say, "Expect the unexpected when you walk into his class."
That's the advice that they'd always give the other s- kids who were coming in. And so taking that PD and going how can we connect with the kids- Mm-hmm ... but also how do we make these lessons more engaging so they're not so boring? Like the PD is, i- is boring when we're sitting in it. So, yeah, I think it, it's probably a lot harder your fourth or fifth graders are ripe for this moment where they wanna go on the adventure, and the, the teachers may not wanna go on that adventure.
But- Yeah ... if we... I call it the Harry Potter-izing. If we, Harry Potter-ize our schools, and there everything is so full of there's either a challenge or a competition or some joy attached to everything learning, that's something we can definitely steal. And it doesn't take a lot.
We don't have to do... I think a lot of folks might read this and be like, "Whoa," but, like, this is also built over, years and years. And so adding- Yeah ... one little thing and finding a way to connect one little way. And maybe it's next semester, maybe it's next year that you can add that second thing.
But you can slowly start to build a system that, feeds this kind of energy, and that to me, as a teacher, was, always the most exciting thing. Like, I wanna come in to school and have fun, too. We're gonna cover everything we need to cover. Right. But, like, why would I make it boring for myself?
That's right. Yeah. It'd be the longest six hours ever or seven hours ever. It would be so... I don't know why people would do it if they're just gonna be bored the whole time doing it. I don't wanna sit all day and look at my students just sitting at desks doing worksheets the whole time. I want them up and engaged.
And it's interesting you mention about, the, the whole Harry Potter thing. When I started getting that idea out there in different Facebook groups and things, and I started having people reach out to me going, "What's the name of these houses? What do they mean? What are your colors? What are the chants?"
And I'd share everything. I'd explain it all to them. One school ended up taking it K5. So tho- there were four houses K5. So teachers were in one house, and they would all once a week get with the kids during assembly and talk about, "How can we beat this other house?" And their whole building had these big TVs with the points updated all the time.
So those four houses became suddenly a school community, where a fifth grader who was in one house is in the same house as a kindergartner, and they can talk to each other and be like, "What are we doing here? How do we make this better?" Yeah. And it actually was really neat to see it done school-wide. I tried to do it school-wide.
It... A lot of teachers are very hesitant to break- Of course ... the, break the norm of what they're typically used to doing. So, but I thought it was really neat that a whole school took it on and did it. That was amazing to me. Yeah. That's super cool. I think, and that's the power of the reach, right?
I mean, if you're sharing things or vice versa, these teachers who are receiving, right, stealing things from these other groups that you might be sharing or whatever it might be, that can slowly start building and making it a lot easier because now you have the momentum of somebody else.
And I think if you're- If you recognize there is something lacking in the classroom, and that, that could be a, a concept that, I was a math teacher and we've, in- initially it was like measurement, man. It's always at the end of the t- end of the book. We're never gonna get there. Yes. So like, how do we, bring that into other things so that we don't con- continually skip that?
And when you recognize that there's something missing, then you can find, fun ways to do it and pull that back in. But you have to seek those things out. And what better way to do that than to, talk amongst your school, your, the other teachers, and hopefully get a few more people who can be involved.
It is hard but if you can't do that, at least you can reach out to folks who are posting on, Facebook groups or whatever else. Yeah. Or read a great book like this. There you go. Definitely. I... By the time I actually left in my last year, there were six different states in Australia that were using the house system that I had created with the same names and everything.
So it's kinda cool to see at least five districts in a, in another country using those same chants. And my students on the last year got a chance to talk to those kids from Australia, and said, "Hey, you're in the same house I am, but I'm, overseas. How crazy is this?" And they got to chat, and it was really neat to experience that.
Oh, that's so much fun. Yeah. And that's such a simple thing, too. I mean, it's just, it's... At that point, you're just sharing an idea, and the idea is what is, made the connection, right? I mean, obviously there's a lot of work behind those ideas, but it's such a simple thing to bring joy in, and to make the whole process a lot easier.
Absolutely. All right. As we as we wrap up here are there any, any final thoughts or lessons you wanna share with those folks who who may pick up this book? And in fact I'll just say this before we go any further. So all of my all of our clients out there who are gonna, are listening to this now you're already receiving this book, so, you're gonna get a copy of this book.
But for anybody else out there who is listening to this and is, doesn't already get one of these in the mail, you should reach out and we'll- I'll make sure you get one because it's something I think everyone should l- should read. Are there any other stories that you wanna share or f- final thoughts for folks as they embark on this, this path of hopefully making their classroom less chaotic, but, hopefully a whole lot more fun?
Well, the first thing I tell teachers is you're gonna make mistakes, and that's okay. And it's okay for students to see that you've made mistakes because then they feel like not everybody has to be perfect. But the biggest takeaway I would take from this book is everything that you do in your classroom, look at it through the eyes of the child.
Look at it through the eyes of the student sitting in front of you. Would you be engaged by that lesson? Would you be happy to be in that classroom? Would you be excited every day? Mm-hmm. Would, on snow days, would you go, "Oh man, I'm missing school today," or would you be the one going, "Yay, no school," that's the big takeaway is you're with these kids, like I said, seven hours a day, 180 days a year. Look at it through their eyes and see is this where you would wanna be? And that's the biggest takeaway I think is you gotta think about it from the perspective of the students that's sitting in front of you.
Yeah. I love that. I also, and f- to flip that on the head I think that teachers should bring more of themselves into the classroom. There's- We were all fourth graders once, and hopefully having, these experiences. And that we have so many skills and characteristics and ideas that we hold onto that we could be sharing, and so, the more you share yourself, the easier it is for the kids to connect and to be a part of it. So, for me, I was al- always playing music in class because that's what I wanted to do. But it was also a way for me to, like, I'm bringing my joy we're making music out of everything that we're doing, and therefore, the kids are...
That becomes a normal part of our deal. Kids are singing, kids are dancing because that's okay, that's how we do things in our class, right? Absolutely. And so that, I think if you bring, whatever your personality might be or whatever that skill might be, you bring more of yourself in there. You can't possibly lose.
No. Every- How it's funny you mention the music, 'cause every transition, instead of saying, "Okay, let's move on to math," I would just play a song, the song that they knew, oh, it's time to start this next lesson. And so they would do, they knew what they had to do once that music- That's funny ... came on.
And it was really funny because, again, so they would eventually sing along, even I found a kindergarten song, because they used to hate... they were terrible at putting their names on their paper. They couldn't do it. For some reason. Mm-hmm. I'd hand them the worksheet, they couldn't.
They'd go right to the first problem, never put their names on the paper. And so I found a Dr. Jean song. But she sings a lot of kindergarten songs- ... and there's one called Name On Your Paper. And it's this, it's the... I, I, if Dr. Jean ever listens to this, I'd feel terrible. It's not the best song, but it's a catchy song.
And so I would play it, and they'd remember, "Oh, I gotta put my name on there." But then they started singing along to it, like it was the greatest song ever. It was like like Taylor Swift was singing it. They just loved it so much. So, doing things like what you said but, adding music.
I never cared if they did their work standing up, s- laying on the floor. I did have a policy about you had to keep your shoes on after one student kinda ruined my air freshener one time when he took his shoe off. And so, a- I wanted them to be comfortable, just like we had talked about PD.
We don't like sitting in hard chairs for so long. Why should we make our students do it? So just little things like that. But yeah, that's just some of the things that, that I did, mentioning music, that I thought was really fun, so. No, that's great. All right, so the book is called Controlled Chaos.
We're with Eric Hall. Eric, is there some place that folks can find you? And what's next for you? Okay, I have a website called mrhallwrites.com, a Facebook page called One Hall of a Story. And I write, I do that I put a story on there once or twice a day, mostly about classroom antics that happened to me.
What's next for me is I'm in the process... Obviously, this book, I'm doing a lot of book signings and going around and promoting the book, but I also am working with my publisher on a second book called Before I Knew Better, and it's actually not necessarily mistakes, but things I thought I knew that I turned out I didn't know.
Like you had mentioned, when you come out of, teacher school and you're like, "I am gonna be the best. I took a six-week classroom management course. No one's gonna tell me how to do it. I know what I'm doing." And then you find out, "Oh, boy, this is a bad... This is bad." Yeah ... and I'm working, so I'm working on that book.
Just one example, when you're laminating, make sure your tie isn't on top of the thing that you're laminating because- ... you're gonna be ... so, things that I learned. I learned about the reply all button once. That was a big mistake. So- ... you just... That, that's my next book, Before I Knew Better.
I'm slowly getting through that. So, that's where I'm at. Well, I'm excited for that one, too. This has been a great one and it sounds like we've got, we've already identified together book two, book three, book four- ... book nine. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Well, I appreciate the time, and thanks for the conversation.
Absolutely. I really appreciate you having me, and I appreciate all the support.
